Mr. Hablot K. Browne, better known as Phiz, was an artist of a departed
school to whom we all owe a great deal of amusement. He was not so
versatile nor so original as Cruickshank; he had not the genius, nor the
geniality, still less the sense of beauty, of John Leech. In his later
years his work became more and more unequal, till he was sometimes almost
as apt to scribble hasty scrawls as Constantin Guys. M. Guys was an
artist selected by M. Baudelaire as the fine flower of modern art, and
the true, though hurried, designer of the fugitive modern beauty. It is
recorded that M. Guys was once sent to draw a scene of triumph and
certain illuminations in London, probably about the end of the Crimean
War. His sketch did not reach the office of the paper for which he
worked in time, and some one went to see what the man of genius was
doing. He was found in bed, but he was equal to the occasion. Snatching
a sheet of paper and a pencil he drew a curve. "There," said he, "is the
triumphal arch, and here"--scribbling a number of scratches like
eccentric comets--"here are the fireworks." Mr. Browne's drawings
occasionally showed a tendency to approach the rudimentary sort of
"pictograph" rather than give what a dramatic critic calls "a solid and
studied rendering" of events. But many of Mr. Browne's illustrations of
Dickens are immortal. They are closely bound up with our earliest and
latest recollections of the work of the "incomparable Boz." Mr.
Pickwick, we believe, was not wholly due to the fancy of Mr. Browne, but
of the unfortunate Seymour, whom death prevented from continuing the
series. Every one has heard how Mr. Thackeray, then an unknown man,
wished to illustrate one of Mr. Dickens's early stories, and brought Mr.
Dickens examples of his skill. Fortunately, his offer was not accepted.
Mr. Thackeray's pencil was the proper ally of his pen. He saw and drew
Costigan, Becky, Emmy, Lord Steyne, as no one else could have drawn them.
But he had not beheld the creations of Boz in the same light of
imaginative vision. Sometimes, too, it must be allowed that Mr.
Thackeray drew very badly. His "Peg of Limavaddy," in the "Irish Sketch
Book," is a most formless lady, and by no means justifies the enthusiasm
of her poet. Thus the task of illustrating "Pickwick" fell to Mr.
Browne, and he carried on the conceptions of his predecessor with
extraordinary vigour. The old vein of exaggerated caricature he
inherited from the taste of an elder generation. But making allowance
for the exaggeration, what can be better than Mr. Pickwick sliding, or
the awful punishment of Stiggins at the hands of the long-suffering
Weller? We might wish that the young lady in fur-topped boots was
prettier, and indeed more of a lady. But Mr. Browne never had much
success, we think, in drawing pretty faces. He tried to improve in this
respect, but either his girls had little character, or the standard of
female beauty has altered. As to this latter change, there can be no
doubt at all. Leech's girls are not like Thackeray's early pictures of
women; and Mr. Du Maurier's are sometimes sicklied o'er with the pale
cast of an aesthetic period.
It is probable that the influence of Mr. Browne's art reacted in some
degree on Dickens. In the old times every one whom the author invented
the artist was pretty certain to caricature. Thus the author may have
felt the temptation to keep pace with the frolic humour of the artist.
Mr. Browne cannot be blamed for a tendency to exaggerate noses and other
features, which was almost universal in his time. None of us can say
what conception would now be entertained of Dickens's characters if Mr.
Browne had not drawn them. In the later works of Dickens (when they were
illustrated) other artists were employed, as Mr. Stone and Mr. Fildes.
These are accomplished painters of established reputation, and they of
course avoided the old system of caricature, the old forced humour. But
we doubt whether their designs are so intimately associated with the
persons in the stories as are the designs of Mr. Browne. The later
artists had this disadvantage, that the later novels (except "Great
Expectations," which was not illustrated) were neither so good nor so
popular as "Pickwick," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Martin Chuzzlewit," "David
Copperfield," or even "Bleak House." We never can have any Mr. Micawber
but Phiz's indescribably jaunty Micawber. His Mr. Pecksniff is not very
like a human being, but his collars and his eye-glass redeem him, and
after all Pecksniff is a transcendental and incredible Tartuffe. Tom
Pinch is even less sympathetic in the drawings than in the novel. Jonas
Chuzzlewit is also "too steep," as a modern critic has said in modern
slang. But in the novel, too, Mr. Jonas is somewhat precipitous.
Nicholas Nickleby is a colourless sort of young man in the illustrations,
but then he is not very vividly presented in the text. Ralph Nickleby
and Arthur Gride may pair off with Jonas Chuzzlewit, but who can
disparage the immortal Mr. Squeers? From the first moment when we see
him at his inn, with the starveling little boys, through all the story,
Mr. Squeers is consistently exquisite. In spite of his cruelty,
coarseness, hypocrisy, there is a kind of humour in Mr. Squeers which
makes him not quite detestable. In "David Copperfield" Mr. Micawber is
perhaps the only artistic creation of much permanent merit, unless it be
the waiter who consumed David's dinner, and the landlady who gave him a
pint of the Regular Stunning. In "Bleak House" Mr. Browne made some
credible attempts to be tragic and pathetic. Jo is remembered, and the
gateway of the churchyard where the rats were, and the Ghost's Walk in
the gloomy domain of Lady Dedlock.
It is a singular and gloomy feature in the character of young ladies and
gentlemen of a particular type that they have ceased to care for Dickens,
as they have ceased to care for Scott. They say they cannot read
Dickens. When Mr. Pickwick's adventures are presented to the modern
maid, she behaves like the Cambridge freshman. "Euclide viso, cohorruit
et evasit." When he was shown Euclid he evinced dismay, and sneaked off.
Even so do most young people act when they are expected to read "Nicholas
Nickleby" and "Martin Chuzzlewit." They call these masterpieces "too
gutterly gutter;" they cannot sympathize with this honest humour and
conscious pathos. Consequently the innumerable references to Sam Weller,
and Mrs. Gamp, and Mr. Pecksniff, and Mr. Winkle which fill our ephemeral
literature are written for these persons in an unknown tongue. The
number of people who could take a good pass in Mr. Calverley's Pickwick
Examination Paper is said to be diminishing. Pathetic questions are
sometimes put. Are we not too much cultivated? Can this fastidiousness
be anything but a casual passing phase of taste? Are all people over
thirty who cling to their Dickens and their Scott old fogies? Are we
wrong in preferring them to "Bootle's Baby," and "The Quick or the Dead,"
and the novels of M. Paul Bourget?