"The Turveydrops, Senior and Junior" by Harry Furniss — tenth illustration for "Bleak House" (1910) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated: A Remnant of the Regency

Prince Turveydrop then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr. Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment.

He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment.

"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson." [Chapter XIV, "Deportment," 191-192]

Commentary: A Fashionable Relic of the Previous Era

The Regency revenant and his pleasant son have been the subject of every illustrator from the original Phiz serial illustrations of 1852-53 to the Charles Dickens Library Edition of 1910. The superannuated Regency buck who has modelled himself on the First Gentleman of Europe, the Prince Regent (afterwards, King George IV), demonstrates like his model the triumph of style over substance. The indolent senior Turveydrop had lived on his wife's exertions until she died from overwork, whereupon he took up sponging off his son, the musician and dancing-master whom he christened "Prince" in deference to his model of deportment and fashion. Like his mother, Prince maintains his father in comfort and style by over-working himself in running the Newman Street Dancing Academy. The job of the illustrator is challenging since Turveydrop must look elegant, but must reveal himself to be egotistical, exploitative — and near-sighted. The characteristic posture is therefore looking down and upon his own accoutrements rather than at others, as in the Furniss treatment The Turveydrops, Senior and Junior(1910).

The later illustrators such as Harry Furniss and Sol Eytinge, Junior, have followed Phiz's practice of exaggerating the physical bulk of Mr. Tturveydrop to suggest his massive egotism. However, whereas Phiz has contextualized the dominating figure of the master of deportment in The Dancing School (June 1852) and A model of parental deportment (October 1852), but Eytinge merely juxtaposes the slight son with the super-sized father without depicting the activities of the dancing academy in the background.

Other​ Illustrations​ of The Turveydrops, 1852-1910

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Left: The Kyd wartercolour study of the Regency Master of Deportment for Player's Cigarette Card No. 47, Mr. Turveydrop (1910). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 1867 Diamond Edition of the Turveydrops at the Newman Street Academy: Mr. Turveydrop and his Son. Right: Fred Barnard's 1873 Household Edition full-page composite woodblock wood-engraving of the father and son in the gallery: Deportment.

Phiz's original; serial illustration of the school of deportment in full swing: The Dancing School (July 1852).

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

"Bleak House — Sixty-one Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.

The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd." London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, n. d.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vols. 1-4.

_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [61 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875.

_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Harry Furniss [28 original lithographs]. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Vol. 11.​ London: Educational Book, 1910.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 18: Bleak House."The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. XVII. 366-97.

Kyd [Clayton J. Clarke]. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.

Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985.

Created 2 March 2021