Online Exhibition: Character Sketches from the World of Charles Dickens
This exhibition celebrates one of the most enduring legacies of Charles Dickens's genius: the unforgettable characters he brought to life.
Paul Dombey is the powerful head of the House of Dombey. When his wife dies in childbirth, he remarries, but his new wife eventually runs away with his manager, Carker. “. . .Though a handsome and well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance to be prepossessing.”
Joseph Clayton Clark,"Kyd." 30 Original Character Illustrations to Dombey and Son.
Lucretia Tox is described by Dickens as "a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-drapers call 'fast colours' originally, and to have, by little and little, washed out." She has designs on Mr. Dombey after his wife dies.
Extra-illustrations for Dombey and Son, drawn by Hablot K. Browne, 1848.
An old naval man, and friend of Solomon Gillis, Captain Cuttle is "a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a hand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick stick in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs."
Joseph Clayton Clark,"Kyd." The Characters of Charles Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1890.
Toots is a classmate of Paul Jr.'s at Dr. Blimber's Academy who falls hopelessly in love with Florence Dombey. “Possessed of the gruffest of voices and the shrillest of minds. . . constantly falling in love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of his existence. . . . ”
Joseph Clayton Clark,"Kyd." The Characters of Charles Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1890.
With the patriarch Dombey sitting stiffly in the middle and the children off to the side, and Little Paul being held by his wet-nurse, Browne is able to suggest the awkwardness of the family dynamic.
Hablot K. Browne. Original illustration of a scene from Dombey and Son, 1846.
Little Paul is sent to Brighton, on the seacoast in the south of England, for his health. “The sea, Floy. What is it that it keeps on saying?” he asks his sister. Dickens had described the first Mrs. Dombey’s death as drifting "out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the world.”
Illustration for the Household Edition of The Works of Charles Dickens, Chapman and Hall, 1873.
James Carker is a manager in the firm and assistant to Paul Dombey, who elopes with Dombey’s second wife. “Mr. Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine, there is no show of subservience compatible with the transaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient.”
Extra-illustrations for Dombey and Son, drawn by Hablot K. Browne, 1848.
Old Joe describes himself as "tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!" Dickens describes him as “a wooden-featured, blue-faced major, with his eyes starting out of his head. . . . ” He is a retired army man who is a neighbor of Miss Tox and a toady to Dombey.
Extra-illustrations for Dombey and Son, drawn by Hablot K. Browne, 1848.