FRED. G. KITTON.
25, Paultons Square,
Chelsea, S.W.
August, 1882.
LIST OF PLATES.
| Portrait of "Phiz" (H. K. Browne) | [FRONTISPIECE] | |
| The Departure | To face page | [8] |
| Artist's "Fancies for Mr. Dombey" | " | [11] |
| Sam Weller and his Father | " | [14] |
| Tail-piece to Barnaby Rudge | " | [16] |
| Dick Swiveller and the Lodger | " | [20] |
| Death of Quilp | " | [26] |
| The Rioters | " | [30] |
Note.—With the exception of the Portrait, and the "Dombey fancies," the above engravings are printed from electro-types of the original blocks, which were first published in Master Humphrey's Clock (1840-1).
"PHIZ" (H. K. BROWNE) A MEMOIR.
"Fizz, Whizz, or something of that sort," humorous Tom Hood would say, when trying to recall the pseudonym that has since become so familiar by means of the innumerable works of art to which it was appended. At the time Hablot[A] Knight Browne first used this quaint soubriquet, it was customary to look upon book-illustrators as second, or even third-rate artists—mere hacks in fact; and for this reason they usually suppressed their real names, in order to give themselves the opportunity of earning the title of artist, when producing more ambitious results as painters. Occasionally, whether by accident or design, the subject of this memoir would affix his real name to his illustrations; and the public were consequently under the impression that the two signatures were those of different artists, and were even wont to remark that "Browne's work was better than that of 'Phiz!'"
It is not, perhaps, generally known that the artist's first nom de crayon was "Nemo," which to some extent bears out the above statement that a book-illustrator was considered a "nobody." Mr. Browne himself, in referring to the Pickwick Papers, gave the following explanation:—"I think I signed myself as 'Nemo' to my first etchings (those of No. 4) before adopting 'Phiz' as my soubriquet, to harmonize—I suppose—better with Dickens' 'Boz.'" It is only on the earliest printed plates in some copies of the Pickwick Papers that the signature of "Nemo" can be faintly traced.