"'When we came to the gate on the road he turned round full and looked at the house,' etc." Eleventh illustration by William Newman for Charles Lever's "A Day's Ride" (29 September 1860)

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"When we came to the gate on the road he turned round full and looked at the house," etc.

William Newman

29 September 1860

8.8 cm high by 6.6 cm wide (3 ½ by 2 ⅝ inches)

Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance,

Harper's Weekly, Vol. IV (29 September 1860): partially framed, bottom right, p. 621.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

When we came to the gate on the road he turned round full and looked at the house," etc. — staff artist William Newman's eleventh composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, instalment 7, published on 29 September 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, Chapter IX, "My Interest in a Lady Fellow-Traveller," framed, bottom right, page 621. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated in the Inset Narrative: "the house, overgrown with that rich red creeper"

“'You know me, then? — you know who I am?' said he, hastily, as I called him by his name.

“'That I do, sir, and I hold my place under you; my name is Shore.'

“'Yes, I remember,' said he, vaguely, as he moved away. When we came to the gate on the road he turned around full and looked at the house, overgrown with that rich red creeper that was so much admired. 'Mark my words, my good man,' said he, — mark them well, and as sure as I live, I'll not leave one stone on another of that dwelling there.'”

“He was promising more than he could perform,” said the attorney.

“I don't know that,” sighed the meek man; “there's very little that money can't do in this life.” [Chapter IX, "My Interest in a Lady Fellow-Traveller," 621; page 84 in the Chapman and Hall edition]

Commentary: Potts overhears the gossip about Sir Elkanah Crofton and Samuel Whalley

Potts, distracted by the alluring presence of a tearful young lady in a veil, misses the noon-day train from Millford to Brighton, and ends up on the same uptrain as she, the 3:40 for London. Her luggage proclaims that she ("Miss K. Herbert") is bound for the port of Ostend in Belgium, and Potts determines to follow her, at least nominally pursuing his missing mount, Blondell. Getting into the wrong second-class carriage at the last moment, Potts has lost track of Miss Herbert, and resolves to sleep. However, the passengers interrupt his attempts at catching a nap in their animated discussion of the disappearance of the Welsh foundry owner, Sir Samuel Whalley, and the possible involvement in Whalley's disappearance of his quondam mentor, Sir Elkanah Crofton. Mention of that name arrests Potts's attention as it is that of the rich uncle of his fellow guests at The Rosary back in Ireland. Suddenly bereft of her husband, Lady Whalley has opened a girls' school in the neighbourhood under her maiden name, "Herbert," according to the gossiper, Mr. Shore (the second figure in Newman's illustration), who then reveals the reason for Miss Kate Herbert's going to Brussels: she is to become the paid companion of an elderly English widow living there, a Mrs. Keats. These characters will appear in the ensuing chapters.

The present illustration, therefore, has nothing whatsoever to do with Potts's peregrinations. Rather, it concerns the old baronet's intention to be avenged on Samuel Walley for a public insult from his former protegé — "You shall rue this insolence — it shall cost you dearly, by Heaven!" the crotchety aristocrat had sworn in the presence of the traveller retailing the anecdote. Suddenly feeling quite ill, the angry baronet had gripped the speaker's (Shore's) arm, and sworn to use financial leverage to bring down the Whalleys' red-brick cottage. And now Walley is missing. Newman's Sir Elkanah Crofton seems what Lever paints him: an elderly, well-dressed, and malevolent aristocrat. In the background is the house that the baronet has sworn to destroy.

Bibliography

Brown, Jane E., and Richard Samuel West. "William Newman (1817—1870): A Victorian Cartoonist in London and New York." American Periodicals, 17, 2: "Periodical Comics and Cartoons." (Ohio State University Press, 2007), 143-183. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20770984.

Lever, Charles. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by William Newman. Vols. IV-V (13 April 1860 through 23 March 1861) in thirty-five weekly parts. Only a dozen of these weekly instalments were illustrated: p. 541 (one), 549 (two), 573, 589, 605, 621, 637, 649, 661, 678, 701, and 714.

_______. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1863, rpt. Routledge, 1882.

_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.

Lever, Charles James. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. http://www.gutenberg.org//files/32692/32692-h/32692-h.htm

Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.

Sutherland, John. "Charles Lever." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. Pp. 372-374.

Created 17 June 2022