"Darby Feelingly Apologises for the Scarcity of Irish Lion," by "Phiz"

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) —> Barrington —> Charles Lever —> Next]

Darby Feelingly Apologises for the Scarcity of Irish Lion

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

March 1862

Steel engraving

10.9 by 10 cm (4 ¼ by 3 ⅞ inches), vignetted

Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter IV), p. 37

Third serial illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington; Tales of the Trains, facing 37.

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 it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Realisation of Irish Brogue

Darby would like to have given a ready assent, — he would have been charmed to say that they came daily, that they made the place a continual rendezvous; but as he saw no prospect of being able to give his fiction even twenty-four hours' currency, he merely changed from one leg to the other, and, in a tone of apology, said, “Betimes they does, when the sayson is fine.”

“Who are the persons who are most frequently here?”

“Those two that you saw last night, — the Major and Dr. Dill. They're up here every second day, fishing, and eating their dinner with the master.”

“Is the fishing good?”

“The best in Ireland.”

“And what shooting is there, — any partridges?”

“Partridges, be gorra! You could n't see the turnips for them.” [Chapter IV, "Fred Conyers," 37]

Commentary

His old master's only remaining servant, Darby Cassan, is cleverer than he appears, having amassed a retirement fund from making modest loans to young blades (although his having occasionally supplied old Peter funds seems initially less than shrewd, his doing so will be amply rewarded at the end of the story). Here, having listened to his young guest's tales of hunting in India, Darby acknowledges that the Irish chase has nothing so exciting to offer as a challenge for the invalid (presumably, once he recovers). Like Dickens's youthful protagonist Martin Chuzzlewit, there is a callowness about the self-centred youth that sometimes verges on the objectionable.

Related Material

Bibliography

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. Barrington; Tales of the Trains. Illustrated by 'Phiz'. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Sutherland, John A. "Barrington." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 48-49.

Created 9 August 2002

Last modified 28 September 2026