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A Useful Hand
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
steel engraving
12.7 cm high by 10.3 cm wide (4 ⅞ by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted
August 1862
Thirteenth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter XXIV, “Conyers Makes an Evening Call”), facing p. 200.
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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.]
With a seriousness which cost him no small effort to maintain, Conyers addressed himself at once to the task; and she walked along at his side, with a rake over her shoulder, talking with the same cool unconcern she would have bestowed on Darby.
“I have often told Miss Barrington,” said she, “that our rock melons were finer than hers, because we used a peculiar composite earth, into which ash bark and soot entered, — what you are wheeling now, in fact, however hurtful it may be to your feelings. There! upset it exactly on that spot; and now let me see if you are equally handy with a spade.”
“I should like to know what my wages are to be after all this,” said he, as he spread the mould over the bed.
“We give boys about eightpence a day.”
“Boys! what do you mean by boys?”
“Everything that is not married is boy in Ireland; so don't be angry, or I'll send you off. Pick up those stones, and throw these dock-weeds to one side.”
“You'll send me a melon, at least, of my own raising, won't you?”
“I won't promise; Heaven knows where you'll be — where I 'll be, by that time! Would you like to pledge yourself to anything on the day the ripe fruit shall glow between those pale leaves?”
“Perhaps I might,” said he, stealing a half-tender glance towards her.
“Well, I would not,” said she, looking him full and steadfastly in the face. [Chapter XXIV, “Conyers Makes an Evening Call,” 200]
To impress Polly Dill, Fred Conyers resolves to return to the Barringtons' in his full-dress military uniform, only to be enlisted to move garden refuse in a wheelbarrow, while Darby (dressed as a stereotypical comic Irishman, upper left) watches him with detached amusement: "By my conscience, Miss Polly, it's only yerself could do it; and it's truth they say of you, you'd get fun out of an archdaycon!" (200). In exchange for Polly's assailing his "Saxon" taste for respectability, Fred reveals Colonel Hunter's romantic interest in her.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. Barrington. With 25 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. 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 10 August 2002 Last updated 13 October 2026