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The "Big Drum" in a state of Abstraction
Phiz
May 1844 (sixteenth) instalment
Steel-engraving
13.4 cm by 11.1 cm (5 ¼ by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours", Chapter LXIX, "A Fragment of The Maître d'Armes' Experiences" (May 1844), facing p. 102 in volume 2 of the 1844 edition, and Chapter XXV, 193 of volume 2 in the 1869 edition.
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I thought of Areola and Rivoli, of Cairo and the Pyramids, and the great charge at Marengo when Desaix's division came up, — and my heart was nigh bursting when I remembered that I wore the epaulette no longer. I forgot, too, where I was; and expected every instant to hear him call for one of the marshals, or see him stretch out his hand to point to a distant part of the field. And so absorbed was I in my reveries, that I had neither eyes nor ears for anything around me; when suddenly all the din of the orchestra ceased, — not a sound was heard; and a hand rudely shook me by the arm, while a voice whispered, 'Now! now!' Mechanically I seized the drumsticks. But my eyes still were riveted in the Emperor — my whole heart and soul were centred in him. Again the voice called to me to begin; and a low murmur of angry meaning ran through the orchestra. “I sprang to my legs, and in the excitement of the moment, losing all memory of time and place, I rolled out the 'pas de charge.' Scarce had the first roulade of the well-known sounds reverberated through the house, when one cry of 'Vive l'Empereur!' burst forth. It was not a cheer; it was the heart-given outbreak of ten thousand devoted followers. Marshals, generals, colonels, ambassadors, ministers, all joined — and the vast assembly rocked to and fro like the sea in a storm, while Napoleon himself, slowly rising, bent his proud head in acknowledgment, and then sat down again amid the thundering shouts of acclamation. It was full twenty minutes before the piece could proceed; and even then momentary outbreaks of enthusiasm would occur to interrupt it, and continued to burst forth till the curtain fell. [Chapter LXIX, "A Fragment of The Maître d'Armes' Experiences," pp. 146-147 in the 1844 edition, Chapter XIX, pp. 192-193 in the 1869 edition]
Again, as in Cut and Run opposite the previous page, the narrator of the text for the present illustration is not Tom, but his old duelling acquaintance François, Maître d'Armes, formerly of the Fourth Chasseurs of the Guard, in Egypt, who, like Tom, enjoys the distinction of having saved Napoleon's life. Whereas Tom prevented the Emperor from being shot by his own sentries the night before Jena, François saved him from a Mameluke's sabre at Chebrheis. However, having long ago been wounded in a duel, the fifty-year-old François is no longer serving in the military, but, arriving penniless and ragged back in Paris, has served two years as a supernumerary performer in the Grand Opera before being promoted to the base drum in the orchestra. Thus, he finds himself before Napoleon once again, this time on the very day that his former Commander-in-Chief has been named Emperor. Lever mentions the celebrity audience, whereas, oddly enough, Phiz has not even sketched in either the Emperor nor the Empress in the background, and has focussed on François and his fellow musicians in the foreground as they perform a battle piece. Each musician is a distinct character in terms of facial features and instrument, and the conductor (not mentioned by Lever at all) looks severely at the player of the base drum as the clarinetist tries to signal the balding François, left of centre.
Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Chapter 11: "'Give Me Back the Freshness of the Morning!'" Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 108-127.
Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1844. Illustrated by H. K. Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1869. Serialised February 1843 through September 1844. 2 vols.
Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 24 February 2021.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
Created 21 November 2023