Lionel left aground
Phiz
August 1846 (eighth) instalment
Steel-engraving
12.1 cm by 10.5 cm (4 ⅝ by 4 ¼ inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union (August 1846), originally for Part 8, facing p. 240.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated: Lionel Darcy's chagrin at being unhorsed
“Keep his head to the current, and sit steady!” shouted the stranger, who now watched the struggle with breathless eagerness. “Well done! well done! — don't press him, he'll do it himself.”
The counsel was wise, for the noble animal needed neither spur nor whip, but breasted the white torrent with vigorous effort, sometimes plunging madly above, and again sinking, all save the head, beneath the flood. At last they reached the side, and the strong beast, with one bold spring, placed his fore-legs on the high bank. This was the most dangerous moment, for, unable to follow with his hind-legs, he stood opposed to the whole force of the current, that threatened every instant to engulf him. Lionel's efforts were tremendous; he lifted, he spurred, he strained, he shouted, but all in vain: the animal, worn out by exertion, faltered, and would have fallen back, when the stranger, springing from his saddle, leaned over the bank, and, seizing Lionel by the collar, jerked him from his horse. The beast, relieved of the weight, at once rallied and bounded up the bank, where Lionel now found himself, stunned, but not senseless.
“Let them say what they like,” muttered the stranger, as he stood over him, “you're a devilish fine young fellow! D—— me if I'll ever think so much about good blood again!”
Lionel was too weak and too much exhausted to reply, and even his fingers could scarcely close upon the whip he tried to grasp; yet, for all that, the stranger's insolence sickened him to the very heart. Pride of race was the strongest feeling of his nature, and this fellow seemed determined to outrage it at every turn. [Chapter XXIX, "The Hunt," pp. 239-240]
Commentary: Lever now introduces Captain Lionel Darcy, a little the worse for wear
In the midst of the hunt which Netherby has organized for his English guests at Gwynne Abbey for the day after the ball, we finally meet Maurice Darcy's son and heir, Lionel, a military officer attached to the suite of the Prince Regent, the future King George the Fourth. A stranger who has witnessed Lionel's being thrown from his horse seems to taunt the youth as he gleefully makes off with Lionel's mount, a thoroughbred worth three hundred pounds, a mount which Lionel has borrowed just for the day from Beecham O'Reilly. In fact, the stranger has just rescued Lionel from the horse, who has been floundering in a roaring torrent. And it is that horse which has caused the stranger's misidentification of Lionel.
The caption alerts readers to the fact that the young man who has been unhorsed is Maurice Darcy's son, Lionel. The identity of "the stranger" and his motivations, however, constitute something of a mystery. Phiz implies the stranger's superciliousness by his smirking and mock deference in tipping his hat to the fallen Lionel, who is having difficulty getting up after his fall from the highly spirited thoroughbred whom he has never before ridden. Thus, the illustrator enlists readers' sympathies for Lionel before we have been properly introduced, and injects a note of mystery into the plot past the one-third mark in the original serialisation. Lever implies that the mysterious and masterful horseman is Tom Nolan, hardly a "gentleman" and therefore something of an interloper at the hunt, "a strange ambiguous kind of fellow, always seen in the world, constantly met at the best houses, and yet nobody being able to explain why he was asked" (Chapter XXVIII, "The Hunt-Breakfast," 229). Since the supercilious stranger turns out to be Bagenal Daly's old acquaintance, the notorious robber Freney, the illustration quite misrepresents the gentlemanly appearance of Lionel's antagonist, and therefore contributes to the mystery that Lever's Freney in his inset narrative resolves in the next chapter.
Related Material: Horses in The Knight of Gwynne (1846-47)
Bibliography
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. The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union. London: Chapman and Hall, serialised January 1846 through July 1847.
Lever, Charles. The Knight of Gwynne. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 28 February 2018.
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. Chapter IX, "Nomadic Patriarch, 1845-1847." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 146-164.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
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