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Frederick & Mark
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
steel engraving
12.9 cm by 10.6 cm (5 ⅛ by 4 ¼ inches), vignetted
May 1845
Charles Lever's The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago, Chapter XIX, "A Diplomatist Defeated," facing p. 155.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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He had not ridden long, when the tall towers of the old castle of Carrig-na-curra caught his eye, standing proudly on the bold mass of rock above the road. The unseemly adjunct of farm-house and stables were lost to view at such a distance, or blended with the general mass of building, so that the whole gave the impression of extent and pretension to a degree he was by no means prepared for. These features, however, gradually diminished as he drew nearer; the highly-pitched roof, pierced with narrow windows, patched and broken — the crumbling battlements of the towers themselves — the ruinous dilapidation of the outer buildings, disenchanted the spectator of his first more favourable opinion; until at length, as he surveyed the incongruous and misshapen pile, with its dreary mountain back-ground, he wondered how, at any point of view, he should have deemed it other than the gloomy abode it seemed at that moment.
The only figure Frederick Travers had seen, as he rode along, was that of a man carrying a gun in his hand, in a dress somewhat like a gamekeeper's, who, at some short distance from the road, moved actively across the fields, springing lightly from hillock to hillock with the step of a practised mountain walker, and seemingly regardless of the weight of a burden which he carried on one shoulder: so rapidly did he move, that Frederick found it difficult to keep pace with him, as the road was deeply cut up, and far from safe for horse travel. Curious to make out what he carried, Travers spurred eagerly forward; and, at last, but not without an effort, came within hail of him at the iron-barred gate which formed the outer entrance to the castle from the high road. The burden was now easily seen, and at once suggested to Frederick's mind the reason of the bearer's haste. It was a young buck, just killed; the blood still trickled from the wound in its skull.
“Leave that gate open, my good fellow,” cried Frederick, in a voice of command, as the other pushed the frail portal wide, and let it fall back heavily to its place again — “Do you hear me? — leave it open.” [Chapter XIX, “A Diplomatist Defeated,” 154]
Although Lever has already briefly introduced Sir Marmaduke Travers' son, Frederick, in the London scenes, this is his first appearance in the narrative-pictorial series. The steel engraving clearly establishes that he will be something of a foil to hotheaded Mark O'Donoghue. We have already met the aristocratic Guardsman, Captain Frederick Travers, in his handsomely appointed drawing-room in St. James's Street in Chapter XIII, an attractive but somewhat dissipated youth in his early twenties. Phiz conveys something of Frederick's jauntiness as he gestures at the roughly-clothed hunter, whom he misinterprets as a poacher since Mark is carrying a recently shot buck on his shoulder, as in the picture. Only once he has entered the somewhat dilapidated castle does he realize his error, for the surly huntsman proves to be the haughty Mark O'Donoghue.
As we learned in Chapter XVIII, "A Hasty Pledge," Frederick Travers arrived at "The Lodge," his father's Irish manor-house, about the same time that Kate arrived at Carrig-na-curra. Ironically, although the pair made the Irish crossing together, the Captain was unable "either to learn her name, or whither she as going" (145). Thus, in this scene the astute reader anticipates his delighted surprise when Frederick Travers encounters the pretty French girl from the Bristol packet. Since this pair of steel engravings — the second being The Game of Chess — would both have occurred at the head of the May 1845 instalment, the serial reader would have instantly identified the rider of the fine cob and the uniformed chess-player as Captain Frederick Travers, son of Sir Marmaduke Travers of "The Lodge."
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. With 26 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1845.
Lever, Charles. The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. In One Vol. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: May 11, 2010.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter VIII, "Heretic Among Tories, 1844-1845." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 128-145.
Sutherland, John A. "Lever, Charles." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 372-374.
Created 30 December 2023