The Letter-Bag (Vol. XVIII, facing page 1), horizontally-mounted, 10.5 cm high by 16.2 cm wide (4 ⅛ by 6 ¼ inches), framed; signed "MEE." in the lower-left corner. Mary Ellen Edwards' wood-engraving for Charles Lever's The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly in the Cornhill Magazine (July 1868), Chapters LII-LV ("Ischia" through "The Prisoner at Cattaro") in Vol. 18: pages 1 through 26 (26 pages including unpaged illustration in instalment). The wood-engraver responsible for this illustration was Joseph Swain (1820-1909), noted for his engravings of Sir John Tenniel's cartoons in Punch. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: George and Augustus read their correspondence over breakfast
“What a mail-bag!” cried Nelly, as she threw several letters on the breakfast-table; the same breakfast-table being laid under a spreading vine, all draped and festooned with a gorgeous clematis.
“I declare,” said Augustus, “I'd rather look out yonder, over the blue gulf of Cattaro, than see all the post could bring me.”
“This is for you,” said Nelly, handing a letter to L'Estrange. [Chapter LIV, "The Letter Bag," 16 in serial; 358 in volume]
Commentary: The Scene Now Shifts to Sleepy Cattaro on the Adriatic Coast
While Augustus and L'Estrange then sat sulkily smoking their cigars on the sea-wall, contemptuously turning their backs on the mountain variegated with every hue of foliage, and broken in every picturesque form, the girls had found out a beautiful old villa, almost buried in orange-trees in a small cleft of the mountain, through which a small cascade descended and fed a fountain that played in the hall; the perfect stillness, only broken by the splash of the falling water, and the sense of delicious freshness imparted by the crystal circles eddying across the marble fount, so delighted them that they were in ecstasies when they found that the place was to be let, and might be their own for a sum less than a very modest “entresol” would cost in a cognate city. [Chapter L, "Catarro," 332 in volume]
Having rejected the notion of returning to England to assist his attorney in preparing his defence in the retrial of Pracontal's case, Augustus proceeds to his diplomatic posting at Cattaro, on the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Adriatic coast. Even as Nelly and Julia enjoy the Edenic garden adjoining the stately Venetian villa on which Augustus has taken a three-year lease, Lever continues to use the epistolary technique to uncover new plot developments back in Ireland. The illustration and its caption set the scene for a series of revelations with the arrival of letters from Marion, Cutbill, and Tom Sedley, the family's lawyer. The first letter opened is Marion's from the Hotel Victoria, Naples. Marion passes along a peculiar request from Lady Augusta, who asks Augustus "to permit M. Pracontal to pull down part of the house at Castello, to search for some family papers" (359 in volume). The other letter, from the loquacious Cutbill, contains a clue as to where the documents that will prove (or disprove) Pracontal's claim will be found: “Behind this stone I have deposited books or documents.” Pracontal has merely assumed that all of these mysterious papers are to be discovered at Castello; in fact, as Chapter LVIII reveals, the artist, Giacomo Lami, had also hidden documents in the chapel at the Villa Fontanella, a fact for which Chapter LII, "Ischia," prepares the attentive reader.
Two sensational pieces of news cap off the readings from "the bag." According to information provided Sedley by Pracontal's lawyer, Kelson, the new friends, Cutbill and Pracontal, have gone over to Castello, and have found the missing church registers that reveal the legitimacy of the wedding of Montague Bramleigh and Enrichetta Lami, and therefore support the claim of the Pretender. Cutbill's good news from Lisconnor is that the investments of the Bramleighs and the L'Estranges are safe because he has discovered a fraud at the mine, where somebody had sealed up a rich vein of coal, making it seem as if the venture was worthless "while its real worth was considerable" (361 in volume). The upshot is that Augustus agrees to return to England, leaving George as his deputy. As Acting Consul, George encounters a castaway British sailor whom the local Podesta (civil and military judge) has had arrested on suspicion of his being an escapee from the galleys at Ischia. Thus, George effects the releases of "Samuel Rogers," otherwise, Jack Bramleigh.
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 the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Lever, Charles. The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly. The Cornhill Magazine 15 (June, 1867): pp. 640-664; 16 (July-December 1867): 1-666; 17 (January-June 1868): 1-663; 18 (July-October 1868): 1-403. Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872. Illustrated by M. E. Edwards; engraved by Joseph Swain.
Stevenson, Lionel. "Chapter XVI: Exile on the Adriatic, 1867-1872." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 277-296.
Created 10 September 2023