[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Sir Luke Fildes —> Lord Kilgobbin —> Next]
She suffered her hand to remain
Fildes
Swain
February 1872 (seventeenth) instalment
Wood-engraving
15.6 cm by 10.2 cm (6 ⅛ by 4 inches), framed.
Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Own Time (February 1872), originally for Part 17, facing p. 228; used as the frontispiece in the single-volume edition of 1873.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
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 photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
On that same evening, just as the last flickerings of twilight were dying away, Nina stole into the sick-room, and took her place noiselessly beside the bed.
Slowly moving his arm without turning his head, or by any gesture whatever acknowledging her presence, he took her hand and pressed it to his burning lips, and then laid it upon his cheek. She made no effort to withdraw her hand, and sat perfectly still and motionless.
"Are we alone?" whispered he, in a voice hardly audible.
"Yes, quite alone."
"If I should say what — displease you," faltered he, his agitation making speech even more difficult; "how shall I tell?" And once more he pressed her hand to his lips.
"No, no; have no fears of displeasing me. Say what you would like to tell me."
"It is this, then," said he, with an effort. "I am dying with my secret in my heart. I am dying, to carry away with me the love I am not to tell — my love for you, Kate."
"I am not Kate," was almost on her lips; but her struggle to keep silent was aided by that desire so strong in her nature — to follow out a situation of difficulty to the end. She did not love him, nor did she desire his love; but a strange sense of injury at hearing his profession of love for another shot a pang of intense suffering through her heart, and she lay back in her chair with a cold feeling of sickness like fainting. The overpowering passion of her nature was jealousy; and to share even the admiration of a salon, the "passing homage," as such deference is called, with another, was a something no effort of her generosity could compass.
Though she did not speak, she suffered her hand to remain unresistingly within his own. After a short pause he went on: "I thought yesterday that I was dying; and in my rambling intellect I thought I took leave of you; and do you know my last words — my last words, Kate?" [Chapter LXXIII, "A Darkened Room," p. 239 in serial; p. 399 in 1873 edition]
From the initial page for the seventeenth instalment in Volume XXV of the Cornhill Magazine (February, 1872), 493.
In the frontispiece, readers of the volume edition encounter two of the novel's characters, as is typical of Fildes' compositions for the initial-letter vignettes and full-page wood-engravings that he designed for the novel's eighteen-month serialisation in The Cornhill Magazine. However the volume reader, just opening the book, will shortly meet only Kate (Kitty) Kearney; it will be only in the later chapters of the novel that the reader of the volume will encounter Gorman O'Shea, one of narrative's five young men. The illustration of the moment realised, coming at the very beginning of the novel, makes no sense until the volume reader arrives at Chapter 73. Here, Nina Kostalergi presents herself to the delirious Gorman O'Shea, recuperating at Kilgobbin Castle, as if she is Kate Kearney, whom in youth as a close neighbour he seemed destined to marry. Knowing about the complex relationships in the previous sixteen monthly numbers, the serial reader of the novel would have grasped immediately the significance of the scene as indicative of a romantic rivalry between the cousins. The volume reader of the opening chapters, on the other hand, lacks the necessary context for interpreting the bedside scene. However, only this and one other illustration, The balcony creaked and trembled, and at last gave way (October 1871), had the horizontal orientation necessary for an effective frontispiece.
Fildes' choices for his subjects in the main (full-page) serial illustrations indicate how he read Lever’s last novel. The complementary young women, the domestic and thoroughly Irish Kate (Kitty) Kearney and her subtle Greek cousin, Nina Kostalergi, dominate the narrative-pictorial sequence as they do much of the novel's romance: they appear together in the second serial illustration and again in the final, eighteenth full-page illustration, with Nina making ten appearances in total and Kate seven. The third significant female character in the illustrations is Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, the niece and intimate advisor of Lord Danesbury, the Viceroy of Ireland. She makes three major appearances in the full-page illustrations: numbers 9 (May 1871), 16 (January 1872), and 17 (February 1872). Fildes' interest is fairly divided between six male characters:
The only other significant character in the program is Betty O'Shea, who makes just two appearances, in the initial-letter vignettes for instalments 6 (March 1871) and 17 (February 1872). Thirteen of the full-page illustrations feature just two or three characters in the following sequence from the volume edition:
The remaining plates (for instalment numbers 4, 10, 13, 14, and 18) have four or more characters each, and several of the crowd scenes involve characters who appear nowhere else in Fildes' program of full-page wood-engravings, such as the old Tory Justice of the Peace, Tom Flood, in "Just look at the crowd that is watching us already" (November 1871).
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. The Cornhill Magazine. With 18 full-page illustrations and 18 initial-letter vignettes by S. Luke Fildes. Volumes XXII-XXV. October 1870-March 1872.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Own Time. With 18 Illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, 3 vols; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vols. I-III. In three volumes. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1873. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 19 August 2010.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter XVI, "Exile on the Adriatic, 1867-1872." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell and Russell, 1939; rpt. 1969. Pp. 277-296.
Sutherland, John A. "Lord Kilgobbin." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 382.
Created 7 July 2005 Updated 6 July 2023