"I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek," said Kate. by Sir Luke Fildes; engraver, Swain. Eighteenth illustration for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Time, facing page 462. Reprinted from the March (final serial) 1872 number of the Cornhill Magazine. 10.3 cm by 15.7 cm (4 by 6 ¼ inches), framed. Part 18, Chapter LXXXIII, "The Garden by Moonlight." [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Nina's wedding present for Kate
Right: The initial page for the eighteenth instalment in Volume XXV of the Cornhill Magazine (March, 1872), 348.
"You’re off, are you?" asked Nina, as Kate was about to leave.
"Yes; I’m going to read to him."
"To read to him!" said Nina, laughing. "How nice it sounds, when one sums up all existence in a pronoun. Good-night, dearest — good-night," and she kissed her twice. And then, as Kate reached the door, she ran towards her, and said, "Kiss me again, my dearest Kate!"
"I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek," said Kate.
"It was about all I could give you as a wedding-present," muttered Nina, as she turned away.
"Are you come to study whist, Nina?" said Lord Kilgobbin, as she drew nigh the table. [Chapter LXXXIII, "The Garden by Moonlight," 462]
Commentary: The Novel's Heroines All Marry after "Spooning" — Sentimentality?
Love was a very proper thing in three-volume novels, and Mr. Mudie drove a roaring trade in it; but in the well-bred world, immersed in all its engagements, triple-deep in its projects and promises for pleasure, where was the time, where the opportunity, for this pleasant fooling? That luxurious selfishness in which people delight to plan a future life, and agree to think that they have in themselves what can confront narrow fortune and difficulty — these had no place in the lives of persons of fashion! In that coquetry of admiration and flattery which in the language of slang is called spooning, young persons occasionally got so far acquainted that they agreed to be married, pretty much as they agreed to waltz or to polka together; but it was always with the distinct understanding that they were doing what mammas would approve of, and family solicitors of good conscience could ratify. No tyrannical sentimentality, no uncontrollable gush of sympathy, no irresistible convictions about all future happiness being dependent on one issue, overbore these natures, and made them insensible to title, and rank, and station, and settlements. [Chapter LXX, "Atlee's Return," 383]
But of course, no matter how high-brow or political Lever's last novel may be, it is still very much a Victorian Novel, and closure requires multiple marriages. The pairings suggested by the plot thus far have seemed obvious enough: Joe Atlee, returned from the eastern Mediterranean, will marry Lady Maude (he doesn't); Gorman O'Shea, exonerated for the attempted murder of Gill, will marry his childhood sweetheart, Kitty Kearney; and the socially mobile and politically adroit Cecil Walpole should marry that self-aware, highly strategic thinker, Nina Kostalgeri (she runs off with the romantic Fenian instead). This pattern, which Lever and Fildes have so carefully established over the last dozen chapters, has now been upended by the evening rendezvous in the garden between Nina and the Fenian. She has agreed to marry and run away to America with him.
Here, knowing what is afoot, in the full-page illustration, we encounter the foregrounded heroines, Kate and Nina, in the drawing-room at Kilgobbin, and in the background some of the principal young men of the eighteen-part serialisation (Joe Atlee, Major Lockwood, Dick Kearney, and Captain Curtis) and the grey-headed Lord Kilgobbin, his back towards us. But Lever and Fildes in "I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek," said Kate at the head of the ultimate instalment, and in the antepenultimate chapter (March 1872, facing p. 462 in volume) have given us a red herring. The next chapter opens with Kate's sensational revelation: "‘Here’s very terrible tidings, papa dearest,’ said she, as she drew him along towards his study. ‘Nina is gone! Nina has run away!’" (464). And Donogan proves as good as his promise to Nina, marrying her in a Catholic ceremony, sending Sam Gill off to Quebec, and obtaining for the Kearneys "the lease which Miss O'Shea was so rash as to place in Gill's hands" (464).
Related Material: Sentimentalism as a Guiding Principle of Plot Construction
- Sentimentalism in Victorian Reform Literature
- Sentimentality: The Victorian Failing
- Realism and Sentimentality in Victorian Fairy Tale Illustrations
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Bibliography
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. Illustrated 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. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1873, in a single volume. 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 27 May 2005 Updated 8 July 2023