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"In that semi-nude sociality, begun on the sands," etc.
William Newman
20 October 1860
8.8 cm high by 6.8 cm wide (3 ½ by 2 ⅝ inches)
Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance,
Harper's Weekly, Vol. IV (20 October 1860): partially framed, bottom right, p. 661.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"In that semi-nude sociality, begun on the sands," etc. — staff artist William Newman's fifteenth composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, instalment 9, published on 20 October 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, Chapter XII, "The Duchy of Hessl-Kalbbratonstadt," framed, bottom right, page 661. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
I grew impatient to leave Ostend; every association connected with the place was unpleasant. I hope I am not unjust in my estimate of it I sincerely desire to be neither unjust to men nor cities, but I thought it vulgar and commonplace. I know it is hard for a watering-place to be otherwise; there is something essentially low in the green-baize and bathing-house existence, — in that semi-nude sociality, begun on the sands and carried out into deep water, which I cannot abide. I abhor, besides, a lounging population in fancy toilets, a procession of donkeys in scarlet trappings, elderly gentlemen with pocket-telescopes, and fierce old ladies with camp-stools. The worn-out debauchees come to recruit for another season of turtle and whitebait; the half-faded victims of twenty polkas per night, the tiresome politician, pale from a long session, all fiercely bent on fresh diet and sea-breezes, are perfect antipathies to me, and I would rather seek companionship in a Tyrol village than amidst these wounded and missing of a London season. With all this I wanted to get away from the vicinity of the Jopplyns, — they were positively odious to me. Is not the man who holds in his keeping one scrap of your handwriting which displays you in a light of absurdity, far more your enemy than the holder of your protested bill? I own I think so. Debt is a very human weakness; like disease, it attacks the best and the noblest amongst us. You' may pity the fellow that cannot meet that acceptance, you may be sorry for the anxiety it occasions him, the fruitless running here and there, the protestations, promises, and even lies he goes through, but no sense of ludicrous scorn mingles with your compassion, none of that contemptuous laughter with which you read a copy of absurd verses or a maudlin love-letter. [Chapter XII, "The Duchy of Hessl-Kalbbratonstadt," 661; 113 in the Chapman and Hall edition]
Potts has a sudden aversion to seaside resorts such as Ostende, undoubtedly occasioned by his misadventure with Christy Jopplyn at his hotel. In fact, since Potts does not even visit the beach, the illustrator is merely realizing the narrator's antipathy towards "that semi-nude sociality" of such tawdry tourist destinations as Brighton. The illustrator for American readers invents a disagreeable scene in which a channel steamer blackens the horizon with the discharge from its smokestack. By the changing rooms, a lean, muscular tough lounges as he presides over the bathing station. In the foreground, a miserable-looking young man shivers as he makes his way from the strand. Meantime, to the left, a husband carries his invalid wife towards the sea.
Brown, Jane E., and Richard Samuel West. "William Newman (1817—1870): A Victorian Cartoonist in London and New York." American Periodicals, 17, 2: "Periodical Comics and Cartoons." (Ohio State University Press, 2007), 143-183. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20770984.
Lever, Charles. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by William Newman. Vols. IV-V (13 April 1860 through 23 March 1861) in thirty-five weekly parts. Only a dozen of these weekly instalments were illustrated: p. 541 (one), 549 (two), 573, 589, 605, 621, 637, 649, 661, 678, 701, and 714.
_______. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1863, rpt. Routledge, 1882.
_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles James. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. http://www.gutenberg.org//files/32692/32692-h/32692-h.htm
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.
Sutherland, John. "Charles Lever." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. Pp. 372-374.
Created 25 June 2022