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Good Night
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
steel engraving
14.5 cm by 10.3 cm (5 ⅝ by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted
July 1845
Charles Lever's The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago, Chapter XXVI, "A Last Evening at Home," facing p. 213.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“Mark — cousin Mark, is this you,” cried she, with mingled pleasure and shame.
“Yes,” replied he, in a tone of still deeper gravity; “I grieve to disappoint you — it is me.”
“Oh, Mark, mistake me not — do not wrong me,” said she, laying her hand affectionately on his arm. “I have longed so much to see you — to speak to you, ere we went away.”
“To see me — to speak to me,” said he, stepping back, and letting the moonlight fall full upon his features, now pale as death; “it was not me you expected to meet here.”
“No, Mark, but it was for you I came; I wished to serve — perhaps to save you. I know your secret, Mark, but it is safe with me.”
“And I know yours, young lady,” retorted he, bitterly. “I cannot say how far my discretion will rival your own.”
As he spoke, a horseman darted rapidly past, and as he emerged from the shadow, turned round in his saddle, stared fixedly at the figures before him, and then taking off his hat, said —
“Good-night, Miss O'Donoghue.”
When Kate recovered the shock of this surprise, she found herself alone — Mark had disappeared; and she now returned slowly to the castle, her heart torn with opposing emotions, among which wounded pride was not the least poignant. [Chapter XXVI, "A Last Evening at Home," 213]
In requesting the note of invitation from the Travers which Mark had inadvertently snatched up earlier, Kate receives quite another kind of missive. From a clandestine piece of correspondence (signed "H. R.") which Mark gives her in error, Kate discovers the secret of the hidden weapons as part of the general preparations for an armed uprising. His absence from home and Captain Frederick Travers' allusions to rumours about a forthcoming rebellion only serve to intensify her concern for Mark, who is expected at any moment. Nevertheless, when she steps out of the castle by the postern, Kate expects to intercept Frederick Travers, returning home after having delivered his invitation to Herbert to accompany him up to Dublin, for Herbert has just been admitted to a degree program at Trinity College.
However, Kate is surprised to encounter Mark rather than Frederick, leading his horse by the bridle in the darkness cast by the castle walls. The reader is under no such misapprehension for Phiz has taken pains to distinguish the stocky Mark, wearing civilian clothing and a broad-brimmed hat, from the slender Frederick in Guardsman's uniform, the rider in the foreground here.
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: 11 May 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 2 January 2024