"A Phoenix" — Twenty-fourth illustration by "Phiz" for Charles Lever's "Roland Cashel," Chapter XLIV, "The Burnt Letters

A Phoenix

Phiz

Dalziel

March 1849

Steel-engraving, dark plate, facing p. 370.

11.4 cm high by 9.3 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ⅝ inches), framed.

Twenty-fourth illustration for Roland Cashel, published serially by Chapman and Hall (1848-49).

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

[You may use these images 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.]

Passage Illustrated: Aunt Fanny Resuscitates a Burnt Letter

“'Olivia and 'settlement' in the same paper,” thought she; “what can this mean?”

“Come here, Mamma — Aunt Fanny — look at this for a moment,” said she, eagerly; and the two ladies approached at her bidding.

“What is that word?” she said to Mrs. Kennyfeck; “is it not 'Olivia'? Don't you see the end of the 'l' has been burned away, but the rest is quite plain?”

“So it is — upon my life! — and in Cashel's hand, too!” exclaimed Mrs. Kennyfeck.

“And what is that?” asked Miss Kennyfeck, triumphantly, pointing to another word.

Aunt Fanny, with her spectacles on, bent down, and examined it long.

“'Battlement.' That is 'battlement' — as clear as day,” said she.

“What nonsense, Aunt — it is 'settlement.' Look at what you call a 'b' — it is an 's.'”

“Cary's quite right. The word is 'settlement,'” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, in a voice tremulous with joy.

“And there! — I hope you can read!” exclaimed Miss Kennyfeck, “even without your spectacles — 'paying' — 'addresses.'”

“Show it to me, Cary,” said her mother, eagerly. “I declare I can read it perfectly. Is it possible? — can this be indeed true?” [Chapter XLIV, "The Burnt Letters — 'Great Expectations'," pp. 369-370]

Commentary: "Great Expectations" Rise from the Ashes, like a Phoenix

Since Lever's novel was published in serial a full decade before Dickens's Great Expectations, Lever's readers in March 1849 would not have associated the marriage plot of Roland Cashel with the 1861 story of Pip and the Convict. The "Great Expectations" here are Aunt Fanny's hopes to see her younger niece, Livy, married to the young millionaire. Since the illustration appeared at the head of the March 1849 Chapman and Hall instalment, the mystery of the burnt and crumpled letter from Cashel to his lawyer about "the settlement of some difficult affairs" and renewing his "respectful address to the ladies" (369), Caroline and Olivia Kennyfeck, must have excited the interest of serial readers. Lever, of course, satirizes Aunt Fanny's determination to see the proposal of an engagement to Olivia.

The reader is nonetheless aware of the true significance of the settlement agreement which Cashel burned in the fireplace at the close of the last chapter since, in return for the annuity for his grand-daughter, Corrigan would be resigning all legal claim to the Tubber-beg estate. Neither the old man, nor Cashel, nor yet Dr. Tiernay nor attorney Kennyfeck, is yet aware of the King George the Third's bond which Linton has purloined from Cashel bedroom. However, what Aunt Fanny finds burnt in the fireplace grate is not the "document" that Cashel burned in Chapter XLIII, but the brief letter to her brother-in-law from Cashel to set up the interview, a letter which Kennyfeck himself had crumpled and thrown into the fireplace:

"Dear Mr. Kennyfeck, — Make my excuses to Mrs. Kennyfeck and the Demoiselles Cary and Olivia, if I deprive them of your society this morning at breakfast, for I shall want your counsel and assistance in the settlement of some difficult affairs. I have been shamefully backward in paying my respectful addresses to the ladies of your family; but to-day, if they will permit, I intend to afford myself that pleasure. It is as a friend, and not as my counsel learned in law, I ask your presence with me in my library at ten o'clock. Till then,

"Believe me yours,

"R. C." [369]

Lever here is utilizing the streaky bacon principle of plot construction that served Dickens so well, alternating intensely melodramatic scenes such as the previous interview between Cashel and Tiernay about the Corrigan property and the annuity with this comic scene about the marriage plot, directed by the fatuous Aunt Fanny. The matchmaker is sure that the letter once ended "Your present friend, and future son-in-law, — R. C.'” (370).

Bibliography

Lever, Charles. Roland Cashel. With 39 illustrations and engraved title-vignette by Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.

Lever, Charles. Roland Cashel. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vols. I and II. In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1907. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 19 August 2010.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Seven: "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and a Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 298-316.

Created 4 January 2023