"A Family Party" by "Phiz" — Thirty-third illustration for Charles Lever's "Roland Cashel" (August 1849)

A Family Party by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), August 1849. Steel-engraving. 8.8 cm high by 12.8 cm wide (3 ½ by 5 inches), framed, full-page dark plate for Roland Cashel, Chapter LX, "Tiernay Intimidated —— The Abstracted Deeds," facing p. 502. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Linton's Hired Assassin Not to be Found

So intently had he pursued these various reasonings, that he utterly forgot everything of his late interview with Tom Keane; and when the remembrance did flash upon him, the effect was almost stunning. The crime would now be useless, so far as regarded Linton's own advantage. Mary Leicester could never be his wife; why, then, involve himself, however remotely, in a deed as profitless as it was perilous? No time should be lost about this. He must see Keane immediately, and dissuade him from the attempt. It would be easy to assure him that the whole was a misconception, — a mistake of meaning. It was not necessary to convince, it was enough to avert the act; but this must be done at once.

So reflecting, Linton took his way to the Gate Lodge, which lay a considerable distance off. The space afforded much time for thought, and he was one whose thoughts travelled fast. His plans were all matured and easy of accomplishment. After seeing Keane, he would address a few lines to Tiernay, requesting an interview on the following morning. That night, he resolved, should be his last at Tubbermore: the masquerade had, as may be conjectured, few charms for one whose mind was charged with heavier cares.

But still it would give him an occasion to whisper about his scandal on Lady Kilgoff, and, later on, give him the opportunity of searching Cashel's papers for that document he wished to obtain.

On reaching the Gate Lodge, under pretence of lighting his cigar he entered the house, where, in all the squalid misery of their untractable habits, Keane's wife sat, surrounded by her ragged children. [Chapter LX, "Tiernay Intimidated ——The Abstracted Deeds," 502]

Commentary: Linton's Plot further Unravels

Phiz adroitly suggests the squalor in which the Tubbermore gatekeeper's family live in the lodge at the entrance to the estate. Lever wrote the novel during the Hungry Forties, when hunger, privation, unemployment, land enclosures, and such diseases as cholera sadly depleted the Irish peasantry. The final scourge, the Potato Famine of 1845 through 1849, well under way when Lever serialised the novel, drove many of that marginalised class to seek employment and new lives in the United States and Canada.

Having inadvertently let his mask drop with Mat Corrigan, Linton now realizes that his chances of marrying Mary Leicester and exercising the purloined bond signed and sealed by King George the Third are slim to non-existant. Whatever, then, should he do to prevent Dan Keane from carrying out his plan to waylay and assassinate Cashel? Should the authorities apprend the killer afterwards, he will almost certainly implicate Linton himself in the scheme. But the gatekeeper is already out, presumably stalking his prey. Linton seems to have set in motion a series of events no longer within his control.

In the ironically entitled August 1849 illustration, Phiz contrasts the forthcoming masquerade party of Cashel's affluent guests at the great house with the slovenly scene of the indigent peasant family of four young children, Dan's young wife (centre) and an adolescent daughter (right), all in rags. In front of the smokey cooking fire in the dimly lit interior a gigantic sow suckles three piglets, completing the scene of filth and indigence. Over the decade of the Hungry Forties the population of Ireland declined from 8.2 to 6.5 million.

Related Material

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 person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

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 21 January 2023