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Passage Illustrated

"I'll beg a little more tea in this, ma'am," said the Major, holding out his cup.

"Do you mean water, sir? Did you say it was too strong?"

"With your leave, I 'll take it a trifle stronger,” said he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye, for he knew all the offence his speech implied. [Chapter III, "Our Next Neighbours," 24]

Commentary

Most of the plates in the volume edition of the 1863 novel have been juxtaposed against the moments illustrated. The parsimonious, old, half-pay major, M'Cormick (standing), who proclaims himself a veteran of the disastrous Walcheren campaign (in the summer 1809) in the Netherlands during the Napoleonic wars, is frequently a self-invited guest at "The Fisherman's Home," much to the chagrin of the thrifty Miss Dinah (right), in charge of the teapot. Since the local quack, Dr. Dill, is the self-important figure seated left, the remaining figure with the mutton-chop whiskers should, by process of elimination, be Peter Barrington, who looks rather young for an octogenarian (or perhaps Lever failed to brief Phiz adequately). The host as depicted in plate 3 and the doctor as depicted in plate 23 somewhat resemble one another while the major, also depicted in plates 3, 24, and is clearly bald. Perhaps at this stage of the program Phiz had not clearly thought out what each of these characters should look like; certainly, his version of Miss Dinah is consistently much thinner than Lever's.

Bibliography

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. Barrington; Tales of the Trains. Illustrated by 'Phiz'. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863.

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Created 9 August 2002

Last modified 8 February 2020