Maurice Scanlan, Attorney-at-Law. by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), facing page 41 (January 1855). Steel-engraving. 9.5 cm high by 18 cm wide (3 ⅝ by 7 ⅛ inches), vignetted, full-page illustration for The Martins of Cro' Martin, for the opening of Chapter IV, "Maurice Scanlan, Attorney-at-Law." Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: An Attorney with Sporting Pretensions and an Eye to the Main Chance
About an hour after the occurrence mentioned in our last chapter, the quiet little village of Kilkieran was startled by the sharp clattering sounds of horses' feet, as Mr. Scanlan's tandem came slinging along; and after various little dexterities amid stranded boats, disabled anchors, and broken capstans, drew up at the gate of the Osprey's Nest. When men devise their own equipage, they invariably impart to it a strong infusion of their own idiosyncrasy. The quiet souls who drag through life in chocolate-coloured barouches, with horses indifferently matched, give no clue to their special characteristics; but your men of tax-carts and tandems, your Jehus of four-in-hand teams, write their own biographies in every detail of the “turn-out.”
Maurice Scanlan was a sporting Attorney, and from the group of game cocks neatly painted on the hind panel, to the wiry, well-bred, and well-looking screws before him, all was indicative of the man. The conveyance was high and red-wheeled; the nags were a chestnut and a gray; he drove them without winkers or bearing-reins, wearing his white hat a very little on ope side, and gracefully tilting his elbow as he admonished the wheeler with the “crop” of his whip. He was a good-looking, showy, vulgar, self-sufficient kind of fellow, with consummate shrewdness in all business transactions, only marred by one solitary weak point, — an intense desire to be received intimately by persons of a station above his own, and to seem, at least, to be the admitted guest of very fashionable society. It was not a very easy matter to know if this Lord-worship of his was real, or merely affected, since, certainly, the profit he derived from the assumption was very considerable, and Maurice was intrusted with a variety of secret-service transactions, and private affairs for the Nobility, which they would never have dreamed of committing to the hands of their more recognised advisers. [Chapter Four, "Maurice Scanlan, Attorney-at-Law," 33]
Commentary: a Satirical Portrait Catching its Subject in Action
Here Phiz completes his visual complements to the novel's introductory chapters. Although he has passed over the haughty Lady Dorothea Martin and her disappointed husband, the former Versailles beau and resident landlord for the west of Ireland Cro' Martin estate, Phiz begins the second monthly instalment with a humorous introduction of the sporting attorney. The ruthless Scanlan, something of an election fixer, ineptly but with obvious relish wheels his light four-in-hand, dual-horse carriage through the Kilkieran Bay portion of the Borough of Oughterard occupied by ramshackle fishermen's dwellings and net-drying racks. These are the humble Catholic peasantry who have just received the franchise under Catholic Emancipation. Lever's readers are already familiar with Scanlan's destination from the previous chapter: the Osprey's Nest, the fashionable summer retreat of Sir Godfrey and Lady Dorothea Martin on the seashore.
Undoubtedly the previous chapter's arrival of Mary Martin by small sailboat through a powerful swell would have made an exciting and picturesque complement to the second Chapman and Hall instalment. However, Phiz has satisfied his own predelections for satire (the plump, self-satisfied, fashionably dressed young attorney) and for fine horses. The lightly sketched-in backdrop of the humble dwellings of the Irish fisherfolk sharply contrast the firmly etched, foregrounded driver, the tandem, and the "nags."
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
Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Chapter 11: "'Give Me Back the Freshness of the Morning!'"Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 108-127.
Lever, Charles. The Martins of Cro' Martin. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman & Hall, 1856, rpt. 1872.
Lever, Charles. The Martins of Cro' Martin. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Introduction by Andrew Lang. Lorrequer Edition. Vols. XII and XIII. In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1907.
Steig, Michael. Chapter VII, "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 299-316.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter XII, "Aspirant for Preferment, 1854-1856." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell and Russell, 1939; rpt. 1969. Pp. 203-220.
Created 11 September 2022