Pride meets Pride by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), facing page 497. (March 1856). Steel-engraving. 9.7 cm high by 13.3 cm wide (3 ¾ by 5 ⅛ inches), vignetted, full-page illustration for The Martins of Cro' Martin, Chapter LI, "How Pride Meets Pride." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Lady Dorothea confronts Kate Henderson
“Her Ladyship, Miss Henderson,” said a servant, throwing wide the door, and closing it after the entrance of Lady Dorothea, who swept into the room in her haughtiest of moods, and seated herself with all that preparation that betokened a visit of importance.
“Take a seat, Miss Henderson,” said she. And Kate obeyed in silence. “If in the course of what I shall have to say to you,” resumed her Ladyship, — “if in what I shall feel it my duty to say to you, I may be betrayed into any expression stronger than in a calmer moment would occur to me, — stronger in fact, than strict justice might warrant —”
“I beg your Ladyship's pardon if I interrupt, but I would beg to remark —”
“What?” said Lady Dorothea, proudly.
“That simply your Ladyship's present caution is the best security for future propriety. I ask no other.”
“You presume too far, young lady. I cannot answer that my temper may not reveal sentiments that my judgment or my breeding might prefer to keep in abeyance.”
“If the sentiments be there, my Lady, I should certainly say, better to avow them,” said Kate, with an air of most impassive coldness.
“I'm not aware that I have asked your advice on that head, Miss Henderson,” said she, almost insolently. “At the same time, your habits of late in this family may have suggested the delusion.”
“Will your Ladyship pardon me if I confess I do not understand you?”
“You shall have little to complain of on that score, Miss Henderson; I shall not speak in riddles, depend upon it. Nor should that be an obstacle if your intelligence were only the equal of your ambition.”
“Now, indeed, is your Ladyship completely beyond me.”
“Had you felt that I was as much 'above' you, Miss Henderson, it were more to the purpose.”
“I sincerely hope that I have never forgotten all the deference I owe your Ladyship,” said Kate. Nor could humble words have taken a more humble accent; and yet they availed little to conciliate her to whom they were addressed; nay, this very humility seemed to irritate and provoke her to a greater show of temper, as with an insolent laugh she said:
“This mockery of respect never imposed on me, young lady. I have been bred and born in a rank where real deference is so invariable that the fictitious article is soon detected, had there been any hardy enough to attempt it.”
Kate made no other answer to this speech than a deep inclination of her head. It might mean assent, submission, anything. [Chapter LI, "How Pride Meets Pride," pp. 496-497]
Commentary: Pride of Intellect versus Pride of Place
Kate Henderson has just finished reading a letter from her father, the Martins' estate-manager. Her father, ever the dutiful servant, forbids his daughter to leave Lady Dorothea;s service and return home "as long as her ladyship is pleased to accept of your services" (495). The intellectually gifted Kate, deeply resenting her employer's haughty manner, would like to leave her situation. And nothing that Kate says in their subsequent interview seems sufficient to persuade Lady Dorothea that she should send her companion back to Cro' Martin — until Captain Harry, summoned by his mother to the drawing-room, reveals that he has proposed to Kate, and that Kate has refused. "You can leave this [situation] — to-morrow, if you wish it" (501), decides her employer, on the condition that Kate never reveal how Lady Dorothea came to relent. She knows all too well that the only solution to her son's money problems is, as attorney Maurice Scanlan has suggested to Harry himself, marrying well from among the wealthy class of industrialists in "the manufacturing districts" (492), for such a financially advantageous liaison would likely net Harry eighty thousand pounds.
In the illustration, Phiz indicates Lady Dorothea's dictatorial manner by her simple gesture with her index finger. Kate, in contrast, seems deep in thought, trying to cope with her internal conflicts, and strategize her way out of this dilemma. Harry is poised at the door, about to change the entire trajectory of the dialogue by his revelation of the frustrated proposal.
Bibliography
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. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 28 February 2018.
Created 12 October 2022