Kate Henderson at Home by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), facing page 542. (April 1856). Steel-engraving. 9.9 cm high by 13.4 cm wide (3 ⅞ by 5 ¼ inches), vignetted, full-page illustration for The Martins of Cro' Martin, Chapter LVII, "The Dark Side of a Character." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Kate Henderson Confronts Her Father, The Estate-manager
While her stepmother went in search of something to offer her, Kate sat down beside the fire, deep in thought. She had removed her bonnet, and her long silky hair fell in rich masses over her neck and shoulders, giving a more fixed expression to her features, which were of deathlike paleness. And so she sat, gazing intently on the fire, as though she were reading her very destiny in the red embers before her. Her preoccupation of mind was such that she never noticed the opening of the door, nor remarked that her father had entered. The noise of a chair being moved suddenly startled her. She looked up, and there he stood, his hat on his head and his arms closely folded on his breast, at the opposite side of the fire.
“Well, lassie,” said he, after a long and steady stare at her, “ye hae left your place, or been turned oot o' it, — whilk is the case?”
“I came away of my own accord,” said she, calmly.
“And against my Leddy's wish?”
“No, with her full consent.”
“And how did ye do it? for in her last letter to my sel', she says, 'I desire ye, therefore, to bear in mind that any step she takes on this head' — meaning about going away — 'shall have been adopted in direct opposition to my wishes.' What has ye done since that?”
“I have succeeded in convincing her Ladyship that I was right in leaving her!” said Kate. [Chapter LVII, "The Dark Side of a Character," 542]
Commentary
Kate has arrived at Cro' Martin before the news of Godfrey Martin's death in Baden. Her father is not especially happy to see her as the dour Scot believes that she has abandoned her post even as the estate's owner had fallen seriously ill and Lady Dorothea most needed her help. She assures her father that she has left Baden with Lady Dorothea's permission, but does not reveal that she used Harry's frustrated marriage proposal as leverage. An important detail that Lever mentions for the first time here is that the woman waiting at the door to deliver Kate's lunch is not her mother, but her "stepmother," by which reference Lever is laying the groundwork for the revelation of yet another plot secret.
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. The Marins of Cro' Martin. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman & Hall, 1856, rpt. 1872.
Lever, Charles. The Marins 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 18 October 2022