"Meet Companions" — Phiz's twenty-third illustration for Charles Lever's "Barrington" (January 1863 serial number)

Meet Companions

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

January 1863

steel engraving

11.6 cm high by 9.3 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted

Twenty-third serial illustration Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter XLVII, “Meet Companionship”), facing p. 379.

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Scanned image & text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Realised: The Picaresque Novel's Only London Scene

In a very modest chamber of a house in one of the streets which lead from the Strand to the Thames, two persons sat at supper. It is no time for lengthened introductions, and I must present Captain Duff Brown very hurriedly to my reader, as he confronted his friend Stapylton at table. The Captain was a jovial-looking, full-whiskered, somewhat corpulent man, with a ready reply, a ready laugh, and a hand readier than either, whether the weapon wielded was a billiard-cue or a pistol.

The board before them was covered with oysters and oyster-shells, porter in its pewter, a square-shaped decanter of gin, and a bundle of cigars. The cloth was dirty, the knives unclean, and the candles ill-matched and of tallow; but the guests did not seem to have bestowed much attention to these demerits, but ate and drank like men who enjoyed their fare.

“The best country in Europe, — the best in the world, —I call England for a fellow who knows life,” cried the Captain. “There is nothing you cannot do; nothing you cannot have in it.”

“With eight thousand a year, perhaps,” said Stapylton, sarcastically. [Chapter XLVII, “Meet Companionship,” 379]

Commentary: Another Pun — “Dining” or “Meat Companions”

Although the picaresque novel has transported us across the Irish Sea to Dover for the reunion of Ormsby and Fred Conyers, this is the only Phiz plate set in England, as the rascals Stapylton and Captain Duff Brown, late of the Fifth Fusiliers, confer in the latter's rooms at Holt's Hotel, Charing Cross. They are anticipating a duel with Peter Barrington, who had set out from Ireland for Liverpool in the last chapter. Brown upbraids his friend for not having absconded with the heiress. Some suspense is generated by Stapylton's determining to put a ball in young Conyers' head, but nothing comes of this plot gambit.

Related Material

Bibliography

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

Lever, Charles. Barrington. With 25 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863; rpt., 1872.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Sutherland, John A. "Barrington." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, pp. 48-49.

Created 11 November 2007

last updated 12 October 2026