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Passage Illustrated: Peg the Witch delivers a Curse on the blameless Tom

“Good-by, Peg. I hope we'll be better friends when we meet again,” said Darby, as he passed out.

She made no reply, but entered the cabin, from which, in an instant after, she emerged, carrying a lighted sod of turf in a rude wooden tongs.

“Come along quick!” said Darby, with a look of terror; “she's going to curse you.”

I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself.

“Gome along, I say I,” said Darby, pulling me by the arm.

“And now,” cried the hag aloud, “may bad luck be your shadow wherever you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always burning here, and —” [Chapter III, "The Departure," 32 in the 1844 William Curry edition; 30 in the 1865 Chapman & Hall edition]

Commentary: Introducing Darby "The Blast"

The first instalment's second illustration shows Tom as a more active and engaged participant in the narrative, but once again as a victim, for he as the living and present representative of the Burke family receives the curse of the local witch in the presence of his mentor and companion, Darby. Since Tom is a mere child, and has been absent for some time at school in Dublin, the reader naturally wonders what Tom has done to earn Peg's curse.

“Come down to the kitchen, alannah!” said the old cook, as the hall door closed; “come down and sit with us there. Sure it 's no wonder your heart 'ud be low.”

“Yes, Master Tommy; and Darby “the Blast” is there, and a tune and the pipes will raise you.”

I suffered myself to be led along listlessly between them to the kitchen, where, around a huge fire of red turf, the servants of the house were all assembled, together with some neighboring cottagers; Darby “the Blast” occupying a prominent place in the party, his pipes laid across his knees as he employed himself in concocting a smoking tumbler of punch.

“Your most obadient!” said Darby, with a profound reverence, as I entered. “May I make so bowld as to surmise that my presence is n't unsaysonable to your feelings? for I wouldn't be contumacious enough to adjudicate without your honor's permission.” [Chapter II, "Darby 'The Blast'," 14]

Phiz's second serial illustration introduces Lever's Darby M'Keown late in the third chapter, although he has appeared in the kitchen among the servants, playing his bagpipes and singing the traditional air of "Una" just after the funeral, at the beginning of the second chapter. Perhaps owing to his prowess as a piper, Darby M'Keown is colourfully called "Darby the Blast." An ardent Irish patriot, Darby is young Tom's friend and surrogate father whose genial attitude contrasts the open hostility of Tony Bassett, the family attorney, towards the orphan. Since a sudden snowfall has prevented Darby from attending a wedding at Croocknavorrigha that evening, he practices his skills as a humorous raconteur and musician for the amusement of the servants, who are in a quandary  after their master's death, and take solace in Darby's tunes and numerous servings of punch around the kitchen fire. The next morning, in anticipation of Basset's coming to remove him from the house, Tom decides to unburden himself to Darby about Basset's determination to train him as an attorney, and to escape with the piper by the high road to Athlone, where he hopes to find his friend from the coach, Captain Bubbleton. Thus, the pair find themselves on foot, trudging down the windswept, rainy road when they arrive at Peg's gabled, smoke-filled cottage, with a low doorway and mud walls. Tom's description of the owner has directly affected Phiz's representation of the rural witch:

A low grunting noise issued from the foot of a little mud wall beside the fireplace. I turned and beheld the figure of a woman of some seventy years of age, seated beside the turf embers; her dark eyes, bleared with smoke and dimmed with age, were still sharp and piercing; and her nose, thin and aquiline, indicated a class of features by no means common among the people. Her dress was the blue frieze coat of a laboring man, over the woollen gown usually worn by women. Her feet and legs were bare; and her head was covered with an old straw bonnet, whose faded ribbon and tarnished finery betokened its having once belonged to some richer owner. [Chapter III, 28]

Thus, the first two illustrations frame the action of the first instalment, from the plotting of the doctor and lawyer and Burke's death to Tom's confrontation with the poverty-stricken hag on the high road to Athlone. Phiz reduces the scene to its bare essentials, focussing on the three figures and minimizing the dilapidated cottage. The hunched, wizened form of Peggy M'Casky dominates the bleak scene as she curses the son of Matthew Burke, whom she holds responsible for the death of her husband and the transportation of her two sons.

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. Tom Burke of "Ours." Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1844. Illustrated by H. K. Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865. Serialised February 1843 through September 1844. 2 vols.

Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 24 February 2021.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.

Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

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Created 20 September 2023