Travellers' Dust (January 1858) by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne), thirty-seighth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Davenport Dunn: A Man of Our Time, Part 19 (January 1859), Chapter LXX, "Overreachings," facing 605.
Bibliographical Note
This appeared as the thirty-eighth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Davenport Dunn: A Man of Our Time, steel-plate etching; 4 ⅛ by 6 ⅛ inches (10.5 cm high by 15 cm wide), vignetted. This plate appeared ahead of A New Name in the nineteenth monthly number, which included Chapters LX/viii through LXX, pages 577 through 608.
Details of the three scenes that the Lackingtons pass through the Alps
- The upper section, showing the Viscount's carriage and Mediaeval romance
- Lower left, showing "the heavy wagon unloading at the little quay"
- Lower right, showing Italian peasants' "humble life"
Passage Complemented: The "Happy Pair" set out Italy in the autumn of 1854
“At all events,” said he, “I 'll 'put the Alps between us;'” and early on the following morning the travelling-carriage stood ready at the door, and amidst the bowings and reverences of the hotel functionaries, the “happy pair” set out for Italy.
Do not smile in any derision at the phrase, good reader; the words are classic by newspaper authority; and whatever popular preachers may aver to the contrary, we live in a most charming world, where singleness is blessed and marriage is happy, public speaking is always eloquent, and soldiery ever gallant. Still, even a sterner critic might have admitted that the epithet was not misapplied; for there are worse things in life than to be a viscount with a very beautiful wife, rolling pleasantly along the Via Mala on Collinge's best patent, with six smoking posters, on a bright day of November. This for his share; as to hers, I shall not speak of it. And yet, why should I not? Whatever may be the conflict in the close citadel of the heart, how much of pleasure is derivable from the mere aspect of a beautiful country as one drives rapidly along, swift enough to bring the changes of scene agreeably before the eye, and yet not too fast to admit of many a look at some spot especially beautiful. And then how charming to lose oneself in that-dreamland, where, peopling the landscape with figures of long, long ago, we too have our part, and ride forth at daybreak from some deep-vaulted portal in jingling mail, or gaze from some lone tower over the wide expanse that forms our baronial realm, — visions of ambition, fancies of a lowly, humble life, alternating as the rock-crowned castle or the sheltered cot succeed each other! And lastly, that strange, proud sentiment we feel as we sweep past town and village, where human life goes on in its accustomed track, — the crowd in the market-place, the little group around the inn, the heavy wagon unloading at the little quay, the children hastening on to school, — all these signs of a small, small world of its own, that we, in our greatness, are never again to gaze on, our higher destiny bearing us ever onward to grander and more pretentious scenes.
“And this is Italy?” said Lizzy, half aloud, as, emerging from the mists of the Higher Alps, the carriage wound its zigzag descent from the Splügen, little glimpses of the vast plain of Lombardy coming into view at each turn of the way, and then the picturesque outlines of old ruinous Chiavenna, its tumble-down houses, half hid in trellised vines, and farther on, again, the head of the Lake of Como, with its shores of rugged rock.
“Yes, and this miserable dog-hole here is called Campo Dolcino!” said Beecher, as he turned over the leaves of his “John Murray.” “That's the most remarkable thing about these Italians; they have such high-sounding names for everything, and we are fools enough to be taken in by the sound.” [Chapter LXX, "Overreachings," pp. 605-606]
Commentary: Free of Grog Davis's Tyranny
As Beecher and Lizzy travel from Baden to Lombardy, Phiz attempts to communicate through the dreamy triptych Beecher's sense of liberation from his controlling and devious father-in-law. The three picturesque scenes, complete with six horses and alpine scenery, suggest the journey of the Lackingtons from southwest Germany across the Alps to Lake Como in northern Italy. Phiz offers three contrasting pictures that blend imagination (the four mediaeval knights that welcome Lackingon's postillion), workaday reality (a stevadore unloading bales from a wagon), and a rustic idyll of a peasant couple with a hound and a sheep outside a Swiss village, perhaps recalling the Maria of Moulin chapters of Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey (17868). Phiz, responding to Beecher's (mistaken) belief that he has at last escaped Davis's clutches, imparting a dream-like quality to the illustration and adds the mediaeval fantasy, both of which extend the Lever paragraph from description to psychological revellation.
Scanned image by Simon Cooke; colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary 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.] Click on the image to enlarge it.
Bibliography
Lever, Charles. Davenport Dunn: A Man of Our Day. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.
Lever, Charles. Davenport Dunn: The Man of The Day. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, January 1859 (Part XIX).
Last modified 26 April 2019