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Father Tom's Curriculum
Phiz
July 1842 instalment
Steel-engraving
15.3 cm by 11.1 cm (6 by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted
Fourteenth steel-engraving and twenty-third serial illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), facing page 222.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"'Sit mihi lagena, Ad summum plena.' ["Let me get the bottle, full to the top."]
Here, Captain, take a pull — beautiful milk-punch!'
Draining the goblet to the bottom, which I confess was no unpleasant task, I pledged my kind hostess, who, curtsying deeply refilled the vessel for Father Tom.
'That's it, Mary; froth it up, acushla! Hand it here, my darlin' — my blessing on ye.'
As he spoke, the worthy father deposited the reins at his feet, and lifted the cup with both hands to his mouth; when suddenly the little window over the inn door was burst open, and a loud tally-ho was shouted out, in accents the wildest I ever listened to. I had barely time to catch the merry features of poor Tipperary Joe, when the priest's horse, more accustomed to the hunting-field than the highroad, caught up the welcome sound, gave a wild toss of his head, cocked up his tail, and, with a hearty bang of both hind legs against the front of the chariot, set off down the street as if the devil were after him. Feeling himself at liberty, as well as favoured by the ground, which was all down hill, the pace was really terrific. It was some time before I could gather up the reins, as Father Tom, jug and all, had been thrown at the first shock on his knees to the bottom of the convaniency, where, half suffocated by fright and the milk-punch that went wrong with him, he bellowed and coughed with all his might.
'Howld him tight I — ugh, ugh, ugh! — not too hard; don't chuck him for the love of — ugh, ugh, ugh! — the reins is rotten and the traces no better — ugh, ugh, ugh! Bad luck to the villains, why didn't they catch his head? And the stultus execrabilis! — the damned fool! how he yelled!'
Almost fainting with laughter, I pulled my best at the old horse, not, however, neglecting the priest's caution about the frailty of the harness. This, however, was not the only difficulty I had to contend with; for the curriculus, participating in the galloping action of the horse, swung upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, and from one side to the other — all at once too . . . . [Chapter XXXIII, "The Priest's Gig," 222]
Irish readers, particularly devout Catholics, looked askance at Lever's characterization of the fun-loving, bibulous Father Tom Loftus, who appears here for the first time in Phiz's narrative-pictorial sequence. "Knowing the priesthood only through their sociable good-humour and hospitality, he had depicted that side of their nature in such a way as to imply no recognition of their sanctity or virtue" (Stevenson 104). As Hinton struggles to control Father Tom's gig, the jovial priest has lost his balance, but tenaciously holds onto the cup of milk punch that the hostess of the inn at Loughrea, Mrs. Doolan, has just presented to him as a doch an dhurras or stirrup-cup. We shall encounter Father Tom in a very different light in the next illustration for Lever's tale of the uncanny, "The Mountain Pass."
Allingham, Philip V. "Hablot Knight Browne: A Good Hand at a Horse." Illustration, 73 (Autumn 2022): 36-40.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. Jack Hinton, The Guardsman. Illustrated by Hablột Knight Browne (Phiz). London: Downey & Co., 1901. [First published serially in The Dublin University Magazine January through December 1842; and subsequently in a single volume, Dublin: William Curry, Jun. December 1842, pp. 396. Illustrated with wood and steel engravings by H. K. Browne: 27 full-page plates. 8vo, 396pp. Boston: Little, Brown, 1894; New York: Croscup, 1894. 2 vols.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter VI, "Editor, 1841-1843." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. 92-107.
Sutherland, John A. "The Dublin University Magazine." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 200.
Thomson, David Croal. Life and Labours of Hablột Knight Browne, "Phiz". London: Chapman and Hall, 1884.
Created 28 May 2023