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What is it?
Phiz
October 1842 instalment
Steel-engraving
13.5 cm by 11.4 cm (5 ¼ by 4 ½ inches), vignetted
Twentieth steel-engraving and twenty-ninth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), facing page 316.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Some dreadful catastrophe in the West Indies, where an earthquake had swallowed up a whole population, occurred to her memory at the instant, and the possibility of something similar occurring between Seven Oaks and Tunbridge seemed to engross her entire attention. By this time we reached the hall, where the servants, drawn up in double file, stood in respectful silence. My mother's eyes were, however, directed upon a figure which occupied the place next the door, and whose costume certainly was strangely at variance with the accurate liveries about him. An old white greatcoat with some twenty capes reaching nearly to the ground (for the garment had been originally destined for a much larger person), a glazed hat fastened down with a handkerchief passed over it and tied under the chin, and a black-thorn stick with a little bundle at the end of it were his most remarkable equipments.
'What is it? What can it be doing there?' said my mother, in a Siddons tone of voice.
'What is it? Corny Delany, no less,' croaked out the little man in the crankiest tone of his harsh voice. 'It's what remains of me, at laste!'
'Oh, yes,' said Julia, bursting into a laugh, 'Corny's coming as my bodyguard. He'll sit in the rumble with Thomas.' [Chapter XLIX, "The Horse Guards," 316]
Returned from Ireland, Hinton finds that Dudley de Vere has besmirched his reputation by grossly misrepresenting the behaviour and Irish exploits of his fellow aide-de-camp. He has thus made military advancement more challenging for the protagonist, but at the Horse Guards Hinton learns from the Prince Regent that he has been gazetted to the 27th, a regiment which is about to ship out from Chatham for active service — the next chapter indicates the destination: the Iberian peninsula. Further news which renders this a significant chapter is Jack's cousin's having fallen in love with the insidious Lord Dudley de Vere, and Sir George Hinton's having gambled on Spanish investments with his own, his wife's, and his niece's fortunes — and lost. To cope with bankruptcy he will have to take a post abroad, and may even have to leave his wife behind to pursue a less lavish lifestyle in Bath. Meanwhile, Sir George and her physician have arranged for Lady Hinton to take the sea air at Hastings for her health. On this trip, the Lady Julia has arranged to take Corny Delaney with the party as a kind of protector. Phiz depicts Jack's haughty mother regarding "it" (Corny in a travelling costume far too big for him) with upturned nose indicative of disdain as Jack escorts her to a waiting carriage while the servants gather in the front hall to wish her farewell. Phiz has also incorporated a detail which the narrator mentioned earlier, when he arrived home from the Horse Guards with news of his posting abroad. Lady Charlotte Hinton's French maid, Mademoiselle Clemence, is attempting to transport two of her mistress's fashionable pets to the carriage: "a poodle under one arm and a macaw's cage in the other." Phiz depicts the butler as offering to assist in the transposed action which actually occured pages earlier.
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 7 June 2023