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Corny's Combat with the Cossack
Phiz
December 1842 instalment
Steel-engraving
13.5 cm by 11.2 cm (5 ¼ by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted
Twenty-third steel-engraving and thirty-second serial illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), facing page 354.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Our progress, which at the first was a slow one, ceased entirely at the corner of the palace, where a considerable crowd was now collected. Although we asked of the bystanders, no one could tell what was going forward; but the incessant roars of laughter showed that something droll or ridiculous had occurred. O'Grady, whose taste in such matters would suffer no denial, elbowed his way through the mob, I following as well as I was able. When we reached the first rank of the spectators, we certainly needed no explanation of the circumstances to make us join in the mirth about us.
It was a single combat of a very remarkable description. A tall Cossack, with a long red beard now waving wildly on every side, was endeavouring to recover his mutcka cap from a little decrepit old fellow, from whom he had stolen a basket of eggs. The eggs were all broken on the ground; and the little man danced among them like an infuriated fiend, flourishing a stick all the while in the most fearful fashion. The Cossack, whose hand at every moment sought the naked knife that was stuck in his girdle, was obliged to relinquish his weapon by the groans of the mob, who unequivocally showed that they would not permit foul play, and being thus unarmed, could make nothing of an adversary whose contemptible appearance caused all the ridicule of the scene. Meanwhile the little fellow, his clothes in rags, and his head surmounted by a red Cossack mutcka, capered about like nothing human, uttering the most frightful sounds of rage and passion; at length, in a paroxysm of fury, he dealt the tall Cossack a rap on the temples which made him reel again. Scarcely had the blow descended, when, stung by the insult and the jeers of the mob, the enraged savage grasped his knife; with one spring he pounced upon the little man; but as he did so a strong hand from behind seized him by the collar, and with one tremendous jerk hurled him back upon the crowd, where he fell stunned and senseless. [Chapter LVII, "Paris in 1814," 354]
Instead of being courtmartialed by his commanding adjutant for the four-in-hand affair at St. Omer, Colonel O'Grady finds himself congratulated on having asserted what constitutes the appropriate treatment of the occupying forces. The upshot is that the commissaire of police is to receive an official reprimand. In fact, O'Grady's adjutant has been so entertained by the anecdote that he has invited Phil to dinner. Ater a night at the Hotel de la Paix, O'Grady and Hinton set out from the Faubourg St. Denis for No. 4, Place Vendôme, in the 1st arrondissement, Lady Hinton's residence. The pair encounter a Parisian crowd laughing at the comical conflict between Corny Delany and the Russian Cossack over the broken eggs (depicted in the foreground of the engraving). The sympathetic crowd will not permit the Russian to use his weapon to retrieve his missing cap, "red Cossack mutcka" which Corny in the picture is wearing in lieu of his wig. The humorous illustration supports Lever's lavish descriptions of the street scenes involving the exotic uniforms of the various foreign regiments who constitute the occupying forces in the French capital in April 1814 after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainbleau and the abdication of Bonaparte.
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 12 June 2023