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Passage Illustrated: Mrs. Paul Rooney's Last Appearance and Corny's Last Word

It would be even more wearisome to my reader than the fact was worrying to myself, were I to recount the steps by which my father communicated to Lady Charlotte the intended marriages, and finally obtained her consent to both. Fortunately, for some time previous she had been getting tired of Paris, and was soon brought to suppose that these little family arrangements were as much 'got up' to afford her an agreeable surprise and a healthful stimulant to her weak nerves as for any other cause whatever."

With Mrs. Rooney, on the other hand, there was considerable difficulty. The holy alliance she had contracted with the sovereigns had suggested so much of grandeur to her expectations that she dreamed of nothing but archdukes and counts of the empire, and was at first quite inexorable at the bare idea of the mésalliance that awaited her ward. A chance decided what resisted every species of argument. Corny Delany, who had been sent with a note to Mr. Rooney, happened to be waiting in the hall while Mrs. Rooney passed out to her carriage escorted by the "Tartar" of whom we have already made mention. Mrs. Rooney was communicating her orders to her bearded attendant by a code of signals on her fingers, when Corny, who watched the proceeding with increasing impatience, exclaimed —

"Arrah, can't you tell the man what you want? Sure, though you have him dressed like a wild baste, he doesn't forget English.

"It is a Tartar!" said Mrs. Rooney, with a contemptuous sneer at sneer at Corny and a forbidding wave of her hand ordaining silence.

"A Tarther! Oh, blessed Timothy! there's a name for one that comes of dacent people! He's a county Oarlow man, and well known he is in the same parts. Many a writ he served — eh, Tim?"

"Tim!" said Mrs. Rooney, in horror, as she beheld her wild-looking friend grin from ear to ear, with a most fearful significance of what he heard.

"It wasn't my fault, ma'am, at all," said the Tartar, with a very Dublin accent in the words; "it was the master made me." [Chapter LXII, "Conclusion," 392]

Commentary: Multiple Revelations and "Disclosures" as Poetic Justice Reigns

This "Tim the Tartar" is presumably the same "Long Tim" whom Paul Rooney has employed as a messenger and despatch rider in Dublin, but throughout her time in Paris attending balls and other social engagements with European nobility and crowned heads-of-state the rather dense Mrs. Rooney has failed to penetrate his disguise until she hears him speak. This unmasking scene, then, humorously supports Lever's plot manipulations for the multiple revelations regarding Ulick Burke, Lord Dudley de Vere, Louisa Bellew, the Rooneys, and Jack's cousin, Lady Julia — to say nothing of what is uppermost in the narrator's mind, marrying Louisa Bellew. No wonder, then, that Lever has entitled the antepenultimate chapter, No. LX, "Disclosures."

Lever's first great disclosure is that Ulick Burke has forged a letter in Sir Simon Bellew's hand commanding his daughter never to see Hinton again. Hinton overhears Burke bragging about this strategy to De Vere at Frescati's casino. Burke has a plan to cover their gambling losses by having De Vere steal papers from the British embassy, where he is an an attaché — and the prospective purchaser with an offer of forty thousand francs is Count Guillemain. Insulted, Burke turns on his partner, smashes De Vere's nose and teeth, and escapes into the night. Hinton scoops him up, unconscious, and takes De Vere to be tended at Lady Charlotte's. The next morning, Hinton reveals all he has gleaned to O'Grady. The Rooneys, unmasked as impostors, have received an order from the chef de police to leave Paris within a week as they are no longer useful to him. And O'Grady has yet another revelation: De Vere has been gambling with forged billets de banque, although he is unaware of Burke's passing them off as legitimate. And Count Guillemain could expose them both, sending them to the galleys for life. Meeting Paul Rooney on the boulevard shortly after these revelations, Hinton joins him for lunch; awkwardly, he is in the library when Louisa Bellew enters, but she fails to notice him. Standing before her suddenly, he reveals that her father's note is a forgery by Ulick Burke. She faints into his arms at this unexpected disclosure about her father's dying wish. When Hinton announces the culminating revelation — his forthcoming marriage to Louisa — Rooney does a capering jig around the room. They are to be married before the Rooneys leave Paris. Burke is unmasked by De Vere as a Bonapartist spy, but, using a forged passport, has fled to London, where he has turned over secret French government papers to the Foreign Office. And Lever closes "Disclosures" with one final revelation: O'Grady had announced he was being posted to India, compelling an emotional response from Hinton's cousin, Julia: the two are to be married.

Elsewhere in the "Conclusion" chapter Lever utterly violates the Victorian principle of poetic justice. Instead of being imprisoned for debt as a result of intemperate gambling, Dudley de Vere lost his property and never saw the inside of the Marshalsea, taking advantage of Lord Brougham's legal initiative for insolvent debtors. And Ulick Burke escapes to the United States, where he amasses a fortune, and enjoys a political career as a Congressman, pursuing an anti-English agenda.

Bibliography

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.

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Created 12 June 2023