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Tipperary Joe
Evans
Phiz
August 1842 instalment
Wood-engraving
12.4 cm by 11.2 cm (5 by 4 ½ inches), vignetted
Seventh wood-cut: nineteenth illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (August 1842), embedded on page 177.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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'Tally-ho, tally-ho! — hark, there — stole away!' shouted a wild cry from without, and at the same instant four countrymen came forward, carrying a door between them, on which was stretched the pale and mangled figure of Tipperary Joe. 'A drink of water — spirits — tay — anything, for the love of the Virgin! I'm famished, and I want to drink Captain Phil's health. Ah, darling!' said he, as he turned his filmy eyes up towards me, 'didn't I do it beautifully; didn't I pay him off for this?' With these words he pointed to a blue welt that stretched across his face, from the mouth to the ear. 'He gave me that yesterday for saying long life and success to you!' [Chapter XXV, "The Steeple-Chase," 177]
After the tense and sustained life-and-death drama of the steeple-Chase and Hinton's victory over the malicious Burke, the unsung hero of the race, Tipperary Joe, appears, wounded by Burke but in good spirits as his friends carry him away on a door. Although Burke asserts that, in vengeance for Joe's interference at the final hurdle, he has smashed Joe's thighbone, apparently the fracture is not so serious as first thought, and he rests comfortably in Hinton's quarters while the young master takes a rest before going to the ball at Mount Brown, where he will be reunited with Louisa Bellew.
Phiz has emphasized Joe as the largest and most dynamic figure, the darkest in the woodcut. He waves has hat towards Hinton and the viewer, as the country people in the background, lightly sketched in, roar their approval and wave their hats as four litter-bearers carry Joe off to the inn at Loughrea. Joe's action, we should note, is not malicious, but an act of vengeance for Burke's having horsewhipped him across the face on the day before the race.
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 27 May 2023