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Corny Delany
Evans
Phiz
July 1842 instalment
Wood-engraving
9 cm by 5 cm (3 ½ by 1 ⅞ inches), vignetted
Final wood-cut and twenty-first illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (July 1842), embedded on page 215.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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'Corny has not yet arrived, and we have received our orders for embarkation within twenty-four hours. I begin half to despair of his being here in time. Should this be the case, will you, my dear Hinton, look after the old villain for me, at least until I write to you again on the subject?'
While I was yet pondering on these last few lines, I perceived that a card had fallen from my father's letter. I took it up, and what was my astonishment to find that it contained a correct likeness of Corny Delany, drawn with a pen, underneath which was written, in my cousin Julia's hand, the following few lines: —
'The dear old thing has waited three days, and I think I have at length caught something like him. Dear Jack, if the master be only equal to the man, we shall never forgive you for not letting us see him. — Yours, JULIA.'
This, of course, explained the secret of Corny's delay — my cousin, with her habitual wilfulness, preferring the indulgence of a caprice to anything resembling a duty; and I now had little doubt upon my mind that O'Grady's fears were well founded, and that he had been obliged to sail without his follower.
The exertion it cost me to read my letters, and the excitement produced by their perusal, fatigued and exhausted me, and as I sank back upon my pillow I closed my eyes and fell sound asleep, not to wake until late on the following day. But strange enough, when I did so, it was with a head clear and faculties collected, my mind refreshed by rest unbroken by a single dream; and so restored did I feel, that, save in the debility from long confinement to bed, I was unconscious of any sense of malady.
From this hour my recovery dated. Advancing every day with rapid steps, my strength increased; and before a week elapsed, I so far regained my lost health that could move about my chamber. . . . [Chapter XXXI, "The Letter Bag," 215]
Lever has anticipated (perhaps even directed) that Phiz will provide a second pen-and-ink sketch of the sardonic Corny, purportedly executed by Jack's cousin Julia in England. She has apparently detained Corny, so that he will have to sail for British North America after his master's departure. Fortunately, Hinton's opening the letter-bag here coincides with his recovery from Ulick Burke's maliciously striking him between the eyes with a hurled pistol at the conclusion of the duel in Chapter XXIX, "The Duel," which ended the first volume (June 1842). The present character study occurs in the first chapter in the second volume (July 1842).
Ironically, the correspondent who should know the most about Jack's affairs in Ireland, Captain Phil O'Grady, has received no correspondence about the affair with Burke, or Jack's consequent delirium. But he reports that the Duke is satisfied with the conduct of his aide-de-camp in the recent affair of honour, and O'Grady has bequeathed Modirideroo to him as a reward for having won the steeple-chase and cleared O'Grady's injudicious wagers. The reappearance Corny Delany in the narrative-pictorial sequence signals the departure of man and master from the story as O'Grady has, through the influence of the Viceroy, been posted to the Ninth Light Dragoons, and has shipped out for Canada — an oblique reference to the War of 1812 then ramping up across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1811. Tipperary Joe will now assume Corny's role as the picaresque novel's quintessential Irish character.
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 29 May 2023