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A Monk of the Screw unscrews Mr. Delany’s Courage
Phiz
April 1842 instalment
Steel-engraving
12.6 cm by 10.4 cm (5 by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted
Eighth steel-engraving and twelfth illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), facing page 122.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It was now late, and what between the noise, the wine, and the laughter, my faculties were none of the clearest. Without having drunk much, I felt all the intoxication of liquor, and a whirlwind of confusion in my ideas, that almost resembled madness. To this state one part of their proceedings in a great measure contributed; for every now and then, on some signal from the prior, the whole party would take hands and dance round the table to the measure of an Irish jig, wilder and even more eccentric than their own orgies. Indeed, I think this religious exercise finished me; for after the third time of its performance, the whole scene became a confused and disturbed mass, and amid the crash of voices, the ringing of laughter, the tramping of feet, I sank into something which, if not sleep, was at least unconsciousness; and thus is a wet sponge drawn over the immediately succeeding portion of my history.
Some faint recollection I have of terrifying old Corny by my costume; but what the circumstances, or how they happened, I cannot remember. I can only call to mind one act in vindication of my wisdom — I went to bed. [Chapter XVII, "An Evening in Town," 122]
Some faint recollection I have of terrifying old Corny by my costume; but what the circumstances, or how they happened, I cannot remember. [122]
The reader immediately recognizes the distorted visage and diminutive body of Corny Delaney, Phil O'Grady's hereditary servant and quondam porter of the diplomats' and soldiers' quarters at Dublin Castle. The youthful figure garbed as a "Monk of the Screw" (as in "corkscrew") is none other than our narrator, returning home from a meeting of the secret society of political wags into which Phil O'Grady has initiated him earlier that evening. According to Phiz's steel-engraving, Corny is startled by seeing Hinton's smiling visage in the cowl of a Benedictine habit. In his amazement, he drops a candle, and accidentally sets the tassel of his nightcap on fire — a nice bit of comic business that Lever has not specified. The illustration marks a fitting conclusion to Hinton's recalling his nocturnal initiation into the "order of the venerable and pious brothers, the Monks of the Screw," accompanied by numerous libations. Phiz's Hinton seems to be smirking, as if thoroughly enjoying Corny's startled reaction.
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, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. 92-107.
Sutherland, John A. "Jack Hinton The Guardsman." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 323.
Thomson, David Croal. Life and Labours of Hablột Knight Browne, "Phiz". London: Chapman and Hall, 1884.
Created 19 May 2023