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Joe, The Mighty Hunter
Phiz
May 1842 instalment
Steel-engraving
13.3 cm by 11.3 cm (5 ¼ by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted
Ninth steel-engraving and fifteenth illustration for Charles Lever's Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843), facing page 137.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Scarcely had I put foot on shore when the whole population of the village thronged around me. What are these, thought I? What art do they practise? what trade do they profess? Alas! their wan looks, their tattered garments, their outstretched hands, and imploring voices, gave the answer — they were all beggars! It was not as if the old, the decrepit, the sickly, or the feeble, had fallen on the charity of their fellow-men in their hour of need; but here were all — all — the old man and the infant, the husband and the wife, the aged grandfather and the tottering grandchild, the white locks of youth, the whiter hairs of age — pale, pallid, and sickly — trembling between starvation and suspense, watching with the hectic eye of fever every gesture of him on whom their momentary hope was fixed; canvassing, in muttered tones, every step of his proceeding, and hazarding a doubt upon its bearing oh their own fate.
'Oh, the heavens be your bed, noble gentleman! look at me! The Lord reward you for the little sixpence that you have in your fingers there! I'm the mother of ten of them.'
'Billy Cronin, yer honour; I'm dark since I was nine years old.'
'I'm the ouldest man in the town-land,' said an old fellow with a white beard, and a blanket strapped round him.
While bursting through the crowd came a strange, odd-looking figure, in a huntsman's coat and cap, but both so patched and tattered, it was difficult to detect their colour. 'Here's Joe, your honour,' cried he, putting his hand to his mouth at the same moment. 'Tally-ho! ye ho! ye yo!' he shouted, with a mellow cadence I never heard surpassed. 'Yow! yow! yow!' he cried, imitating the barking of dogs, and then uttering a long, low wail, like the bay of a hound, he shouted out, 'Hark away! hark away!' and at the same moment pranced into the thickest of the crowd, upsetting men, women, and children as he went — the curses of some, the cries of others, and the laughter of nearly all ringing through the motley mass, making their misery look still more frightful. [Chapter XX, "Shannon Harbour," 137]
This scene marks the conclusion of Hinton's journey by barge to fulfill his promise to O'Grady to see that at the Loughrea races Ulick Burke rides his friend's horse to victory in the steeplechase, and keeps Phil O'Grady from having to sell his commission and go into bankruptcy for his injudicious betting. The journey has taken Hinton west through the Grand Canal (1796) to Shannon Harbour, a distance of some 132 kilometres involving the negotiation of forty-three locks. Hinton has made the overnight journey with a delightful clerical companion, the loquacious and effervescent Catholic priest whom he had earlier encountered on the Liverpool crossing, Father Tom Loftus, who promises to meet Hinton again at the races. Stevenson notes that Lever meant no malice towards Catholicism when he based this convivial travelling companion "the jocund Father Tom Loftus" (105) on Father Comyns of Kilkee; "but the majority of devout Irish Catholics were very naturally incensed at what appeared to be a gross indignity to their faith" (105).
The many curious bystanders are shocked to learn that Hinton intends to spend the night in the local hotel rather than push on to Loughrea at once. Petitioning him for modest charity, a number of beggars introduce themselves as worthy objects for the young traveller's largesse. Throwing coins at the beggars, he secures his luggage, transfers it to a carrier, and makes for the Grand Canal Hotel, the only substantial building in the mud-hut village. But no attendant greets him, and the house seems deserted. Phiz renders Hinton as a respectably dressed traveller standing beside his luggage; in the background the artist has placed thatched-roofed cottages, and, confronting the traveller in the foreground, a ragged and somewhat demented mob of seventeen disheveled beggars ranging from eight mere children to five petitioners of advanced age.
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 20 May 2023