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Passage Illustrated: A Peculiar Family Gathering at the Inn

At this moment the low murmur of voices caught my ear. I listened, and could distinctly catch the sound of persons talking together at the end of the corridor. Following along this, I came to a door, at which, having knocked twice with my knuckles, I waited for the invitation to enter. Either indisposed to admit me, or not having heard my summons, they did not reply; so turning the handle gently, I opened the door, and entered the room unobserved. For some minutes I profited but little by this step; the apartment, a small one, was literally full of smoke, and it was only when I had wiped the tears from my eyes three times that I at length began to recognise the objects before me.

Seated upon two low stools, beside a miserable fire of green wood, that smoked, not blazed, upon the hearth, were a man and a woman. Between them a small and rickety table supported a tea equipage of the humblest description, and a plate of fish whose odour pronounced them red herrings. Of the man I could see but little, as his back was turned toward me; but had it been otherwise, I could scarcely have withdrawn my looks from the figure of his companion. Never had my eyes fallen on an object so strange and so unearthly. She was an old woman, so old, indeed, as to have numbered nearly a hundred years; her head, uncovered by cap, or quoif, displayed a mass of white hair that hung down her back and shoulders, and even partly across her face, not sufficiently, however, to conceal two dark orbits, within which her dimmed eyes faintly glimmered; her nose was thin and pointed, and projecting to the very mouth, which, drawn backwards at the angles by the tense muscles, wore an expression of hideous laughter. Over her coarse dress of some country stuff she wore, for warmth, the cast-off coat of a soldier, giving to her uncouth figure the semblance of an aged baboon at a village-show. Her voice, broken with coughing, was a low, feeble treble, that seemed to issue from passages where lingering life had left scarce a trace of vitality; and yet she talked on, without ceasing, and moved her skinny fingers among the tea-cups and knives upon the table, with a fidgety restlessness, as though in search of something.

'There, acushla, don't smoke; don't now! Sure it is the ruin of your complexion. I never see boys take to tobacco this way when I was young.'

'Whisht, mother, and don't be bothering me,' was the cranky reply, given in a voice which, strange to say, was not quite unknown to me.

'Ay, ay,' said the old crone; 'always the same, never mindin' a word I say; and maybe in a few years I won't be to the fore to look after you and watch you.' [Chapter XX, "Shannon Harbour," 138]

Commentary: No Worthwhile Room at the Inn

Prosecuting his search of the apparently deserted Grand Canal Hotel, Hinton ascends the staircase, and hears voices coming from a room at the end of the corridor. His amusement at finding that Corny Delaney's aged mother is the proprietress of the inn quickly turns to concern as he learns that no bed but straw is available, that nothing in the grandiose bill of fare will be cooked, and that the car for Loughrea has already left for the day. He has no choice but to walk the fourteen miles, but at least he finds an unlikely servant to carry his portmanteau and carpet-bag: mad Joe, the huntsman whom he met at the pier.

In contrast to the slender, well-dressed traveller in his military cap, Corny and his dreadlocked, haggard mother are wizened and misshapen. A smouldering fire of mere twigs (rather than coals) in the fireplace fills the room with acrid smoke, to which Corny's pipe makes a modest contribution. And a derelict gridiron on the floor reinforces the notion that nothing is on the bill of fare but herrings. "Herrins is so cheap that we always make her believe it's Lent; this is nine years now she's fasting" (139).

Related Material

• "Phiz" — artist, wood-engraver, etcher, and printer — and the new reproductive processes
• The Novels of Charles Lever, 1839-72
• Phiz's Forty-four Illustrations for Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1840-41)
• Phiz's Forty Illustrations for Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44)

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 24 May 2023