Passage Illustrated: "By Jingo, here's Nemesis for you, you arrogant Frenchman!"

The clock of the café struck nine, the hour at which Gendémar always retired, so calling to the waiter for his petit verre of brandy, he placed his newspaper upon the table, and putting both his elbows upon it, and his chin upon his hands, he stared full in Trevanion's face, with a look of the most derisive triumph, meant to crown the achievement of the evening. To this, as to all his former insults, Trevanion appeared still insensible, and merely regarded him with his never-changing half smile; the petite verre arrived; le Capitaine took it in his hand, and, with a nod of most insulting familiarity, saluted Trevanion, adding with a loud voice, so as to be heard on every side — "a votre courage, Anglais." He had scarcely swallowed the liqueur when Trevanion rose slowly from his chair, displaying to the astonished gaze of the Frenchman the immense proportions and gigantic frame of a man well known as the largest officer in the British army; with one stride he was beside the chair of the Frenchman, and with the speed of lightning he seized his nose by one hand, while with the other he grasped his lower jaw, and, wrenching open his mouth with the strength of an ogre, he spat down his throat.

So sudden was the movement, that before ten seconds had elapsed, all was over, and the Frenchman rushed from the room, holding the fragments of his jaw-bone (for it was fractured!), and followed by his countrymen, who, from that hour, deserted the Café Philidor, nor was there ever any mention of the famous captain during the stay of the regiment in Paris. [Ch. XXIX, "Captain Trevanion's Adventure," 220]

Commentary: An Anecdote Appealing to the Nationalistic Reader's Baser Instincts

Phiz and Lever use the confrontation between the huge British officer and the small, arrogant French officer to appeal to the jingoistic reader's taste for farce and poetic justice. Three young, uniformed British officers from the Army of Occupation look on with approval (right), while to the left three French officers in ornate battle-dress from three different regiments react with alarm to the Englishman's brutal treatment of their compatriot, a fierce duellist and manifest bully. That Phiz has included other French officers in the background establishes the danger to which Captain Trevanion of the 43rd may be exposing his fellow Britons by punishing the bully Capitaine Augustin Gendémar one evening in the Café Philidor in post-Waterloo Paris.

The anecdote or inset narrative that Lorrequer narrates at this point is essentially a flashback that demonstrates Trevanion's suitability for Harry's second in a challenge that he has received through an arrogant French officer, "Le Capitaine Eugene de Joncourt, Cuirassiers de la Garde" (219). The young Irishman now requires a second for an affair of honour with a French nobleman involved in the Casino altercation, Le Baron D'Haulpenne. Although Lorrequer concedes that he pummelled a stout gentleman in order to make his escape to the garden via the window, the Frenchman is wrongfully asserting that Harry struck him with a cane.

Bibliography

Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.

Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1839.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-85.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Seven: "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and a Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 299-316.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

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