Passage Illustrated: A Mob Scene in the Rue Rivoli, Paris

A tremendous noise in the street here interrupted our colloquy, and on opening the window, a strange scene presented itself to our eyes. In the middle of a dense mass of moving rabble, shouting, yelling, and screaming, with all their might, were two gens d'armes with a prisoner between them. The unhappy man was followed by a rather well-dressed, middle-aged looking woman, who appeared to be desirous of bestowing the most covam publico endearments upon the culprit, whom a second glance showed us was O'Leary.

"I tell you, my dear madam, you are mistaken," said O'Leary, addressing her with great sternness of manner and voice.

"Mistaken! Never, never. How could I ever be mistaken in that dear voice, those lovely eyes, that sweet little nose?"

"Take her away; she's deranged," said O'Leary to the gens d'armes. "Sure, if I'm a Pole, that's enough of misfortune."

"I'll follow him to the end of the earth, I will."

"I'm going to the galleys, God be praised," said O'Leary.

"To the galleys — to the guillotine — any where," responded she, throwing herself upon his neck, much less, as it seemed, to his gratification, than that of the mob, who laughed and shouted most uproariously.

"Mrs. Ram, ain't you ashamed?"

"He calls me by my name," said she, "and he attempts to disown me. Ha! ha! ha! ha!" and immediately fell off into a strong paroxysm of kicking, and pinching, and punching the bystanders, a malady well known under the name of hysterics; but being little more than a privileged mode, among certain ladies, of paying off some scores, which it is not thought decent to do in their more sober moments.

"Lead me away — anywhere — convict me of what you like," said he, "but don't let her follow me." [Chapter XLI, "Mr. O'Leary's Capture," 275]

The Comic Juxtaposition of the Gens D'arme, Mrs. Ram, and Mr. O'Leary

Yes, that is our old friend, the comic Irishman O'Leary, disguised as a bearded Polish nobleman named the "Compte O'Lieuki" [sic], supposedly exiled by the Tsarist government, in order to avoid his Irish wife, who has just arrived in Paris in search of him.

However, in the present scene the police have mistaken O'Leary for a genuine Polish revolutionary who has made threats against the French Minister of War. Trevanion interrupts the tearful farewell between Harry Lorrequer and Emily Bingham to announce that Harry must quit Paris at once since the authorities will assume that Harry is an accomplice in the clandestine "Polish plot," and will shortly arrest them. This accident actually accords well with Harry's plan to visit the Callonbys in Switzerland. Once again, offered a choice between a lachrymose and romantic scene on the one hand and a farcical scene on the other (Lever's "streaky bacon" method of plot construction all too evident here), Phiz prefers the latter. The florid Mrs. O'Leary insists her husband is not a Polish revolutionary, as her husband hopes that the French court will send him to the galleys, and out of her reach.

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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