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Exorcising a Spirit
Phiz
March 1841
Steel-engraving
12 cm by 10.2 cm (4 ¾ by 4 inches), in Chapter LXVIII, "The Doctor's Tale," facing p. 342, vignetted.
Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“‘Come, your reverence, come, for the love of marcy! Sure didn’t I see him myself! Oh, wirra, wirra!’
“‘What is it, ye ould fool?’ said M’Kenny.
“‘It’s Father Con Doran, your reverence, that was buried last week, and there he is up now, coffin and all, saying a midnight Mass as lively as ever.’
“Poor Mrs. Rogers, God help her! It was a trying sight for her when the priest and the two coadjutors and three little boys and the sexton all came in to lay her spirit; and the shock she received that night, they say, she never got over.
“Need I say, my dear O’Mealey, that our acquaintance with Mrs. Rogers was closed. The dear woman had a hard struggle for it afterwards: her character was assailed by all the elderly ladies in Loughrea for going off in our company, and her blue satin, piped with scarlet, utterly ruined by a deluge of holy water bestowed on her by the pious sexton. It was in vain that she originated twenty different reports to mystify the world; and even ten pounds spent in Masses for the eternal repose of Father Con Doran only increased the laughter this unfortunate affair gave rise to. [Chapter LXVIII, "The Doctor's Story," 342]
The illustration captures the climax of surgeon Dr. Maurice Quill's light-hearted anecdote about how he and Major O'Shaughnessy, now commander of the Twenty-third Light Dragoons, once courted Mrs. Rogers, a wealthy widow in Galway, and botched the whole affair most comically. Trying to impress her with their ardour, the young officers offer to carry her home from a ball in her sedan chair since her footmen are still below stairs, enjoying themselves with the servants of the house. Unfortunately, they deposit her in her chair not in the foyer of her house, but in the darkened church. Their destination is a big building with pillars, but it is to the left after the square, not to the right. She faints just as they run off, utterly exhausted. Somehow managing to disengage herself from the sedan chair, she accidentally wakes up the sexton in the chapel, who dashes to the priest, Father M'Kenny, next door, convinced that he has seen the ghost of the recently buried Father Con Dorran. Thus, the scene of multiple confusions plays out in Phiz's comic illustration of Mrs. Rogers emerging from her conveyance as the priest and sexton shower her with holy water to lay the unquiet spirit to rest. To explain the confusion, Phiz has placed the sedan chair in front of Father Doran's memorial plaque. The black sedan is indeed "very portly-looking" (341), as is Mrs. Rogers herself: "She was short. fat, wore her hair in a crop, had a species of shining yellow skin, and a turned up nose" (340). The illustration shows that, by the midpoint of the novel, Phiz has mastered comic Irish physiognomy.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. "Edited by Harry Lorrequer." Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1841. 2 vols.
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Published serially in The Dublin University Magazine from Vol. XV (March 1840) through XVIII (December 1841). Dublin: William Curry, March 1840 through December 1841. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1842; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 2 September 2016.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.
Created 15 February 2023