A Hunting turn-out in the Peninsula (facing p. 500) — Phiz's thirty-fifth illustration for Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, August 1841. Steel engraving for Chapter XCVII, "The Cantonment." 8.9 cm high by 19 cm wide (3 ½ by 7 ⅜ inches), vignetted.
Passage Illustrated: A Lighthearted Military "Expedition" (Fox Hunt)
Soon after this the army broke up from Caja, and went into cantonments along the Tagus, the headquarters being at Portalegre. We were here joined by four regiments of infantry lately arrived from England, and the 12th Light Dragoons. I shall not readily forget the first impression created among our reinforcements by the habits of our life at this period.
Brimful of expectation, they had landed at Lisbon, their minds filled with all the glorious expectancy of a brilliant campaign; sieges, storming, and battle-fields floated before their excited imagination. Scarcely, however, had they reached the camp, when these illusions were dissipated. Breakfasts, dinners, private theatricals, pigeon matches, formed our daily occupation. Lord Wellington’s hounds threw off regularly twice a week; and here might be seen every imaginable species of equipment, from the artillery officer mounted on his heavy troop horse, to the infantry subaltern on a Spanish jennet. Never was anything more ludicrous than our turn-out. Every quadruped in the army was put into requisition. And even those who rolled not from their saddles from sheer necessity, were most likely to do so from laughing at their neighbours. The pace may not have equalled Melton, nor the fences have been as stubborn as in Leicestershire, but I’ll be sworn there was more laughter, more fun, and more merriment, in one day with us, than in a whole season with the best organized pack in England. With a lively trust that the country was open and the leaps easy, every man took the field. Indeed, the only anxiety evinced at all, was to appear at the meet in something like jockey fashion, and I must confess that this feeling was particularly conspicuous among the infantry. Happy the man whose kit boasted a pair of cords or buck skins; thrice happy he who sported a pair of tops. I myself was in that enviable position, and well remember with what pride of heart I cantered up to cover in all the superior éclat of my costume, though, if truth were to be spoken, I doubt if I should have passed muster among my friends of the “Blazers.” A round cavalry jacket and a foraging cap with a hanging tassel were the strange accompaniments of my more befitting nether garments. Whatever our costumes, the scene was a most animated one. Here the shell-jacket of a heavy dragoon was seen storming the fence of a vineyard; there the dark green of a rifleman was going the pace over the plain. The unsportsmanlike figure of a staff officer might be observed emerging from a drain, while some neck-or-nothing Irishman, with light infantry wings, was flying at every fence before him, and overturning all in his way. The rules and regulations of the service prevailed not here; the starred and gartered general, the plumed and aiguilletted colonel obtained but little deference and less mercy from his more humble subaltern. [Chapter XCVII, "The Cantonment," 500]
Commentary: Light-hearted Cavalry Warfare
Our century hardly regards warfare as a jolly activity, and nobody in today's military likely looks forward to being involved in "sieges, storming, and battle-fields." But Lever and Phiz consistently give the impression that, despite some unpleasant incidents, cavalry warfare in the early nineteenth century was an equestrian picnic. Thus, the penultimate engraving, the Death of Hammersley in the "Waterloo" chapter (no. 120) will come as something of a shock.
The narrator asserts that Wellington is a member of the jaunt: "the cold stern features were as fixed and impassive as before" (500). Although Wellington is supposed to be one of the riders, Phiz provides no figure resembling him. O'Malley is likely the leader (left), in a "round cavalry jacket and a foraging cap with a hanging tassel," but the letterpress mentions only one rider thrown off his mount, the officer in the ditch (bottom left). Phiz, on the other hand, seems to delight in adding half-a-dozen mishaps since these offer him all sorts of opportunities to depict horses in various poses. These summer jaunts across Spanish fields seem intended to restore the morale of the officer class after "the incessant privations they had endured" (501).
Related Material
- Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1840-41)
- Hablot Knight Browne, 1815-1882; A Brief Biography
- Cattermole and Phiz: The First illustrators of Barnaby Rudge: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works" (1841)
- Horses by "Phiz" for Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (Nov.-Dec. 1841, rpt., 1873)
- Phiz: 'A Good Hand at a Horse' — A Gallery and Brief Overview of Phiz's Illustrations of Horses for Defoe, Dickens, Lever, and Ainsworth (1836-64)
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Bibliography
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
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, 2 vols. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1842; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
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]. 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. 24-85.
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 31 March 2023