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Tintefleck's entrée was quite dramatic.
William Cubitt Cooke
1894
14 cm high by 10.1 cm wide (5 ½ by 4 inches), framed.
Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1904. Facing p. 228.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“I would leave it to herself to tell your Excellency,” said he, with much confusion, “but that you could not understand her mountain dialect. The fact is,” added he, after a great struggle with himself, — “the fact is, she is offended at your calling her 'Tintefleck.' She is satisfied to be so named amongst ourselves, where we all have similar nicknames; but that you, a great personage, high and rich and titled, should do so, wounds her deeply. Had you said —”
Here he whispered me in my ear, and, almost inadvertently, I repeated after him, “Catinka.”
“Si, si, Catinka,” said she, while her eyes sparkled with an expression of wildest delight, and at the same instant she bounded forward and kissed my hand twice over.
I was glad to have made my peace, and, placing a chair for her at the table, I filled out a glass of wine and presented it. She only shook her head in dissent, and pushed it away.
“She has odd ways in everything,” said the old man; “she never eats but bread and water. It is her notion that if she were to taste other food she 'd lose her gift of fortune-telling.”
“So, then, she reads destiny too?” said I, in astonishment.
Before I could inquire further, she swept her hands across the strings of her guitar, and broke out into a little peasant song. It was very monotonous, but pleasing. Of course, I knew nothing of the words nor the meaning, but it seemed as though one thought kept ever and anon recurring in the melody, and would continue to rise to the surface, like the air-bubbles in a well. Satisfied, apparently, by the evidences of my approval, she had no sooner finished than she began another. This was somewhat more pretentious, and, from what I could gather, represented a parting scene between a lover and his mistress. There was, at least, a certain action in the song which intimated this. The fervent earnestness of the lover, his entreaties, his prayers, and at last his threatenings, were all given with effect, and there was actually good acting in the stolid defiance she opposed to all; she rejected his vows, refused his pledges, scorned his menaces; but when he had gone and left her, when she saw herself alone and desolate, then came out a gush of the most passionate sorrow, all the pent-up misery of a heart that seemed to burst with its weight of agony.
If I was in a measure entranced while she was singing, such was the tension of my nerves as I listened, that I was heartily glad when it was over. As for her, she seemed so overcome by the emotion she had parodied, that she bent her head down, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed twice or thrice convulsively.
I turned towards Vaterchen to ask him some question, I forget what, but the little fellow had made such good use of the decanter beside him, while the music went on, that his cheeks were a bright crimson, and his little round eyes shone like coals of fire.
“This young creature should never have fallen amongst such as you!” said I, indignantly; “she has feeling and tenderness, — the powers of expression she wields all evidence a great and gifted nature. She has, so to say, noble qualities.'
“Noble, indeed!” croaked out the little wretch, with a voice hoarse from the strong Burgundy. [Chapter XXVII, "I Attempt to Overthrow Social Prejudices," pp. 216-217 in the Chapman and Hall edition; pp. 228-229 in the Little, Brown edition]
Lever now picks up the plot-line involving Potts's quest for the retired circus horse, Blondel, which was his original reason for crossing to the Continent. The circus acrobat and peasant musician Catinka ("Tintefleck") will be instrumental in his recovery of the horse, as Phiz has noted in his illustration of the girl performing with the horse in The girl, with a graceful slide, seated herself on his back in Chapter XLII, when the Tyrolean authorities have mistakenly arrested Potts.
The juggler Vaterchen ushers Catinka into the room to perform for Potts on the guitar. In Cooke's illustration, "the Moorish girl" has already demonstrated her acrobatic agility by performing a backspring, but her expression is hardly one of "wildest delight." She is assiduously studying the theatrical properties on the floor, but the illustrator has not included among the properties the guitar with which she sings a series of peasant melodies with "fervent earnestness." Rather, Cooke captures a wistful mood in the singer; he focuses on what Potts sees in her: feeling, tenderness, and "the powers of expression she wields all evidence of a great and gifted nature." But the theatrical elements on the floor reflect her ability to counterfeit emotions.
N. B.: A Ride for a Day, 15 December 1860: Instalment No. 19 (Chapters 26-27), has no illustrations. However, Phiz illustrated this chapter with an image of the drunken juggler, There was Vaterchen on his head, with a bunch of candles between his feet..
Lever, Charles. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Vols. IV and V (18 August 1860 through 13 April 1861) in 35 weekly parts.
_______. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1863, rpt. Routledge, 1882.
_______. The Daltons and A Day's Ride. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). Vol. VI of Lever's Works. New York: P. F. Collier, 1882; rpt. from Chapman and Hall, 1852.
_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). Vol. XIV of Lever's Works. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900. rpt. from Chapman and Hall, 1863.
_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. To Which is Added That Boy of Norcott's. Illustrated by William Cubitt Cooke. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1904.
Lever, Charles James. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. http://www.gutenberg.org//files/32692/32692-h/32692-h.htm
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.
Sutherland, John. "Charles Lever." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. 372-374.
Created 27 June 2022 Last updated 26 July 2022