Initial letter O: "the boy" that should drive her, was a little old man by Sir Luke Fildes; engraver, Swain. Third initial-letter vignette for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin, from the December 1870 number of the Cornhill Magazine, p. 738 in Vol. XXII. 7.5 cm by 5.1 cm (3 by 2 inches), framed. Part 3, Chapter VII, "The Cousins." The wood-engraver responsible for this thumbnail illustration was Joseph Swain (1820-1909), noted for his engravings of Sir John Tenniel's cartoons in Punch. [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Right: The title-page for Volume XXII of the Cornhill Magazine (July-December, 1870).
This third vignette is based on the following passage in Ch. 9, "A Drive through a Bog"
While Lockwood continued thus to doubt and debate with himself, Walpole was already some miles on his way to Kilgobbin. Not, indeed, that he had made any remarkable progress, for the ‘"are that was to rowle his honour over in an hour and a quarter," had to be taken from the field where she had been ploughing since daybreak, while "the boy" that should drive her, was a little old man who had to be aroused from a condition of drunkenness in a hayloft, and installed in his office.
Nor were these the only difficulties. The roads that led through the bog were so numerous and so completely alike that it only needed the dense atmosphere of a rainy day to make it matter of great difficulty to discover the right track. More than once were they obliged to retrace their steps after a considerable distance, and the driver’s impatience always took the shape of a reproach to Walpole, who, having nothing else to do, should surely have minded where they were going. Now, not only was the traveller utterly ignorant of the geography of the land he journeyed in, but his thoughts were far and away from the scenes around him. [Cornhill, Vol. XXII, pp. 745-746]
Commentary: Introducing the Sophisticated Cecil Walpole
Cecil Walpole, perhaps somewhat indiscreetly since he is engaged to Lady Maude, has accepted the invitation from Kate and Nina to have lunch at Kilgobbin Castle, and then to see the room in which King James II slept after the Battle of the Boyne. Since his fellow-hiker Major Henry Lockwood, a military attaché at Dublin Castle, does not wish to be morally compromised (or drenched to the skin by the incessant June downpour in Ireland), Cecil is on his own as the hired carriage runs out of road in the bog near Kilgobbin Castle. Throughout the sequence Fildes is able to distinguish Walpole from the novel's other young men by his Van Dyke moustache; Lever describes him as "a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a beard en Henri Quatre, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance" (Chapter VI, "The 'Blue Goat'," 40). Once again, Fildes associates Nina with the castle piano in the complementary, full-page wood-engraving, "How that song makes me wish we were back again, where I heard it first" in the exciting chapter, "The Search for Arms."
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. The Cornhill Magazine. With 18 full-page illustrations and 18 initial-letter vignettes by S. Luke Fildes. Volumes XXII-XXV. October 1870-March 1872.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Own Time. With 18 Illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, 3 vols; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vols. I-III. In three volumes. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1873. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 19 August 2010.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter XVI, "Exile on the Adriatic, 1867-1872." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell and Russell, 1939; rpt. 1969. Pp. 277-296.
Sutherland, John A. "Lord Kilgobbin." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 382.
Created 7 June 2023 Updated 17 June 2023