Initial letter T: and filling his palm with the running water, drank it off. by Sir Luke Fildes; engraver, Swain. Fourth initial-letter vignette for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin, from the January 1871 number of the Cornhill Magazine, p. 1 in Vol. XXIII. 7.7 cm by 5.1 cm (3 by 2 inches), framed. Part 4, for Chapter XII, "The Journey to the Country." 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 XXIII of the Cornhill Magazine (January to June, 1871).
This fourth vignette is based on the closing passage in Ch. 12, "The Journey to the Country"
"And those rills of clear water that flank the road, are they of her designing?"
"That they are. There was a cutting made for a railroad line about four miles from this, and they came upon a sort of pudding-stone formation, made up chiefly of white pebbles. Kate heard of it, purchased the whole mass, and had these channels paved with them from the gate to the castle, and that’s the reason this water has its crystal clearness."
"She’s worthy of Shakespeare’s sweet epithet, the 'daintiest Kate in Christendom.' Here’s her health!" and he stooped down, and filling his palm with the running water, drank it off. [Cornhill, Vol. XXIII, 9]
Commentary: Another Set of Hikers from the Metropolis of Dublin
Lever has already had Major Henry Lockwood and his irreverent pal, Cecil Walpole, hiking near Kilgobbin Castle as mere tourists; here, Fildes depicts in the vignette the original odd couple of the novel, Dick Kearney and his college roommate, Joe Atlee, hiking from the railway station at Moate to the Castle in order to avoid hiring a carriage. This is their third appearance in the narrative-pictorial sequence as Fildes has highlighted them in several of the novel's thirty-six illustrations already: "What lark have you been on, Master Joe?" (October 1870, Vol. XXII, facing p. 493), and Initial-letter Vignette I, Chapter IV (November 1870, Vol. XXII, p. 513). The pair of college students appear shortly in the January 1871 instalment's main illustration, He entered, and Nina arose as he came forward. (facing p. 1 of Vol. XXIII of The Cornhill), with Major Lockwood, a sober-looking military man in his late thirties, entering the breakfast parlour (right).
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these 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 10 June 2023