"Is not that as fine as your boasted Campagna?" by Sir Luke Fildes. Eigth full-page illustration for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Time, 10.5 cm by 15.9 cm (4 by 6 ¼ inches), framed, facing page 166. Reprinted from the April 1871 number of the Cornhill Magazine: 10.54 cm by 15.7 cm (4 by 6 ¼ inches), facing p. 490. Passage illustrated: Part 7, Chapter XXVII, "On the Leads," 509. [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Passage Realised: A Confidential Conversation in the Garden
The initial page for the seventh instalment in Volume XXIII of the Cornhill Magazine (April, 1871).
It was at this window Kate now sat with Nina, looking over the vast plain, on which a rich moonlight was streaming, the shadows of fast-flitting clouds throwing strange and fanciful effects over a space almost wide enough to be a prairie.
"What a deal have mere names to do with our imaginations, Nina!" said Kate. "Is not that boundless sweep before us as fine as your boasted Campagna? Does not the night wind career over it as joyfully, and is not the moonlight as picturesque in its breaks by turf-clamp and hillock as by ruined wall and tottering temple? In a word, are not we as well here, to drink in all this delicious silence, as if we were sitting on your loved Pincian?"
"Don’t ask me to share such heresies. I see nothing out there but bleak desolation. I don’t know if it ever had a past; I can almost swear it will have no future. Let us not talk of it."
"What shall we talk of?" asked Kate, with an arch smile. [Chapter XXVII, "On the Leads," 166]
Commentary: Oneupmanship over Picturesque Vistas in the Seventh Serial Plate
Fildes puts a moonlit glow on the faces of the statuesque women, so that his focus is not the grand vista of the Bog of Allen which they regard but the cousins themselves. The illustrator, however he may focus on their classical faces, seems to wish readers to attend to their conversation about the uncouth Daniel Donogan. Nina in conversation with her cousin on the roof garden off the leads of the square tower again tries to assert her mental and aesthetic superiority over her Irish cousin by demonstrating a superior Romantic sensibility as to the picturesque. Once again, Lever foils the dutiful daughter, devoted to her native Ireland, and her exotic cousin, ever prepared to argue in favour of the merits of Mediterranean culture. In this instance, Kate alludes to the vista that the British tourist might acquire by climbing the Pincian Hill, northeast of the Roman Forum and overlooking the Campus Martius. Since the area features numerous ancient villas and gardens, Kate's alluding to it establishes her geographical as well as her aesthetic sense. Of course Lever delights in having his Irish heroine win the debate with an arch smile. And his use of the word "prairie" recalls Lever's own adventures as a youth on the Canadian plains, which to Canadians are now the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
The timing of the conversation is significant as it occurs on the evening of the day on which Dick Kearney has arrived from Dublin in company with "that strange man" (166), the ex-convict and Irish nationalist, the physician-turned-Fenian, Daniel Donogan. The reader is already aware of Donogan's plan to run Dick as the Member of Parliament for King's County. Ironically, it will be the support of the Viceroy as a recognition of Kate's repelling the Fenian raid that will make Dick the Whig member for the county, advocating the repeal of the Act of Union.
Scanned images and commentary 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. Illustrated 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, in a single volume. 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.
University of Lincoln. "Review of Stephen Haddelsey's Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian (2000)." Abstract accessed 23 June 2023.
Created 24 October 2007 Updated 24 June 2023