Walpole looked keenly at the other's face as he read the paper by Sir Luke Fildes; engraver, Swain. Sixteenth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin, 10.3 cm high by 15.7 cm wide (4 by 6 ¼ inches), framed, full-page wood-engraving for Chapter LXVI, "Atlee's Message," facing p. 366. Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine, Part 16 (January 1872), Vol. XXV, facing p. 98. [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Lord Danesbury interprets Atlee's telegram from Athens
Right: The initial page for the sixteenth instalment in Volume XXV of the Cornhill Magazine (January, 1872), 98.
It was in the perfect stillness that followed that Walpole entered the room with the telegram in his hand, and advanced to where Lord Danesbury was sitting.
"I believe, my lord, I have made out this message in such a shape as will enable you to divine what it means. It runs thus: “Athens, 5th, 12 o’clock. Have seen S——, and conferred at length with him. His estimate of value” or “his price” — for the signs will mean either — “to my thinking enormous. His reasonings certainly strong and not easy to rebut.” That may be possibly rendered, “demands that might probably be reduced.” “I leave to-day, and shall be in England by middle of next week. — ATLEE.”’
Walpole looked keenly at the other’s face as he read the paper, to mark what signs of interest and eagerness the tidings might evoke. There was, however, nothing to be read in those cold and quiet features.
"I am glad he is coming back," said he at length. "Let us see: he can reach Marseilles by Monday, or even Sunday night. I don’t see why he should not be here Wednesday, or Thursday at farthest. By the way, Cecil, tell me something about our friend — who is he?" [Chapter LXVI, "Atlee's Message," 366]
Commentary
Cecil Walpole, Lord Danesbury's private secretary, had established the circumstances that led to the Irish Viceroy's appointing Joe Atlee as his confidential agent in Turkey to negotiate with a Greek spy employed by the British embassy codenamed "S," for Speridionides. In Constantinople, Atlee has become fast friends with Kulbash Pasha, the Turkish official with whom Danesbury had dealt when head of the British legation there. Atlee has also uncovered a considerable amount of diplomatic bungling by Danesbury's successor, Sam Brumsey. Another discovery occurs in the meeting in Athens between Joe Atlee and Nina's father, Count Kostalergi in Chapter LXIV, "Greek meets Greek" (as in, "one sharp practitioner meets another"), where Joe learns that Spiridion Kostalergi, by birth a Prince of Delos, is in fact the spy whom Lord Danesbury wished Joe to contact, for the Greek form of "Spiridion" is "Spiridionides." Moreover, as his his telegram in cipher from Athens indicates, the Count intends to release Danesbury's compromising Turkish correspondence only if the British diplomat is prepared to pay him the exorbitant sum of ten thousand pounds. Atlee manages to get Kostalergi to confirm in writing that the purchase price will be his daughter's marriage dowry.
Meantime in Wales, Walpole (as yet knowing nothing about such a "dowry" for Nina) has resolved on how to approach his new diplomatic post in Guatemala: turned down by Maude Bickerstaffe, he now determines to propose marriage to Nina, whose stunning appearance, clothes sense, and knowledge of languages will fit her well for the position of the wife of the British ambassador to Guatemala:
"Poor Frank Touchet used to say," cried he aloud, "'Whenever they refuse my cheques at the Bank, I always transfer my account"; and fortunately the world is big enough for these tactics for several years. That’s a change of front too, if I knew how to adapt it. I must marry another woman — there’s nothing else for it. It is the only escape; and the question is, who shall she be?’ The more he meditated over this change of front the more he saw that his destiny pointed to the Greek. If he could see clearly before him to a high career in diplomacy, the Greek girl, in everything but fortune, would suit him well. Her marvellous beauty, her grace of manner, her social tact and readiness, her skill in languages, were all the very qualities most in request. Such a woman would make the full complement, by her fascinations, of all that her husband could accomplish by his abilities. The little indiscretions of old men — especially old men — with these women, the lapses of confidence they made them, the dropping admissions of this or that intention, made up what Walpole knew to be high diplomacy. [Chapter LXI, "A Change of Front," pp. 340-341]
However, the present illustration occurs as an adjunct to Chapter LXV, "In Town," which is to say, back in London, where Danesbury has gone to confer with the Prime Minister and key cabinet members about both Walpole's creating a predicament in Ireland, and Danesbury's returning as British ambassador to Constantinople. Once Walpole applies the cypher-book that Maude has found in Walpole's room to Atlee's telegram, he brings it to the parlour. Fildes shows him bowing deferentially as he keenly studies his lordship's reaction to the translation. Danesbury insists that Atlee is a brilliant agent: confidential, resourceful, and shrewd, to say nothing of a fluent writer of perceptive government briefs and political commentaries for the press. He would make, ponders Danesbury, a useful addition to the government benches in the Commons in the Cradford byelection.
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. 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.
Created 27 May 2005 Last modified 5 July 2023