"Any luggage, sir? Is this yours?" said he, pointing to a wool-sack. — staff artist William Newman's composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, first published on 6 October 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Chapter X, "The Perils of My Journey to Ostende." 2 ⅝ by 3 ½ inches (6.8 cm by 8.8 mm), framed, top left of page 637. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: On the Railway Station's Platform
“Young lady in deep mourning, sir, — crape shawl and bonnet, sir,” said the official, in answer to my question, aided by a shilling fee; “the same as asked where was the station for the Dover Line.”
“Yes, yes; that must be she.”
“Got into a cab, sir, and drove off straight for the Sou'Eastern.”
“She was quite alone?”
“Quite, sir; but she seems used to travelling, — got her traps together in no time, and was off in a jiffy.”
“Stupid dog!” thought I; “with every advantage position and accident can confer, how little this fellow reads of character! In this poor, forlorn, heart-weary orphan, he only sees something like a commercial traveller!”
“Any luggage, sir? Is this yours?” said he, pointing to a woolsack.
“No,” said I, haughtily; “my servants have gone forward with my luggage. I have nothing but a knapsack.” [Chapter X, "The Perils of My Journey to Ostende," 636; pp. 86-87 in the Chapman and Hall edition]
Commentary: Further Railway Satire on the Way to Ostende, Belgium
Lever continues his satire on the inconveniences of travelling by the new railway system as Potts follows the mysterious Kate Herbert to Ostende. Nominally, he is still searching for the mount that Father Dyke duped him out of at backgammon, but in reality Potts hopes to advance his romantic prospects by being of use to the fair traveller who has left England in order to become the paid companion of an elderly widow, Mrs. Keats, living abroad. In the illustration, Potts continues his pose as a young Anglo-Irish aristocrat who is attended by a legion of servants. He explains to the baggage-handler that his servants have gone ahead, taking almost all of his luggage with them.
In wasting a valuable few minutes discussing luggage at the station, Potts is too late to catch the next train from London’s South-eastern Station on the Dover Line. Thus, the reader wonders whether he will catch up with Miss Herbert, the beautiful traveller whom he encountered on the uptrain. The Newman illustration once again satirizes Potts’s pretensions and how railway functionaries regard him as a second-class passenger at best.
The original Southeastern Line, which ran from London to the Channel port of Dover, opened in 1836. On the North Staffordshire Line, opened in 1845, Trentham Park, which Potts has just passed at the close of the last chapter, presented the last opportunity for a meal break before London. As a traveller on thisline Potts fancies that he is every inch a gentleman, but the station hand clearly takes him for some sort of agriculturalist as he assumes that the large sack of wool on the platform belongs to Potts.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Brown, Jane E., and Richard Samuel West. "William Newman (1817—1870): A Victorian Cartoonist in London and New York." American Periodicals, 17, 2: "Periodical Comics and Cartoons." (Ohio State University Press, 2007), 143-183. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20770984.
Lever, Charles. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by William Newman. Vols. IV-V (13 April 1860 through 23 March 1861) in thirty-five weekly parts. Only a dozen of these weekly instalments were illustrated: p. 541 (one), 549 (two), 573, 589, 605, 621, 637, 649, 661, 678, 701, and 714.
_______. A Day's Ride; A Life's Romance. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1863, rpt. Routledge, 1882.
_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
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. Pp. 372-374.
Created 18 June 2022