"He was fast, sound asleep, and snoring loudly." — 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 ⅜ inches (6.8 cm by 8.6 mm), framed, bottom right, page 637. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: A Boorish Fellow-Traveller in the Railway Carriage
The question is, will he give me a patient hearing, for my theory requires nice handling, and some delicacy in the developing? He may cut me short in his bluff, abrupt way, and say, “Out with it, old fellow, you want to sneak out of this quarrel.” What am I to reply? I shall rejoin: “Sir, let us first inquire if it be a quarrel. From the time of Atrides down to the Crimean war, there has not been one instance of a conflict that did not originate in misconceptions, and has not been prolonged by delusions! Let us take the Peloponnesian war.” A short grunt beside me here cut short my argumentation. He was fast, sound asleep, and snoring loudly. My thoughts at once suggested escape. Could I but get away, I fancied I could find space in the world, never again to see myself his neighbor.
The train was whirling along between deep chalk cuttings, and at a furious pace; to leap out was certain death. But was not the same fate reserved for me if I remained? At last I heard the crank-crank of the break! We were nearing a station; the earth walls at either side receded; the view opened; a spire of a church, trees, houses appeared; and, our speed diminishing, we came bumping, throbbing, and snorting into a little trim garden-like spot, that at the moment seemed to me a paradise. [Chapter X, "The Perils of My Journey to Ostende," 638; pp. 95-96 in the Chapman and Hall edition]
Commentary: On the Channel Train to Dover, and thence to Ostend
Potts now finds himself sharing a railway compartment with an overbearing young British diplomat (identified as such by the tags on his luggage, "To H. M.'s Minister and Envoy at —, by the Hon. Grey Buller, Attaché, &c.") on the Southeastern Line out of London. Already having missed her train, Potts continues his pursuit of Miss K. Herbert, the fair traveller who is leaving England in order to become the paid companion of an elderly widow, Mrs. Keats, living in Belgium. The journey from the Southeastern Station to Dover on the Channel coast cuts across the South Downs, and the line dips into the chalk hillsides as it connects various Kentish villages to the metropolis and the port.
The bland illustration of a burly sleeper does nothing to prepare the reader for the hilarity of the dialogue between the indignant Potts and the flash, judgmental, self-absorbed youth. As he keeps insisting that Potts is merely some species of commercial traveller or bagman, Miss Herbert passes their window as the train pulls out of the country station. Again, the chagrined Potts is left playing catchup. Newman seems to have deliberately avoided making Potts's interlocutor look witty, fashionable, and observant, and shaded the composition to suggest a night-time setting that obscures the sleeper and highlights Potts, still brooding over his antagonist's "confounded calm, cold manner" and supercilious depreciation of the Anglo-Irish poser.
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