"While I screamed murder in every language I could command." — staff artist William Newman's composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, first published on 13 October 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Chapter XI, "A Jealous Husband." 2 ⅝ by 3 ½ inches (6.8 cm by 8.9 mm), framed, bottom left, page 645. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: An Unpleasant Turn of Events re. Miss Herbert
My heart was in my mouth; I gave a glance at the window; it was the third story, and a leap out would have been fatal. What would I not have given for one of those weapons I had so proudly proclaimed myself possessed of! There was not even a poker in the room. I made a spring at the bell-rope, and before he could interpose, gave one pull that, though it brought down the cord, resounded through the whole house.
“Time is up, Porringer,” said he, slowly, as he replaced the watch in his pocket, and grasped his murderous-looking cane.
There was a large table in the room, and I intrenched myself at once behind this, armed with a light cane chair, while I screamed murder in every language I could command. Failing to reach me across the table, my assailant tried to dodge me by false starts, now at this side, now at that. Though a large fleshy man, he was not inactive, and it required all my quickness to escape him. These manoeuvres being unsuccessful, he very quickly placed a chair beside the table and mounted upon it. I now hurled my chair at him; he warded off the blow and rushed on; with one spring I bounded under the table, reappearing at the opposite side just as he had reached mine. These tactics we now pursued for several minutes, when my enemy suddenly changed his attack, and, descending from the table, he turned it on edge; the effort required strength. I seized the moment and reached the door; I tore it open in some fashion, gained the stairs, the court, the streets, and ran ever onward with the wildness of one possessed with no time for thought, nor any knowledge to guide; I turned left and right, choosing only the narrowest lanes that presented themselves, and at last came to a dead halt at an open drawbridge, where a crowd stood waiting to pass. [Chapter XI, "A Jealous Husband," 645; 107 in the Chapman and Hall edition]
Commentary: The Innocent Potts's Encounters the Wrath of a Jealous Husband
The narrator-protagonist has just landed at Ostend, port of entry to the Continent, and, like the foolish, naieve young Romantic he is, has offered his protection to a young lady in deep mourning who has just arrived at the same inn from the channel steamer on which both were passengers. Mistakenly, he believes that the young lady in deep mourning (as the waiter has informed him) from the recently arrived vessel and travelling on her own to Brussels is Miss Herbert, whom he met in England.
Although he has not seen her face behind the veil, Potts has convinced himself that this is the young woman with whom he smitten. Through the waiter he sends her a note offering her his protection on the railway journey since the party from Brussels who was to meet her has not arrived. He composes various versions of his offer of protection, and sends one by way of the hotel waiter to the woman whom he has mistaken for Miss Herbert. Then suddenly an irate, middle-aged Englishman arrives, demanding to know why Potts (who now styles himself "Pottinger," but which the jealous husband continually confuses for "Porringer") has dared to write thus to his wife. This burly figure named Christopher Jopplyn has just arrived by the 9:40 train from Brussels to collect his wife, and has intercepted Potts's romantic epistle. Thus, Lever sets up a classic farcical scene of cross-purposes and misinterpreted intentions in the manner of a French farce.
Potts has made what proves a nearly fatal error: he has misidentified the young lady in mourning at the Ostend hotel with the young lady had had encountered two days earlier at the Milford Station as he set out on his journey to the Continent in quest of the mount from his "day's ride," Blondel, the retired circus horse. All three illustrators (Newman, Phiz, and Cooke) have seized upon the same moment, when Potts (aka "Pottinger"), thinking himself secure in his hotel room and about to entertain the wistful Miss Herbert, fellow passenger on the mail packet from Dover, instead encounters a very different sort of visitor: the woman's husband, who has just arrived on the 9.40 train from Brussels, and has intercepted Potts's note. The black-and-white illustrations do not do justice to the imposing figure who bursts into Potts's room, but all three certainly make Mr. Christopher Jopplyn large, angry, and depict him wearing a tweed suit, and all three arm him with a heavy stick like a Shillelagh.
Relevant Illustrations of This Scene from Other Editions (1862 and 1894)
Left: Phiz's earlier illustration emphasizes the contrast between the berserk husband and the timorous Potts in He very quickly placed a chair beside the table and mounted upon it (1862). Right: William Cubitt Cooke's treatment of the farcical us more realistic: A jealous husband (1894)
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 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.
_______. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Illustrated by William Cubitt Cooke. Boston: Little, Brown, 1904.
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 21 June 2022