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"And ran ever onward with the wildness of one possessed." — staff artist William Newman's fifteenth composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, instalment 9, published on 13 October 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, Chapter XI, "A Jealous Husband," framed, bottom right, page 645. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: The Pellmell Escape from the Irate Husband

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," 646; pp. 107-108 in the Chapman and Hall edition]

Potts Makes His Escape from Christy Jopplyn through the Streets of Ostende

Using the table to evade the stout cane of the jealous husband, Potts escapes from the hotel, and in the street providentially runs into his old friend the skipper, who persuades Jopplyn that the whole affair is based on a misunderstanding. Potts had made the error of misidentifying Mrs. Jopplym with Miss Herbert, for both are wearing deep mourning. The veiled woman's husband, who has just arrived on the 9.40 train from Brussels, has intercepted Potts's note offering her "protection" on her journey to Brussels. The black-and-white wood-engraving uses cross-hatching to suggest the evening setting, obscuring the figure of the fleeing Potts, who any moment now will run into his saviour, his friend the sea captain from the Dover packet-boat.

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.

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Created 26 May 2022