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"In this state was it that I entered the little inn of Ovoca, etc."
William Newman
1 September 1860
8.6 cm high by 6.8 cm wide (3 ⅜ by 2 ⅝ inches)
Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance,
Harper's Weekly, Vol. IV (1 September 1860): bottom p. 549.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"In this state was it that I entered the little inn of Ovoca." — staff artist William Newman's fourth composite woodblock engraving for Charles Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance, instalment 4, published on 1 September 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, Chapter V, "The Rosary at Inistioge," framed, bottom right, page 549. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
I applied the circumstances in which I then found myself to my theory, and met no difficulty in the adaptation. Blondel was to perform a great part in my future. Blondel was a symbol selected by fate to indicate a certain direction. Blondel was a lamp by which I could find my way in the dark paths of the world. With Blondel, my Good Genius would walk beside me, or occasionally get up on the crupper, but never leave me or desert me. In the high excitement of my mind, I felt no sense of bodily fatigue, but walked on, drenched to the skin, alternately shivering with cold or burning with all the intensity of fever. In this state was it that I entered the little inn of Ovoco soon after daybreak, and stood dripping in the bar, a sad spectacle of exhaustion and excitement My first question was, “Has Blondel been here?” and before they could reply, I went on with all the rapidity of delirium to assure them that deception of me would be fruitless; that Fate and I understood each other thoroughly, travelled together on the best of terms, never disagreed about anything, but, by a mutual system of give and take, hit it off like brothers. I talked for an hour in this strain; and then my poor faculties, long struggling and sore pushed, gave way completely, and I fell into brain fever. [Chapter V, "The Rosary at Inistioge," 549; pages 32-33 in the Chapman and Hall edition]
Fortunately for Potts the weather turns more favourable, and five days later he arrives at the little village of Inistioge, home of the Catholic priest who won Blondel from him in the backgammon game at Ashford, although the reader is reasonably sure that Lord Keldrum and his cronies conspired to cheat the inebriated Potts. To add to his troubles, Potts learns that the inn at Inistioge has closed for want of customers.
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 25 May 2022