"Not Quite the Sort of Thing (Aunt Dinah Thinks)" — Phiz's sixteenth illustration for Charles Lever's "Barrington" (September 1862)

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Not Quite the Sort of Thing (Aunt Dinah Thinks)

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

steel engraving

12 cm high by 10.7 cm wide (4 ¾ by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted

September 1862

Sixteenth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter XXIX, "The Ramble," facing p. 237)

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

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 person who scanned it, and (2) linkyour document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Commentary: Courtship on the Banks of the Rhine under the Aunt's Disapproving Gaze

Shortly after the argument about the veracity of novels, Fred Conyers quite by chance appears to accompany Fifine and her Aunt Dinah on their journey down the Rhine (exemplified in Phiz's plate by the distant castle in the background). Quickly, he and the teenage beauty become fast friends — but Dinah is concerned that a closer relationship is developing when "Freddy," apologizing for his imperiousness with a princess, assumes a reverent position and lifts Fifine's hand to his lips. While the girl herself regards the scene as one from "a little comedy" (237) they have been enacting, Dinah expresses her disapproval through crimson cheeks and flashing eyes (and a certain hauteur in Phiz's realisation):

"I beg, then, that the piece may not be repeated," said she, stiffly.

"Considering how ill Freddy played his part, aunt, he will scarcely regret its withdrawal." (Chapter 29, "The Ramble," 237)

For a fifteen-year-old fresh out of the cloister, Josephine ["Fifine"] is very quick to take up her aunt's theatrical analogy!

Related Material

Bibliography

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. Barrington. With 25 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Sutherland, John A. "Barrington." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 48-49.

Created 10 August 2002

Last updated 10 October 2026