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Miss Dinah in Dishabille
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
steel engraving
11.6 cm high by 9.5 cm wide (4 ¾ by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted
October 1862
Seventeenth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington Chapter III, Vol II (Chapter 33, "A Small Dinner Party"), facing p. 267.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It is not for me to speculate on what sort of thing the world had been, if the Major himself had been intrusted with the control and fashion of it; but I have my doubts that we are just as well off as we are. “Well, though they haven't the manners to say 'M'Cormick; will you stop and dine?' they haven't done with me yet; not a bit!” And with this resolve he entered the cottage, and found his way to the drawing-room. It was unoccupied; so he sat himself down in a comfortable armchair, to await events and their issue. There were books and journals and newspapers about; but the Major was not a reader, and so he sat musing and meditating, while the time went by. Just as the clock struck five, Miss Dinah, whose various cares of housewifery had given her a very busy day, was about to have a look at the drawing-room before she went to dress, and being fully aware that one of her guests was asleep, and the other full stretched beside the river, she felt she could go her “rounds” without fear of being observed. Now, whatever had been the peculiar functions she was lately engaged in, they had exacted from her certain changes in costume more picturesque than flattering. In the first place, the sleeves of her dress were rolled up above the elbows, displaying arms more remarkable for bone than beauty. A similar curtailment of her petticoats exhibited feet and ankles which — not to be ungallant — might be called massive rather than elegant; and lastly, her two long curls of auburn hair — curls which, in the splendor of her full toilette, were supposed to be no mean aids to her captivating powers — were now tastefully festooned and fastened to the back of her head, pretty much as a pair of hawsers are occasionally disposed on the bow of a merchantman! Thus costumed, she had advanced into the middle of the room before she saw the Major.
“A pleasure quite unexpected, sir, is this,” said she, with a vigorous effort to shake out what sailors would call her “lower courses.” “I was not aware that you were here.” [Chapter XXXIII, "A Small Dinner Party," 267]
By the time Dinah and M'Cormick enact this comic man/comic woman scene, Josephine seems to have accepted the fact that the Barringtons live in a cottage rather than a castle, and that domestic cares rather than the pursuit of fashion and pleasure must be her daily concern. Skirts up (in the text revealing her "massive" ankles) and feather-duster in hand, Dinah, cleaning the house prior to the arrival of Withering and Major Stapylton for dinner, is shocked to find her inquisitive neighbour ensconced in a comfortable arm-chair in the drawing-room, compelling the Barringtons to invite him to the sumptuous feast that he has detected being prepared in the kitchen. However, although Phiz depicts the major sedulously reading his newspaper, Lever clearly (if somewhat improbably) indicates that he is merely "musing and meditating" (267).
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