Passage Illustrated: A Rollicking Irish Caricature

Whenever my uncle or Considine were not in the room, my companion was my own servant, Michael, or as he was better known, “Mickey Free.” Now, had Mickey been left to his own free and unrestricted devices, the time would not have hung so heavily; for among Mike’s manifold gifts he was possessed of a very great flow of gossiping conversation. He knew all that was doing in the county, and never was barren in his information wherever his imagination could come into play. Mickey was the best hurler in the barony, no mean performer on the violin, could dance the national bolero of “Tatter Jack Walsh” in a way that charmed more than one soft heart beneath a red woolsey bodice, and had, withal, the peculiar free-and-easy devil-may-care kind of off-hand Irish way that never deserted him in the midst of his wiliest and most subtle moments, giving to a very deep and cunning fellow all the apparent frankness and openness of a country lad.

He had attached himself to me as a kind of sporting companion; and growing daily more and more useful, had been gradually admitted to the honors of the kitchen and the prerogatives of cast clothes, without ever having been actually engaged as a servant; and while thus no warrant officer, as, in fact, he discharged all his duties well and punctually, was rated among the ship’s company, though no one could say at what precise period he changed his caterpillar existence and became the gay butterfly with cords and tops, a striped vest, and a most knowing jerry hat who stalked about the stable-yard and bullied the helpers. Such was Mike. [Chapter XII, "Mickey Free" 58]

Commentary: A Comic Valet not to be Confused with Dickens's Sam Weller

Lever had been under some apprehension that Phiz would borrow heavily from his own Dickensian stereotypes in executing images of such quintessentially Irish characters as Mickey Free, the comic valet, who has obvious affinities with Mr. Pickwick's genial, aphoristic companion and valet, Sam Weller. Dickens and Phiz had already created a celebrated comic Cockney servant who serves as a Sancho Panza comic foil to the sometimes obtuse and Quixotic Samuel Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers (April 1836 through November 1837). Dickens introduced the working-class "boots" in the galleried inn in the July 1836 instalment complemented by Phiz's First Appearance of Mr. Samuel Weller.

Charles Lever has thus taken some pains in the second half of the picaresque/historical novel to individualize O'Malley's comic valet, making him less Cockney and more emotional (even melancholy in Mr. Free's Song, giving his dialectal and comic song a Gaelic title to underscore Mickey's "Irishness" and his satirical, anti-English attitudes. Phiz provided only one illustration of O'Malley's comic servant-companion in the first volume since this frontispiece was actually issued in the final double number. It seems likely that Lever, having scored a hit with the Welleresque Irishman, decided to emphasize his exploits and witticisms in what would become the second volume. By the time that readers of the monthly parts purchased that November/December 1841 double number they would have been thoroughly familiar with the comic Irishman that Lever translated from the stage to the page as "the Sam Weller of Ireland."

The Other Seven Scenes involving O'Malley's Comic Valet

• 21. Mr. Free's Song
• 24. Mickey's Joy upon finding his Master
• 29. Mr. Free turned Spaniard
• 34. Mr. Free Pipes whilst his Friends Pipe-clay
• 36. Mike capturing the Trumpeter
• 38. Captn. Mickey Free relating his Heroic Deeds
• 41. Mickey astonishes the "Natives"

Bibliography

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Published serially in The Dublin University Magazine from Vol. XV (March 1840) through XVIII (December 1841). Dublin: William Curry, March 1840 through December 1841, 2 vols. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1840; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 2 September 2016.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

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14 February 2023