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The Cavern
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
steel engraving
13.3 cm by 9.9 cm (5 ¼ by 3 ⅞ inches), vignetted
June 1845
Charles Lever's The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago, Chapter XX, "Temptation in a Weak Hour," facing p. 167.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“Wouldn't you show him —” and Lanty hesitated to conclude a speech, the imprudence of which he was already aware of.
“Ay will I,” said Mary. “I never mistrusted one of his name;” and with that, she rose from the fire-side, and took a candle in her hand, “Come here a minute, Master Mark.” Unlocking a small door in the back wall of the cabin, she entered a narrow passage which led to the stable, but off which, a narrow door, scarcely distinguishable from the wall, conducted into a spacious vault, excavated in the solid rock. Here were a vast number of packing-oases, and boxes, piled on each other, from floor to roof, together, with hogsheads and casks of every shape and size. Some of the boxes had been opened, and the lids laid loosely over them. Removing one of these, Mary pointed to the contents, as she said —
“There they are — French muskets and carabines. There's pistols in that case; and all them, over there, is swords and cutlasses. 'Tis pike-heads that's in the other corner; and the casks has saddles and holsters and them kind of things.”
Mark stooped down and took up one of the muskets. It was a light and handy weapon, and bore on its stock the words — “Armée de la Sambre et Meuse” — for none of the weapons were new.
“These are all French,” said he, after a brief pause.
“Every one of them,” replied Mary, proudly; “and there's more coming from the same place.” [Chapter XX, "Temptation in a Weak Hour," pp. 166-167]
Enraged by his cousin Kate's attentiveness to Frederick Travers, Mark storms out of the parlour just before Kate and the young English officer play a few games of chess, which Phiz has just depicted in The Game of Chess (May, 1845). Despite the intense and sudden snowfall for which he is ill-dressed, Mark waits where the road narrows; his object is to shoot Frederick as he rides homeward. However, after hours of fruitless waiting, Mark encounters quite another rider, the Irish horse-dealer Lanty Lawler. He invites Mark to join him for dinner at Mary's tavern nearby. As they enter the cabin, Lanty begins to sound out Mark's sentiments about the English in general, and resolves to incorporate him into the forthcoming rebellion. To assure him that the operation has every chance of success, he has the publican show Mark the store of French weaponry that is hidden in her cavern storeroom carved out of the rock. In the illustration, therefore, Phiz shows Mark appreciatively examining a French musket as Mary proudly extols the quality and quantity of the armaments, and Lanty jovially regards the nationalist convert.
The social and political upheavals in nineteenth-century Ireland have their origin in the late eighteenth century, when the ultra-nationalist United Irishmen began to organize both politically and militarily. The Society of United Irishmen, which was inspired by the American and French revolutions, was established in 1791, first in Belfast and then in Dublin. The membership of both societies was primarily middle-class, but Presbyterians predominated in the Belfast society whereas the Dublin society was composed of both Catholics and Protestants. Leaders of the organization, most notably Theobald Wolfe Tone, met with Napoleon Bonaparte in revolutionary France, seeking his assistance in overthrowing British rule in Ireland, precipitating the Rebellion of 1798, which is the antecedent event in Lever's previous novel Tom Burke of "Ours". Young Lieutenant Charles de Meudon, Tom Burke's mentor in the first movement of the 1843-44 novel, had been dispatched as part of the French contingent to direct and supply the Irish militants in their armed insurrection against Great Britain. British regulars, much better trained and much more disciplined than the forces of the United Irishmen, brutally put down the republican uprising, killing thousands of civilians as well as combatants. They also defeated the French expeditionary force that landed near Killala in County Mayo in support of the rebels. The political aftermath was the Act of Union (1801), which abolished the Irish Parliament and crushed hopes of home rule for the rest of the century.
"The Irish Rising of 1798." The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford, New York: Oxford U. Press, 1997. https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/archive/rebellion/1798/
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. With 26 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1845.
Lever, Charles. The O'Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. One Vol. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: May 11, 2010.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter VIII, "Heretic Among Tories, 1844-1845." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 128-145.
Sutherland, John A. "Lever, Charles." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 372-374.
Wallenfeldt, Jeff. "Irish Rebellion [1798]." Britannica. Accessed 7 December 2023.
Created 1 January 2024