Minette in attendance on Pioche (facing title-page) vertically-mounted, 12 cm high by 9.4 cm wide, (5 ¼ by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted steel illustration for Charles Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours," Chapter XLIV, "The Canteen" (December 1843). Printed title-page from the William Curry, Jun. two-volume edition (Dublin, 1844); the Chapman and Hall (1865) title-page appears below. [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Passage Illustrated from the Final (December) Serial Instalment for 1843
“It is no small triumph, Mademoiselle,” said I, “that you have inspired such a passion in the hardy breast of the cuirassier.”
A saucy shake of the head, as though she did not like the compliment, was the only reply. She bent her head down over her work, and seemed absorbed in its details; while I, reverting to my own cares, became silent also.
“And so, Monsieur,” said she, after a long pause — “and so you deem this conquest of mine a very wonderful thing?”
“You mistake me,” said I, eagerly, — “you mistake me much. My surprise was rather that one like Pioche, good-hearted, simple fellow as he is, should possess the refinement of feeling ——”
“A clever flank movement of yours. Lieutenant,” interposed she, with a pleasant laugh; “and I'll not attack you again. And, after all, I am a little proud of my conquest.”
“The confession is a flattering one, from one who doubtless has had a great many to boast of.”
“A great many, indeed!” replied she, naïvely; “so many, that I can't reckon them, — not to boast of, however, as you term it. Parbleu! some of them had little of that —— But here comes the doctor, and I must not let him see us talking. Ma foi, they little think when their backs are turned how seldom we mind their directions!”
The surgeon's visit was a matter of a few seconds; he contented himself with feeling my pulse and reiterating his advice as to quiet.
“You have got the best nurse in the army. Monsieur,” said he, as he took his leave. “I have only one caution to give you, — take care if an affection of the heart be not a worse affair than a thrust of a small sword. I have known such a termination of an illness before now.”
Mademoiselle made no reply save an arch look of half anger, and left the room; and I, wearied and exhausted, sank into a heavy slumber. [Chapter XLIV, "The Canteen," 334; 346 in the 1865 edition and the last page of Vol. I)]
Commentary: Anticipating A Scene Half-way through the 1843-44 Novel
The frontispiece for the first volume anticipates a scene well into the biography of Tom Burke, the upper-middle-class Irish youth who joins the Grande Armee of France directly under the command of the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte. Thus, the opening plate is virtually unintelligible to readers until they have read half the novel. Because the jovial piper, Darby the Blast, dominates the first half of the initial volume, The Wondrous Effects of a Piper's Pipe of Tobacco, from the March 1843 instalment, is far more suitable as a frontispiece, and indeed was the choice of Boston publishers Little, Brown for the 1913 American edition in two volumes.
The reader, then, naturally wishes to know how Tom has been laid up, and who both the audacious Minette and the venerable Pioche are, and how the narrator, whose story begins in Dublin at the end of the eighteenth century, finds himself in the French army of the Republic. The illustration, meanwhile, has its own merits, aside from its serving as an adjunct to the action in Chapter XLIV, "The Canteen." It suggests that the protagonist has a somewhat challenging relationship with a sharp-tongued, quick-witted young Frenchwoman who is apparently wearing a regimental uniform. The steel helmet, sabre, pistol, breastplate, and cavalry boots imply that the figure in the bed is a member of a unit such as the Eighth Hussars, Tom's regiment. Only an 1845 or 1869 reader with some expertise in identifying the French regiments of the Napoleonic Wars by their headgear would know that the helmet at Tom's bedside belongs to a member of a unit such as the Cuirassiers a Cheval de la Garde impériale of 1804-5, one of fourteen elite, heavy cavalry regiments distinguished by the breastplate. Undoubtedly old Alsatian, Gros Pioche, fits the stereotype of "a big man on a big horse," but, since Tom does not, even a reader with considerable background knowledge of the period would have had questions about the identity of the figure in bed since the plate's title implies that he is the good-hearted, old cuirassier who has been romancing the vivacious vivandiére of the Fourth.
All of these matters the final chapter of the first volume would have revealed to purchasers even though neither the 1865 nor the 1869 first Chapman and Hall volume contains the original concluding chapter, XLV, "The Vivandière of the Fourth."
Further Information
- Charles Lever's Fourth Novel, Tom Burke of "Ours" (February 1843 — September 1844)
- Instalment-by-instalment Synopsis of the Novel's Plot and Characters: Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours" (February 1843)
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 the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Chapter 11: "'Give Me Back the Freshness of the Morning!'" Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 108-127.
Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1844. Illustrated by H. K. Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865. Serialised February 1843 through September 1844. 2 vols.
Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 24 February 2021.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
Created 7 November 2023