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Napoleon shews Tom the door
Phiz
October 1843 (ninth) instalment
Steel-engraving
13.1 cm by 10.3 cm (5 ⅛ by 4 inches), vignetted.
Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours", Chapter XXXIX, "A Morning at 'The Tuileries'" (October 1843), facing p. 281 in the 1844 edition, 290 in the 1865 edition.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“Is on record. General; I have seen it in [the spy] Mehée de la Touche's own writing,” added Bonaparte, with a sneer. “Give me the fidelity, sir, that has no tarnish, — like your own, D'Auvergne. Go, sir,” said he, turning to me, while he waved his hand towards the door; “it will need all your bravery and all your heroism to make me acquit General d'Auvergne of an act of folly.”
I hung my head in shame, and with a low reverence and a tottering step moved from the room and closed the door behind me. [Chapter XXXIX, "A Morning at 'The Tuileries'," 281 in the 1844 edition; 290 in the 1865 edition]
After months imprisoned in The Temple, Tom is at last free after a general amnesty proclaimed as the Senate has offered to proclaim the First Consul "Emperor." As Marie de Meudon had warned Tom earlier, Bonaparte's notorious spy Mehée de la Touche (whom Tom has known until recently as the Abbé D'Ervan) had apparently poisoned Napoleon's mind against the loyal youth. At the crucial moment for Tom Lever refers to the stern commander, dressed in the uniform of the Chasseurs of the Guard and with his right hand in the characteristic pose, as "The Consul" (290). This suggests that, despite the fact that Tom has been imprisoned for months since his initial arrest in January, 1804, technically Lever would have referred to Napoleon as "The Emperor" only if this interview were occurring after Napoleon and Joséphine had been crowned Emperor and Empress on Sunday, 2 December 1804 (11 Frimaire, Year XIII), at Notre-Dame de Paris.
The balding, elderly soldier just behind Tom we met on the morning of Tom's trial, General D'Auvergne; it was D'Auvergene who arranged the writ to have Tom released from the criminal trial and have him translated to a military tribunal. And the General has just arranged that Tom should accompany him as aide-de-camp on the forthcoming Austrian campaign. The ladies present are Napoleon's wife (seated) and, standing behind her, Marie de Meudon, "The Rose of Provence." Tom is present to thank Madame Bonaparte because it was Madame Consulesse who anonymously sent him three thousand francs and arranged his release. What only a careful reading of this instalment will reveal is the identity of uniformed, bearded young man in the centre of the composition set in a suite in the Tuileries at the half-way mark in Tom's retrospective narrative. This jaunty figure with the commanding air and Italian appearance is General Murat (1767-1815), Napoleon's brother-in-law and confidant, whom Lever has just described as something of a dandy:
The person thus addressed was a very tall and singularly handsome man, whose dark eyes, and dark whiskers meeting in the middle of his chin, gave him the appearance of an Italian. He was dressed in a hussar uniform, whose gorgeous braiding of gold was heightened in effect by a blaze of orders and stars that covered the entire breast; the scarlet pantaloons, tight to the leg, displayed to advantage the perfect symmetry of his form; while his boots of yellow morocco, bound and tasselled with gold, seemed the very coquetry of military costume. A sabre, the hilt actually covered with precious stones, clanked at his side, and the aigrette of his plumed hat was a large diamond. There was something almost theatrical in the manner of his approach, as with a stately step and a deep bow he took Madame Bonaparte's hand and kissed it. . . . [288-89]
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 4 November 2023