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Passage Illustrated: As Tom's father lies dying, his Doctor and Lawyer confer.

I turned away with a bursting heart, and felt my way up the broad oak stair, which was left in complete darkness. As I reached the corridor, off which the bedrooms lay, I heard voices talking together in a low tone; they came from my father's room, the door of which lay ajar. I approached noiselessly and peeped in. By the fire, which was the only light now in the apartment, sat two persons at a set table, one of whom I at once recognized as the tall, solemn-looking figure of Doctor Finnerty; the other I detected by the sharp tones of his voice to be Mr. Anthony Basset, my father's confidential attorney.

On the table before them lay a mass of papers, parchments, leases, deeds, together with glasses and a black bottle, whose accompaniments of hot water and sugar left no doubt as to its contents. The chimney-piece was crowded with a range of vials and medicine bottles, some of them empty, some of them half finished. [Chapter I, "Myself," pp. 9-10]

Commentary: A Theatrical Scene of Death

Tom as a child is not so much a witness as an audience for a theatrical presentation of death, with the gigantic curtains of the bed suggesting stage curtains. Emphasizing the staginess of the scene, Phiz shines a spotlight on the deathbed of Tom's father at the back without showing a body or a patient approaching death. The illustrator relegates the boy to a shadowy corner at the foot of the bed while the well-dressed professional men, the family attorney and the local physician, hold centre stage. Their black bottle of spirits, to be enjoyed and consumed by the living, contrasts the many bottles of medicine crowding the mantlepiece.

The presence of the well-dressed middle-aged professionals, like that of the numerous "papers, parchments, leases, [and] deeds," establishes Tom's father is a member of the monied class in Ireland, although Tom's narrative shows that his affairs have taken a turn for the worse and that what income he has has been lavished on the education of the older brother. Notably absent from the bedside colloquy about the estate is the parish priest, whether Catholic or Protestant, and a mother and siblings. In the accompanying letterpress that precedes the illustration, the narrator (Tom himself, recalling this scene from childhood), explains that his father is a widower, and that his only sibling, an older brother named George, is away studying at Eton. As he stealthily enters, Tom focuses on his father's laboured breathing, but gradually becomes aware of the watchers' conversation:

Into the company of these two worthies I now found myself thus accidentally thrown, and would gladly have retreated at once, but that some indescribable impulse to be near my father's sickbed was on me; and so I crept stealthily in and sat down in a large chair at the foot of the bed, where unnoticed I listened to the long-drawn heavings of his chest, and in silence wept over my own desolate condition.

For a long time the absorbing nature of my own grief prevented me hearing the muttered conversation near the lire; but at length, as the night wore on and my sorrow had found vent in tears, I began to listen to the dialogue beside me.

“He'll have five hundred pounds under his grandfather's will, in spite of us. But what's that?” said the attorney.

“I'll take him as an apprentice for it, I know,” said the doctor, with a grin that made me shudder.

“That's settled already,” replied Mr. Basset. “He's to be articled to me for five years; but I think it's likely he'll go to sea before the time expires. How heavily the old man is sleeping! Now, is that natural sleep?” [10]

Thus, text and illustration taken together establish this as a first-person Bildungsroman set initially on a run-down estate in Ireland. The doctor and attorney have sent for Tom, who has been away at school in Dublin, but have taken no care about the boy's reception at the coach stop. He has made his own way on foot in the January rain through the blighted fields and dilapidated gatehouse, and has encountered only a mentally incapacitated old servant downstairs.

The boy, hiding in the corner, is visually marginalized as the illustrator focuses on the father's professional advisors. Thus, the illustration reinforces their aloofness, their lack of concern about Tom and his brother George, and their fleecing the estate. It sets up expectations about the father's death, which occurs at the very close of the first chapter.

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.

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Created 18 September 2023