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Passage Illustrated: Tom Grapples with the Mysterious Assailant

The chair still continued to slide silently into the room, and already the arm of the man within protruded. Now was the moment, or never; and with a spring, I threw myself on it, and, pinioning the wrist in my hands, held it down upon the floor while I opposed my weight against the door.

Quick as lightning the other hand appeared, armed with a pistol; and I had but a moment to crouch my head nearly to the ground when a bullet whizzed past and smashed through the window behind me, while with a crash the frail door gave way to a strong push, and a man sprang fiercely forward to seize me by the throat. Jumping backward, I recovered my feet; but before I could raise my pistol he made a spring at me, and we both rolled together on the floor. On the pistol both our hands met, and the struggle was for the weapon. [Chapter LI, "The Mill on the Hollitsch Road," 15 in the 1844 edition; Chapter VII, 55, in the 1869 edition]

Commentary: The Exciting Sequel to The Locomotive Chair

This picture's distinction is that it is the second of a "before-and-after" matched pair occurring within a single chapter, its mate being The Locomotive Chair (facing page 14 in Chapter LI of the 1844 edition), in which Tom baits his hidden assailant by pretending to be asleep, all the while gripping his sabre in anticipation of being set upon. Here Tom and his uniformed assailant wrestle for control of the second pistol in a life-and-death struggle that culminates in the resolution of the mystery: the hidden adversary proves to be Henri de Beauvaise, now an Austrian officer.

Following an exchange of politically based insults in which De Beauvaise denigrates his former friend as "a foreign mercenary" (57, 1869 edition) and Tom's dead mentor, Charles de Meudon, "a base traitor to the king of his fathers," Tom is incensed. And then he realizes that De Beauvaise has sustained a sabre cut on his leg, and is bleeding profusely. Suddenly Tom forgives him, and attempts to staunch the bleeding.

Phiz uses the windows and open door (now to the left, rather than to the right in the previous frame, as if to adjust our perspective) to establish the octagonal shape of the room. The pair have overturned the humble, wicker chair, in the struggle, have dislodged the door, and have scattered the meal on the wooden floor. Desperately Tom clenches his sword-knot in his right hand as he prepares to punch the (supposed) Austrian, and attempts to wrench control of the pistol away from his desperate adversary.

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 17 September 2023