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Passage Illustrated: The Musician Darby M'Keown's Tobacco-induced Creations

“Well,” replied he, a little piqued by the tone of my answer, “'tis worse you might be doin' than that same. Tobacco's a fine thing for the heart! Many's the time, when I'm alone, if I hadn't the pipe I'd be lone and sorrowful, — thinking over the hard times and the like; but when I've filled my dudeen, and do be watching the smoke curling up, I begin dhraming about sitting round the fire with pleasant companions, chatting away, and discoorsing, and telling stories. And then I invint the stories to myself about quare devils of pipers travelling over the country, making love here and there, and playing dhroll tunes out of their own heads; and then I make the tunes to them. And after that, maybe, I make words, and sometimes lay down the pipe and begin singing to myself; and often I take up the bagpipes and play away with all my might, till I think I see the darlingest little fairies ever you seen dancing before me, setting to one another, and turning round, and capering away, — down the middle and up again; small chaps, with three-cornered hats, and wigs, and little red coats all slashed with goold; and beautiful little craytures houlding their petticoats, this way to show a nate leg and foot; and I do be calling out to them, — 'Hands round!' 'That's your sowl!' 'Look at the green fellow; 'tis himself can do it!' 'Rise the jig, hoo!' — and faix 'tis sorry enough I'm when they go, and lave me all alone by myself.”

“And how does all that come into your head. Darby?” “Troth, 'tis hard to tell,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But my notion is, that the poor man that has neither fine houses, nor fine clothes, nor horses, nor sarvants to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way, and fills his mind with all manner of dhroll thoughts and quare stories and bits of songs, and the like, and lets him into many a sacret about fairies and the good people that the rich has no time for. And sure you must have often remarked it, that the quality has never a bit of fun in them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them laugh. [Chapter IV, "My Wanderings," 33 in the 1844 edition; 31 in the 1865 edition]

Commentary: Portrait of Darby The Blast and His Infectious Visions

Even then the words of the piper had worked upon me, and already had I connected the possession of wealth with oppression and tyranny, and the lowly fortunes of the poor man as alone securing high-souled liberty of thought and freedom of speech and action. [Chapter III, 33]

We have already been introduced to the piper, Darby "The Blast," Tom's friend and mentor, in the second chapter, and he has already appeared prominently in Phiz's narrative-pictorial sequence in The Curse for Chapter III, "The Departure" (February 1843). The present illustration serves only to further our understanding of Darby the Blast as the quintessential artist whose imagination conjures up visionary creatures — "fairies" — clothed in the fashions of the eighteenth century. The majority are indeed dancing, but a few are engaged in courtship, eating and drinking, and one, standing on the highest of the pipes, is dressed as the conductor of an orchestra. The god-like creator himself, the musician, smoking his pipe, has a slightly sinister expression, and is not wearing the caped topcoat that Phiz has shown Darby wearing in the previous illustration.

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" (March 1843)

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. Rpt. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865. Serialised February 1843 through September 1844 in twenty parts. 2 vols.

Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Vol. I and II. 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 31 October 2023