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Tom escapes being made into Mince-meat
Phiz
September 1844 (twentieth) instalment
Steel-engraving
13 cm by 10.2 cm (5 ⅛ by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours", Chapter LXXXVI, "The Conclusion" (September 1844), facing p. 288 in the 1844 edition, and 211 in the 1869 edition.
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“Down with the Napoleonist — down with him!” screamed a savage looking fellow, who, jammed-up in the crowd, pointed towards me, as I stood a mere spectator of the scene.
A dozen voices shouted out at the same time, “Down with him! down with him!”
“Off with your hat, sir!” said a rude-looking fellow beside me, as he raised his hand to remove it.
“At your peril!” said I, as I clenched my hand, and prepared to strike him down the moment he should touch me. The words were not well uttered, when the crowd closed on me, and a hundred arms were stretched out to attack me. In vain all my efforts to resist. My hat was torn from my head, and assailed on every side, I was dragged into the middle of the street, amid wild cries of vengeance and taunting insults. It was then, as I lay overcome by numbers, that a loud cry to fall back issued from the cavalcade, and a horseman, sword in hand, dashed upon the mob, slashing on every side as he went, mounted on a high-mettled horse. He cleared the dense mass with the speed of lightning, and drove back my assailants.
“Catch my horse's mane,” said he, hurriedly. “Hold fast for a few seconds, and you are safe.”
Following the advice, I held firmly by the long mane of his charger, while, clearing away the mob on either side, he protected me by his drawn sabre above my head. [Chapter LXXXVI, "The Conclusion"," p. 288 in the 1844 edition; 341 in the 1869 edition]
Restored to health through two months' convalescence at the palace of Fontainebleau, Tom returns to active duty in a failing cause. The Republicans are losing ground in popular sentiment to the monarchists. Tom encounters Napoleon in the night, alone except for his personal bodyguard, the Mameluke Rustan. Defeated at last and forced to resign on the morrow, the Emperor bids him a sad farewell in Chapter LXXXV, "Fontainebleau," realised in Frontispiece for Vol. Two: A Parting Scene with Napoleon. (September 1844) from Part 20. And so we come to present incident in a Paris street in Chapter LXXXVI, "Conclusion."
One evening shortly after the Bourbon restoration, while walking to recover his health, Tom is confronted by a mob on the Boulevard Montmartre as a military parade advances through the thoroughfare. Following these Napoleonic regiments are old cavaliers wearing the order of St. Louis, devout monarchists. Tom by virtue of his uniform and downcast demeanour stands out as a Napoleonist among the jubilant spectators. Suddenly a uniformed officer on a magnificent charger comes to Tom's rescue, drawing his sabre to ward off the ragtag mob in the Paris suburb (suggested by the second storeys sketched in, rear). He and Henri de Beauvais are now equal, for Tom had saved him from arrest all those years ago. But de Beauvais is now a Colonel and an aide-de-camp to the Bourbon monarch, Louis XVIII. The two part at last, friends.
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 December 2023