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Tom receives a strange Visitor
Phiz
April 1843 (third) instalment
Steel-engraving
12.9 cm by 10.7 cm (5 by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours" (March 1843), Chapter XII, "A Character," (April 1843), facing p. 94 in both the 1844 and 1865 editions.
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The captain, who was somewhere about the forties, was a full-faced, chubby, good-looking fellow, of some five feet ten or eleven inches in height; his countenance had been intended by nature for the expression of such emotions as arise from the enjoyment of turtle, milk punch, truffled turkeys, mulled port, mullagatawny, stilton, stout, and pickled oysters; a rich, mellow-looking pair of dark-brown eyes, with large bushy eyebrows meeting above the nose, which latter feature was a little “on the snub and off the Roman;” his mouth was thick-lipped, and had that peculiar mobility which seems inseparable wherever eloquence or imagination predominate; in colour, his face was of that uniform hue painters denominate as “warm, “— in fact, a rich sunset Claude-Lorrainish tint that seemed a compound, the result of high-seasoned meats, plethora, punch, and the tropics; in figure, he was like a huge pudding-bag, supported on two short little dumpy pillars, that from a sense of the superincumbent weight had wisely spread themselves out below, giving to his lower man the appearance of a stunted letter A; his arms were most preposterously short, and for the convenience of locomotion he used them somewhat after the fashion of fins. As to his costume on the morning in question, it was a singularly dirty and patched dressing-gown of antique silk, fastened about the waist by a girdle, from which depended a scymitar on one side and a meerschaum on the other; a well-worn and not over clean-looking shawl was fastened in fashion of a turban round his head; a pair of yellow buskins with faded gold tassels decorated legs which occasionally peeped from the folds of the robe-de-chambre without any other covering.
Such was the outward man of him who suddenly stopped short at the doorway, while he held the latch in his hand, and called out, —
“Burke, Tom Burke! don't be violent, don't be outrageous; you see I'm armed! I'd cut you down without mercy if you attempt to lift a finger! Promise me this, — do you hear me?”
That any one even unarmed could have conceived fear from such a poor weak object as I was seemed so utterly absurd that I laughed outright; an emotion on my part that seemingly imparted but little confidence to my friend the captain, who retreated still closer to the door, and seemed ready for flight. The first use I could make of speech, however, was, to assure him that I was not only perfectly calm and sensible, but deeply grateful for kindness which I knew not how, nor to whom, I became indebted.
“Don't roll your eyes there; don't look so d —— d treacherous!” said he; “keep down your hands; keep them under the bed-clothes. I'd put a bullet through your skull if you stirred!” [Chapter XII, "A Stranger," pp. 93-94 in both the 1844 and 1865 edition]
Although Phiz might have elected to describe more interesting incidents in the third monthly instalment, he settled upon the Lever original of Captain George Frederic Augustus Bubbleton, 45th Regiment, Tom's Dublin host. Somehow, instead of being thrown in a cell for inciting a riot outside the Parliament-house, Tom has been allowed to recuperate from his concussion in a comfortable bed in the barracks. During his second day after coming to consciousness, Tom finally interacts with his genial but bizarre host and his quirky sister, Miss Anna Maria Bubbleton. When he is then visited by the regimental surgeon, Tom learns that he has been suffering from a brain fever and a broken arm for several weeks, not mere days. Dr. Pepper's reference to "the drum for parade" (97) suggests that his accommodations are in a regimental barracks.
Just as Tom has recovered, Major Barton arrives from the Castle to clarify that Tom was not accidentally caught up in the riot, but was an instigator in leading the attack on the troops. He bears an arrest warrant from the Privy Council consigning Tom to Newgate Prison. Captain Bubbleton is incredulous when he learns that his guest is not "Tom Burke of 'Ours'" at all, but a rebel.
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 1 November 2023