A Small Tea Party — tenth illustration engraved by the Dalziels for the 1852 Chapman and Hall edition of The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). Second illustration for Chapter XIV, "An Embarrassing Question" (facing 103). 9.1 cm by 14.8 cm (3 ½ by 5 ¾ inches) vignetted. This is the first vertically oriented plate in the two-volume novel. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Jekyl Critically Observes the Daltons' Domestic Entertainment
Albert Jekyl was a proficient in this great art; indeed, his powers developed themselves according to the exigency, so that the more insufferably tiresome his companion, the more seemingly attentive and interested did he become. His features were, in fact, a kind of “bore-ometer,” in which, from the liveliness of the expression, you might calculate the stupidity of the tormentor; and the mercury of his nature rose, not fell, under pressure. And so you would have said had you but seen him that evening, as, seated beside Dalton, he heard, for hours long, how Irish gentlemen were ruined and their fortunes squandered. What jolly times they were when men resisted the law and never feared a debt! Not that, while devouring all the “rapparee” experiences of the father, he had no eye for the daughters, and did not see what was passing around him. Ay, that did he, and mark well how Lady Hester attached herself to Kate Dalton, flattered by every sign of her unbought admiration, and delighted with the wondering homage of the artless girl. He watched Onslow, too, turn from the inanimate charms of Nelly's sculptured figures, to gaze upon the long dark lashes and brilliant complexion of her sister. He saw all the little comedy that went on around him, even to poor Nelly's confusion, as she assisted Andy to arrange a tea-table, and, for the first time since their arrival, proceed to make use of that little service of white and gold which, placed on a marble table for show, constitutes the invariable decoration of every humble German drawing-room. He even overheard her, as she left the room, giving Andy her directions a dozen times over, how he was to procure the tea, and the sugar, and the milk, extravagances she did not syllable without a sigh. He saw and heard everything, and rapidly drew his own inferences, not alone of their poverty, but of their unfitness to struggle with it. [Chapter XIV, "An Embarrassing Question," 103]
Commentary: Vertical, Dark, and Wash Effect Plates
In The Daltons (1852), Phiz relinquishes dark plates, and his illustrations revert to being easily recognisable. As always, he was sensitive to an author's effort; Lever was dashing off The Daltons with little struggle, so Phiz did the same. [Lester 124],/p.
In other series, by this point the reader would have already encountered some vertically mounted plates emulating the stage, and one of these would likely have been a dark plate. But, as Valerie Browne Lester has noted, Lever was working at break-neck speed on the manuscript, and Phiz had to keep up with him. Moreover, throughout 1852, although he had no commission from Dickens, Phiz was working on illustrating five other titles: Ann Hawkshaw's Aunt Effie's Rhymes for Little Children, his own The Five Senses, Julia Maitland's The Doll and Her Friends; or Memoirs of the Lady Serafina, Harriet Myrtle's A Day of Pleasure, and F. E. Smedley's Lewis Arundel, as well as several frontispieces for reprints of the works of Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton. Dark plates require far more preparation time than Phiz had available. As Buchanan-Browne remarks, Phiz occasionally resorts to a wash effect in The Daltons to create tonal effects and chiaroscuro, but "the wash effect tends to be wishy-washy" (24), as in the background of this plate and more effectively in such plates as Grounsell brought to bay (Chapter 40): "The line loses strength and, although Browne produced perfectly competent and decorative illustrations with this technique, they lack his old vigour" (24).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Browne, John Buchanan. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1978.
Downey, Edmund. Charles Lever: His Life in Letters. 2 vols. london; William Blackwood, 1906.
Fitzpatrick, W. J. The Life of Charles Lever. London: Downey, 1901.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Lever, Charles. The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1852, rpt. 1872.
Lever, Charles James. The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life. http://www.gutenberg.org//files/32061/32061-h/32061-h.htm
Skinner, Anne Maria. Charles Lever and Ireland. University of Liverpool. PhD dissertation. May 2019.
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
Last modified 5 April 2022