Friendly Advice kindly received (as usual)
Phiz
Engraver: Dalziel
1852
Vignette: 13.1 cm by 11.2 cm (5 ⅛ by 4 ⅜ inches)
Steel-engraving
Charles Lever's The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life, Chapter XIX, "Preparations for the Road," facing p. 147.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, sizing, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
Passage Illustrated
Dalton sprang to his feet, and clutching the chair, raised it in the air; but as suddenly dashed it on the floor again, without speaking.
“Go on,” cried Grounsell, daring him. “I'd rather you'd break my skull than that dear girl's heart; and that's what you're bent on. Ay, break her heart! no less. You can't terrify me, man, by those angry looks. You can't wound me, either, by retaliating, and calling me a dependent. I know I am such. I know well all the ignominy, all the shame; but I know, too, all the misery of the position. But, mark me, the disgrace and the sorrow end where they begin — with myself alone. I have none to blush for me; I stand alone in the world, a poor, scathed, sapless, leafless trunk. But it is not so with you. Come, come, Dalton, you fancy that you know something of life because you have passed so many years of it among your equals and neighbours in your own country; but you know nothing — absolutely nothing — of the world as it exists here.”
A hearty but contemptuous laugh broke from Dalton as he heard this speech. It was indeed somewhat of a surprise to listen to such a charge. He, Peter Dalton, that knew a spavined horse, or could detect a windgall better than any man in the county — he, that never was “taken in” by a roarer, nor deceived by a crib-biter — to tell him that he knew nothing of life! [Chapter XIX, "Preparations for the Road," 147]
Commentary: The Interview with the Doctor
The Onslows' physician, Dr. Grounsell, proves more difficult for Peter Dalton to put in his place than the haughty French courier whom Dalton roughed up in A Hydropathic Remedy, situated earlier in this same chapter. Evidently, Grounsell, perhaps sensing a rival for Lady Hester's affections, is trying to persuade Dalton as her parent and guardian that he not permit his daughter Kate to accompany the Onslows back to Paris. His argument is that the girl will be tainted by the "vile world of envy, malice, and all wickedness" (146) to which she will be exposed in the French capital. Immediately Dalton's blood is up again, and he resorts to physical intimidation to bring the physician into line. His sudden menacing action with the chair in which he has been sitting causes Grounsell to cut himself again as he tries to finish shaving. Stepping out of Grounsell's chambers, Dalton in no way indicates the confrontational nature of the interview he has just had with the Onslows' physician as he, Kate, and Nelly continue to prosecute their search for Lady Hester in the Hotel de Russie, Baden.
Commentary: Note Phiz's editorial use of inset classical paintings
The complementary paintings based on Rubens' The Judgment of Paris: left, Venus admires herself in the glass; right: Diana and Actaeon.
One of Phiz's favourite editorial strategies in his numerous Dickens illustrations is to insert neoclassical paintings in the background to comment upon the nature of the scene. Here, we see two complementary works that together recapitulate The Judgment of Paris by Peter Paul Rubens (1632-35) and Titian's Diana and Actaeon, finished between 1556–1559. It portrays the hunter bursting in upon the goddess of chastity and her nymphs as she bathes, again with catastrophic consequences.
The theme of Ovid's "Diana and Actaeon" in The Metamorphoses concerns the violation of a powerful female's privacy. This background "painting" (a line drawing in imitation of a Titian) depicts the story of the hunter Actaeon's trespassing upon the bath of Diana, goddess of the hunt. As a penalty for violating her privacy, she will shortly transform the hunter into a stag and he will be devoured by his own hounds. The meaning of the inserts lies within Lever's letterpress. The confrontations of this chapter, first with the haughty courier Gregoire over the loading of the Daltons' trunk and then with the more subtle Dr. Grounsell, suggest that we are to interpret the injudicious Peter Dalton as the real-life counterpart of the mythical hunter, and that his ill-considered actions may provoke the goddess of these suites, Lady Hester Onslow.
Bibliography
Brown, 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 22 April 2022