Passage Illustrated: Kate and Nina contrasted

While Kate sat at a writing-table, adding a few lines to that letter which, began more than a week ago, was still far from being completed, Nina, whose place was beside the window, worked away with bent-down head, not seeming to have a thought save for the occupation before her. Not so Kate; fancies came and went at every instant, breaking in upon the tenor of her thoughts, or wending far away on errands of speculation. Now she would turn her eye from the page to gaze in wondering delight at the tasteful decorations of her little chamber, a perfect gem of elegance in all its details; then she would start up to step out upon the terrace, where even in winter the orange-trees were standing, shedding their sweet odor at every breeze from the Arno. With what rapturous delight she would follow the windings of that bright river, till it was lost in the dark woods of the Cascini! How the sounds of passing equipages, the glitter and display of the moving throng, stirred her heart; and then, as she turned back within the room, with what a thrill of ecstasy her eyes rested on the splendid ball-dress which Nina had just laid upon the sofa! With a trembling hand she touched the delicate tissue of Brussels lace, and placed it over her arm in a graceful fold, her cheek flushing and her chest heaving in consciousness of heightening beauty. [Chapter XXII, "Kate," 171]

Commentary: Arrived in Florence, the Onslows engage a French maid for Kate.

With Lever's allusion to the Arno one might have expected Phiz to provide a picturesque Florentine scene, or at least to insert a panoramic view of the river and mountains seen through an open hotel window, in imitation of Da Vinci's backdrop for La Gionconda (i. e., the Mona Lisa). Instead, Phiz provides another of those interior scenes between two young women of the petite, brunette type that he favoured throughout his career. The reader readily distinguishes Kate Dalton, accompanying the Onslows back to Paris, through her not being the young woman engaged in sewing, for the maid hired expressly for Kate, Mademoiselle Nina, her new companion, has a "place . . . beside the window, [where she] worked away with bent-down head" (171). The text clarifies why Nina was suddenly thrust on the job market after her employer's, Princess Menzikoff's, separation from her husband, for the femme de chambre, implies Lever, was "the other woman."

Rather than depict a characteristic Florentine scene, then, Phiz focuses on the relationship between Nina and Kate Dalton. The illustration seems to underscore Kate's new status as Lady Hester's dependant: "she, therefore, owned her; the original title was vested in her; the young girl's whole future was to be in her hands; her "road in life" was to be at her dictation" (169). However, although Kate is thoroughly enjoying the society of the Onslows and the other British families in the city, the "refinement of manners, taste, luxury, the fascinations of wit, the glitter of conventional brilliancy" (170), Phiz focuses on Kate's pensive mood, whereas in the the previous paragraphs Lever's focus has been on the aloof, knowing maid with jet-black eyes. Kate feels the gorgeous dress that Nina has been stitching is "too handsome" for her. Thus, the scene establishes the intimate relationship between the guileless Irish girl and her morally compromised French maid, and suggests that Kate is ill-suited to the society role that Lady Hester wishes her to play.

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.

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Last modified 23 April 2022