Passage Illustrated: The Irish Cadet and the Austrian Princess

“What regiment is yours?” said Kate, hastily, to the soldier.

“Franz Carl Infanterie, Highness,” said the youth, respectfully, using the title he had heard assumed by the servant.

“Do you know many of your comrades, —— among the cadets, I mean?”

“There are but seven in the battalion, Highness, and I know them all.”

“Is Von Dalton an acquaintance of yours?”

“I am Von Dalton, Highness,” said the youth, while a flush of surprise and pleasure lighted up his handsome features.

“Frank! Frank!” cried she, springing towards him with open arms; and ere he could recognize her, clasping him round the neck.

“Is this real? Is this a dream? Are you my own sister Kate?” cried the boy, almost choked with emotion. “And how are you here? and how thus?” and he touched the robe of costly velvet as he spoke.

“They call you Highness; and how handsome you've grown!”

“You shall know all, dear, dear Frank. You shall hear everything when the joy of this meeting will let me speak.” [Chapter XLVI, "At Vienna," 400; Vol. II: 38]

Commentary: Frank surprises Kate in her Vienna palace

Lever now transports his readers to the sophisticated capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its heyday, Vienna, one of the major diplomatic postings for those like Lever employed by the British Foreign Office. Here, Kate Dalton is now received as the "Princess de Midcheckoff," as Phiz shows us in this Austrian drawing-room reunion of Kate and her brother. As part of the suite of palatial rooms for one of the wealthiest aristocrats in Europe, Phiz has made the backdrop surprisingly bare of ornamentation and luxury. He has apparently disregarded Lever's description: "The apartment was splendid; not in that gorgeous taste of modern decoration of which she had seen so much already, but in a more stately fashion, recalling the grandeur of a past age, and exhibiting traces of a long line of princely occupants. The very portraits along the walls had a proud and haughty bearing, and the massive chairs glittered in all the blaze of heraldry" (II: 36).

Kate, we quickly learn from her note to her uncle (an Austrian Field-Marshal, and her brother's commanding officer), is merely engaged to Prince Midchekoff. They have just arrived in central Vienna, staying at a large palace near the “Hoff.” In her note to Field-Marshal von Auersberg she subscribes herself, “Your affectionate niece, Kate Dal ton, Affianced Princesse de Midchekoff” (vol. 2, p. 36). At first, as Lever's dramatises their reunion, she fails to recognize the bearer of the Field-Marshal's letter as her brother.

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. 1859, and 1872. [Two volumes as one, with separate page numbers in the 1859 volume, after I: 362.]

_______. The Daltons and A Day's Ride. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). Vol VI of Lever's Works. New York: P. F. Collier, 1882. [This large-format American edition reproduces only six of the original forthy-eight Phiz illustrations.]

Lever, Charles James. The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life. Vol. 2. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32062/32062-h/32062-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 17 May 2022