Passage Illustrated: Uncle Stephen and Kate get to know one another

“All — everything; and what are they, save the boyish excesses of one who, carried away by high spirits, and buoyed up by the flattering sense of relationship to a great and distinguished name, has been led on to follies by the mere native warmth of temperament? It is easy to see how little he thought of himself, and how much of his uncle!”

The old General shook his head dubiously.

“There, dear uncle,” said she, pressing him into a seat before a table with writing-materials, “take that pen and write.”

“Write what, dear child?” said he, with a softness very different from his usual manner.

“I know nothing of the forms, nor the fitting phrases. All I want is that Frank should have his sword-knot.”

“You have learned the proper word, I see,” said he, smiling, while he balanced the pen doubtingly in his fingers “The Colonel of his regiment is an imperial prince.”

“So much the better, uncle. A Hapsburg will know how to reward a Dalton.”

“So, then, we begin thus,” said the old General, whose half-suppressed smile showed that he was merely jesting with her eagerness: “'Imperial Highness, — the Cadet von Dalton, whose distinction it is to be the grand-nephew of a very old soldier, and the brother of a very young princess —'”

“Nay, surely, this will not do,” said Kate.

“'A very young princess,” resumed the Feld, as he continued to write, “'who, confiding in her own captivations and your Highnesses gallantry —'”

“This is but jesting with me, uncle, and I am serious,” said she, poutingly. [Chapter L, "The Cadet Von Dalton," 436]

Commentary: Another "Streaky Bacon" Juxtaposition

Left: A 19th c. Austrian officer's sword-knot. Right: Frank visits his Uncle, in Chapter XLIII, "A Package of Letters. A Last Scene."

Although Phiz fails to communicate the playfulness of the elderly uncle's bantering with the young niece whose acquaintance he has only just made, the illustration does indeed depict the stern Field-Marshall of the Austrian imperial forces in an entirely different light, a contrast to his stiff formality in Frank Visits his Uncle (Chapter 43). Again, the comic and intimate domestic scene sharply contrasts that in which the jealous Nina pounces on George's miniature in A Discovery (Chapter 48, "Secrets of Head and Heart"). As Phiz suggests by the ornate furnishings and immense Sevrés vase, the scene is the apartments of the "Princess Von Dalton" in the Viennese palace she and her wealthy fiancé have taken. Frank stands discretely towards the back, overhearing his sister's charming the old officer into rescuing his career.

Kate has asked her uncle to make a direct appeal to the Austrian Emperor in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the nation's armed forces to bestow the distinction of the officer's sword-knot upon Cadet Von Dalton. The decorative knot is a leather-backed wire brocade strap, with a tasseled knot, and double-headed Hapsburg eagle emblem on one side of the stem. The decoration, made largely of leather, graced the hilt of a cavalry officer's sabre in such armies as those of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, as noted in Tolstoy's War and Peace. Before engaging the enemy, the officer would loop the knot around his wrist in order to prevent accidentally dropping the weapon during combat.

Already ten months a cadet, Frank has told his sister that he yearns for a Lieutenancy as he had expected that as the nephew of a Field-Marshall he would receive rapid promotion, but he is not even a Corporal. Without an officer's stipend and constantly bragging of the aristocratic Dalton blood, he has run deeply into debt. He is now destitute of further credit, and is about to be posted at Laybach in the depth of winter. Threatening in a letter to desert, he has passed a week in irons as part of a month's sentence, driving Frank to consider suicide to escape "ignominious poverty" (II: 70) and the indignities heaped upon him for his misconduct. Needless to say, Frank's self-abasing narrative distresses his sister.

When her uncle arrives, he counsels patience, but Kate counters with an entreaty that the Field-Marshall intercede directly with the Emperor to arrange for Frank's promotion out of the ranks and into the officer corps "within a week" (II: 73). Since Frank has confessed his follies, including extravagance, insubordination, and detention, Kate begs her uncle to pardon his misconduct as "boyish excesses." Thus, Phiz's scene has a serious dimension that only scrutinizing the text imparts to it.

Bibliography

Bonhams. "An Austrian 1904 Model Cavalry Officer's Sword, And A Bavarian Officer's Sword The Second Late 19th Century." Accessed 18 May 2022. London, Knightsbridge: 29 July 2004. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11258/lot/63/

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