Passage Illustrated: Mrs. Ricketts Overcome by Peter Dalton's Hospitality at Baden

“To be sure; yes, of course!” cried Dalton. “There's a room here empty. It's a tender heart she has, any way;” and, so saying, he arose, and with the aid of some half-dozen waiters transported the now unconscious Zoe, chair and all, into a small chamber adjoining the Saal.

“This is her father's hand,” murmured Mrs. Ricketts, as she pressed Dalton's in her own, —— “her father's hand.”

“Yes, my dear!” said Dalton, returning the pressure, and feeling a strong desire to blubber, just for sociality's sake.

“If you knew how they loved each other,” whispered Martha, while she busied herself pinning cap-ribbons out of the way of cold applications, and covering up lace from the damaging influence of restoratives.

“It 's wonderful, — it's wonderful!” exclaimed Peter, whose faculties were actually confounded by such a rush of sensations and emotions.

“Make him go back to his dinner, Martha; make him go back,” sighed the sick lady, in a half-dreamy voice.

“I couldn't eat a bit; a morsel would choke me this minute,” said Dalton, who couldn't bear to be outdone in the refinements of excited sensibility.

“She must never be contradicted while in this state,” said Martha, confidingly. “All depends on indulgence.”

“It's wonderful!” exclaimed Dalton, again, —— “downright wonderful!”

“Then, pray go back; she'll be quite well presently,” rejoined Martha, who already, from the contents of a reticule like a carpet-bag, had metamorphosed the fair Zoe's appearance into all the semblance of a patient.

“It's wonderful; it beats Banagher!” muttered Peter, as he returned to the Saal, and resumed his place at the table. The company had already taken their departure, and except Purvis and the General, only a few stragglers remained behind.

“Does she often get them?” asked Peter of Purvis.

“Only when her fee-fee-feelings are worked upon; she's so se-sensitive!”

“Too tender a heart,” sighed Peter, as he filled his glass, and sighed over an infirmity that he thought he well knew all the miseries of. “And her name, if I might make bould?” [Chapter LV, "Peter Dalton on Politics, Law, and Socialities," pp. 489-490]

Commentary

Thanks to remittances from his devoted daughter, the "Princess-designate" Kate in St. Petersburg, Peter Dalton's fortunes are riding high in Baden as the season opens. He is beautifully dressed in a cutaway "jockey" topcoat and flash D'Orsay waistcoat, and entertaining all and sundry with iced champagne in the most fashionable restaurant when Mrs. Montague Ricketts, her retired husband in his dotage (The General), their daughter Martha, and Zoe's obsequious brother Scroope Purvis, arrive from Florence. Quickly, the socially adept Zoe Ricketts realizes that she has just encountered Kate's father, and intends to make the most of it, flattering the Irish generally and complimenting the Daltons in particular: "'This is her father's hand,' murmured Mrs. Ricketts, as she pressed Dalton's in her own" (490).

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. Vol. 1. 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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