The Queen of Sheba, etc., retires from the Banquet — thirty-eighth illustration engraved by the Dalziels for the 1852 Chapman and Hall edition of The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). Chapter LIX, "The Last Stake of All," facing 537. 10.6 cm by 13 cm (4 ¼ by 5 ⅛ inches) vignetted. This is the fourteenth vertically oriented plate in the two-volume novel (1852). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: "Count" Dalton and the Ricketts await the arrival of guests
The banquet—the word “dinner” was strictly proscribed for that day — was to be arrayed in the hall, where Dalton was to preside, if possible, with an Irish crown upon his head, supported by Nelly as the genius of Irish music; and Zoe herself in a composite character, — half empress, half prophetess, — a something between Sappho and the Queen of Sheba; Martha, for the convenience of her various household cares, was to be costumed as a Tyrolese hostess; and Purvis, in a dress of flesh-colored web, was to represent Mercury, sent on purpose from above to deliver a message of welcome to the arriving guests. As for the General, there was a great doubt whether he ought to be Belisarius or Suwarrow; for, being nearly as blind as the one and as deaf as the other, his qualifications were about evenly balanced. [Chapter LIX, "The Last Stake of All," 535]
Commentary: Peter Dalton's Unexpected Death at the Tables in the Cursaal
Despite Abel Kraus's refusal to fund further adventures at roulette in Chapter 58, "The 'Cursaal'," later in "The Last Stake of All" Dalton decides on a desperate gamble to restore his fortunes. Hanserl, his former landlord, has offered to intervene with the money-lender, but cautioned him against trusting to his chances at the play-table. Losing massively, he suffers a stroke, and dies at the gaming table. The 1852 edition juxtaposes the illustrations of Zoe Ricketts' fancy dress party for Colonel Haggerstone and Mr. Foglass against the passage in which Dalton returns to the Cursaal and begins his rapid descent to catastrophic losses and death. Phiz depicts the blithe Zoe as the Queen of Sheba, her tractable daughter Martha as a Tyrolese hostess, and her brother, Scroope, as a mincing Mercury. In the background, Peter Dalton converses cheerfully with Nelly in anticipation of the arrival of Zoe's distinguished guests from Florence. "It did his heart good to see the lavish waste and profusion that went forward" and, says Lever, his "face glowed with delight as he surveyed a scene so suggestive of convivial thoughts and dissipation" (II: 170). Although the situation Phiz describes seems to be earlier that day, when Hans has bought some time from Abel Kraus, the title of the plate suggests that the scene is later, when the guests have failed to materialise, and Dalton determines to try his luck again and win back five thousand pounds:
Nelly drew near him as they were leaving the room, and, passing her arm fondly about him, whispered a few words in his ear.
“And why not this evening?” said he, aloud, and in a rude voice. “Is it Friday, that it ought to bring bad luck? Why shouldn't I go this evening? I can't hear you; speak louder. Ha! ha! ha! Listen to that, Miss Martha. There's the sensible Nelly for you! She says she had a dhrame about me last night.”
“No, dearest papa; but that it was like a dream to me. All the narrative seemed so natural, all the events followed so regularly, and yet I was awake just as I am now.” [Chapter LIX, "The Last Stake of All," 535]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
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.
Created 24 May 2022