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Daly surveying the robber's Imp
Phiz
April 1846 (fourth) instalment
Steel-engraving
12.8 cm by 11.4 cm (5 by 4 ½ inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union (April 1846), originally for Part 4, facing page 122.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"They're my nags, sir, coming up the road. I'd know their trot if I heard it among a troop of dragoons. 'Tis clippers they are."
As he spoke he arose from the table, and, lighting a small lantern he always carried with him, hastened to the door, where already the two horses were standing, a bare-legged "gossoon" holding the bridles.
"Well, Jemmy, what's the news to-night?" said Freney.
"Nothing, sir, at all. I passed the down mail at Seery's Mill, and when the coachman heard the step of the horses, he laid on the wheelers wid all his might, and sat down on the footboard, and the two outside passengers lay flat as a pancake on the top when I passed. I couldn't help giving a screech out of me for fun, and the old guard let fly, and sent a ball through my 'caubeen;'" and as he said these words he exhibited his ragged felt hat, which, in addition to its other injuries, now displayed a round bullet-hole through either side.
"Serve you right," said Freney, harshly; "I wish he'd levelled three inches lower. That young rascal, sir, keeps the whole road in a state of alarm that stops all business on it." Then he added, in a whisper, "but he never failed me in his life. I've only to say when and where I want the horses, and I'd lay my neck on it he's there."
Daly, who had been for some minutes examining the two horses by the lantern with all the skill of an adept, now turned the light full upon the figure of the boy whose encomium was thus pronounced. The urchin, as if conscious that he was passing an inspection, set his tattered hat jauntily on one side, and with one arm a-kimbo, and a leg advanced, stood the very perfection of ragged, self-sufficient rascality. Though at most not above fourteen years of age, and short in size even for that, his features had the shrewd intelligence of manhood; a round, wide head, covered with dark red hair, projected over two eyes set wide apart, whose bad expression was ingeniously improved by a habit of squinting at pleasure, — a practice with which he now amused himself, as Mr. Daly continued to stare at him. His nose, which a wound had partly separated from the forehead, was short and wide, leaving an unnatural length to the lower part of the face, where an enormous mouth, garnished with large and regular teeth, was seen, — a feature that actually gave a look of ferocity even to a face so young. [Chapter XVII, "Bagenal Daly's Journey to Dublin," pp. 122-123]
Daly's horses are on their last legs, and he is desperate to get to the town of Kilbeggan, where he is sure of a change of horses. So far, however, he has progressed only as far as a poor "shebeen" or cottage on the outskirts of the village of Horseleap. Already, however, Phiz has signalled us that Daly will procure the mounts he needs to pursue the remainder of the hundred-and-fifty mile journey to Dublin, and participate in the political machinations surrounding the stepped-up second reading of the Act of Union Bill. When Daly knocks for admission, whom should he encounter within but the notorious thief, Freney, whom he once saved from arrest? Daly was motivated by Freney's stopping in flight to perform for a good deed on the mean streets of Dublin, rescuing a child who was being savaged by a bulldog. (Lever does not clarify whether he intended the ragged child to represent Ireland, and the brutal beast English domination.) Daly is the gentlemanly-attired figure with his back towards the reader, Freney the other adult, and the imp, delighted to be holding the horses that he has "procured," is the robber's factotum and apprentice, cocky Jemmy, an Irish version of the lippy, witty, street-wise Artful Dodger from Dickens's Oliver Twist (February 1837 through April 1839).
Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Chapter 11: "'Give Me Back the Freshness of the Morning!'" Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 108-127.
Lever, Charles. The Knight of Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union. London: Chapman and Hall, serialised January 1846 through July 1847.
Lever, Charles. The Knight of Gwynne. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 28 February 2018.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter IX, "Nomadic Patriarch, 1845-1847." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 146-164.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
Created 13 July 2023