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Tate's tête-à-tête interrupted
Phiz
September 1846 (ninth) instalment
Steel-engraving
13.7 cm by 9.5 cm (5 ½ by 4 inches), vignetted.
Charles Lever's The Knight of the Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union (September 1846), originally for Part 9, facing p. 274.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"They say you didn't like Ireland; but I don't believe them. There never was a Darcy didn't love the ould island; but I know well whose fault it was if you didn't, — it was that dark villain that's standing at your side, ould Harry Inchiquin, the renegade, that turned many a man against his country. Ye may frown and scowl at me; but if you were alive this minute, I'd say it to your face. It was you that first brought gambling and dicing under this blessed roof; it was you that sent the ould acres to the hammer; 'twas you that loved rioting, and duelling, and every wickedness, just like old Bagenal Daly himself, that never could sleep in his bed if he hadn't a fight on hand."
"What ho! you old reprobate!" called out Daly, in a voice which, echoing under the arched roof, seemed rather to float through the atmosphere than issue from any particular quarter.
"Oh! marciful Father!" cried Tate, as, falling on his knees, the lamp dropped from his fingers, and became extinguished, — "oh! marciful Father! sure I didn't mane it; 'tis what the lying books said of you, — bad luck to the villains that wrote them! O God! pardon me; I never thought you'd hear me; and if it's in trouble you are, I'll say a mass for you every day till Aaster, and one every Friday as long as I live." [Chapter XXXIII, "Tate Sullivan's Farewell," 276]
The Darcy family (father, Lady Eleanor, Helen, and Lionel) and their sole guest, Bagenal Daly, have loitered long over dinner un the library. The next morning, the Darcys will depart for Daly's cottage in Antrim, leaving the Abbey in possession of Hickman O'Reilly since Daly has as yet been unable to prove that Gleeson redeemed the bond before decamping for America. As he makes his way to his room after midnight, Daly looks down over the gallery railing to watch, unobserved, the family butler, Tate Sullivan, taking leave of the Darcy ancestors, each in their ornate frame, below. Phiz has used as his guide to depict the family butler this description:
Curious to ascertain what the old man might be about in such a place at such an hour, Daly extinguished the candle to watch him unobserved. Tate was dressed in his most accurate costume: his long cravat, edged with deep lace, descended in front of his capacious white waistcoat; silver buckles, of a size that showed there was no parsimony of the precious metal, shone in his shoes; and his newly powdered wig displayed an almost snowy lustre. His gestures were in accordance with the careful observances of his toilet; he moved along the floor with a slow, sliding step, bowing deeply and reverentially as he went, and with all the courtesy he would have displayed if ushering a goodly company into the state drawing-room. [Chapter XXXIII, "Tate Sullivan's Farewell," 273]
In the background, Phiz has included five family portraits from among the "glorious ancestors." Above and to the right, Daly cries out as Sullivan kneels "in respectful admiration" before a suit of armour that had once been worn by Sir Gavin Darcy, the first Knight of Gwynne, whom the butler now addresses in soliloquy, little knowing that Daly is overhearing everything he says to the ancestral portrait, opposite. Although Phiz depicts Sullivan as startled by Daly's booming voice as he kneels before the armour, in the text Sullivan has already moved on to address other Darcy ancestors, and has addressed the portrait of Bernhard Enmeric, fourth Abbot of Gwynne, and Reginald Herbert de Guyon, second Baron of Gwynne. In fact, Tate Sullivan makes his melancholy address about the fate of the present Darcys to an ancestor from the early seventeenth century:
halting suddenly, he stood before a tall figure, dressed in black velvet, with a deep collar of point lace. A connoisseur of higher pretensions than poor Tate might have gazed with even greater rapture at that splendid canvas, for it was from the hand of Vandyke, and in his very best manner. The picture represented the person of Sir Everard Darcy, Lord Privy Seal to Charles I. It was a specimen of manly beauty and high blood such as the great Fleming loved to paint; and even yet the proud and lofty forehead, the deep-set brown eyes, the thin compressed lip, the long and somewhat projecting chin, seemed to address themselves to the beholder with traits of character more than mere painting is able to convey. Tate approached the spot with an almost trembling veneration, and bowed deeply before the haughty figure. [275]
Although he appears to be kneeling before the suit of armour, Sullivan may be in front of a family portrait (a Darcy in an admiral's uniform) that the illustrator has not depicted, to the left of the armour. The scene is suitably mock-gothic, with the startled, superstitious servant (he who earlier thought he had been visited by the family banshee). The reader and the viewer have every reason to support Daly in his impersonation of "ould Harry Inchiquin," for Sullivan has accused Daly of providing a bad role model for the local aristocracy. Thus addressed by a malevolent spirit, the butler faints as Daly exits above, laughing.
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 the Gwynne; A Tale of the Time of the Union. London: Chapman and Hall, serialised January 1846 through July 1847.
Lever, Charles. The Knight of the 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 4 August 2023