Passage Illustrated: Another Interpolated Tale — A Spoof of a Ghost Story

. . . my father went on betting till he lost the hearse and all the six horses, mourning cloaks, plumes, and every thing.M

“‘Are you tired, Mr. Free? May be you’d like to stop?’

“‘Stop! faith it’s a nice time to stop; of course not.’

“‘Well, what will ye play for now?’

“The way he said these woods brought a trembling all over my father, and his blood curdled in his heart. ‘Oh, murther!’ says he to himself, ‘it’s my sowl he’s wanting all the time.’

“‘I’ve mighty little left,’ says my father, looking at him keenly, while he kept shuffling the cards quick as lightning.

“‘Mighty little; no matter, we’ll give you plenty of time to pay, — and if you can’t do it, it shall never trouble you as long as you live.’

“‘Oh, you murthering devil!’ says my father, flying at him with a spade that he had behind his chair, ‘I’ve found you out.’

“With one blow he knocked him down; and now a terrible fight begun, for the ghost was very strong too: but my father’s blood was up, and he’d have faced the Devil himself then. They rolled over each other several times, the broken bottles cutting them to pieces, and the chairs and tables crashing under them. At last the ghost took the bottle that lay on the hearth, and levelled my father to the ground with one blow. Down he fell, and the bottle and the whiskey were both dashed into the fire; that was the end of it, for the ghost disappeared that moment in a blue flame that nearly set fire to my father as he lay on the floor. [Chapter LXXV, "The Ghost," 377; pp. 43-44 in the second volume of the 1841 edition]

Commentary: Another Spurious Mickey Free Reminiscence

About half-way through the March 1840-December 1841 (twenty-two part) serialisation in the Dublin University Magazine, Lever is still heavily relying on interpolated tales to flesh out the instalments, utilising the engaging Irish brogue of narrator Mickey Free to vary the more formal diction and English accent of the protagonist. As an examination of the second volume of the 1841 edition makes clear, the illustration complements the climax of Mickey Free's anecdote about his father and the ghost, who was, in realty, the sexton. The illustration suggests that this may be Lever's expropriation of an inset tale from Dickens's Pickwick Papers, namely The Goblin and the Sexton in the January 1837 serial instalment. Both humorous (interpolated) tales of the supernatural owe their existence to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819).

Whether we can believe that mendacious raconteur Mickey Free is debatable, but the comic business of the engraving admirably complements Lever's "streaky bacon" plot construction as the ghost story follows hard upon O'Malley's battlefield adventures, and his protracted recuperation from his wounds and fever as battle rages outside his little hut on the banks of the Coa. Now, as they are transported by wagon to Lisbon, where O'Malley will recover the use of his arm, Mike tries to cheer up his employer with an Irish song ("The Corpse of Rossmore") and the story of how his "father seen the greatest ghost that ever was seen in the county Cork, and spent the evening with him, that's more" (372).

Phiz captures all of the particulars of Mike's desultory tale: the room in the old, ruined church in the mountains at Aghan-lish; the black coffin; the mourning cloak doubling as a curtain in the window; the high wind from the storm outside; Mickey's father, dressed as a hearse driver for Callaghan of Cork; and a bottle of potteen on the floor. However, instead of the ghost of Father Dwyer in a mourning cloak, Phiz has given away the joke by depicting the sexton rather than the ghost as the other card-player.

Necessary Background

• Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1840-41)

Bibliography

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. "Edited by Harry Lorrequer." Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1841. 2 vols.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Published serially in The Dublin University Magazine from Vol. XV (March 1840) through XVIII (December 1841). Dublin: William Curry, March 1840 through December 1841. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1842; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 2 September 2016.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

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Created 15 February 2023