Passage Illustrated: A Irish Musical Interlude Introduced

Mr. Free was, as Godwin described, most leisurely reposing on a bank, a mug of something drinkable beside him, and a pipe of that curtailed proportion which an Irishman loves held daintily between his fingers. He appeared to be giving his directions to some soldiers of the troop, who were busily cleaning his horses and accoutrements for him.

“That’s it, Jim! Rub ‘em down along the hocks; he won’t kick; it’s only play. Scrub away, honey; that’s the devil’s own carbine to get clean.”

“Well, I say, Mr. Free, are you going to give us that ere song?”

“Yes. I’ll be danged if I burnish your sabre, if you don’t sing.”

“Tear an’ ages! ain’t I composing it? Av I was Tommy Moore, I couldn’t be quicker.”

“Well, come along, my hearty; let’s hear it.”

“Oh, murther!” said Mike, draining the pot to its last few drops, which he poured pathetically upon the grass before him; and then having emptied the ashes from his pipe, he heaved a deep sigh, as though to say life had no pleasures in store for him. A brief pause followed, after which, to the evident delight of his expectant audience, he began the following song, to the popular air of “Paddy O’Carroll”: — [Chapter XCIII, "A Night on the Azava," 485]

Commentary: Phizzian Visual Humor — and Mickey has put O'Malley in a Scrape

Although Phiz rarely uses icons and symbols in the O'Malley illustrations, here he offers Lever's readers a visual pun: as Mickey prepares to pipe his fellows a song (in recompense for their burnishing his cavalry sabre), he holds his pipe conspicuously — and the plate's title points to another sort of "piping," as the other soldiers are using "pipe-clay" to spruce up their uniforms for parade.

Little does the jovial servant know that has put his master in an extremely awkward position. Through his negligence, Mickey has substituted a newsy and quasi-romantic letter intended for Mrs. Molly M'Gra at home for O'Malley's reports of killed and wounded for the adjutant-general. The Military Secretary, George Hamilton, has ordered O'Malley to give up his command and report himself "under arrest" to headquarters at Fuentes d'Onoro. Thus, the two horsemen to the rear of the drawing are the despatch officer, Godwin, and O'Malley himself. As the chapter concludes, O'Malley orders Mike to get the horses in readiness so that they can leave at once, but has yet to explain the circumstances of the journey.

Commentary: A Note on the Songs and Cultural Context of "Tommy Moore"

Here Lever's regimental crooner, Mickey Free, is making a contemporary allusion to the celebrated lyricist of Irish Melodies, in which Thomas Moore (1779-1852) set English-language verse to traditional Irish melodies. The magisterial Edinburgh Review ridiculed law student Moore's Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806) as "licentious" and morally corrupting, and Lord Byron himself in English Bards and Scots Reviewers (1809) chastised his work for lack of substance. However, Moore showed political gravitas in famously lampooning Irish-born Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh in Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress (1818) and Fables for the Holy Alliance (1832). His most serious work of literary criticism, Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1825), involved nearly a decade of research, and went through a number of editions. His History of Ireland (four volumes, 1825-46), which methodically pilloried English policies in his native land, was not a critical success, but was consulted by no less a historian and social commentator than Karl Marx.

However, here Mickey Free is alluding to Moore as a songsmith in Irish Melodies (1808-34), whose most popular lyrics, with the piano arrangements of Sir John Andrew Stevenson (1761-1833), were "The Last Rose of Summer," "The Minstrel Boy," "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and "Oft in the Stilly Night," praised by no less a poet than Sir Walter Scott. His lyrics were employed in the early 1840s as part of Daniel O'Connell's campaign to cancel anti-Catholic laws, and his Repeal Association celebrated in crowds exceeding one hundred thousand "Where is the Slave?" and "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls" as assertions of Irish nationalism.

Necessary Background: Irish Cultural, Socio-political, and Geographical Associations

• Thomas Moore: The poet of all circles, the delight of his own
• Peel and Catholic Emancipation
• The Landscape of Ireland
• The Geography of Ireland
• Ireland in The Illustrated London News
• Victorian Ireland
• The Land War in Ireland
• The Irish Famine: 1845-49
• Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1840-41)

Bibliography

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, 2 vols. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1840; 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.

Poetry Foundation. " Thomas Moore, 1779-1852." Accessed 26 March 2023.

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.

Strong, L. A. G. The Minstrel Boy, A Portrait of Tom Moore. New York: Knopf, 1937.

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Created 26 March 2023