""My Lord, you are a Model of Courtesy" by Mary Ellen Edwards, eighth full-page illustration for Charles Lever’s "The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly" (January 1868)

"My Lord, you are a Model of Courtesy."

Mary Ellen Edwards

1868

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain

15.8 cm high by 10.4 cm wide (6 ⅛ by 4 inches)

Main illustration for the eighth (January 1868) serial number of Charles Lever’sThe Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly in the Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 17, facing p. 70.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

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.]

Passage Anticipated: A Frigid Conversation between the Cudluffs in a Paris Hôtel

“Let me observe to your Ladyship that there is no greater enormity in manners than an epigram. Keep this smartness for correspondence exclusively, abstain from it strictly in conversation.”

“I protest, my Lord, your lessons come so thick that I despair of being able to profit by half of them. Meanwhile, if I am not committing another solecism against good manners, I should like to say good-night.”

Lord Culduff arose and walked to the door, to be ready to open it as she approached. Meanwhile, she busied herself collecting her fan and her scent-bottle and her handkerchief, and a book she had been reading.

“Hadn't Virginie better come for these things?” said he, quietly.

“Oh, certainly,” replied she, dropping them hurriedly on the table; “I'm always transgressing; but I do hope, my Lord, with time, and with that sincere desire to learn that animates me, I may yet attain to at least so many of the habits of your Lordship's order as may enable me to escape censure.”

He smiled and bowed a courteous concurrence with the wish, but did not speak. Though her lip now trembled with indignation, and her cheek was flushed, she controlled her temper, and as she drew nigh the door dropped a low and most respectful courtesy.

“Very nice, very nice, indeed; a thought, perhaps, too formal — I mean for the occasion — but in admirable taste. Your Ladyship is grace itself.”

“My Lord, you are a model of courtesy.” [Chapter XXIX, "The Hôtel Bristol," 198 in volume]

Commentary: The Illustration holds to key to Marion's Attitude towards Lord Cudluff

The opening scene of the twenty-ninth chapter, "The Hôtel Bristol," set in Paris, is full of marital verbal fencing as Lord Cudluff deigns to "educate" his young wife, the former Marion Bramleigh, about how she ought to behave now that she is an English peeress rather than an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from a remote corner of the Emerald Isle. She has, he condescends, mastered the art of entering a room, but has yet to master the art of leaving it. His gesture in the plate betokens mock courtesy, and she haughtily sweeps up her portables into her shawl rather than leaving them for her French maid, Virginie, to collect. This is a marriage that stands on ceremony rather than mutual affection. And Edwards accentuates the gulf between the Cudluffs by emphasizing the husband's age: his withered facial skin, his general boniness, and his balding pate. In contrast, Marion is a hard-edged, middle-aged beauty with an obvious hauteur.

After this confrontational scene, Culduff confers with his new private secretary, Temple Bramleigh, who explains the nature of the lawsuit whereby Pracontal threatens to bankrupt the Bramleighs, now vulnerable on the financial markets as a result of the death of their father, the Colonel. Cutbill proposes to raise twenty-thousand pounds and buy off the descendant of the Colonel's older half-brother, who has also recently died.

Bibliography

Lever, Charles. The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly. The Cornhill Magazine 15 (June, 1867): pp. 640-664; 16 (July-December 1867): 1-666; 17 (January-June 1868): 70-663; 18 (July-October 1868): 1-403. Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872. Illustrated by M. E. Edwards; engraved by Joseph Swain.

Stevenson, Lionel. "Chapter XVI: Exile on the Adriatic, 1867-1872." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 277-296.

Created 29 August 2023