The Emperor Charles V. restores Art. by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), facing page 42 at the beginning of Chapter V. (January 1855). Steel-engraving. 9.9 cm high by 13 cm wide (3 ⅞ by 5 ⅛ inches), vignetted, full-page illustration for The Martins of Cro' Martin, for the opening of Chapter V, "A Studio and An Artist." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Comic Relief in a Painter's Studio
While Mary was still hesitating as to what she should do, the door suddenly opened, and a man in a mediaeval costume rushed out, tugging after him a large bloodhound, whose glaring eyeballs and frothy mouth betokened intense passion. Passing hurriedly forward, Mary beheld Lady Dorothea bending over the fainting figure of a short little man, who lay on the floor; while her uncle, tottering under a costume he could barely carry, was trying to sprinkle water over him from an urn three feet in height.
“Mr. Crow has fainted, — mere fright, nothing more!” said Lady Dorothea. “In stepping backward from the canvas he unluckily trod upon Fang's paw, and the savage creature at once sprung on him. That stupid wretch, Regan, one of your favorites, Miss Martin, never pulled him off till he had torn poor Mr. Crow's coat, clean in two.”
“Egad, if I had n't smashed my sceptre over the dog's head the mischief wouldn't have stopped there; but he 's coming to. Are you better, Crow? How do you feel, man?”
“I hope you are better, sir?” said Lady Dorothea, in an admirable blending of grand benevolence and condescension.
“Infinitely better; supremely happy, besides, to have become the object of your Ladyship's kind inquiries,” said the little man, sitting up, and looking around with a very ghastly effort at urbanity and ease.
“I never knew Fang to bite any one,” said Mary.
“Doesn't she, by jingo!” exclaimed the artist, who with difficulty caught himself in time before he placed his hand on the supposed seat of his injuries. [Chapter Five, "A Studio and An Artist," pp. 42-43]
Commentary: a Satirical Portrait in Action
Here Phiz applies the "streaky bacon" principle of composition by providing a scene of comic relief after the serious introductory scenes. Those scenes highlighted the reforming initiatives of Mary Martin, whom the little painter, Crow, had intended to place on the portrait of the abdicating Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth (1500-58), impersonated by Godfrey Martin. Mary now enters the "studio" to persuade her uncle to have an interview with the visiting attorney, Scanlan, about the forthcoming election for the borough of Oughterard, the first after the recent Catholic emancipation. Apparently Lord Killmorris, the present member, intends to break with the Martins in order to court the Catholic vote. What Mary discovers upon entering Mr. Crow's studio is pandemonium, for the Martins' bloodhound, Fang, has bitten the little painter when Crow accidentally stepped on her paw. Mary's uncle, in mediaeval costume, tries to revive the artist, whose jacket the hound has torn in two, with water from a large urn. The imperious Lady Dorothea, costumed as the Empress, Isabella of Portugal, tries in vain to persuade the painter to continue with the canvas.
The Irish painter's choice of historical subject, the abdication of Charles V on account of ill-health in 1556 in favour of his son and his brother, may foreshadow the untimely death of Godfrey Martin at the close of the novel. Discussing his intentions for the historical canvas afterward with Mary Martin, Simpson ("Simmy") Crow, Lady Dorothea's resident artist, mentions that he had planned to introduce Mary Martin as "betrothed to one of the young Princes" (46), and to use for the face of the Prince of Orange that of young Joseph Nelligan, the Trinity College student and son of the local grocer. Since Simmy has only actually sold two of his historical paintings, done in the grand manner of the Renaissance masters whom he has studied in Italy, The Abdication of Charles V and The Finding of Moses, "he went on multiplying new versions of these subjects ad infinitum, eternally writing fresh variations" (pp. 48-49).
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.]
Bibliography
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 Martins of Cro' Martin. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman & Hall, 1856, rpt. 1872.
Lever, Charles. The Martins of Cro' Martin. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Introduction by Andrew Lang. Lorrequer Edition. Vols. XII and XIII. In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1907.
Steig, Michael. Chapter VII, "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 299-316.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter XII, "Aspirant for Preferment, 1854-1856." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell and Russell, 1939; rpt. 1969. Pp. 203-220.
Created 11 September 2022