How to work a Patent Pump by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), November 1848. Steel-engraving. 9.6 cm high by 13.6 cm wide (3 ¾ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed, full-page dark plate for Roland Cashel, Chapter XXVII, "Lieutenant Sickleton's Patent Pump," facing p. 246 [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Lieutenant's Singleton's Amusing Anecdote
“'I say, Sickleton,' said the king, 'your invention's not worth the sawder it cost you. You couldn't sprinkle the geraniums yonder in three weeks with it.'
“'It's all the fault of these d —— d buffers, please your Majesty,' said I, driven clean out of my senses by failure and disgrace — and, to be sure, as hearty a roar of laughter followed as ever I listened to in my life — 'if they 'd only bear a hand and work the crank as I showed them —' As I spoke, I leaned over and took hold of the crank myself, letting the hose rest on my shoulder.
“With two vigorous pulls I filled the pistons full, and, at the third, rush went the stream with the force of a Congrève — not, indeed, over the trees, as I expected, but full in the face of the First Lord; scarcely was his cry uttered, when a fourth dash laid him full upon his back, drenched from head to foot, and nearly senseless from the shock. The king screamed with laughing — the admiral shouted — the old post-captain swore — and I, not knowing one word of all that was happening behind my back, worked away for the bare life, till the two footmen, at a signal from the admiral, laid hold of me by main force, and dragged me away, the perspiration dripping from my forehead, and my uniform all in rags by the exertion. [Chapter XXVIII, "Lieutenant Sickleton's Patent Pump," 246]
Commentary: Sickleton's Anecdote told aboard the Lucciola in Kingstown Harbour
The mariner's chart He knew by heart, And every current, rock, and shore, From the drifting sand Off Newfoundland, To the sun-split cliffs of Singapore. Captain Pike.
Phiz is not realizing an actual incident in the story, but a flashback anecdote narrated by Cashel's genial companion, an ex-Royal Navy man in charge of his new yacht. Lieutenant Sickleton, late of the Royal Navy, is the skipper of Cashel's luxury pleasure craft, the Lucciola, which Cashel has just purchased from a mere description of the vessel, and arranged to have sailed over to Kingstown from Cowes. The old salt recalls the patent pump he invented when he retired from active military service, and which he was requested to demonstrate for "the King" (either George IV or William IV) at the Admiralty in London. Phiz imagines the scene as occurring in a garden, and the King (left) laughing heartily as the slightly built Sickleton accidentally immerses a corpulent First Lord of the Admiralty. After the debacle, Sickleton landed on his feet, as it were, by becoming the skipper of a private yacht. Despite his apparently jolly nature, Sickleton proves a formidable commander when Cashel's schooner yacht encounters rough weather; his skill rather than Roland's saves the passengers and crew.
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
Lever, Charles. Roland Cashel. With 39 illustrations and engraved title-vignette by Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
Lever, Charles. Roland Cashel. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vols. I and II. In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1907. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 19 August 2010.
Steig, Michael. Chapter VII, "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and a Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 299-316.
Created 29 December 2022