The Templars (facing p. 233 in the 1844 edition, p. 239 in the 1865 edition) horizontally-mounted, 9.3 cm high by 14.3 cm wide, (3 ¾ by 5 ¼ inches), seventeenth vignetted steel illustration for Charles Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours," Chapter XXXIII, "The Temple" (September 1843). [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Passage Illustrated: Tom meets his fellow "Templars" in prison
In a strange state of mingled hope and fear I followed the jailer along the corridor, and across a paved courtyard into a low hall, where basins and other requisites for a prison toilet were arranged around the walls. Passing through this, we ascended a narrow stair, and finally entered a large, well-lighted room, along which a table, plentifully but plainly provided, extended the entire length. The apartment was crowded with persons of every age, and apparently every condition, all conversing noisily and eagerly together, and evidencing as little seeming restraint as though within the walls of a café.
Seated at a table, I could not help feeling amused at the strange medley of rank and country about me. Here were old militaire, with bushy beards and mustaches, side by side with muddy-faced peasants, whose long, yellow locks bespoke them of Norman blood; hard, weather-beaten sailors from the coast of Bretagne, talking familiarly with venerable seigneurs in all the pomp of powder and a queue; priests with shaven crowns; young fellows, whose easy looks of unabashed effrontery betrayed the careless Parisian, — all were mingled up together, and yet not one among the number did I see whose appearance denoted sorrow for his condition or anxiety for his fate.
The various circumstances of their imprisonment, the imputation they lay under, the acts of which they were accused, formed the topics of conversation, in common with the gossip of the town, the news of the theatres, and the movements in political life. Never was there a society with less restraint; each man knew his neighbor's history too well to make concealment of any value, and frankness seemed the order of the day. While I was initiating myself into so much of the habit of the place, a large, flat, florid personage, who sat at the head of the table, called out to me for my name.
“The governor desires to have your name and rank for his list,” said my neighbour at the right hand. [Chapter XXXIII, "The 'Temple'," pp. 232-233 in the 1844 edition; p. 239 in the 1865 edition]
Commentary: Tom the Outsider — Another Political Prisoner of The Temple in Paris
Colonel Savary's gendarmes catch Tom at the Château d'Ancre with the Chouans, and naturally assume he has secretly gone over to the Bourbonists after they discover on Tom's person an official offer of a commission in a restored monarchist government, a document which Tom had meant to return to Henri de Beauvaise before he escaped. Several well-wishers caution Tom about saying anything that the Bonapartist government could use against him, for the Temple is full of government spies or "moutons" (242). The gaoler has an anonymous letter for Burke which advises him to demand legal representation, and nominates as his advocate Monsieur Baillot of 4, Rue Chantereine; the anonymous billet also contains a bank draft for three thousand francs to pay for his defence, andavoid being sent to the guillotine as a traitor to the Republic.
Phiz has positioned Tom to the extreme left of the frame with an undistinguished but professionally dressed, upper-middle-class "neighbour" who intimately pats Tom on the back. He does not engaged with the group in the dining-hall; Phiz has him as the only political prisoner in a military uniform to suggest his apartness: Tom remains a devout supporter of the new regime, not a member of the upper-middle class yearning to restore the Bourbons. But his separation also signals his dilemma: only by implicating Marie de Meudon and Henri de Beauvaise can he fully exonerate himself and have the flimsy "evidence" of the proffered royalist commission thrown out. From his demeanour, it seems clear that the wounded Red Beard (General George Cadoudal), just captured and brought to The Temple, does not intend to recognize Tom, let alone implicate him in the aborted Chouan uprising.
Further Information
- Charles Lever's Fourth Novel, Tom Burke of "Ours" (February 1843 — September 1844)
- Instalment-by-instalment Synopsis of the Novel's Plot and Characters: Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours" (February 1843)
- Instalment-by-instalment Synopsis of the Novel's Plot and Characters: Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours" (March 1843)
- Synopsis of the Novel's Plot and Characters for Tom Burke's Adventures in France in Lever's Tom Burke of "Ours" (April 1843 through June 1844)
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. Tom Burke of "Ours." Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1844. Illustrated by H. K. Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865. Serialised February 1843 through September 1844. 2 vols.
Lever, Charles. Tom Burke of "Ours." Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 24 February 2021.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Four: "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939.
_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.
Created 2 November 2023