Passage Illustrated: Cashel arraigned before the Court

From an early hour of the morning the court was crowded. Many persons distinguished in the world of fashion were to be seen amid the gowned and wigged throng that filled the body of the building; and in the galleries were a vast number of ladies, whose elegance of dress told how much they regarded the scene as one of display, as well as of exciting interest. Some had been frequent guests at his house; others had often received him at their own; and there they sat, in eager expectancy to see how he would behave, to criticise his bearing, to scan his looks through their “lorgnettes,” and note the accents in which he would speak. A few, indeed, of his more intimate friends denied themselves the treat such an exhibition promised; and it was plain to see how highly they estimated their own forbearance. Still, Frobisher and some of his set stood beneath the gallery, and watched the proceedings with interest. [Chapter LXIV, "The Trial — The Prosecution," 546]

Commentary: Cashel's Fairy-Weather Friends

Phiz's illustration clarifies the level of engagement that some of Cashel's "friends" have brought to his arraignment on the charge of murdering his lawyer. Lever is being ironic when he describes this male coterie lounging in the foyer outside the courtroom as "intimate." The illustrator depicts them as casually gossiping, and not at all concerned about their host at Tubbermore. One point of Phiz's interpretation is, however, curious: whereas Lever specifies that a number of these fashionably dressed young Anglo-Irish aristocrats and military men are looking into the courtroom with their “lorgnettes,” Phiz has but a single member of this blithe group using a vision aid, and this device clearly resembles binoculars. Although a lorgnette is usually thought of as a pair of spectacles on a handle, the name derived from the French “lorgnor” ("to take a sidelong look at" or "squinting"), by the nineteenth century it had evolved into two related forms: the folding lorgnette, carried in a case, and the type hung around the neck by a chain or worn as a brooch. Clearly, the device in this illustration is none of these. What the idler employs to home in on faces in the courtroom is indeed a species of "miniature telescope." However, Victorians would have described the device shown here as "French opera glasses." Phiz may have chosen to realise the “lorgnettes” in this manner to suggest how entertaining Cashel's hangers-on are finding his arraignment.

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.

Matthews, Mimi. "The History of the Lorgnette." Posted 20 September 2015. mimimatthews.com/2015/09/20/the-history-of-the-lorgnette/ Accessed 23 January 2023.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Seven: "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and a Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 298-316.

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Created 23 January 2023