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O'Malley in the Presence of Napoleon
Phiz
November 1841
Steel-engraving
13.7 cm by 10.7 cm (5 ⅜ by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted.
Title-page vignette for Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1841), Volume 2.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Although burning with anxiety to learn what had taken place, yet somehow I could not bring myself to ask the question. A secret pride mingled with my fear that all had not gone well with us, and I durst not expose myself to hear of our defeat from the lips of an enemy. I had barely time to ask into whose presence I was about to be ushered, when with a slight smile of a strange meaning, he opened the door and introduced me into the saloon. Although I had seen at least twelve or fourteen horsemen arrive, there were but three persons in the room as I entered. One of these, who sat writing at a small table near the window, never lifted his head on my entrance, but continued assiduously his occupation. Another, a tall, fine-looking man of some sixty years or upward, whose high, bald forehead and drooping moustache, white as snow, looked in every way the old soldier of the empire, stood leaning upon his sabre; while the third, whose stature, somewhat below the middle size, was yet cast in a strong and muscular mould, stood with his back to the fire, holding on his arms the skirts of a gray surtout which he wore over his uniform; his legs were cased in the tall bottes à l’écuyère worn by the chasseur-à-cheval, and on his head a low cocked hat, without plume or feather, completed his costume. There was something which, at the very moment of my entrance, struck me as uncommon in his air and bearing, so much so that when my eyes had once rested on his pale but placid countenance, his regular, handsome, but somewhat stern features, I totally forgot the presence of the others and looked only at him.
“What’s your rank, sir?” said he, hurriedly, and with a tone which bespoke command.
“I have none at present, save —”
“Why do you wear your epaulettes then, sir?” said he, harshly, while from his impatient look, and hurried gesture, I saw that he put no faith in my reply.
“I am an aide-de-camp to General Picton, but without regimental rank.”
“What was the British force under arms yesterday?”
“I do not feel at liberty to give you any information as to the number or the movements of our army.”
“Diantre! Diantre!” said he, slapping his boot with his horsewhip, “do you know what you’ve been saying there, eh? Cambronne, you heard him, did you?” [Chapter CXIX, "Les Quatre Bras," 632]
Fittingly, the vignette on the title-page for the second volume complements that on the first. We have already seen O'Malley in the more or less civilian garb of an aide-de-camp in conversation with the victor of Waterloo, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington with their thoroughbred mounts. O'Malley there had looked dejected because, in spite of his surviving the recent duel, his adversary had mysteriously died. Lost in his own thoughts, he had failed to recognize the Iron Duke. In contrast to Charley's meeting with Sir Arthur, O'Malley and his interlocutor are both afoot. The protagonist seems to express little emotion here; rather, he is controlled and deferential, whereas his interlocutor, immediately recognizable as the defeated General at Waterloo, moodily expresses mild consternation because O'Malley's uniform strikes him as incomplete.
Surprise has sometimes been expressed at the long delay before that vast topic found its way into English fiction; that Scott and Jane Austen seemed oblivious to it, and a dozen years after Waterloo the novelists had scarcely begun to exploit the theme. The reason is not far to seek. In those days the soldiers were professionals with no pretentions to authorship, and the novelists were stay-at-homes who lacked opportunities for learning much about the campaigns. Without war-correspondents or photographers, the newspapers could offer little beyond bare official summaries; and the Duke of Wellington's despatches were not notably rich in local colour or picturesque detail. Even after the war, there were only two ways in which the material could be transmuted into fiction: either veterans might master the craft of authorship, or authors might ross-examine the veterans and extract enough information to make their stories plausible. [Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841," 76]
Apparently Lever derived the details of the Peninsular Campaign from his friend Lord Douro, to whom he dedicated the novel. Wellington himself, Douro's father, in reading Lever's scenes of battle, muttered, "Good! but where did the fellow get that story? 'Tis not in the histories, nor in the despatches, nor could anyone know of it unless he was present" (Stevenson, 91).
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. "Edited by Harry Lorrequer." Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1841. 2 vols.
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Published serially in The Dublin University Magazine from Vol. XV (March 1840) through XVIII (December 1841). Dublin: William Curry, March 1840 through December 1841. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1842; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 2 September 2016.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.
19 March 2023