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Passage Illustrated: Mr. Burchell to the rescue

My attention was so much taken up by Mr. Burchell's account, that I scarce looked forward as we went along, til we were alarmed by the cries of my family, when turning, I perceived my youngest daughter in the midst of a rapid stream, thrown from her horse, and struggling with the torrent. She had sunk twice, nor was it in my power to disengage myself in time to bring her relief. My sensations were even too violent to permit my attempting her rescue: she must have certainly perished had not my companion, perceiving her danger, instantly plunged in to her relief, and with some difficulty, brought her in safety to the opposite shore. By taking the current a little farther up, the rest of the family got safely over; where we had an opportunity of joining our acknowledgments to her's. Her gratitude may be more readily imagined than described: she thanked her deliverer more with looks than words, and continued to lean upon his arm, as if still willing to receive assistance. My wife also hoped one day to have the pleasure of returning his kindness at her own house. Thus, after we were refreshed at the next inn, and had dined together, as Mr. Burchell was going to a different part of the country, he took leave; and we pursued our journey. My wife observing as we went, that she liked him extremely, and protesting, that if he had birth and fortune to entitle him to match into such a family as ours, she knew no man she would sooner fix upon. I could not but smile to hear her talk in this lofty strain: but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy. [Chapter III, "A Migration. The Fortunate Circumstances of Our Lives are Generally Found at last to be our own Procuring," pp. 16-17]

Commentary

Little do the Primroses (or the readers, for that matter) suspect that the dashing yet sensible and somewhat cynical Mr. Burchell is in fact the charitable and kindly Sir William Thornill in disguise. So engrossed is Dr. Charles Primrose in his discussion with Burchell that he fails to observe ​his youngest daughter drowning in the stream that the family is crossing on the way to Primrose's new post as curate in the west of England. In this first-person account of the accident and Burchell's presence of mind, the narrator lowers himself in the reader's estimation by his lack of awareness. At the very least, Dr. Primrose is an imperceptive first-person narrator, but his lack of practical judgment suggests that his narrative of events and motives is sometimes unreliable.

Stothard's treatment of the rescue smacks of more than a little of period melodrama as the girl's mother, on her knees, devoutly thanks Heaven for the unconscious girl's rescue, and Dr. Primrose reaches out to reassure himself that she is alive. Burchell (in reality, Sir William Thornhill) clasps the girl in Regency dress determinedly, one foot still in the water as he brings her (no worse for wear) to land. Ironically, the nobleman whose praises Dr. Primrose is repeating ("whose virtues, generosity, and singularities, are so universally known," p. 14) is the very man to whom Dr. Primrose is addressing them. Yet another irony here is that Dr. Primrose mistakes the character of the nephew, whose "magnificent" house stands "at some distance," although Stothard has apparently placed it in the background.

Related Illustrations by George Cruikshank (1832)

• The unexpected Visit of the fine Ladies
• The Gross of Green Spectacles

Bibliographical Note

The 1766 edition, bound in calfskin, consisted of two slender volumes, neither illustrated. The 1793 single-volume edition (two volumes bound as one and numbered continuously) retains the two-volume notation, but includes six illustrations of Dr. Primrose and his family, the Vicar himself being present in each illustration. Later readers, however, are probably familiar only with the twenty-five full-page illustrations by Arthur Rackham for the 1929 edition by George G. Harrap, London. The illustrations in the most important Victorian illustrated edition, those by Thomas Mulready, are more natural but less harmonious than Stothard's:

In 1840 Mulready was commissioned to illustrate the book and produced 32 drawings, one for each chapter head. The etchings were conceived by John Thompson who was one of the best wood-engraver in England. This was the most extensively illustrated version to date, following earlier editions illustrated by Daniel Dodd (1780), Thomas Stothard (1792), Thomas Uwins (1812), Thomas Rowlandson (1817) and George Cruikshank (1830, 1832). Only the volume illustrated by Rowlandson with twenty-four aquatints approached Mulready’s in sheer quantity of illustration. ["Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries"]

Sir Walter Scott’s appreciation of the book was shared British readers generally throughout the nineteenth century: "We read [it] in youth and in age, we return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature . . . the wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice."

Bibliography

Goldsmith, Dr. [Oliver]. The Vicar of Wakefield. A Tale. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard. London: Sammells and Ritchie for E. Harding, Fleet-Street; and J. Good, New Bond-Street, 1792.

Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries. "William Mulready RA (1786-1863). Collection of 19 drawings & 9 etchings for Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (England, c. 1840)." http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/william-mulready/48046

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Last modified 6 March 2018