The Illustrated Letters of Richard Doyle to His Father, 1842–1843. Doyle Richard
rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_734ffaae-ffa7-5948-a7bc-fad471da39ac">fig. 7.) He reappropriates Solomon Eagle as a portrait of his own family that embodies his unspoken anxieties about their fragile condition and his fears that the healing process may take a radical turn. It is important to note here that Henry Doyle resumed his own letters on exactly the same date, June 25, 1843, and that he too copied a painting from the Royal Exhibition that subtly telegraphed his grief. The work that he chose, Richard Redgrave’s The Poor Teacher, is a far more conventional treatment of mourning, however, and a picture of consolation rather than horror. As Henry writes, “There is a beautiful expression of calm sadness upon her face which I never saw surpassed, and I never saw a tear so beautifully introduced as that little one which is slowly rolling down her cheek” (see fig. 8). Unlike his brother, who confronts a variety of desperate responses to the prospect of death in Solomon Eagle, Henry sentimentalizes his family’s sorrow, finding in Redgrave’s portrait a traditional expression of suffering and resignation.
Figure 7. Richard Doyle, illustration for “Third Quarter,” from Charles Dickens, The Chimes (London: Chapman & Hall, 1845). (This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. RB 122301.)
Figure 8. Henry Doyle, ALS, Sunday, June 25, 1843, p. 4. (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. MA 3315. Purchased on the Fellows Fund with special assistance of Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Page, 1974. Photographic credit: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.)
Further evidence of his father’s delicate emotional state arises in Richard’s subsequent letters of July through September 1843. As a result of Frank’s death and as a way to ensure their own survival, John Doyle prescribed the fashionable “cold water cure” for his remaining children. The new science of hydropathy had only recently begun to attract attention with the publication of influential books and public lectures by Drs. James Wilson and James Gully, who set up a famous water cure establishment at Malvern. Pure water was declared essential in maintaining health and preventing diseases. Hydropathists recommended drinking and bathing in pure water combined with vigorous exercises such as hill walking and running. They also advocated a simple diet, frequent breaks from mental activity, and the cultivation of habits of regularity and sobriety.
Early each morning, consequently, Doyle sent his children to “drink the waters” from St. Agnes’s Well in Kensington Gardens and “systematically run up and down hills” (no. 39). More than a month later, they were still following the regime “with a perseverance that does infinite credit to all the parties concerned,” as Richard reports, though he confesses that he has noticed no improvement in his constitution (no. 44). During the first cure, in fact, he says that he was “seized” with a head cold. Nevertheless, he uses the outings as an opportunity to observe a gallery of characters who will later serve his imagination, and gently mocks his father’s excessive care: “one morning last week when I was kept at home by tooth ache, I really felt quite uncomfortable all day, to think that I had not seen the respectable old woman who keeps the glasses, the foreigner who drinks seven or eight moderate sized tumblers full, taking a walk between every couple, the man who washed his face at the spring, . . . to think that I had not seen any of these interesting people for the space of forty eight hours—it was really quite shocking to think of, I declare” (no. 44).
A more serious indication of concern for his father’s capacity to restore the family’s health emerges in Richard’s near obsession with Father Theobald Mathew, the Irish “Apostle of Temperance” who was visiting London at this time and exhorting people to take the pledge of sobriety. Father Mathew was enjoying considerable success in his tour of England and Scotland, garnering widespread coverage in the newspapers, drawing massive crowds at his rallies and recruiting thousands to his cause. Thomas Carlyle had accidentally happened on him in Manchester and was struck by his broad build, strikingly handsome face, and charismatic voice; indeed, he was so deeply moved by his simple speech that he “almost cried to listen to him,” and when it was over tipped his hat. Several weeks later, his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, responded to Father Mathew with even greater enthusiasm, at one point during a London rally swinging herself up to the platform by a rope and landing “in a horizontal position at his feet.”31
Doyle was no less taken by him, though characteristically more restrained, venturing out three separate times to watch the proceedings from the edges of the crowd. Like Carlyle he was impressed by Father Mathew’s appearance, remarking that “his head is really very fine, strength of purpose and resolution are indicated there, if ever they were upon any man” (no. 41). He was also struck by his “expression of benevolence” and in three vignettes depicts his serenity in commanding the crowd’s attention. Given the family’s recent tragedy and Doyle’s “respect and admiration for the reverend gentleman,” one wonders if Father Mathew’s regimen for healing began subtly to persuade him against his father’s more rigid approach, his conviction that the deaths of family members was a direct sign of their own sins. As a figure of power and reverence, a man who unified an enormous family by gathering together the Irish immigrant population and promising to rescue them from the disease of alcoholism, Father Mathew must have seemed an irresistible father-substitute. For Doyle he gradually emerges as a sane version of Solomon Eagle, gently encouraging the people to repent rather than threatening them with damnation, appealing to their best selves, and offering them a practical solution for their afflictions. As Doyle repeatedly says, he “administers the pledge” (my italics), as if an alderman or city official, and does so in “batches,” rewarding those who have taken it with a medal and a ribbon. Such pragmatism appealed to Doyle and, combined with Father Mathew’s moderation, may have indicated to his own father a more direct and effective way of responding to misfortune.
Because Doyle’s vision is always in the end recuperative and redemptive, it is fitting that he balances the subtle criticism of his father on whom, as he says, he will “inflict” the successive letters about Father Mathew, with an image of recovery and triumph (no. 42). In one of his finest letters, which harmoniously blends word and image, Doyle describes a procession of Temperance societies marching toward the meeting grounds near the Great Western Railway. In the midst of bands and banners, Father Mathew rides along in a coach pulled by horses. The procession momentarily slows at the edge of an abrupt slope only to tumble down driven by its own momentum. In a terrifying moment, Father Mathew disappears, his life in jeopardy. Like a surging wave, as Doyle writes, “the whole mass rolls from the top to the bottom.” After a “great gasping for breath” and “another fierce struggle,” however, “the head and shoulders of the reverend gentleman are seen to appear in the crowd.” He is safe and the band rouses itself to strike up, “See the Conquering Hero Comes” (no. 42).
The plunge down the bank reminds us of the earlier May letter where all the figures are falling helplessly in a dark waterfall. But here the resolution is clear: the procession reconstitutes itself, the band resumes its playing, and the figure of authority emerges unscathed, mounting the platform to greet the enthusiastic crowd. Three “doses” of Father Mathew not only dispel the gloom caused by his brother’s premature death but inspire some of his best artwork, a series of marvelously detailed drawings that he hopes will go some of the way toward banishing the “vacancy” from his father’s eyes (no. 36). More important, these letters of August and September 1843 revive his faith in the viability of the paternal figure and begin to repair his confidence in his own father.
THE LETTERS
The fifty-three letters Doyle wrote between July 3, 1842, and December 17, 1843, offer a portrait of the artist as a young man and reveal his rapid aesthetic growth from the age of seventeen, when he is part of a thriving family guild of artists and musicians, to nineteen, as he moves toward independence by assuming his role as one of the main graphic illustrators at Punch magazine. Because this is such a relatively short span of time and because his visual style and sensibility evolve so quickly,