Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 246 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 246: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Page 228 This is running prose (body text) from a Victorian penny dreadful titled "Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil." The page depicts a dramatic street scene: while Sir Æneas travels toward Lady Savage's ball, a commotion erupts involving grenadiers, bagpipes, and a stretcher bearing a murdered officer. The victim is identified as Valentine Paris. Despite this omen, Sir Æneas proceeds to the ball at the old Savage house—now quarters for paroled American officers—which stands damaged and desolate from bombardment. The narrative blends melodramatic elements (murder, bagpipe laments, omens) typical of penny dreadful sensation fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
228 Tom ANDERSON, DaARE-DEVIL Carriage after carriage rolled by to Lady Savage’s. But there was a commotion in the street which had nothing to do with Her Ladyship’s ball. Crowds choked the way. A detachment of grenadiers was marching up from the river. A rabble debouched from a side street, and the bar- onet’s horses were rearing wildly at the sight of a stretcher. Behind the stretcher walked a Highlander with the bag- pipes. Above the hoarse roar of the crowd, the ancient battle bugle of Scotland. Oh, the heart-breaking wail: ‘Lochaber will no more return!” ‘What the devil’s the matter?” Sir Atneas called sharply to his black coachman. “Get us out of this, Sardanapalus!”’ The polysyllabic negro lashed his horses into a dark alley. A bystander hurried to fetch the news. An officer had been foully murdered. By whom, nobody knew. Now the black footman, who had dropped from his perch and run into the crowd, appeared at the coach window: “‘ Please, Your Honor, de gen’man’s name Cap’n Harris.” ‘Harris? — Harris? Don’t know him. To Lady Sav- age’s, Sardanapalus.”’ But before he made his bow to Lady Savage, Sir A‘neas had found out that the bundle which had barred his way in the street just now had been, in life, Valentine Paris. He was agitated. In the ballroom door he paused to say abruptly, “It’th an ill omen Franthith.” “That corkscrew wrist of yours is a worse one, Sir A‘neas — for the American!” Meantime Troupe went through the ragged, “ratty,” trampled shrubbery, up the fissured stone steps, — split by a shell, — and entered the old Savage house, former residence of the “patriot’’ branch of an old Royalist fam- ily. Dismal, dismantled, torn by the bombardment, picked clean of everything that could be peeled away, — panel- ing, wainscoting, and so on, — it was the quarters of more than a dozen American officers, paroled prisoners. Bare floors resounded under every step; vacant rooms and cor- ridors drummed with echoes; and the sea-winds whisked in and out through a shattered conservatory in a distract- GomicbooksTGo m