Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 391 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 391: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis: Victorian Penny Dreadful This is a page of running prose (page 371) from a serialized sensation novel titled *Dare*. The text depicts a chaotic scene in which the protagonist Dare confronts a drunken mob vandalizing portraits in a drawing-room. After discovering a blood-stained coat and pistols in a sick-room, she arms herself and enters the chaos, where she uses a pistol to defend the portraits and demonstrate her courage. A witness (Pratt) later describes her actions admiringly, comparing her to "a white doe in a pack of wolves." The passage emphasizes her inherited nerve and depicts her protecting family property and honor against rowdy, intoxicated men.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
DaRE 371 and held his tongue when Dilsey, unwittingly, locked him in. Downstairs matters grew worse. The uproar was deaf- ening. Dilsey went down to the first floor, and came back with tears streaming down her honest face. “Honey, dee’s hackin’ de pote’its ter pieces!”’ Dare took fire. “They shall not!” “Babe! Y’ainh gwine in dat rabble?” Dilsey choked. But the courage which is “will-force regardless of con- sequences” was Dare’s now. In the lower hall she stepped over more than one drunken fellow, snoring on the floor, and eluded more than one outstretched paw. The draw- ing-room was the storm-center. Empty wine-bottles be- strewed the carpet. One maudlin trio had brought in Lum Egger, crazy drunk, and seated him at the spinet. He was pounding the keys with an empty bottle, and squalling out one of John Wesley’s hymns. One group was hacking into strings the portrait of an early colonial governor. His red cloak bulked large. “My heye! Jock, bain’t we makin’ shoe-thrums o’ the hold turkey-cock?”’ “Ow, let me hat my lady!” pointing to the portrait of Josephine de Berrien on the opposite wall. Next instant Dare was in the sick-room. Her finger on her lip, she stole to the table whereon lay a blood- stained red coat. Beside it was a belt and pistols. It was buckled about her waist and she was gone before Pratt could open his mouth. He rushed after her. And the sight he saw in the drawing-room of Oxheart House — well, he could never talk about that minute without ag1- tation. “She was like a white doe in a pack of wolves, sir! I saw her duck under one fellow’s outstretched arm. I saw her jab that pistol against one of ’em’s jaw! She showed her daddy’s own nerve, sir!”’ Panting, Dare leaned with her back against the wain- scot. Over her head hung the portrait of her mother: her of the slim, white throat, the pensive smile, the swim- CORNIELMOO® SS) (C©) m