Lizzie Pezzack

Although Sir Harry and George Vyell are morally flawed human beings, the reader can empathise with their concerns. Moyle, except on brief occasions, and Jacky Pascoe exist outside the parameters of normality. Lizzie Pezzack lies somewhere between the two, at times being a standard working class girl and at others a sensual vamp. She is introduced in Chapter X, ‘A Happy Day’, as a timid and immature proletarian of 14, begging money for her May-doll from Honoria. Although Honoria is younger, she has the presence to appear older and command the situation. The contrast between the two is evident in the next chapter, ‘Lizzie and Honoria’, where Lizzie comes begging for her May-doll to be returned. In emphasising the difference in maturity between the two adolescent girls Q is clearly making a case for the importance of education. By Chapter XV Lizzie is 17 years old, has a fear of ghosts and is in the employment of Farmer Joll. There is a remarkable similarity between the industrious and prosperous Jolls and the family of ‘Springwheat’ from Chapter XXVI of Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour by R.S. Surtees (1853). That is until Jacky Pascoe arrives. Pascoe makes his entry into the home of the Jolls as do the disreputable Lord Scamperdale and his side-kick Jack into the parlour of the Springwheats. On both occasions the ordered scene begins to disintegrate. Pascoe’s religious hysteria and Lizzie’s sensuality produce a whirling-dervish type dance. Eventually they all sit down to supper, just as Scamperdale and his friends sit down at the Springwheats for a hunt breakfast.

Q’s portrayal of the relationship between revivalism and sexual hysteria in the kitchen of the Jolls reflects Hawker’s views of the Bible Christians. This is reinforced in Chapter XVI, when Lizzie, who has religion from Jacky Pascoe, endeavours to seduce Taffy at the Smithy. Then in the following chapter she is portrayed writhing at the head of the torch-lit Midsummer ‘devil hunt’. Progressively she has as a character degenerated from a pathetic girl to an adolescent seductress and finally to a figure of phantasmagoria.

Realism returns many chapters later, when she and Taffy stand at the church gate to watch the wedding of Honoria and George. Her threatened cursing appears to be the expression of class consciousness. Unknown to the reader she is, in fact, carrying George’s child. Even a description in Chapter XIII of the bleak cottage where she lives with her crippled son and father produces not so much compassion as a distaste for the barrenness of life. Q’s presentation of the lives of the native Cornish working population frequently emphasises bleakness. It is very different from that presented by novelists such as Ballantyne in Deep Down (1868) and the Hocking brothers.

Lizzie Pezzack’s immature and hysterical attitude is again revealed on the occasion of the wreck of the Samaritan. She reacts with helpless panic to the loss of her son along the cliffside, but laughs triumphantly when he is rescued, even though at the cost of the rescuer’s, George Vyell’s, life. Immaturity becomes callousness, when with Joey in her arms, Lizzie confronts the figure of Honoria ensconced in her coach. At this point a chance remark let slip from the unreflective Lizzie intimates the true identity of the boy’s father. The inevitable confrontation between Lizzie and Honoria occurs in the penultimate chapter. Lizzie’s uneducated cunning is set against Honoria’s wounded dignity. Pain and triumph ring through Lizzie’s words, while Honoria’s finer emotions are lacerated. Yet, as Lizzie leaves, hysterically laughing and crying, Honoria’s composure ensures her the moral high ground. Lizzie, like Moyle, elicits from Q no compassion. She is a figure not quite from the world of humankind.