The End of the Elopment, by G. H. Thomas

The End of the Elopement

George Housman Thomas, 1824-1868

Engraved by William Luson Thomas (Thomas's brother)

1866

From Wilkie Collins's novel Armadale, Vol. II, facing p.195

Source: the 1866 Smith, Elder edition, uploaded to the Internet Archive by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

How unusual it is to see Allan Armadale looking despondent! G. H. Thomas has seized the chance to endow this likeable but apparently rather shallow character with some depth, and also to join Wilkie Collins in leavening the narrative with a little good-humoured fun at his expense. [continued below]

Caption and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print document]

Commentary

This is an episode reported by Miss Gwilt in her diary. She describes Allan as reeling under a "double shock" (599): he has just learnt that she and Midwinter are to be married, and that his beloved Neelie Milroy is being sent away by her father to test the couple's feelings for each other. Their plans to elope have been thwarted, and they are not to communicate for six whole months. Allan, still of course the very picture of health, declares that he will never survive that long. Lydia and Midwinter encourage him to be patient, and win Major Milroy's good opinion. Then Midwinter suggests that Allan might spend some of the intervening time visiting the Reverend Brock in Somerset. Lydia herself adds that he could then sail out to visit them in Naples, where Midwinter has a journalistic assignment. Allan brightens up considerably: "I had hit on the best of all ways of occupying the weary time," she writes. "He started up, and wrung my hand in quite an ecstasy of gratitude. How I do hate people who can only express their feelings by hurting other people's hands!" (604)

The humour, however, has an ominous undertow. Lydia Gwilt has now succeeded in getting "Armadale's future movements completely under [her] own control," as she puts it in her diary, and it has already occurred to her that "the small yacht might do me the inestimable service of drowning him...." (605, 604). So this is another pivotal point in the plot. Allan of course has no conception of the position he is in — or the danger involved. As is often noted, he has "no sense of the complexity of the situations surrounding him" (Marshall 73). But the illustrator does give some clues to the reader. In contrast to Midwinter's, Lydia's eyes are hooded; and while Midwinter's hand rests protectively and intimately on Allan's chair, Lydia's hands are clasped in front of her. A little aloof from the other two, her chin tilted slightly, she has adopted a rather stagy and condescending stance.

"Authenticism and Post-Authenticism: The Case of Wilkie Collins's Armadale and Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night: A Confession"

References

Collins, Wilkie. Armadale Ed. Catherine Peters. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2008.

Marshall, William H. Wilkie Collins. New York: Twayne, 1970.

Last modified 9 November 2011