Norah and Magdalen Vanstone in Mourning [uncaptioned] — headnote vignette for “Between the Scenes. I. From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril,” in Wilkie Collins’s No Name, first published in Harper’s Weekly Number 11 (the 24 May 1862 instalment): 11.5 cm high by 5.6 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, framed, text on p. 334 (volume edition, p. 74); with the regular illustration, “I instantly ran into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and Frank standing staring at her with a lowering, angry face, biting his nails.” only in the volume edition, p. 73. Wood-engraving 11.5 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed. This eleventh set of illustrations was not published in the serial, perhaps owing to a shortage of available space at the end of the weekly number.
Passage Illustrated in the Vignette: The Dispossessed Daughters Gather Nosegays
“We had no friends to come and bid us good-by; and our few acquaintances were too far from us — perhaps too indifferent about us — to call. We employed the little leisure left in going over the house together for the last time. We took leave of our old schoolroom, our bedrooms, the room where our mother died, the little study where our father used to settle his accounts and write his letters — feeling toward them, in our forlorn condition, as other girls might have felt at parting with old friends. From the house, in a gleam of fine weather, we went into the garden, and gathered our last nosegay; with the purpose of drying the flowers when they begin to wither, and keeping them in remembrance of the happy days that are gone. When we had said good-by to the garden, there was only half an hour left. We went together to the grave; we knelt down, side by side, in silence, and kissed the sacred ground. I thought my heart would have broken. August was the month of my mother’s birthday; and, this time last year, my father and Magdalen and I were all consulting in secret what present we could make to surprise her with on the birthday morning. [“Between the Scenes. I. From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril, Westmorland House, Kensington, August 14, 1846,” p. 316 in the American serial, p. 74 in volume]
Passage Realised in the Main Illustration: Frank Clare’s leaving has upset Magdalen
“After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged that Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented himself to take his leave. I was upstairs when he came; and I remained upstairs for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anxious, as you may well believe, on Magdalen’s account.
“At the end of the half-hour or more, I came downstairs. As I reached the landing I suddenly heard her voice, raised entreatingly, and calling on him by his name — then loud sobs — then a frightful laughing and screaming, both together, that rang through the house. I instantly ran into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and Frank standing staring at her, with a lowering, angry face, biting his nails. [“Between the Scenes. I. From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril, Westmorland House, Kensington, August 14, 1846,” p. 316 in the American serial, p. 73 in volume]
Comment: The Girls Desperately Try to Bear up under the Stress of Leaving Combe-Raven
This instalment marks the transition from the sisters’ old life of leisure and privilege to an uncertain residence with Miss Garth, who has offered to to provide them with a suitable home. Norah will follow in her footsteps, but Magdalen will pursue a path of intrigue and subterfuge to regain the inheritance that is morally but not legally theirs. The return address on the letter — “Westmorland House, Kensington, August 14, 1846,” immediately telegraphs the fact that the girls have left Somersetshire, and are now living in London, making this chapter a detailed first-person reportage rather than conventional, third-person narration.
The chief illustration clearly focuses n the emotional response of the younger sister to their much-changed circumstances, and to Frank’s having to depart for a British trading house in coastal China. The girls had packed up their possessions, and deposited them on the dining table, ready for their departure the next morning. All but two of the servants, having been paid by Mr. Pendril, have already left. By chance, Norah tries to throw away the card that the acting manager had given Magdalen months before at the Clifton performance. This accident prepares readers for the radical course that Magdalen will determine to take. She stays up all night, contemplating what she intends to do.
Now, after the sisters have received the condolences by mail of that peculiar Captain Wragge (“Post Office, Birmingham”), comes her first real trial, bidding Frank farewell. The main illustration, intended for this instalment but not printed until 1873, depicts the overwrought, blonde-haired Magdalen, prostrate on the sofa in the morning-room, and young Francis Clare, apparently unsure as to how he should respond to her vociferous entreaties and violent hysterics. Mclenan does not suggest, however, that Frank is “angry.” In the ensuing dialogue with Norah out in the hall, where she has thrust him, the youth expresses his indignation as having been “infamously used in this business” (74), for, having professed her love for him, Magdalen has told him to go to China. Mr. Clare calls later to inform the girls that he will be making the necessary arrangements in London. Significantly, then, Mclenan has altered Frank’s reaction in order to render him more sympathetic and less egocentric, dithering but not petulant.
Related Material
- Frontispiece to Wilkie Collins’s No Name (1864) by John Everett Millais
- Victorian Paratextuality: Pictorial Frontispieces and Pictorial Title-Pages
- Wilkie Collins's No Name (1862): Charles Dickens, Sheridan's The Rivals, and the Lost Franklin Expedition
- "The Law of Abduction": Marriage and Divorce in Victorian Sensation and Mission Novels
- Gordon Thomson's A Poser from Fun (5 April 1862)
- Kate Egan's Playthings to Men: Women, Power, and Money in Gaskell and Trollope
- Philip V. Allingham, The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 — "preaching to the nerves instead of the judgment"
Image scans and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Blain, Virginia. “Introduction” and “Explanatory Notes” to Wilkie Collins's No Name. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
