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Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified by astonishment. Wood-engraving 11.6 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed, for instalment twenty-one in the American serialisation of Wilkie Collins’s No Name in Harper’s Weekly [Vol. VI. — No. 292] Number 21, “The Fourth Scene — Aldborough, Suffolk.” Chapter I, (page 493; p. 136 in volume), plus an uncaptioned vignettte of Magdalen, sitting on the garden wall of The North Shingles Villa, Aldborough (page 493; p. 132 in volume): 11 cm high by 5.6 cm wide, or 4 ¼ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, vignetted. [Instalment No. 21 ends in the American serialisation on page 495, at the end of Chapter I. Precisely the same number without illustration ran on 2 August 1862 in All the Year Round.]

Vignette of Magdalen, seated on the garden wall at The North Shingles Villa, Aldborough

The dress of one of the two strangers showed him to be a clergyman. His companion’s station in life was less easily discernible to ordinary observation. Practiced eyes would probably have seen enough in his look, his manner, and his walk to show that he was a sailor. He was a man in the prime of life; tall, spare, and muscular; his face sun-burned to a deep brown; his black hair just turning gray; his eyes dark, deep and firm—the eyes of a man with an iron resolution and a habit of command. He was the nearest of the two to Magdalen, as he and his friend passed the place where she was sitting; and he looked at her with a sudden surprise at her beauty, with an open, hearty, undisguised admiration, which was too evidently sincere, too evidently beyond his own control, to be justly resented as insolent; and yet, in her humor at that moment, Magdalen did resent it. She felt the man’s resolute black eyes strike through her with an electric suddenness; and frowning at him impatiently, she turned away her head and looked back at the house.

The next moment she glanced round again to see if he had gone on. He had advanced a few yards — had then evidently stopped — and was now in the very act of turning to look at her once more. His companion, the clergyman, noticing that Magdalen appeared to be annoyed, took him familiarly by the arm, and, half in jest, half in earnest, forced him to walk on. The two disappeared round the corner of the next house. As they turned it, the sun-burned sailor twice stopped his companion again, and twice looked back.

“A friend of yours?” inquired Captain Wragge, joining Magdalen at that moment.

“Certainly not,” she replied; “a perfect stranger. He stared at me in the most impertinent manner. Does he belong to this place?”

“I’ll find out in a moment,” said the compliant captain, joining the group of boatmen, and putting his questions right and left, with the easy familiarity which distinguished him. He returned in a few minutes with a complete budget of information. The clergyman was well known as the rector of a place situated some few miles inland. The dark man with him was his wife’s brother, commander of a ship in the merchant-service. He was supposed to be staying with his relatives, as their guest for a short time only, preparatory to sailing on another voyage. The clergyman’s name was Strickland, and the merchant-captain’s name was Kirke; and that was all the boatmen knew about either of them. [“The Fourth Scene. — Aldborough, Suffolk.” I. page 493 in serial; p. 132 in volume.]

Passage Illustrated: Captain Wragge and Magdalen on the seashore at Aldborough

“Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life!” cried the captain, at the end of his patience. “Hang me if I know what you mean!”

She looked round at him for the first time — looked him straight and steadily in the face.

“I will tell you what I mean,” she said. “I mean to marry him.”

Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified by astonishment.

“Remember what I told you,” said Magdalen, looking away from him again. “I have lost all care for myself. I have only one end in life now, and the sooner I reach it — and die — the better. If —” She stopped, altered her position a little, and pointed with one hand to the fast-ebbing stream beneath her, gleaming dim in the darkening twilight — “if I had been what I once was, I would have thrown myself into that river sooner than do what I am going to do now. As it is, I trouble myself no longer; I weary my mind with no more schemes. The short way and the vile way lies before me. I take it, Captain Wragge, and marry him.” [“The Fourth Scene — Aldborough, Suffolk.” Chapter I, page 495; pp. 135 in volume]

Magdalen’s Momentous Decision at The North Shingles Villa and on the Beach

In the uncaptioned vignette (lower left on the serial page), we see Magdalen, but recently arrived from London by the Eastern Counties Railway, sitting on the wall outside the North Shingles Villa. She is somewhat upset by the two strangers who have been scrutinizing her as she sits, waiting for Wragge to return to the pathway after locking his wife (who must now assume the name “Julia Bygrave”) into her room: they cannot afford to have Mrs. Wragge wandering about the village until she has mastered her new name and identity. Quite by accident, Magdalen attracts the interest of two local passersby, Rev. Strickland and his brother-in-law merchant Captain Kirke, who will prove an important addition to the cast of characters.

Both the introductory headpiece and the larger wood-engraving appear on the same page in the Harper’s Weekly serial number for 2 August 1863; however, in the 1873 Harper’s volume the arrangement is quite different as each plate appears adjacent to the text it realizes. We could be forgiven, for example, for thinking that the vignette is set at the port of Aldborough since the second paragraph is immediately above the small-scale plate; however, the text realised appears in the twenty-sixth paragraph in the instalment. In contrast, the main illustration is thirteen paragraphs into the chapter in the serial, but serves as a tailpiece of sorts in the volume edition, since the chapter runs from page 130 to 137, and the main illustration realizes a scene at the top of page 135, just prior to the appearance of the wood-engraving at the top of page 136.

In the main illustration Wragge suddenly begins to rise as he is shocked to learn that Magdalen's plan to retrieve her inheritance involves marrying Noel Vanstone under the guise of her assumed character. If he assists her in furthering her marriage scheme, she promises him two hundred pounds on her wedding day, but Wragge must exert himself to ensure that Mrs. Lecount does not learn her true identity. This expedient is the upshot of Frank's having cancelled their engagement. Deeply offended by Noel Vanstone's offering a paltry bribe of five pounds for the news of treachery he had earlier offered, Wragge determines to hurt Noel in any way he can. The number ends with Magdalen's ritually ridding herself of Frank and her feelings for him:

Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she answered him. It was the little white silk bag which she had always kept hidden in her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which it held — one of the relics which she had not had the heart to part with before — was gone from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange shore, she had torn from her the fondest of her virgin memories, the dearest of her virgin hopes. Alone, on a strange shore, she had taken the lock of Frank’s hair from its once-treasured place, and had cast it away from her to the sea and the night. [2 August 1862, p. 495, second column; in volume, p. 137]

Related Material

Image scans and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the 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.