"Figaro Quá! Figaro Lá!" etc. — staff artist John McLenan's thirteenth regular composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 14, published on 25 February 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: IX, July 2," p. 117; p. 92 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage: Count Fosco as a afficiando of Buffo Opera

As we passed an open space among the trees in front of the house, there was Count Fosco, slowly walking backwards and forwards on the grass, sunning himself in the full blaze of the hot July afternoon. He had a broad straw hat on, with a violet-coloured ribbon round it. A blue blouse, with profuse white fancy-work over the bosom, covered his prodigious body, and was girt about the place where his waist might once have been with a broad scarlet leather belt. Nankeen trousers, displaying more white fancy-work over the ankles, and purple morocco slippers, adorned his lower extremities. He was singing Figaro’s famous song in the Barber of Seville, with that crisply fluent vocalisation which is never heard from any other than an Italian throat, accompanying himself on the concertina, which he played with ecstatic throwings-up of his arms, and graceful twistings and turnings of his head, like a fat St. Cecilia masquerading in male attire. “Figaro qua! Figaro la! Figaro su! Figaro giu!” sang the Count, jauntily tossing up the concertina at arm’s length, and bowing to us, on one side of the instrument, with the airy grace and elegance of Figaro himself at twenty years of age.

“Take my word for it, Laura, that man knows something of Sir Percival’s embarrassments,” I said, as we returned the Count’s salutation from a safe distance. ["The Second Epoch. The Story continued by Marian Halcombe," Blackwater Park, Hampshire. July 2," p. 229; p. 95 in the 1861 volume.]

Commentary: Count Fosco — The Singer as much as the Italian Aristocrat

Once again, McLenan communicates Fosco's enormous girth and his peculiar taste for accompanying himself on a musical instrument as he sings Italian songs, such as "Figaro" from The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution (1816), a comic opera by Giancomo Rossini based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy of 1775. The minimal background and the grass, lower centre, as well as the Count's straw hat suggest that the scene is outside, where his "crisply fluent vocalization" (95), accompanied vigorously on an Italian concertina, is less likely to disturb the family and servants. What McLenan fails to communicate is the Count's ecstatic movements.

Related Material

• McLenan's headnote vignette for the thirteenth number: Fosco points to blood-stains on the floor of the summer-house for 25 February 1860
• Fred Walker's poster: The Woman in White for the Olympic's October 1871 adaptation

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1860.

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. III-IV (16 November 1859 through 8 September 1860).

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Ed. Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox. Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert. London: Minerva, 2006.

Peters, Catherine. "Chapter Twelve: The Woman in White (1859-1860)." The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva Press, 1992. Pp. 205-225.

Vann, J. Don. "The Woman in White in All the Year Round, 26 November 1859 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.

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Created 10 July 2024