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"There sat the Count," etc.
John McLenan
10 March 1860
11.1 cm high by 8.2 cm wide (4 ⅜ by 3 ¼ inches), framed, p. 149.
Second regular illustration for the sixteenth weekly number of Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"There sat the Count," etc. — staff artist John McLenan's second regular composite woodblock engraving for the sixteenth weekly number of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 10 March 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: IV, July 3d," p. 149; 111 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
I sent Laura upstairs immediately, waited a minute to take off my hat and put my hair smooth, and then went at once to make my first investigations in the library, on pretence of searching for a book.
There sat the Count, filling out the largest easy-chair in the house, smoking and reading calmly, with his feet on an ottoman, his cravat across his knees, and his shirt collar wide open. And there sat Madame Fosco, like a quiet child, on a stool by his side, making cigarettes. Neither husband nor wife could, by any possibility, have been out late that evening, and have just got back to the house in a hurry. I felt that my object in visiting the library was answered the moment I set eyes on them.
Count Fosco rose in polite confusion and tied his cravat on when I entered the room.
“Pray don’t let me disturb you,” I said. “I have only come here to get a book.”
“All unfortunate men of my size suffer from the heat,” said the Count, refreshing himself gravely with a large green fan. “I wish I could change places with my excellent wife. She is as cool at this moment as a fish in the pond outside.”
The Countess allowed herself to thaw under the influence of her husband’s quaint comparison. “I am never warm, Miss Halcombe,” she remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to one of her own merits.
“Have you and Lady Glyde been out this evening?” asked the Count, while I was taking a book from the shelves to preserve appearances.
“Yes, we went out to get a little air.” ["The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: July 3d," p. 149; 110 in the 1861 volume]
Since this is a Collins Sensation Novel, readers would have anticipated the surveillance gambit. However, since Glyde is away (presumably chasing down the whereabouts of Mrs. Catherick and her daughter), they would have been as surprised as Marian and Laura to finde Fosco blithely reading a book while smoking in the library. Clearly neither he nor his placid wife was the cloaked figure dogging their steps.
McLenan does not have Fosco merely sitting in the easy-chair, but filling it, and contemporary readers may well have marked how much Fosco's face here resembles that of Napoleon, Emperor of the French. Since he is both reading and smoking, McLenan has omitted the large green fan with which, in the text, he is attempting to cool himself. Subsequently Marian learns from Laura's maid that, although the servants were also feeling the heat, none of them had been outside, and that the housekeeper, Mrs. Michelson, has been asleep all evening on her sofa. "Who," Marian asks herself and her reader, "could it have been?"
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 and F. A. Fraser. Toronto: Broadview, 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.
Created 11 July 2024