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"Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?"
John McLenan
17 March 1860
11.5 cm high by 8.6 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ⅜ inches), framed, p. 173.
Regular illustration for the seventeenth weekly part of Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
"Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?" — staff artist John McLenan's seventeenth regular composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 17 March 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: July 4th," p. 173; 113 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Exactly at the moment when I was speaking those words [to the messenger], holding the letter open in my hand, Count Fosco turned the corner of the lane from the high-road, and stood before me as if he had sprung up out of the earth.
The suddenness of his appearance, in the very last place under heaven in which I should have expected to see him, took me completely by surprise. The messenger wished me good-morning, and got into the fly again. I could not say a word to him — I was not even able to return his bow. The conviction that I was discovered — and by that man, of all others — absolutely petrified me.
“Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?” he inquired, without showing the least surprise on his side, and without even looking after the fly, which drove off while he was speaking to me.
I collected myself sufficiently to make a sign in the affirmative.
“I am going back too,” he said. “Pray allow me the pleasure of accompanying you. Will you take my arm? You look surprised at seeing me!”
I took his arm. The first of my scattered senses that came back was the sense that warned me to sacrifice anything rather than make an enemy of him. ["The Second Epoch. The Story continued by Marian Halcombe," Blackwater Park, Hampshire. Four o'clock," p. 177; p. 113 in the 1861 volume.]
Marion has just read the correspondence from Gilmour's partner, Kyrle, advising against letting Laura sign Sir Percival's loan document since she would have no recourse if her husband were to fail to reimburse her estate. Thus, the lawyer has confirmed Marion's suspicions. Suddenly at the corner of the lane she encounters Fosco. And then Sir Percival returns on his dogcart, dispirited and hungry: clearly his quest for news of the Cathericks has proven fruitless.
So why, then, is McLenan flagging for readers so trivial a moment? The answer lies not in Fosco's Friar-Tuck-like girth or Marion's walking dress, but in the letter she holds open in her hand. Fosco had deployed his wife to keep Marian out of the house while he steamed open and read her letter to Kyrle in London. With some knowledge of England's laws of inheritance and regulations regarding obligations to creditors, Fosco knew very well what Kyrle's answer would be: "Don't sign the parchment." Fortuitously, Glyde now returns from his overnight journey, giving Fosco a chance to fill him in before they enter the house. But, again, Marion overhears vital snatches of the conversation, that is, as Fosco announces to Glyde, "About business that very much concerns you."
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