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"Oh, my God! Am I going to be ill?"
John McLenan
21 April 1860
11.2 cm high by 8.7 cm wide (4 ⅜ by 3 ⅜ inches), framed, p. 253; p. 141 in the 1861 volume.
Twenty-second regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"Oh, my God! Am I going to be ill?" etc. — staff artist John McLenan's twenty-second composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 22, published on 21 April 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: July 6th," p. 253; p. 141 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Why do I sit here still? Why do I weary my hot eyes and my burning head by writing more? Why not lie down and rest myself, and try to quench the fever that consumes me, in sleep?
I dare not attempt it. A fear beyond all other fears has got possession of me. I am afraid of this heat that parches my skin. I am afraid of the creeping and throbbing that I feel in my head. If I lie down now, how do I know that I may have the sense and the strength to rise again?
Oh, the rain, the rain — the cruel rain that chilled me last night!
Nine o’clock. Was it nine struck, or eight? Nine, surely? I am shivering again — shivering, from head to foot, in the summer air. Have I been sitting here asleep? I don’t know what I have been doing.
Oh, my God! am I going to be ill?
Ill, at such a time as this!
My head — I am sadly afraid of my head. I can write, but the lines all run together. I see the words. Laura — I can write Laura, and see I write it. Eight or nine — which was it?
So cold, so cold — oh, that rain last night! — and the strokes of the clock, the strokes I can’t count, keep striking in my head —— ["The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: July 6th," p. 253; p. 140 in the 1861 volume]
As a result of her adventures in the rat-infested boat-house, Marian may have contracted typhus fever in Part 17, in which she exhibits the early symptoms of the disease. Her adventures on the roof the night before, when she attempted to overhear Fosco's and Glyde's conversation in the library below, have certainly exhausted her. She had returned after 1:00 A. M., soaked to the skin and "cramped in every limb" (253). She certainly seems incapacitated by more than mere fatigue. Shortly, she breaks off her journal entry, which Count Fosco himself completes on July 7th. The revelation that he has found and probably read the journal shocks the serial reader of the 21 April 1860 number, although McLenan's illustration of an obviously ill Marian Halcombe (her journal open, but her quill in the ink-stand, not in her hand) has at least prepared that reader for this surprising turn of events. Mr. Frederick Fairlie now offers his "testament" as an unreliable narrator.
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1861 (first printing, 15 August 1860; reissued in single-column format in 1902, 548 pages).
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. III-IV (26 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 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.
Created 16 July 2024