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Count Fosco and Mrs. Clements.
John McLenan
16 June 1860
11.3 cm high by 8.8 cm wide (4 ¼ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted, p. 380; p. 193 in the 1861 volume.
Thirtieth regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Count Fosco and Mrs. Clements. — staff artist John McLenan's thirtieth composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 30, published on 16 June 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Resumed. VI," p. 380; p. 193 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Mrs. Clements, nevertheless, followed her privately on each occasion when she went to the lake, without, however, venturing near enough to the boat-house to be witness of what took place there. When Anne returned for the last time from the dangerous neighbourhood, the fatigue of walking, day after day, distances which were far too great for her strength, added to the exhausting effect of the agitation from which she had suffered, produced the result which Mrs. Clements had dreaded all along. The old pain over the heart and the other symptoms of the illness at Grimsby returned, and Anne was confined to her bed in the cottage.
In this emergency the first necessity, as Mrs. Clements knew by experience, was to endeavour to quiet Anne’s anxiety of mind, and for this purpose the good woman went herself the next day to the lake, to try if she could find Lady Glyde (who would be sure, as Anne said, to take her daily walk to the boat-house), and prevail on her to come back privately to the cottage near Sandon. On reaching the outskirts of the plantation Mrs. Clements encountered, not Lady Glyde, but a tall, stout, elderly gentleman, with a book in his hand — in other words, Count Fosco.
The Count, after looking at her very attentively for a moment, asked if she expected to see any one in that place, and added, before she could reply, that he was waiting there with a message from Lady Glyde, but that he was not quite certain whether the person then before him answered the description of the person with whom he was desired to communicate. [Part 30: "Hartright's Narrative, VI," p. 380; p. 192 in the 1861 volume.]
Count Fosco has exchanged his summer lounging suit and casual hat for a professional look, carrying a book that gives him the air of a medical practitioner — at least, that is how he presents himself to Anne Catherick’s companion and protector, Mrs. Clements. The illustration conveys a sense of both characters, but not the setting or circumstances of the interview. “What,” the serial reader must have wondered, “is the devious Count up to now? And how is he employing the kindly Mrs. Clements to further his plot to incarcerate Laura in an asylum and appropriate her fortune?
Having learned from the easily-deceived Mrs. Clements where Anne may be found, he uses his equally devious wife, Madame Fosco, to race to Mrs. Clement’s lodgings and spirit Anne away. However, the present scene is two weeks earlier, at Mrs. Clements’ lodgings in the cottage at the village of Sandon (as the grass and trees in the backdrop suggest) rather than the railway terminus in London. The Count, looking eminently respectable, represents himself as Lady Glyde’s messenger. His medication, the prescription for which Mrs. Clements has filled at the village chemist’s, proves efficacious almost at once, enabling Anne to travel by train back to London from Hampshire. McLenan has not shown the elderly lady who accompanies the Count, and is also going to London on the next train: undoubtedly his wife and fellow-conspirator.
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. 205-25.
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. 44-46.
Created 28 July 2024