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"What year did you say, Sir?"
John McLenan
7 July 1860
11.4 cm high by 8.8 cm wide (4 ¼ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted, p. 421; p. 209 in the 1861 volume.
Thirty-third regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"What year did you say, Sir?" — staff artist John McLenan's thirty-third composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 33, published on 7 July 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Resumed. VIII," p. 421; p. 209 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Which year did you say, Sir? Eighteen hundred and what?”
“Eighteen hundred and four,” I replied, mentally resolving to give the old man no more opportunities of talking, until my examination of the register was over.
The clerk put on his spectacles, and turned over the leaves of the register, carefully wetting his finger and thumb at every third page. “There it is, sir,” said he, with another cheerful smack on the open volume. “There’s the year you want.”
As I was ignorant of the month in which Sir Percival was born, I began my backward search with the early part of the year. The register-book was of the old-fashioned kind, the entries being all made on blank pages in manuscript, and the divisions which separated them being indicated by ink lines drawn across the page at the close of each entry.
I reached the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and four without encountering the marriage, and then travelled back through December eighteen hundred and three — through November and October — through ——
No! not through September also. Under the heading of that month in the year I found the marriage.
I looked carefully at the entry. It was at the bottom of a page, and was for want of room compressed into a smaller space than that occupied by the marriages above. The marriage immediately before it was impressed on my attention by the circumstance of the bridegroom’s Christian name being the same as my own. The entry immediately following it (on the top of the next page) was noticeable in another way from the large space it occupied, the record in this case registering the marriages of two brothers at the same time. The register of the marriage of Sir Felix Glyde was in no respect remarkable except for the narrowness of the space into which it was compressed at the bottom of the page. The information about his wife was the usual information given in such cases. She was described as “Cecilia Jane Elster, of Park-View Cottages, Knowlesbury, only daughter of the late Patrick Elster, Esq., formerly of Bath.” [Part 33: "Hartright's Narrative, VIII," p. 421; p. 208 in the 1861 volume.]
As Hartright now observes in the parish registry at the church in Old Welmingham, there is something decidedly odd about the record of the marriage of Glyde's parents. The marriage listed under the September 1803 heading is an entry in a restricted space — "a much smaller space than that occupied by the marriages above." The affable, chatty parish clerk, wanting to impress his London visitor with his arcane knowledge of parish records, is eager to help. Hartright's enquiry about the officiating minister proves pointless: “Yes,” I replied, “but I have some inquiries still to make. I suppose the clergyman who officiated here in the year eighteen hundred and three is no longer alive?” Although he was dead already some three or four years before the present parish clerk arrived, there probably exists a duplicate record at the offices of the vestry clerk, a local lawyer, or rather at the house of his son, who has inherited his father's practice, young Mr. Wansborough, who likely still has his father's copy of the registry in his office in the High Street, a mere five-mile walk away.
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 30 July 2024