Norah and Magdalen Vanstone with Miss Garth [uncaptioned] — headnote vignette for Chapter XV in Wilkie Collins's No Name, first published in Harper's Weekly Number 10 (the 17 May 1862 instalment): 11.5 cm high by 5.6 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, framed; with the regular illustration, “Ready,” he asked, stopping short after a while, both on p. 316 in serial. Wood-engraving 11.5 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed; ninth set of illustrations. Positioned on different pages in the volume: 68 and 70 respectively.
Passage Illustrated in the Vignette: Miss Garth Comforts the Dispossessed Daughters
Norah rose hastily from the sofa; Magdalen impetuously left the window. For once, there was no contrast in the conduct of the sisters. For once, the same impulse moved their hearts, the same earnest feeling inspired their words. Miss Garth waited until the first outburst of emotion had passed away; then rose, and, taking Norah and Magdalen each by the hand, addressed herself to Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare. She spoke with perfect self-possession; strong in her artless unconsciousness of her own good action. [Chapter XV, p. 316 in the American serial, p. 68 in volume]
Comment: The Girls Repudiate Michael Vanstone’s Insulting Offer of One-hundred Pounds
With steely determination, the sisters repudiate Michael Vanstone's odious offer of a mere hundred pounds each when he has just by a legal technicality inherited an estate worth £80,000. The illustrator focuses on the reaction of the three grieving women in mourning, and merely implies the presence of the male auditors, Clare and Pendril, the latter of whom is acting as Michael Vanstone’s agent here. The girls’ best hope is Miss Garth, who now offers to to provide them with a suitable home since she actually has a considerable financial nest-egg from the profits associated with running a private school with her sister in London before becoming the governess at Combe-Raven. “For once there was no contrast in the conduct of the sisters” (68), as the picture suggests their grieving the loss of both their childhood home and their parents. But now comes another blow for Magdalen, who meets the news of Frank’s impending departure stoically since neither of them now has the money or prospects needed for marriage. Remarks Magdalen, the family fortune has just changed hands, and may do so once again. She promises that she will suffer for Frank’s sake, and wait for marriage until she has somehow recovered her inheritance. “Strange things happen sometimes,” particularly in a Sensation Novel. Meantime, the spirit of the girls’ mother in the portrait appears to hover above them.
Passage Realised in the Main Illustration: Mr. Clare Announces Frank’s Departure for China
He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his monotonous march up and down the room began again.
“Ready?” he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to answer. “Take two minutes more,” he said, and resumed his walk with the regularity of clock-work. “These are the creatures,” he thought to himself, “into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?”
He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the dark flush on her face was dying out again.
“Ready?” he repeated. “Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and let’s get it over. I don’t ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to wait.”
“I will wait,” she said. “Patiently, willingly.”
“Will you make Frank wait?”
“Yes.”
“Will you send him to China?”
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in silence. [Chapter XV, p. 316 in the American serial, p. 70 in volume]
Related Material
- Frontispiece to Wilkie Collins’s No Name (1864) by John Everett Millais
- Victorian Paratextuality: Pictorial Frontispieces and Pictorial Title-Pages
- Wilkie Collins's No Name (1862): Charles Dickens, Sheridan's The Rivals, and the Lost Franklin Expedition
- "The Law of Abduction": Marriage and Divorce in Victorian Sensation and Mission Novels
- Gordon Thomson's A Poser from Fun (5 April 1862)
- Kate Egan's Playthings to Men: Women, Power, and Money in Gaskell and Trollope
- Philip V. Allingham, The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 — "preaching to the nerves instead of the judgment"
Image scans and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Blain, Virginia. “Introduction” and “Explanatory Notes” to Wilkie Collins's No Name. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
