Main illustration There doubt stayed her feet at the threshold, and she waited for a moment before going in. — and the accompanying headnote vignette for "The First Scene," Chapter XII, which involves the London attorney, Mr. William Pendril, and Mr. Clare in his dressing-gown outside Clare’s cottage on the Combe-Raven estate in Wilkie Collins's No Name, first published in All the Year Round and Harper's Weekly (Vol. VI-No. 278), the 26 April 1862 instalment; vignette: 11.4 cm high by 5.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, vignetted; with the smaller and regular illustrations both appearing on p. 269 in the serial). The main plate, also a wood-engraving, appears at the bottom of the folio page in the serial: 11.7 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed; top of p. 48 in volume's Chapter XI. These two illustrations are positioned on different pages and in different chapters in the volume: p. 51 for the vignette within Chapter XII, but p. 48 within Chapter XI for the main plate.
Passage Realised in the Main Plate: Miss Garth Acknowledges that Death is Imminent
Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman, with the burden on her mind of one anxiety more.
It was then past eleven o’clock. Some little time had elapsed since she had seen the sisters and spoken to them. The inquiries she addressed to one of the female servants only elicited the information that they were both in their rooms. She delayed her return to the mother’s bedside to say her parting words of comfort to the daughters, before she left them for the night. Norah’s room was the nearest. She softly opened the door and looked in. The kneeling figure by the bedside told her that God’s help had found the fatherless daughter in her affliction. Grateful tears gathered in her eyes as she looked: she softly closed the door, and went on to Magdalen’s room. There doubt stayed her feet at the threshold, and she waited for a moment before going in. [Chapter 10, p. 269 in serial; p. 48 in volume]
Passage Realised in the Vignette: Mr. Pendril Commiserates with Mr. Clare
He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest attentively.
“You are almost as old as I am, sir,” he said. “Has all your long experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?”
“I never knew how little it had hardened me,” replied Mr. Pendril, quietly, “until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral. I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their parents to the grave. I think their presence made the closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching. You saw how the great concourse of people were moved by it — and they were in ignorance of the truth; they knew nothing of the cruel necessity which takes me to the house this morning. The sense of that necessity — and the sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty toward them most painfully — shook me, as a man of my years and my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present or any suspense in the future. I have not recovered it this morning: I hardly feel sure of myself yet.”
“A man’s composure — when he is a man like you — comes with the necessity for it,” said Mr. Clare. “You must have had duties to perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning.”
Mr. Pendril shook his head. “Many duties as serious; many stories more romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this.”
With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for the shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned to the cottage. [Chapter XII, p. 271 in serial; pp. 50-51 in volume]
Commentary: Setting up Serial Readers for a Shocking Revelation
The illustrations reflect the reactions of Miss Garth and Mr. Clare to the sudden death of Mr. Vanstone, leaving readers to wonder about the impact of his demise upon his daughters. But the presence of the family's London attorney, Mr. Pendril, cannot be mere coincidence: something serious has brought him down to Somersetshire. Thus, the pair of illustrations for the 26 April 1862 (seventh) weekly number pique the readers' interest and heighten the suspense as the girls' mother collapses, apparently dying, after receiving the news of her husband's being killed in a railway accident. The local physician holds out little hope of being able to save her. This mood of apprehension and despondency is well conveyed by Maclenan in the pair of illustrations for the chapters originally in the seventh Harper's Weekly instalment (Vol. VI-No. 278), 26 April 1862. The "doubt" that stays Miss Garth's feet is the focus of the large-scale illustration, for the governess does not know how to deal with emotional younger girl. The plate establishes the time of day, past 11:00 P. M., by the darkness surrounding the rigid figure in the hallway, outside what the text reveals is Magdalen's door.
At the very curtain of the 26 April 1862 instalment, William Pendril, who has already told Miss Garth that he must see Mrs. Vanstone as soon as she regains consciousness, enters Andrew Vanstone's study, apparently in search of documents: "The servant opened the door, and Mr. Pendril went in" (p. 271 in serial). Consequently, the headnote vignette's emphasizing at the rural estate his unexpected arrival is crucial to generating Sensational suspense in Chapter XII in the magazine serial, which will break off, and then resume next week (3 May 1862). The small-scale illustration introduces, as does the letterpress, "a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal appearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind" (p. 270 in serial, p. 50 in volume), whose knowledge and strategic thinking may still save the future of the orphaned sisters. But as yet, of course, neither the readers nor the sisters themselves realise that their economic and social well-being (indeed, their very identities) is about to be compromised by the untimely deaths of both parents.
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 the images, 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.
