Main plate “We know it already,” she repeated, in clear, measured tones. — and the accompanying headnote vignette for "The First Scene," Chapter XIII (continued) and XIV in Wilkie Collins's No Name, first published in All the Year Round and Harper's Weekly (Vol. VI-No. 279), the 10 May 1862 instalment; vignette: 11.7 cm high by 5.5 cm wide, or 4 ⅝ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, vignetted; with the smaller and regular illustrations both appearing on p. 301 in the serial). The main plate, also a wood-engraving, appears at the bottom of the folio page in the serial: 11.5 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed (bottom of p. 61 in volume's Chapter XIV).
Passage Realised: Vignette of Magdalen in the Garden of Combe-Raven, Alone
I might have felt it bitterly, later; it is too soon to feel it now. You have seen Magdalen? She went out to find you — where did you leave her?”
“In the garden. I couldn’t speak to her; I couldn’t look at her. Magdalen has frightened me.” [p. 302 in serial, p. 62 in volume]
Passage Realised: Miss Garth Announces Her “No Name” Status to Magdalen
“God help me, what am I to do?” she broke out. “How am I to tell them?”
“There is no need to tell them,” said a voice behind her. “They know it already.”
She started to her feet and looked round. It was Magdalen who stood before her — Magdalen who had spoken those words.
Yes, there was the graceful figure, in its mourning garments, standing out tall and black and motionless against the leafy background. There was Magdalen herself, with a changeless stillness on her white face; with an icy resignation in her steady gray eyes.
“We know it already,” she repeated, in clear, measured tones. “Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children; and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.”
So, without a tear on her cheeks, without a faltering tone in her voice, she repeated the lawyer’s own words, exactly as he had spoken them. Miss Garth staggered back a step and caught at the bench to support herself. [p. 302 in the Harper’s Weekly serial, p. 61 in volume]
Commentary: The Impact of the Disastrous News Falls Most Heavily on Magdalen
It is not the law of Scotland, not the law of France, not the law (so far as I know) of any other civilized community in Europe. A day may come when England will be ashamed of it; but that day has not dawned yet. Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s children, and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy. [p. 59 in volume]
Both illustrations suggest that the most severely impacted household member will be Magdalen; even though Miss Garth and Mr. Clare are shocked, they are not the ones disinherited of an 80,000-pound estate in favour of a ruthless, elderly paternal uncle living in Switzerland. In the weekly serial, both illustrations appear on the number’s opening, signalling that the focal character in this ninth instalment will be the younger Vanstone (or “nameless”) sister, compelling readers to race through Chapter XIII and onto Chapter XIV as soon as possible in order to study Magdalen’s reaction. The effect in the volume is quite different as the illustrations there appear adjacent to the passages they realise. Although somewhat abstracted, the expression on the girl’s face betokens neither mental breakdown nor anguish. Both illustrations, then, provoke readers to wonder what action Magdalen will take to redress the injustice of her technically being disinherited by virtue of her father’s being unable to divorce his New Orleans wife, and legally marry the girls’ mother. Ironically, recent news of the first wife’s death had just made it possible for the parents to marry. By sheer Collinsian coincidence, from the garden, beneath the study window, Magdalen has overheard the entire dialogue between Mr. Pendril and Miss Garth.
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"
Scanned images and captions 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.
