[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John McLenan —> The Woman in White —> Next]
"Mr. Fairlie declared in the most positive terms that he did not recognize the woman."
John McLenan
2 June 1860
11.2 cm high by 8.8 cm wide (4 ¼ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted, p. 341; p. 179 in the 1861 volume.
Twenty-sixth regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
"Mr. Fairlie declared in the most positive terms that he did not recognize the woman." — staff artist John McLenan's twenty-eighth composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 27, published on 2 June 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Resumed. II," p. 325; p. 179 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Arriving at Limmeridge late on the evening of the fifteenth, Miss Halcombe wisely resolved not to attempt the assertion of Lady Glyde’s identity until the next day.
The first thing in the morning she went to Mr. Fairlie’s room, and using all possible cautions and preparations beforehand, at last told him in so many words what had happened. As soon as his first astonishment and alarm had subsided, he angrily declared that Miss Halcombe had allowed herself to be duped by Anne Catherick. He referred her to Count Fosco’s letter, and to what she had herself told him of the personal resemblance between Anne and his deceased niece, and he positively declined to admit to his presence, even for one minute only, a madwoman, whom it was an insult and an outrage to have brought into his house at all.
Miss Halcombe left the room — waited till the first heat of her indignation had passed away — decided on reflection that Mr. Fairlie should see his niece in the interests of common humanity before he closed his doors on her as a stranger — and thereupon, without a word of previous warning, took Lady Glyde with her to his room. The servant was posted at the door to prevent their entrance, but Miss Halcombe insisted on passing him, and made her way into Mr. Fairlie’s presence, leading her sister by the hand.
The scene that followed, though it only lasted for a few minutes, was too painful to be described — Miss Halcombe herself shrank from referring to it. Let it be enough to say that Mr. Fairlie declared, in the most positive terms, that he did not recognise the woman who had been brought into his room—that he saw nothing in her face and manner to make him doubt for a moment that his niece lay buried in Limmeridge churchyard, and that he would call on the law to protect him if before the day was over she was not removed from the house.
Taking the very worst view of Mr. Fairlie’s selfishness, indolence, and habitual want of feeling, it was manifestly impossible to suppose that he was capable of such infamy as secretly recognising and openly disowning his brother’s child. Miss Halcombe humanely and sensibly allowed all due force to the influence of prejudice and alarm in preventing him from fairly exercising his perceptions, and accounted for what had happened in that way. But when she next put the servants to the test, and found that they too were, in every case, uncertain, to say the least of it, whether the lady presented to them was their young mistress or Anne Catherick, of whose resemblance to her they had all heard, the sad conclusion was inevitable that the change produced in Lady Glyde’s face and manner by her imprisonment in the Asylum was far more serious than Miss Halcombe had at first supposed. The vile deception which had asserted her death defied exposure even in the house where she was born, and among the people with whom she had lived.
In a less critical situation the effort need not have been given up as hopeless even yet. [Part 28: "Hartright's Narrative. II," p. 341; pp. 178-179 in the 1861 volume.]
Although Frederick Fairlie's judgment is hardly reliable, his rejecting Laura as his niece, and his assuming that Marian is trying to pass off Anne Catherick as "Lady Glyde," certainly speaks to the thoroughness of Fosco's deception. We of course have already had the funeral of the supposed Lady Glyde at Limmeridge cemetery. More recent events include Fosco's incarcerating Laura under the name "Anne Catherick" on July 30th, Marian's rescuing Laura from the London "Asylum" (October 15th), and her appearing with her half-sister at Limmeridge House on October 16th to re-establish Laura's true identity. Under the circumstances, the reader can appreciate Fairlie's failing to recognize his own niece, for the servants, too, could not positively identify the much-wasted young woman as their young mistress. The picture, then, supports Collins's contention that months of imprisonment have assisted Fosco in his "vile deception" (179).
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 25 July 2024