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"My poor little man!" he said, etc.
John McLenan
11 August 1860
11.5 cm high by 9 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted, p. 485; p. 229 in the 1861 volume.
Thirty-seventh regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"My poor little man!" he said, etc. — staff artist John McLenan's thirty-seventh composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 38, published on 11 August 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Third Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Continued, II," p. 501; p. 238 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
He crossed the road and walked towards the western boundary of the Regent’s Park. I kept on my own side of the way, a little behind him, and walked in that direction also.
Marian had prepared me for his high stature, his monstrous corpulence, and his ostentatious mourning garments, but not for the horrible freshness and cheerfulness and vitality of the man. He carried his sixty years as if they had been fewer than forty. He sauntered along, wearing his hat a little on one side, with a light jaunty step, swinging his big stick, humming to himself, looking up from time to time at the houses and gardens on either side of him with superb, smiling patronage. If a stranger had been told that the whole neighbourhood belonged to him, that stranger would not have been surprised to hear it. He never looked back, he paid no apparent attention to me, no apparent attention to any one who passed him on his own side of the road, except now and then, when he smiled and smirked, with an easy paternal good humour, at the nursery-maids and the children whom he met. In this way he led me on, till we reached a colony of shops outside the western terraces of the Park.
Here he stopped at a pastrycook’s, went in (probably to give an order), and came out again immediately with a tart in his hand. An Italian was grinding an organ before the shop, and a miserable little shrivelled monkey was sitting on the instrument. The Count stopped, bit a piece for himself out of the tart, and gravely handed the rest to the monkey. “My poor little man!” he said, with grotesque tenderness, “you look hungry. In the sacred name of humanity, I offer you some lunch!” The organ-grinder piteously put in his claim to a penny from the benevolent stranger. The Count shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and passed on. [Part 38: "Hartright's Narrative Continued, II," p. 501; p. 238 in the 1861 volume.]
In surreptitiously trailing the Count from his residence in St. John's Wood Walter Hartright notes Fosco's behaviour in Regent's Park as he gives the Italian organ-grinder's monkey some of his pie but contributes not even a penny to the creature's handler. However, the more significant scene is that which McLenan realizes in the headnote vignette of Fosco's scrutinizing a poster advertising the debut of a Donizetti opera, Lucrezia Borgia (1833). Since Count has just had a set of opera glasses repaired and immediately after studying the poster has ordered his cabman drive him to the opera house, Hartright decides to seize this opportunity to have his old friend Professor Pesca to observe his countryman unawares, and possibly shed some light on Fosco's past.
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. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser and Sir John Gilbert. London: Sampson Low, 1860; rpt., Chatto & Windus, 1875.
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. Pp. 205-225.
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. Pp. 44-46.
Created 6 August 2024