Illustration for “Mistress and Maid” by J. E. Millais

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Illustration for Dinah Craik's "Mistress and Maid"

John Everett Millais

1862

Wood engraving

Good Words (Vol. 3, 1862): 225

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The Misses Leaf and their maid Elizabeth have just reached Euston, and are waiting for their nephew to pick them up — but he is far from dependable, and is late. Millais brilliantly evokes their anxiety and bewilderment:

For the great smoky cloud which began to rise in the rainy horizon was indeed London. Soon through the thickening nebula of houses they con verged to what was then the nucleus of all railway travelling, the Euston Terminus, and were hustled on to the platform, and jostled helplessly to and fro - these poor country ladies! Anxiously they scanned the crowd of strange faces for the one only face they knew in the great metropolis which did not appear.... [231]

The nephew does arrive at length. The ending of the novel as a whole is not uniformly happy, but largely so, because of the women's virtues of perseverance and diligence.

Bibliography

Craik, Dinah. Mistress and Maid. Beginning of Ch. VII, but illustrating an episode in Ch. IX. Hathi Trust, from a copy in Princeton University. Web. 30 September 2023.

Created 30 September 2023