The Trio's London Hideout: A Run-down News- vender's. — staff artist John McLenan's headnote vignette (composite woodblock engraving) for the twenty-seventh weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 26 May 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, "Epoch 3: Part II, "Hartright's Narrative, I," p. 325; p. 172 in the 1861 volume. ["The Third Epoch of the Story" opens here.]

Passage Illustrated: Hiding in Plain Sight from the Foscos and Glyde

I left my narrative in the quiet shadow of Limmeridge church — I resume it, one week later, in the stir and turmoil of a London street.

The street is in a populous and a poor neighbourhood. The ground floor of one of the houses in it is occupied by a small newsvendor’s shop, and the first floor and the second are let as furnished lodgings of the humblest kind.

I have taken those two floors in an assumed name. On the upper floor I live, with a room to work in, a room to sleep in. On the lower floor, under the same assumed name, two women live, who are described as my sisters. I get my bread by drawing and engraving on wood for the cheap periodicals. My sisters are supposed to help me by taking in a little needle-work. Our poor place of abode, our humble calling, our assumed relationship, and our assumed name, are all used alike as a means of hiding us in the house-forest of London. We are numbered no longer with the people whose lives are open and known. I am an obscure, unnoticed man, without patron or friend to help me. Marian Halcombe is nothing now but my eldest sister, who provides for our household wants by the toil of her own hands. We two, in the estimation of others, are at once the dupes and the agents of a daring imposture. We are supposed to be the accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place, and the living personality of dead Lady Glyde. [Part 27. Third Epoch. Part II. "Hartright's Narrative, I," p. 325; p. 172 in the 1861 volume.

Related Material

• McLenan's regular, full-scale illustration for the twenty-seventh weekly number in serial: "The Nurse came quickly around the corner of the wall, holding Lady Glyde by the arm" for 26 May 1860
• Fred Walker's poster: The Woman in White for the Olympic's October 1871 adaptation

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1860.

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. III-IV (16 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.

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Created 21 July 2024