Count Fosco contemplating an opera poster for Lucrezia Borgia (composite woodblock engraving) for the thirty-eighth weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 11 August 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Third Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Resumed. II," p. 501; p. 239 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

We reached the streets and the better class of shops between the New Road and Oxford Street. The Count stopped again and entered a small optician’s shop, with an inscription in the window announcing that repairs were neatly executed inside. He came out again with an opera-glass in his hand, walked a few paces on, and stopped to look at a bill of the opera placed outside a music-seller’s shop. He read the bill attentively, considered a moment, and then hailed an empty cab as it passed him. “Opera Box-office,” he said to the man, and was driven away.

I crossed the road, and looked at the bill in my turn. The performance announced was Lucrezia Borgia, and it was to take place that evening. The opera-glass in the Count’s hand, his careful reading of the bill, and his direction to the cabman, all suggested that he proposed making one of the audience. I had the means of getting an admission for myself and a friend to the pit by applying to one of the scene-painters attached to the theatre, with whom I had been well acquainted in past times. There was a chance at least that the Count might be easily visible among the audience to me and to any one with me, and in this case I had the means of ascertaining whether Pesca knew his countryman or not that very night. [Part 38: "Hartright's Narrative Continued, II," p. 501; p. 239 in the 1861 volume.]

Comment

For all his blithe jauntiness, Fosco has now become Hartright's unwitting prey. In surreptitiously trailing the Count from his residence in St. John's Wood Hartright notes 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 scrutinizing the advertising poster has ordered the cabman drive him to the opera house, Hartright decides to seize this opportunity to have his old friend Professor Pesca observe his countryman, and possibly shed some light on Fosco's nefarious past. He and Pesca will be studying Fosco from the pit that very evening through pesca's enormous opera-glass, although, even as they take their seats that night, Hartright has not revealed his motive for taking Pesca to the opera.

Like his suave, musical villain, Collins himself was something of an aficiando of Italian

Related Material

• McLenan's full-scale composite woodblock engraving for the thirty-eighth serial number: "My poor little man!" he said, etc. for the 11 August 1860 instalment.
• 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., 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.

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Created 6 August 2024