Count Fosco and the Dog. — staff artist John McLenan's thirteenth regular composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 13, published on 18 February 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, Blackwater Park, Hampshire: IX, July 1st," p. 229; p. 92 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage: Count Fosco has no appreciation of English dogs

“Mind that dog, sir,” said the groom; “he flies at everybody!” “He does that, my friend,” replied the Count quietly, “because everybody is afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me.” And he laid his plump, yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been perching ten minutes before, upon the formidable brute’s head, and looked him straight in the eyes. “You big dogs are all cowards,” he said, addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the dog’s within an inch of each other. “You would kill a poor cat, you infernal coward. You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward. Anything that you can surprise unawares — anything that is afraid of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth, is the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle me at this moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren’t so much as look me in the face, because I’m not afraid of you. Will you think better of it, and try your teeth in my fat neck? Bah! not you!” He turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the yard, and the dog crept back meekly to his kennel. “Ah! my nice waistcoat!” he said pathetically. “I am sorry I came here. Some of that brute’s slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat.” Those words express another of his incomprehensible oddities. He is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already — all of light garish colours, and all immensely large even for him — in the two days of his residence at Blackwater Park. ["The Second Epoch. The Story continued by Marian Halcombe," Blackwater Park, Hampshire. II. July 1st," p. 229; Chapter VII, p. 92 in the 1861 volume.]

Commentary: Count Fosco — A Complex Character — as much Feminine as Masculine

In The Woman in White as in Wuthering Heights, an orderly world is disrupted by an anarchic figure whose disreputable alternative can seem powerfully attractive, as well as dangerous. Fosco is a link between the claustrophobic world of English domestic crime and a wider one of political intrigue and violence that was very much in the mind of the reading public. London was full of Neapolitan political exiles, conspirators and spies in 1859. [Peters, pp. 214-215]

Here McLenan captures Fosco's enormous girth and his underlying, highly unfeminine brutality as he challenges the enormous dog to attack him, much to the surprise of the groom in the background. Here is a truly contradictory character who can sympathetically pat the enormous head of the "brute" in the stables, then fastidiously fuss over the dog's slobbering on his "nice waistcoat" covering his equally enormous paunch.

Related Material

• McLenan's headnote vignette for the thirteenth number: Madame Fosco doing embroidery for 18 February 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. London: Minerva, 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 20 June 2024