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"She was standing near a rustic table —"
John McLenan
10 December 1859
11.2 cm high by 11.3 cm wide (4 ½ by 4 ½ inches), vignetted.
Third regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"She was standing near a rustic table —." — John McLenan's second regular composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 3, published on 10 December 1859 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. III. Part One: "The Story Begun by Walter Hartright, of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing," Chapter VII, 796; on p. 22 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking, and approached a pretty summer-house, built of wood, in the form of a miniature Swiss chalet. The one room of the summer-house, as we ascended the steps of the door, was occupied by a young lady. She was standing near a rustic table, looking out at the inland view of moor and hill presented by a gap in the trees, and absently turning over the leaves of a little sketch-book that lay at her side. This was Miss Fairlie.
How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own sensations, and from all that has happened in the later time? How can I see her again as she looked when my eyes first rested on her — as she should look, now, to the eyes that are about to see her in these pages?
The water-colour drawing that I made of Laura Fairlie, at an after period, in the place and attitude in which I first saw her, lies on my desk while I write. I look at it, and there dawns upon me brightly, from the dark greenish-brown background of the summer-house, a light, youthful figure, clothed in a simple muslin dress, the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and closely round her shoulders, and a little straw hat of the natural colour, plainly and sparingly trimmed with ribbon to match the gown, covers her head, and throws its soft pearly shadow over the upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint and pale a brown — not flaxen, and yet almost as light; not golden, and yet almost as glossy — that it nearly melts, here and there, into the shadow of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears, and the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses her forehead. The eyebrows are rather darker than the hair; and the eyes are of that soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by the poets, so seldom seen in real life. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in form — large and tender and quietly thoughtful — but beautiful above all things in the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their inmost depths, and shines through all their changes of expression with the light of a purer and a better world. [Chapter VII, 796; page 22 in the 1861 volume edition]
Again, in the 1902 volume Harper's has provided a re-engraved, slightly narrower version of the original 1860 wood-engraving. What is lost, however, is merely the left-hand margin. Otherwise, both versions show a rather unremarkable, well-dressed young woman of the upper-class, the novel's romantic interest, Laura, the niece of Walter Hartright's quirky employer, Frederick Fairlie. Although she has been studying the prints on the rustic table in the summer-house, she is looking up and left, presumably at the narrator, Walter, as he enters. The artist has perhaps made this heroine unremarkable so that readers will vaguely associate her with Anne Catherick, the Woman in White, in the initial plate, "I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the handle of my stick."
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. 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 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.
Created 19 June 2024