Hartright reads Mrs. Catherick's extraordinary letter. — staff artist John McLenan's headnote vignette (composite woodblock engraving) for the thirty-sixth weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 28 July 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch; "The Narrative of Walter Hartright, Resumed. XI," p. 469; p. 226 in the 1861 volume. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: The Anonymous Letter arrives in the Aftermath of Glyde's Death

My first impulse, after reading Mrs. Catherick’s extraordinary narrative, was to destroy it. The hardened shameless depravity of the whole composition, from beginning to end — the atrocious perversity of mind which persistently associated me with a calamity for which I was in no sense answerable, and with a death which I had risked my life in trying to avert — so disgusted me, that I was on the point of tearing the letter, when a consideration suggested itself which warned me to wait a little before I destroyed it.

This consideration was entirely unconnected with Sir Percival. The information communicated to me, so far as it concerned him, did little more than confirm the conclusions at which I had already arrived.

He had committed his offence, as I had supposed him to have committed it, and the absence of all reference, on Mrs. Catherick’s part, to the duplicate register at Knowlesbury, strengthened my previous conviction that the existence of the book, and the risk of detection which it implied, must have been necessarily unknown to Sir Percival. My interest in the question of the forgery was now at an end, and my only object in keeping the letter was to make it of some future service in clearing up the last mystery that still remained to baffle me — the parentage of Anne Catherick on the father’s side. There were one or two sentences dropped in her mother’s narrative, which it might be useful to refer to again, when matters of more immediate importance allowed me leisure to search for the missing evidence. I did not despair of still finding that evidence, and I had lost none of my anxiety to discover it, for I had lost none of my interest in tracing the father of the poor creature who now lay at rest in Mrs. Fairlie’s grave. [Part 36. Third Epoch. Part III. "Hartright's Narrative, Resumed. XI," p. 469; p. 226 in the 1861 volume.

Commentary: A Letter "neither dated nor signed," but useful as evidence

The illustration supports Collins's situating Walter's reading the letter, hand-delivered by a waiter, in the lobby of his hotel. This scene returns us to the present after Walter has read Mrs. Catherick's extraordinary and lengthy letter. In it, she confirms Sir Percival's forgery in the parish registry all those years ago, and explains Anne's oblique knowledge of the Secret that hangs over the disagreeable baronet, whose illegitimacy is never far from his thoughts. Since the letter bears neither signature nor date, Hartright is tempted merely to discard it, but then he realizes that it sheds light on the forgery and Glyde's animosity towards Anne that has resulted in her death.

Related Material

• McLenan's regular, full-scale illustration for the thirty-sixth weekly number in serial: "Beg my pardon, directly" for 28 July 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. 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. 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 30 July 2024