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"The hand holding the damp cloth with which she had been cleaning the inscription dropped to her side; the other hand grasped the marble cross," etc.
John McLenan
31 December 1859
11.6 cm high by 11.5 cm wide (4 ½ by 4 ½ inches), 841.
Sixth regular illustration for Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel (1860).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"The hand holding the damp cloth with which she had been cleaning the inscription dropped to her side; the other hand grasped the marble cross," etc. — staff artist John McLenan's sixth composite woodblock engraving for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, Instalment 6, published on 31 December 1859 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. III, Part Four: "The Story Begun by Walter Hartright, of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing," 841; Chapter XII, p. 42 in the 1861 first American edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
I doubted for a moment whether I ought to follow and speak to her or not. My intense anxiety to find myself face to face with her companion helped me to decide in the negative. I could ensure seeing the woman in the shawl by waiting near the churchyard until she came back — although it seemed more than doubtful whether she could give me the information of which I was in search. The person who had delivered the letter was of little consequence. The person who had written it was the one centre of interest, and the one source of information, and that person I now felt convinced was before me in the churchyard.
While these ideas were passing through my mind I saw the woman in the cloak approach close to the grave, and stand looking at it for a little while. She then glanced all round her, and taking a white linen cloth or handkerchief from under her cloak, turned aside towards the brook. The little stream ran into the churchyard under a tiny archway in the bottom of the wall, and ran out again, after a winding course of a few dozen yards, under a similar opening. She dipped the cloth in the water, and returned to the grave. I saw her kiss the white cross, then kneel down before the inscription, and apply her wet cloth to the cleansing of it.
After considering how I could show myself with the least possible chance of frightening her, I resolved to cross the wall before me, to skirt round it outside, and to enter the churchyard again by the stile near the grave, in order that she might see me as I approached. She was so absorbed over her employment that she did not hear me coming until I had stepped over the stile. Then she looked up, started to her feet with a faint cry, and stood facing me in speechless and motionless terror.
“Don’t be frightened,” I said. “Surely you remember me?”
I stopped while I spoke — then advanced a few steps gently — then stopped again — and so approached by little and little till I was close to her. If there had been any doubt still left in my mind, it must have been now set at rest. There, speaking affrightedly for itself — there was the same face confronting me over Mrs. Fairlie’s grave which had first looked into mine on the high-road by night.
“You remember me?” I said. “We met very late, and I helped you to find the way to London. Surely you have not forgotten that?” [Chapter XII, "Hartright's Narrative Continued," 841; 84 in the volume edition]
In this last instalment for 1859, Collins and his American illustrator deliver a crucial scene in the village churchyard near Limmeridge House and the school. Here, at the grave of Mrs. Fairlie, Laura’s mother, Hartright encounters Anne Catherick again, her white dress hidden under a blue cloak as she attempts to clean Mrs. Fairlie’s headstone and the marble cross which surmounts it. In the background is the church from whose porch Walter has been keeping watch surreptitiously on the grave site. He is convinced that there is more to the schoolboy Jacob Postlethwaite’s farfetched story about a ghost at the grave than sheer imagination, and expects the mysterious escapee from the London asylum, Anne Catherick, to make another appearance shortly. She now does so, and Walter interrupts her as she resumes cleaning. When Walter alludes (without naming him) to Sir Percival Glyde as the one who may have funded her incarceration in the private asylum outside London, Ann grows suddenly fearful and angry. Clearly he is the man whom Anne described in her anonymous note as meaning harm to Laura Fairlie. Subsequently, in the January 14, 1860, (eighth) instalment “The Narrative of Vincent Gilmore, Solicitor, of Chancery-Lane, London,” we learn that Jane Anne Catherick, a former servant at Limmeridge, had approved of her daughter’s incarceration, and that Sir Percival Glyde had acted as her agent. This note confirms the reader’ssuspicions of the character of the blythe, apparently affable baronet.
The large mass ahead of the church may be the sexton’s cottage. Although Anne and her companion, Mrs. Clements, have been staying three miles away at the farm called Todd’s Corner, when Hartright specifically identifies Sir Percival Glyde as the man who had shut her up, she screams, Mrs. Clements dashes out of the cottage door, and comes to Anne’s rescue.
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 (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 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.
Created 26 June 2024