"He entered, to find in the drawing-room no other person than Nichola Pine-Avon." by Walter Paget (1863-1935)

He entered, to find in the drawing-room no other person than Nichola Pine-Avon.

Walter Paget (1863-1935)

1892

17.9 cm by 23.6 cm

Illustrated London News (17 October 1892): 579.

Chapter XVIII, "Juxtapositions" (p. 579, bottom of the first column) in Thomas Hardy's of Thomas Hardy's The Pursuit of The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. Scanned image, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. ]

Commentary

We have been prepared for the appearance of the former earthly husk of the Well-Beloved by Jocelyn's glimpsing her in the local church at the very end of the October 29th instalment, for even viewed from behind the lady's form and the cut of her clothing had "rather suggested London than this ultima Thule" (p. 547). In his choice of subjects and settings for the complementary eleventh and twelfth plates Paget clearly intends the reader to note the obvious contrasts between the young islander that Jocelyn is throwing himself at and the middle-aged sophisticate who is pursuing him. Avice (her very name suggesting a bird) is one with the beaches, rocks, and waters of the island; Nichola Pine-Avon is well-coiffed and expensively attired, an emanation of the sort of fashionable drawing-room depicted in Plate 12. But, infatuated with the little laundress, Jocelyn cannot even bring himself to use her Christian name, even though Hardy shifts the point-of-view to the omniscient so that we know that "it was ŒNichola' that she wanted to be" (p. 579). She graciously apologises for her earlier rebuffing him, but whether he will see his folly and deliver his affections to a woman more appropriate to his station in society seems doubtful as the sixth instalment closes.

References

Buck, Anne. Victorian Costume and Costume Accessories. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1961.

Cunnington, C. Willet, and Phyllis Cunnington. Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Plays Inc., 1970.

Hardy, Thomas. The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. The Illustrated London News, 8 October--17 December, 1892. Pp. 426-775.

Hardy, Thomas. The Well-Beloved with The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 2000.

Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

Last modified 7 August 2002