Allan's Neighbour, by G. H. Thomas

Allan's Neighbour

George Housman Thomas, 1824-1868

Engraved by William Luson Thomas (Thomas's brother)

1866

From Wilkie Collins's novel Armadale, Vol.1, facing p. 165

Source: the 1866 Smith, Elder edition, uploaded to the Internet Archive by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Thomas depicts a key episode in the novel, Allan's first encounter with Miss Milroy, in which, having overheard her standing up to the elderly gardener's remonstrance, he has come across her trespassing and picking flowers: "The young lady turned round, with a scream; her muslin dress, which she was holding up in front, dropped from her hand, and a prodigious lapful of flowers rolled out on the gravel walk" (205). [continued below.]

Caption and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print document]

Commentary

Allan Armadale has taken such a fancy to Midwinter that when he inherits the grand estate of Thorpe-Ambrose he wants him to be his steward, and live at the main house with him. This leaves the steward's cottage empty, and he chooses as new tenants the retired Major Milroy and his wife, simply because they have a daughter: "think of her pretty muslin dress flitting about among your trees and committing trespasses on your property; think of her adorable feet trotting into your fruit-garden, and her delicious fresh lips kissing your ripe peaches; think of her dimpled hands among your early violets, and her little cream-coloured nose buried in your blush-roses," he tells Midwinter (134).

This is a novel crowded with spies, incidents of eavesdropping, and furtive deeds, in which threatening visions come true. But in this case a more delightful one has materialised. Eleanor (Neelie) Milroy is an innocent ingénue like Allan, trusting that she is doing nothing to annoy her landlord. Already primed with romantic notions about his tenant's daughter, Allan for his part stretches out his arms towards her, to ensure that her fright is only momentary. In a moment, he is on his knees picking up the fallen flowers. From this vantage point, he takes in her rather plump figure (Collins mentions her "prettily plump" hands too, 206), and her round startled face under the old gardening hat, and is in love with her before the second armful is gathered.

One critic finds that "Miss Milroy is not completely defenceless and does have a battery of feminine wiles which she can call on in her dealings with Armadale," but, as he says, these are limited to the "traditional female pursuit" of winning a husband (O'Neill 198). In other words, in contrast to the scheming anti-heroine of the novel, Lydia Gwilt, she is very much the conventional romantic heroine. She and the open, trusting Allan will be well-matched.

Related Material

"Authenticism and Post-Authenticism: The Case of Wilkie Collins's Armadale and Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night: A Confession"

References

Collins, Wilkie. Armadale Ed. Catherine Peters. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2008.

O'Neill, Philip. Wilkie Collins: Women, Property and Propriety London: Macmillan,1988.

Last modified 9 November 2011