"Soldiers were seldom seen in this outer part of the isle, and this man must have had a special reason for coming hither. Pearston surveyed him." by Walter Paget (1863-1935)

Soldiers were seldom seen in this outer part of the isle

Walter Paget (1863-1935)

1892

20 cm by 15.2 cm

Illustrated London News (12 November 1892): 609

Scene from Chapter XIX, "She Fails To Vanish When Closely Confronted" (p. 609, top of the third column) in Chapter IV 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. ]

Complete caption: "Soldiers were seldom seen in this outer part of the isle, and this man must have had a special reason for coming hither. Pearston surveyed him."

Commentary

From her behaviour in the previous instalment (Chapter 18, "Juxtapositions") Joceyln has already divined that Avice has a lover connected with the sentry-box in the fortress, and that her fancies--like his--are ephemeral, as she admitted in Chapter 17 to having had fifteen lovers already. Now, as he observes a young soldier walk about in front of her cottage, Jocelyn is sure this must be his present rival. The "Glengarry cap" which Avice's beau wears was a military fashion popular from the early 1860s--indeed, members of the Highland Company of the Edinburgh Volunteer Rifles are wearing them in a plate on page 419 of The Illustrated London News for 20 October 1859, although these soldiers have considerably more facial hair than the "two little pieces of moustache" (609) that Hardy describes and Paget provides. However, Paget has not realised the young man's "beer-blown" quality which so repulses Jocelyn's delicate sensibilities. Even Avice apparently is disturbed by this young man's presence. When Jocelyn finds her, she has been hiding from him, and she admits "I am getting to care for one I ought not to think of. I wish I could get away!" (p. 610).

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.

"The Highland Company of the Edinburgh Volunteer Rifles--See Supplement, Page 424." The Illustrated London News, 29 October 1859, p. 419.

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

Vergil. The Æneid, trans. Frank O. Copley. The Library of Liberal Arts. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.

Last modified 7 August 2002