xxx xxx

“I can twist any man alive around my finger!” Wood-engraving 11.6 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed, for instalment nineteen in the American serialisation of Wilkie Collins’s No Name in Harper’s Weekly [Vol. VI. — No. 290] Number 19, “The Third Scene — Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth.” Chapter IV (page 461; p. 123 in volume), plus an uncaptioned vignette of Mrs. Wragge, dropping an armload of parcels (p. 121 in volume): 11 cm high by 5.6 cm wide, or 4 ¼ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, vignetted. [Instalment No. 19 ends in the American serialisation on page 462, at the end of Chapter IV. Precisely the same number without illustration ran on that date in All the Year Round.]

Passage Illustrated: An Inflated Self-Assessment before the Mirror?

Noel Vanstone was invulnerable on the very point which had presented itself in his father as open to attack.

Having reached this conclusion, how was she to shape her future course? What new means could she discover which would lead her secretly to her end, in defiance of Mrs. Lecount’s malicious vigilance and Noel Vanstone’s miserly distrust?

She was seated before the looking-glass, mechanically combing out her hair, while that all-important consideration occupied her mind. The agitation of the moment had raised a feverish color in her cheeks, and had brightened the light in her large gray eyes. She was conscious of looking her best; conscious how her beauty gained by contrast, after the removal of the disguise. Her lovely light brown hair looked thicker and softer than ever, now that it had escaped from its imprisonment under the gray wig. She twisted it this way and that, with quick, dexterous fingers; she laid it in masses on her shoulders; she threw it back from them in a heap and turned sidewise to see how it fell — to see her back and shoulders freed from the artificial deformities of the padded cloak. After a moment she faced the looking-glass once more; plunged both hands deep in her hair; and, resting her elbows on the table, looked closer and closer at the reflection of herself, until her breath began to dim the glass. “I can twist any man alive round my finger,” she thought, with a smile of superb triumph, “as long as I keep my looks! If that contemptible wretch saw me now —” She shrank from following that thought to its end, with a sudden horror of herself: she drew back from the glass, shuddering, and put her hands over her face. “Oh, Frank!” she murmured, “but for you, what a wretch I might be!” Her eager fingers snatched the little white silk bag from its hiding-place in her bosom; her lips devoured it with silent kisses. “My darling! my angel! Oh, Frank, how I love you!” The tears gushed into her eyes. She passionately dried them, restored the bag to its place, and turned her back on the looking-glass. “No more of myself,” she thought; “no more of my mad, miserable self for to-day!”

Shrinking from all further contemplation of her next step in advance — shrinking from the fast-darkening future, with which Noel Vanstone was now associated in her inmost thoughts — she looked impatiently about the room for some homely occupation which might take her out of herself. The disguise which she had flung down between the wall and the bed recurred to her memory. It was impossible to leave it there. Mrs. Wragge (now occupied in sorting her parcels) might weary of her employment, might come in again at a moment’s notice, might pass near the bed, and see the gray cloak. What was to be done? [“The Third Scene. Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth,” Chapter IV, p. 256 in volume; p. 462 in the American serial]

Comment: A Subtle Change in Magdalen's Self-Assessment from Serial to Volume

Magdalen's assessment of her own sexual allure seems somewhat inflated in the caption of the 1873 frontispiece. However, consulting the passage illustrated, the reader discovers that the passage realised is rather more revealing and less inflated since, after her smile of “superb triumph,” she adds a significant conditional clause: “as long as I keep my looks!” She may be vain, but she is very much aware that the source of her fascination for men is not her mind, but her physical features.

Passage Illustrated in the Vignette: Mrs. Wragge Provides Comic Relief

Magdalen instantly profited by that circumstance and slipped unobserved into the house.

She glided along the passage, ascended the stairs, and found herself, on the first landing, face to face with her traveling companion! There stood Mrs. Wragge, with a pile of small parcels hugged up in her arms, anxiously waiting the issue of the dispute with the cabman in the street. To return was impossible — the sound of the angry voices below was advancing into the passage. To hesitate was worse than useless. But one choice was left—the choice of going on — and Magdalen desperately took it. She pushed by Mrs. Wragge without a word, ran into her own room, tore off her cloak, bonnet and wig, and threw them down out of sight in the blank space between the sofa-bedstead and the wall.

For the first few moments, astonishment bereft Mrs. Wragge of the power of speech, and rooted her to the spot where she stood. Two out of the collection of parcels in her arms fell from them on the stairs. The sight of that catastrophe roused her. “Thieves!” cried Mrs. Wragge, suddenly struck by an idea. “Thieves!”

Magdalen heard her through the room door, which she had not had time to close completely. “Is that you, Mrs. Wragge?” she called out in her own voice. “What is the matter?” She snatched up a towel while she spoke, dipped it in water, and passed it rapidly over the lower part of her face. At the sound of the familiar voice Mrs. Wragge turned round — dropped a third parcel — and, forgetting it in her astonishment, ascended the second flight of stairs. Magdalen stepped out on the first-floor landing, with the towel held over her forehead as if she was suffering from headache. Her false eyebrows required time for their removal, and a headache assumed for the occasion suggested the most convenient pretext she could devise for hiding them as they were hidden now.

“What are you disturbing the house for?” she asked. “Pray be quiet; I am half blind with the headache.”

“Anything wrong, ma’am?” inquired the landlady from the passage.

“Nothing whatever,” replied Magdalen. “My friend is timid; and the dispute with the cabman has frightened her. Pay the man what he wants, and let him go.” [“The Third Scene. Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth,” Chapter IV, pp. 121-122 in volume; p. 461 in the American serial]

Commentary: The Portrait of Self-Doubting Magdalen Foiled by Ineptitude Personified

Although the comic study of personified ineptitude in the vignette speaks for itself, the context again reinforces the reader's appreciation of the girl's competency. She must convince the addle-headed woman that she saw nothing when, in fact, Mrs. Wragge had seen Magdalen disguised as Mrs. Garth. That surprise may well have caused Mrs. Wragge to drop her parcels.

Related Material

Image scans and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Blain, Virginia. “Introduction” and “Explanatory Notes” to Wilkie Collins's No Name. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.