She looked every year of her age as she mixed the spirit with water, etc. Wood-engraving 11.6 cm high by 11.5 cm wide, or 4 ½ inches square, framed, for instalment twenty-four in the American serialisation of Wilkie Collins’s No Name in Harper’s Weekly [Vol. VI. — No. 292] Number 24, “The Fourth Scene — Aldborough, Suffolk.” Chapter V (page 538; p. 149 in volume), plus an uncaptioned vignettte of Mrs. Lecount and Captain Wragge by the seashore, Dulwich (page 538; p. 152 in volume): 11 cm high by 5.6 cm wide, or 4 ¼ inches high by 2 ¼ inches wide, vignetted. [Instalment No. 24 ends in the American serialisation on page 539, at the end of Chapter V. Precisely the same number without illustration ran on 23 August 1862 in All the Year Round.]
Main Illustration: Mrs. Lecount’s hurriedly fortifying herself with medicinal “spirits”
She got out of bed and kindled the light once more. Steady as her nerves were, the shock of her own suspicion had shaken them. Her firm hand trembled as she opened her dressing-case and took from it a little bottle of sal-volatile. In spite of her smooth cheeks and her well-preserved hair, she looked every year of her age as she mixed the spirit with water, greedily drank it, and, wrapping her dressing-gown round her, sat down on the bedside to get possession again of her calmer self.
She was quite incapable of tracing the mental process which had led her to discovery. She could not get sufficiently far from herself to see that her half-formed conclusions on the subject of the Bygraves had ended in making that family objects of suspicion to her; that the association of ideas had thereupon carried her mind back to that other object of suspicion which was represented by the conspiracy against her master; and that the two ideas of those two separate subjects of distrust, coming suddenly in contact, had struck the light. She was not able to reason back in this way from the effect to the cause. She could only feel that the suspicion had become more than a suspicion already: conviction itself could not have been more firmly rooted in her mind. [“The Fourth Scene — Aldborough, Suffolk.” Chapter V: page 538, pp. 148-149 in volume]
Vignette: Captain Wragge’s Verbal Fencing with Mrs. Lecount on the Seashore
They left the village and walked to the ruins of a convent near at hand — the last relic of the once populous city of Dunwich which has survived the destruction of the place, centuries since, by the all-devouring sea. After looking at the ruins, they sought the shade of a little wood between the village and the low sand-hills which overlook the German Ocean. Here Captain Wragge maneuvered so as to let Magdalen and Noel Vanstone advance some distance in front of Mrs. Lecount and himself, took the wrong path, and immediately lost his way with the most consummate dexterity. After a few minutes’ wandering (in the wrong direction), he reached an open space near the sea; and politely opening his camp-stool for the housekeeper’s accommodation, proposed waiting where they were until the missing members of the party came that way and discovered them.
Mrs. Lecount accepted the proposal. She was perfectly well aware that her escort had lost himself on purpose, but that discovery exercised no disturbing influence on the smooth amiability of her manner. Her day of reckoning with the captain had not come yet — she merely added the new item to her list, and availed herself of the camp-stool. [“The Fourth Scene — Aldborough, Suffolk.” Chapter V: page 539 in serial, pp. 151-152 in volume]
Commentary: Plot Developments Involving Captain Wragge, Mrs. Lecount, and Magdalen
A number of serial instalments appeared without any illustrations in Harper’s Weekly for August 1862, so that we jump from 2 August (Chapter I) to 23 August (Chapter V): three issues and forty-three pages. The serial had continued to run in parallel in the British and American weekly magazines.
The plot has been complicated by Frank’s cancelling his engagement with Magdalen, who has subsequently determined that the best way to secure her lost inheritance is to marry Noel Vanstone. However, the legality of this marriage could certainly be challenged since she will have married under the pseudonym “Susan Bygrave,” the supposed niece of “Mr. Bygrave” (in fact, Horatio Wragge), who has taken a lease on the North Shingles Villa, Aldborough, not far from Sea-View Cottage, which Noel Vanstone has inherited from his father. Wragge’s object is to get the cunning housekeeper out of the way, perhaps as far away as Zurich, Switzerland, where she has an invalid brother in ill-health. However, Mrs. Lecount is preparing her own measures to counter Magdalen’s growing influence over her employer. Suspense now rises as the housekeeper seems to recognise “something vaguely familiar . . . in the voice of this Miss Bygrave” (148). The reader wonders whether she will connect Magdalen with her persona of Miss Garth. Just as she has snuffed her candle and gone to bed Mrs. Lecount makes the connection. Shaken, she takes a dose of sal-volatile as she attempts to penetrate the conspiracy against her master.
The illustrator’s task, then, was to distinguish middle-aged Mrs. Lecount from the youthful Magdalen: her face and form are much fuller, her hair is shorter, and her nose more rounded. In particular, her neck is much thicker and less elongated, and, of course, the astute volume reader has the accompanying text to assist in the identification. The vignette presents no such problem as Captain Wragge is far less solicitous with Magdalen, and the woman’s mode of dress is certainly not Magdalen’s. In the vignette, the scene shifts to the seashore on the next day as Wragge attempts to separate Noel Vanstone and Magdalen from the scrutiny of Mrs. Lecount as the group walk near the ruined mediaeval convent on the seashore at nearby Dulwich.
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.
