Armadale (120 page)

3
.
more than one woman on the island whom I had wronged beyond all forgiveness
. He implies that some discarded lover has poisoned him. For the 1860s fascination with domestic poisoners (especially women) see Altick, p.
525
.

4
.
barely twelve years old
. Forgery was a capital offence in 1832. Ingleby evidently reasoned that, if caught, the law would be lenient on the twelve-year-old Lydia.

5
.
Duelling had its received formalities… those days
. Duelling was largely abolished in England in the 1840s. The campaign against it was led by Prince Albert.

6
.
a contemplated emancipation of the slaves
. There were uprisings in the West Indies in 1831 (the slaves mistakenly believing they had already been emancipated) with some loss of life among the white planters and much destruction of property. Emancipation followed two years later in 1833, and the process was completed in 1838. This, and the abolition of protection duty for Jamaica sugar in 1846, led to the collapse of the island's economy.

7
.
on the Devonshire coast
. The manuscript has ‘on the English coast'.

8
.
changed no more
. Collins particularly wanted a funereal black line after ‘changed no more'. This is one of the few occasions on which his instructions to the printer were overridden.

1
.
eighteen hundred and fifty-one
. The plot takes place in this pivotal year of Victoria's reign. But as Altick notes, specific references to the year are minimal (there is one reference to the Great Exhibition, see Book the Fourth, Chapter
IV, note 1). Catherine Peters plausibly suggests that the novel should be assumed to be taking place in the early 1860s.

2
.
to say to him
. The manuscript continues:

Mrs Armadale opened the proceedings by following the wise precedent established by her sex, on all occasions when they stand in need of a man to help them. She put herself in the first place, and kept her business waiting behind her.

This was deleted in proof, apparently.

3
.
If Mrs Armadale… the responsibility of the son
. This paragraph was added at the proof stage.

4
.
O. M
. The manuscript has ‘O. M. 1846'. For the significance of the texts, see the Introduction.

5
.
the yacht… doesn't eat up everything
. See Kenneth Robinson: ‘In August 1864 [Wilkie Collins] was in Norfolk “studying localities” for
Armadale
, and taking time off to go sailing with Charles Ward and Pigott. About this time he was contemplating the purchase of a boat of his own, but never in fact acquired one' (Robinson, p.
187
).

6
.
socialist doctrines to a clergyman
. There were indeed socialist clergymen (‘Christian Socialists') like F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley in the late 1840s, early 1850s. Collins wants the reader to understand that Brock is not one of their disreputable party.

7
.
his tangled black beard
. Thus in the manuscript and the first edition of
Armadale
. Subsequent editions have ‘rough black beard' because the illustrator, George Thomas, depicted Ozias with a very scanty growth on his face. Thomas may not have had proofs early enough to reflect Collins's description accurately.

8
.
in a country town
. The manuscript has ‘in a northern town'.

9
.
the launch of the yacht
. The manuscript continues:

On other occasions they had diverged to other subjects – among the rest the question how ‘my friend Midwinter' (as Allan described him) was to get his living for the future. ‘My friend Midwinter' was to make a new start as a sculptor; he was to begin (having a wonderful knack at catching likenesses in clay) by modelling a little portrait statue of Allan, which was to be kept a secret till it was done and was then to be made a present to Allan's mother. Nobody but a good fellow would have made such a proposal as that. What more did Mr Brock want to know about him? His relations? He had said nothing about his relations – except that they had not behaved well to him…

This was changed in proof, presumably. With the deletion Ozias's sculptural talents are removed from the novel. Clearly, he was originally intended to fashion the statuette in Allan's dream that symbolically breaks later in the action (see pp.
142
,
398
).

10
.
wearing a gown and bonnet of black silk and a red Paisley shawl
. This sentence was added in proof. These articles of clothing are to feature significantly later as hallmark clues to Lydia Gwilt's identity (see p.
79
).

11
.
and had got it
. The manuscript continues:

but the money mattered nothing. Was it long since Mrs Armadale had seen her last? Yes; as long as all Allan's lifetime – as long as one and twenty years.

The 1866 reprint reads:

but the money was of no importance; the one thing needful was to get away before the woman came again. More and more surprised, Mr Brock ventured on another question. Was it long since Mrs Armadale and her visitor had last met? Yes; longer than all Allan's lifetime – as long ago as the year before Allan was born.

Collins evidently felt he had to be careful about dates here.

12
.
Did she remain under your father's care?
The manuscript reads:

‘Did your father bring her up?'

‘I brought her up – I took her with me when we left England for Madeira. I had my father's leave…'

13
.
continental travelling
. The manuscript reveals that Collins originally intended to send the men to Germany, and it was a page or two before he curtailed their trip.

14
.
of his affliction
. The manuscript continues:

and had received an answer, which he now put in Mr Brock's hands. He requested the rector to read the letter; to remember what Midwinter's conduct had been throughout under circumstances infinitely painful to himself; and then to say whether there was any harm (now that Allan was in London and on the spot) in his calling to say good-by before he started for Germany the next morning. What was Mr Brock to do? Midwinter's letter of sympathy was delicately and considerately written; and Midwinter's conduct had unanswerably…

This was dropped in proof, presumably.

15
. ‘
Very oddly
,'
said the rector to the lawyers
. The manuscript reveals that Collins rewrote this section of the plot extensively. Most of his changes are irrecoverable, except for a deleted last paragraph:

[Allan has just been speaking to the lawyers] in his own persistently original way.

‘One thing at a time, gentlemen,' said the young philosopher to his legal advisers. ‘I'm satisfied for the present with knowing that I've got the estate. I'll go and live there, if you please, when I know I can keep it. If it had been anywhere else I daresay I should have been in a violent hurry to go there at once. But they ill used my mother at Thorpe-Ambrose in
her lifetime; and they are ill using her there now after her death. I'll wait to be Squire of the Parish till I can set her memory right in the neighbourhood. When we have got our news from Madeira, let me know. While we are waiting for it, I shall go back to Somersetshire and finish my yacht.

Their client being at that moment legally in possession of the estate, the lawyers left him free to act on his own singular resolutions – merely stipulating that if he went cruising at sea, he should keep within easy reach of the English shore, and should inform them from time to time at what coast-towns a letter would reach him. So the matter rested for the present, while the commissioners on both sides were on their way to Madeira.

The dispute as to whether Allan's mother had been legally married would have taken the narrative in significantly different directions.

16
.
Isle of Man
. In July–August 1863 Collins visited the island and found it ‘the one inaccessible place left in the world'. He crossed the Sound to the Calf of Man which he described as ‘wild and frightful, just what I wanted – everything made for my occult literary purposes' (Robinson, p.
182
).

17
.
to inquire for letters
. The manuscript continues: ‘On the fifth day, the Rector found a letter from Somersetshire waiting for him at the hotel…' The striking detail of Allan ignoring the letter which will completely change his life was added in proof.

1
.
Chapter II
. At this point in the manuscript there is a note: ‘3rd monthly Part – not complete yet. Another Chapter to follow. July 27th. WC.' The third monthly part was published in January 1865.

2
.
the Broomielaw
. A street in Glasgow.

3
.
the bridge at Bristol
. Isambard Brunei's famous suspension bridge over the Severn. Work on it was started in 1832 and it was finished in 1864 (which makes the reference slightly anachronistic here). Collins may intend the reader to remember (in view of Ozias being a Creole) that Bristol was a city enriched by the African slave trade.

4
.
which brought me last night from my room to yours
. Later editions have ‘which brought me from my room to yours'.

5
.
If the conjecture… startling conclusion
. This sentence was added in proof.

1
.
‘a wet sheet… follows free.'
Slightly misquoted (‘sail' should be ‘sea') from the poem by Allan Cunningham (1784–1842). Catherine Peters points out that Cunningham was the biographer of Wilkie Collins's godfather, Sir David Wilkie.

2
.
Governor Smelt
. More correctly the ‘sub-governor'. Leonard Smelt (1719–1800) was a military engineer and expert in fortifications in service with the Royal Family.

3
.
College of King William
. Boys' school on the Isle of Man made famous by Dean Farrar (1831–1903), who set his improving novel
Eric, or Little by Little
(1858) there, masked under the pseudonym ‘Isle of Roslyn'.

4
.
the wilds of Australia
. Collins may be recalling the Australian expedition of R.O. Burke and William J. Wills, described in the
Annual Register
, 1862. They eventually died of thirst.

1
.
while we are brothers still
. The abolitionists' slogan, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?', would echo for many readers here, given the fact that Ozias is black and Allan white.

2
.
Horrible, wasn't it?
As he records in his ‘Appendix', Collins explored the Isle of Man for local colour for
Armadale
in summer 1863. According to Nuel Davis (working from Collins's later testimony to the Manx novelist, Hall Caine), while cruising in a yacht off the island's coast with Pigott,

Collins saw a lunatic caper along the rocks pursued by a farmer and his wife. At Castletown, the capital, he learned that this sight was not so uncommon as one might think. Every Manx family was expected to take care of its own insane, with the result that many were kept chained in sheds. Wilkie, though he used the fact in
Armadale
, was not pleased to find material so perfectly suited to its mood. Sir James Gell, the Attorney General, later told Hall Caine about the results of Wilkie's visit. After several letters written by Wilkie to
The Times
, said Sir James, the Home Office told the insular Legislature that if they did not quickly make provision for their indigent lunatics the imperial authorities would do so for them. (Davis, p.
242
)

This concern for lunatics was in line with Charles Reade's current, high-profile campaign for the abolition of private lunatic asylums. As Altick notes (p.
545
), in 1858 there had been three highly publicized accounts of wrongful incarceration. Reade launched a series of letters to the press on ‘“Our Dark Places” – the unregulated mad-houses' (Altick, p.
546
). A Commons Select Committee was appointed to look into the provision of care for lunatics and their property. Reade kept up the pressure with his novel
Hard Cash
, whose plot hinges on the (sane) hero's incarceration in a private lunatic asylum. Collins returns to the topic in his depiction of Dr Downward's ‘Sanatorium' later in
Armadale
.

3
.
hurts me
. The manuscript continues:

The straightforward simplicity of Allan's appeal to that past time which his friend's memory held sacred seemed to work an instant revolution in Midwinter's mind. [The passage that follows in the text, down to ‘dread
of wounding the sympathies of his friend', was added in proof. The manuscript then continues:] ‘Why distress him?' he whispered to himself. ‘Why resist him when the mischief's done, and the caution comes too late? What
is
to be
will
be. What have I to do with the future? and what has he? This ship—'

He rose and looked round him. Mr Brock's words of caution before the Confession was burnt recurred to his memory. There was no shadow of doubt in his mind now, that the woman whom the rector had met in Somersetshire, and the woman whose attempted suicide had opened Allan's way to Thorpe-Ambrose, were one and the same. ‘Are we at the end here?' he asked himself. ‘No we are only at another stage of the journey. There is worse than this to come – There is the woman behind us in the dark. Will Allan see her first or shall I?' He fell into deeper reflection – roused himself – and stepping hurriedly to the side of the vessel looked down at the channel of the Sound. ‘No swimming
there
!' he thought. ‘Would it be for Allan's good – would it be the saving of him in the future – if I jumped in?'