Armadale (122 page)

‘I hardly know…

5
.
mentioned between them
. The manuscript continues:

Depend on my acting for the best in his interests and in yours; and expect to hear from me again, as soon as I know how this strange discovery is to end. Very Truly Yours, Decimus Brock.

The chapter and the sixth monthly number finished at this point in the manuscript. Collins worked it up to get a better curtain line.

1
.
venomous little quarrel
. The manuscript reads ‘pretty little quarrel'.

2
.
the mixed train
. i.e. with first, second and third class passengers.

1
.
Michael Angelo was to Sir Joshua Reynolds
. Collins quotes at length Sir Joshua Reynolds's eulogy on Michelangelo in his fifth lecture in ‘To think, or be thought for' (1856), reprinted in Collins's
My Miscellanies
(1863). It seems likely that he may have re-read Reynolds's account of the Sistine ceilings in spring 1864, when he was in Rome and thinking out the plot of
Armadale
.

1
.
He rides the whirlwind
. Quoted from Joseph Addison's eulogy of Marlborough (‘who rides the whirlwind and directs the storm') in his poem
The Campaign
(1705).

2
.
‘The Death of Marmion'
,
‘The Battle of the Baltic'
,
‘The Bay of Biscay'
, ‘
Nelson
'. Marmion's death is an extract from Scott's poem on Bannockburn, 1808. The other recitations are appropriately nautical: the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1774–1844) wrote ‘The Battle of the Baltic'; the Irish dramatist Andrew Cherry (1762–1812) wrote ‘The Bay of Biscay'; the famous English tenor John Braham (1774–1856, see the ‘late Braham' below) wrote ‘Nelson'. Altick (pp.
467
–8) cites this scene on the Broads as an illuminating example of Victorian entertainment.

3
.
‘The Mistletoe Bough'
. A ballad by Nathaniel Bayly (1797–1839). ‘Poor Mary Anne' is a ballad by Braham, as Catherine Peters guesses. I am indebted to her for the identification of these songs.

4
.
‘Eveleen's Bower'
. From Irish Melodies (1801–34) by Thomas Moore (1779–1852). See Altick (p.
468
) for the popularity of Moore in Victorian parlour entertainments.

1
.
Hurle Mere
. As Nuel Davis records:

In the summer [1864] Collins cruised along the Norfolk coast in a yacht. [His brother] Charley joined him at Yarmouth in August and they explored one of the broads or marshes called Horsey Mere. Renaming it Hurle Mere, Wilkie introduced it into
Armadale
in one of the most dramatic and skilfully integrated bits of nature painting ever done in a novel.

For Martha Rudd's connection with Hurle Mere and nearby Winterton, see Clarke (pp.
110
–11) and Peters (p.
267
).

1
.
said the voice of young Pedgift
. Crossed out in the manuscript there follows:

‘And it's my opinion Miss Gwilt's place won't be a very easy one.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Allan in return.

‘Did you not notice how the Major and Miss Milroy looked?'

‘They looked surprised; and well they might at getting such a handsome woman as a governess.'

‘I don't mean how they looked at first, Mr Armadale. How did they look when Miss Gwilt made her excuses…'

2
.
by the first train
. The manuscript continues much as the text:

In any event – whether you succeed or whether you fail in confirming my
suspicions – write to me by return of post. If it is only to tell me you have received my letter, write! I am suffering under anxiety and suspense which, separated as I am from Allan, you alone can relieve.

Having said this, I know you well enough to feel that I need say no more.

This redundant information is dropped in subsequent editions.

3
.
it was red!
Richard Altick notes the Victorian prejudice against red hair (particularly ‘flaming red hair') and its ‘association… with female villainy'. Collins, however (in alliance with the Pre-Raphaelites), cast a glamour over this hitherto dubious tint and, as Altick guesses,
Armadale
may even have inspired a fashion for false red hair (Altick, p.
323
).

4
.
to the Thorpe-Ambrose estate
– . The manuscript continues:

In her footsteps and in hers only could the March of Doom advance on the bearers of that fatal name.

Looking, under the influence of that one unalterable conviction, at events as they had just happened, his mind saw and seized its new conclusion…

This mood of inevitable fatalism was lightened systematically by Collins in revising his manuscript.

1
.
Miss Gwilt Among the Quicksands
. In the manuscript, this section is entitled ‘Four Letters'.

2
.
I have been proved not to be myself
. There was a spate of personation cases in the 1850s and 1860s, climaxing in the sensational Tichborne case, to whose early stirrings Collins may well refer in
Armadale
. In April 1854, Sir Roger Tichborne was lost at sea. His mother, the dowager Lady Tichborne, refused to believe he was dead, and advertised for information concerning her son. In late 1865, an Australian butcher from Wagga Wagga, Arthur Orton, claimed to be the Tichborne heir. The case dragged on with various trials until the 1870s when a totally discredited Orton was sent to prison.

3
.
boa constrictor fed at the Zoological Gardens
. As Fred Kaplan (
Dickens
, New York, 1988, p.
359
) records, Collins's friend Dickens had nightmares about the horrific sight of the boa constrictors being fed live rabbits at the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens.

1
.
her residence at Thorpe-Ambrose
. Crossed out in the manuscript, there follows:

Mr Brock's letter of the third of July had reached Mr Brock's correspondent that morning. He had read it, and had set it aside with the sense of relief from responsibility which the writer had desired to produce in him.

The subject had since dropped out of his thoughts, and had left his mind free to occupy itself with other and nearer objects of interest. As he now sat waiting for Allan, he looked round the room, seeking the object of his suspicious distrust, and noted, as composedly as a stranger might have noted, certain changes which had been made in it on that day…

2
.
without knowing why
. The manuscript continues: ‘“I suppose it's the weather,” he said impatiently, as he took up his candle and went to bed.' In the manuscript the ninth number was to end here, but Collins wrote a better curtain line.

1
.
Saturday
. The manuscript has ‘yesterday'.

1
.
Worth makes the Man… leather and prunella
. Proverbial, from Pope's Essay on Man, 4. 203.

2
.
a ladies' medical man
. Collins's portraiture of Dr Downward seems to owe something to Thackeray's Dr Firmin, in
The Adventures of Philip
, which preceded
Armadale
in the
Cornhill Magazine
.

3
.
absence of any other information, sir,' he resumed
. The manuscript continues:

and in the face of what the cabman has just said to us, I see only one other alternative. We must take it for granted that my notion about these people at Pimlico is wrong, and that they really are deceiving us for some purpose of their own. What do you say…

1
.
the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park
. The Crystal Palace which opened in 1851; the greatest public exhibition of its kind ever mounted in Britain. As Altick notes (p.
422
), there are relatively few date markers of this kind in the narrative of
Armadale
.

2
.
five shillingsworth of human labour and electric fluid
. i.e. electrical current (‘fluid' was a common synonym at this period). This detail seems to have been put in Collins's mind by an article on the ‘Electrical Telegraph' in Cornhill, July i860. Wire telegraphs (run by, and alongside, the railroad system) had been widely used since the 1840s.

3
.
learnt his profession at the Old Bailey
. A broad hint that Downward is an abortionist. Collins hints at Oldershaw's parallel procuring activities in a number of places in
Armadale
(see Altick, p.
543
).

1
.
a prison, in the present tender state of public feeling
. Collins is reflecting bitterly here on the recent acquittal of the Scottish arsenical poisoner, Madeleine Smith. Smith had an affair with, and became secretly affianced to, a Glasgow shipping clerk, Emile L'angelier. A richer and older suitor came along. L'Angelier threatened to expose Smith, by means of her letters to him. In response Smith (as Collins, and many other observers firmly believed) poisoned him. The lovers' letters were introduced into evidence in the trial (which may have given Collins some ideas for
Armadale
). In her defence, Smith claimed she had bought arsenic, shortly before L'Angelier's death, for cosmetic purposes (which may have suggested to Collins the link between Lydia Gwilt and Maria Oldershaw). (See Mary S. Hartman,
Victorian Murderesses
, New York, 1977, Chapter Two and Altick, p.
525
.)

1
.
I believe in mesmerism
. Mesmerism had been popularized by John Elliotson (1791–1868), a friend of Dickens and Collins's physician for a short period before
Armadale
. As Catherine Peters points out, Collins wrote sympathetic articles on the subject of mesmerism for the
Leader
(at a period when Elliotson was under attack for his theories). As William Clarke records, while Collins was preparing
Armadale
, Caroline Graves was regularly mesmerizing him to help him withdraw from his opium addiction (Clarke, p.
103
).

2
.
and left them
. The manuscript continues:

‘I'll bet you another half-crown there's something wrong in that quarter,' said the first footman.

‘Thank you,' said the second. ‘When I've got half-a-crown to throw away I'll think of it.'

This was the end of the twelfth monthly part and Collins was working up his curtain line.

1
.
notes-of-hand
. IOUs, legally stamped, which would have to be renewed or retired by a certain date.

2
.
wings of a dove
. From the 1662 Anglican Prayer Book, ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then would I flee away and be at rest.'

3
.
fancy free
. A misquotation (on Oldershaw's part, not Collins's) from
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, II. i. 156.

4
.
and tried in vain
. The manuscript continues:

There are times when one's wits seem to desert one – and it was this helpless time with me.

Monday morning…

5
.
laudanum
. Collins was intermittently addicted to laudanum (a habit which he projects on to Lydia Gwilt). Laudanum – tincture of opium dissolved in alcohol – was an uncontrolled substance at this period.

6
.
than you suppose
. Crossed out in manuscript there follows a partially legible passage:

[I was] considering whether I had better not stop. When I began my letter, I was really angry enough to be bent on terrifying you with the whole truth. But the time I have passed in writing has calmed me down. My head aches and my hand is getting [?]

1
.
The nursery… bread and butter
. Byron,
Beppo
(1818), 39. It should be ‘leaps out' rather than ‘lisps out'.

2
.
It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation
. i.e. the temptation to poison her. The manuscript reads:

Well, well, Miss Milroy. I'm glad now that I resisted temptation, morning after morning, when I knew you were out alone in the park. I'm glad I waited till you yourself put the opportunity in my hands. Though you
did
take shelter from the thunderstorm under the tree, and though you
have
made the best use of your time since you forced him to ask you into his house, you are not Mrs Armadale yet…

3
.
actually jealous of Armadale, at his age
! Both Collins and Dickens had recently fallen in love with much younger women: Martha Rudd (nineteen when Collins met her in 1864) and Ellen Ternan (twenty-seven when Dickens met her in 1857)

4
.
domestic sentimentalists of the present day
! Collins attacks the sensation novel's critics, who valued instead the kind of domestic novel written by Anthony Trollope and Mrs Gaskell. Ironically, during its run in
Cornhill
,
Armadale
was accompanied by Gaskell's
Wives and Daughters
(August 1864–January 1866) and Trollope's
The Claverings
(February 1866–May 1867).

5
.
On this hint, as the man says in the play, I spoke
. The reference is to
Othello
, I. iii. 166. There are many dramatic references in
Armadale
, presumably reflecting Collins's and Dickens's passionate interest in amateur theatricals in the late 1850s.