Armadale (123 page)

6
.
a newspaper which is about to be started in London
. There were a large number of new newspapers started in the middle and late 1850s, following the lifting of the most burdensome of the old taxes (‘taxes on knowledge') in 1855. The most successful of the new i
d
. newspapers of the period was the
Daily Telegraph
, and Collins may be thinking here of the success that his former colleague on
Household Words
, G. A. Sala, had as a foreign correspondent for that paper.

7
.
I will or will not go abroad
. Crossed out in the manuscript there follows:

And suppose I put a kiss in the letter, and drew a line round it to show
where it is? and suppose I write under it ‘Patience, patience; and I'll send some more'? Who was the idiot who first said ‘Beauty was only skin deep'? You can't see anything under the skin – why should you…

8
.
Five o'clock
. The manuscript continues:

Another visitor
! No less a person than Mrs Milroy's nurse! Her excuse (for it was plainly nothing else) for coming to see me, is that it is heavy on her conscience to tell me the truth. She is aware that I believe Miss Neelie to be responsible for sending Mr Armadale to my reference in London; and she wishes to apprise me, from her own personal knowledge, that Miss Neelie really knew nothing about it [the manuscript then continues as in text from ‘and it all originated' to ‘medical care']. Having favoured me with these particulars, the nurse finished with a little cough and looked as if she expected to be made the depository of some confidence on my side.

A little friendly talk between us soon satisfied me of two things. One, that she is so far as ignorant as the major of Miss Milroy's meetings with Armadale. The other, that she had some communication with the servants at the great house, and that she suspects me of stopping here with designs on Armadale, which might make a confidential person like herself a purchaseable bargain to me, in the character of go-between. I thought it wise not to undeceive her. She knows Miss Milroy's habits as well as I do; and her suspicions, if confided with me, might turn Miss Milroy [my way?] Without therefore saying anything positive one way or the other, I thanked her for coming, gave her some silver (which I can ill spare) and took down an address in London at which I can write to her if I pleased. I was not sorry to see the door close on her. She is a dangerous woman, and if she waits till I write, she will wait long enough.

As to what she told me about Mrs Milroy, even if it is true, which I persist in doubting – it is of no importance now. I know that Miss Milroy and nobody
but
Miss Milroy – has utterly ruined my prospect of becoming Mrs Armadale of Thorpe-Ambrose – and I care to know nothing more. If her mother was really alone in the attempt to expose my false reference, the mother seems to me to be suffering for it any rate. And so, good bye to Mrs Milroy.

At an earlier stage, Collins apparently saw a part for the odious nurse in the subsequent narrative.

9
.
I see it
! The manuscript continues:

My door is locked. I am afraid of the people of the house. If any of them came in, they might see it in my face. I believe I look as I looked in the bygone time, when the people in authority came to me with their studied politeness, and their deadly calm, and said, ‘This way, if you please. The judge has taken his seat and the court is waiting for you!'

Gracious God! after going through all the unutterable horror of that time, am I going the same way again?

It came to me…

Collins evidently decided it would be more effective to bury all direct reference to Lydia's criminal past.

10
.
I read the letters
. The manuscript continues:

Most of them made me angry; but some of them made me cry. I daresay I am the wickedest woman breathing – the newspapers said it, I remember, at the time, and the newspapers are always right. I don't care. Most of them made me angry – but some of them made me cry.

I came to the last…

11
.
representing herself… drowned
. This seems to be another reference to the Tichborne case (see Book the Third, Chapter
XI
, note
2
). Collins may also have been thinking of another sensational ‘personation' case of the period, that of ‘Mrs Longworth-Yelverton'. This case also seems to have suggested to Collins part of Lydia Gwilt's subsequent marriage-conspiracy schemes.

During the Crimean War, Captain Charles Yelverton, a combatant in the war and heir to the Marquis of Avonside, met Maria Theresa Longworth, who was nursing as a Catholic Sister of Mercy (i.e. a lay nun). They evidently fell in love, and he probably seduced her. In 1857 Major Yelverton (as he now was) became the ‘husband' of Theresa Longworth by means of an irregular Scotch marriage. In the same year, the couple went through an unwitnessed form of service in a Roman Catholic church. In 1858, Major Yelverton left Theresa and ‘married' another woman (this time with a more regular ceremony). Mrs Longworth-Yelverton subsequently brought a suit against the Major for the ‘restitution of her conjugal rights'. Scottish and Irish courts declared her two ‘marriages' valid. Yelverton appealed his case before the House of Lords, and on 28 July 1864 it found in his favour: ‘Mrs Longworth-Yelverton' was merely personating his wife. The case aroused huge interest in England, and provoked a spate of ‘bigamy' and ‘is she or is she not his wife' novels – including one by Mrs Yelverton herself. (See ‘Bigamy: The Rise and Fall of a Convention', Jeanne Fahnestock,
Nineteenth-Century Fiction
, June 1981, 47–71.)

12
.
in your place
. The manuscript continues:

I read no farther. When I had got on, line by line, to those words, it all burst on my mind in an instant. There is no doubting, no denying, what has happened to me. The frightful temptation under which I now feel myself sinking, has come straight out of that other temptation to which I yielded in the bygone time.

This was eliminated, in proof presumably, as were other references to Lydia's psychopathic criminality.

1
.
the blacksmith at Gretna Green
. Collins was intensely interested in the vagaries of British marriage law, and this section,
Love and Law
, hints at his later sensation novel on the subject,
Man and Wife
(1870). The situation in Scotland and
Ireland had long been anomalous. As Dougald B. McEachen points out, ‘Easy Scotch marriages had been a-source of irritation to the English ever since the passing of Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act in 1753.' In the 1840s, Lord Brougham sponsored a bill that would eliminate irregular Scotch marriages. A law was finally enacted in 1856 (a year or two after the supposed action here) requiring that one of the parties in a Scotch marriage should have resided there for twenty-one days. As McEachen notes, ‘This law put an end to quick Gretna Green marriages, but otherwise left the Scots law on irregular marriages essentially unchanged.' In 1868, a Royal Commission reported on Marriage Statutes and their anomalies. Irregular marriage figures centrally later in
Armadale
. (See D. B. McEachen, ‘Wilkie Collins and the British Law',
Nineteenth-Century Fiction
, September 1950, 121–39.)

1
.
‘You mustn't bleed him, sir
'. Pedgift Junior has been reading Charles Reade's
Hard Cash
. In that novel, the Scottish Doctor Sampson, who treats his patients with unorthodox ‘modern' methods, sends a telegram to the hero with a list of instructions:

Out visiting when yours came. In apoplexy with a red face and stertorous breathing, put the feet in mustard bath and dash much cold water on the head from above. On revival give emetic; cure with sulphate of quinine. In apoplexy with a white face, treat as for a simple faint; here emetic dangerous.
In neither apoplexy bleed
.

There is a diatribe against bleeding in most of Reade's novels.

2
.
harden once more
. The manuscript continues:

His first suspicions of Mr Bashwood's motive – suspicions not even remotely approaching the truth – now dawned on his mind. After a moment's considering, he determined to state them openly, and to bring the interview in that way, if no other way, to an end.

One of us…

3
.
before he said anything more
. The manuscript continues:

It was quite plain to him that in putting the question which had so violently agitated the Deputy Steward, he had unintentionally offered Mr Bashwood a chance of misleading him, which Mr Bashwood had eagerly – too eagerly – accepted on the spot.

‘One thing is clear…

4
.
and in making the discovery within a fortnight from the present time
. This detail was, apparently, added in proof.

1
.
in my maiden name as ‘Miss Gwilt'
. It is a nice question as to whether by doing this (and knowingly falsifying the banns) Lydia is invalidating the marriage. Her lawyer's advice, a little later, seems to follow the normal legal wisdom that
so long as her husband is ignorant, and does not conspire with her, the marriage is valid – but vulnerable should he petition against its legality on the grounds that he was deceived. But Lydia is in murky legal waters. (See Fahnestock, pp.
58
–9: ‘Any error in the formalities could and in fact occasionally did annul an honestly intended marriage.') This situation was cleared up in the late 1860s, partly in response to pressure brought by novelists like Collins.

2
.
go no further
. Crossed out in the manuscript there follows:

His engagements are too numerous to permit him being my friend; and in the event of legal advice being required, he begged I would recommend the lady to apply to some other person. The meaning of all this was plain to me. ‘I can see plainly you are going the bad way again; and I won't run the risk of having anything to do with you.' If a lawyer's tongue ever went to the truth [illeg] that was what my lawyer would have said.

3
.
he will tell me
. In the manuscript there continues, crossed out:

The major must have received my letter yesterday afternoon, and something must have been done on the same day. If Armadale wrote to Miss Milroy from the hotel (as I firmly believe he did) by yesterday's post, he ought to hear from her tomorrow – and if this result is to make any change in his plans, I must know what the change is. My whole future actually depends on what that booby may do, between this and my wedding day!

4
.
After solemnly announcing
. The manuscript has ‘After informing her disconsolate swain'.

5
.
I hailed a passing omnibus, and was a free woman again
. In the late 1840s, horse-drawn omnibuses became more popular as taxes on them were lifted and various improvements were made in their design. Women were able to travel without hindrance in the lower, enclosed deck of the vehicle (men were expected to go to the open upper deck – or knifeboard – where they might smoke). As Altick notes, ‘when London was flooded with Crystal Palace visitors in 1851, buses really came into their own as a democratic means of travel' (Altick, p.
374
).

6
.
from the hotel
. The manuscript continues:

It is not ten o'clock yet. How am I to get through the long lonely hours before he comes. I can't read. If I had a piano – no even if I had a piano I could not touch it. Oh, the weariness of this empty, solitary day! If I could sleep through it from now to the evening!

Five o'clock…

7
.
Great Western… South Eastern… tidal train
. Lydia takes her cab from Paddington to London Bridge – the respective terminus stations of the two railway lines. The GPO head office was at Mount Pleasant, near King's Cross. Tidal trains (now called boat trains) were designed to meet ferries coming in, or leaving, at high tide. They would have appropriately flexible timetables through the year.

1
.
whose business is steadily enlarging
. The manuscript has a long, crossed-out passage emphasizing the despicable nature of the private detective, on the theme of ‘People paid this man to be shameless and pitiless (when their interest required it) and he was shameless and pitiless.' Collins may well have been thinking about investigations into his and Dickens's private lives. The private-detective industry effectively began with the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which for the first time made divorce generally available to the middle classes on the production of the necessary evidence of adultery and abuse. Collins draws a distinct line between the professional detectives of Scotland Yard (such as Sergeant Cuff in
The Moonstone
) and private detectives like James Bashwood.

2
.
a travelling quack-doctor
. Catherine Peters points out that ‘Madame Rachel Leverson's first husband was a chemist's assistant, who taught her to concoct cosmetics.'

3
.
till she was eight years old
. This odd detail, which recalls
Great Expectations
(1861), suggests that Collins was holding in reserve the possibility of revealing Lydia Gwilt's mysterious origins later in the narrative.

4
.
Miss Gwilt, in the character of a Nun
. Theresa Longworth was a lay nun when she met Captain Yelverton in the Crimea. (See Book the Fourth, Chapter
X
, note
11
.)

5
.
Women are queer creatures
. The manuscript continues: ‘Nine out of ten of them don't know what of them is uppermost half the time.' This was presumably deleted because of the mildly indecent misconstructions that could arise.