The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins pdf book download

Book: The Woman in White

Author: Wilkie Collins

Posting Date: September 13, 2008

Release Date: July, 1996

Last updated: September 29, 2014

Language: English.

(✍️ This article is collected from this book 📚 (All Credit To Go Real Hero The Author of this book 📖) 🙏 Please buy this book hardcopy from anyway.)

🔍In This Book_____________________

The Woman in White is widely regarded as the first in the genre of 'sensation novels'. It follows the story of two sisters living in Victorian England with their selfish, uninterested uncle as their guardian. Marian Halcombe is the elder of the two sisters, and a remarkably ugly woman, but with courage, strength and resourcefulness in abundance. The younger, her beautiful half-sister Laura Fairlie, is engaged to a rich man by the name of Sir Percival Glyde.

🧾 You Fing On Book_______________

his hand, the golden Papa has a letter; and after he has made his excuse for disturbing us in our Infernal Region with the common mortal Business of the house, he addresses himself to the three young Misses, and begins, as you English begin everything in this blessed world that you have to say, with a great O. 'O, my dears,' says the mighty merchant, 'I have got here a letter from my friend, Mr.----'(the name has slipped out of my mind; but no matter; we shall come back to that; yes, yes--right-all-right). 

So the Papa says, 'I have got a letter from my friend, the Mister; and he wants a recommend from me, of a drawing-master, to go down to his house in the country.' My-soul-bless-my-soul! when I heard the golden Papa say those words, if I had been big enough to reach up to him, I should have put my arms round his neck, and pressed him to my bosom in a long and grateful hug! As it was, I only bounced upon my chair. My seat was on thorns, and my soul was on fire to speak but I held my tongue, and let Papa go...

📗 Front Page Of This Book______________

THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT

(of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing)

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's

resolution can achieve.

If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of

suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance

only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these

pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice.

But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged servant of the

long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place. 

As the

Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance

of importance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related

on hearsay evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (WalterHartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the

incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his

experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be

continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can

speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as

clearly and positively as he has spoken before them.

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story

of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness—with

the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and

most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events,

by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each

successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word.

Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eight years, be heard

first.

II

It was the last day of July. The long hot summer was drawing to a close; and

we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were beginning to think of the

cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and the autumn breezes on the sea-shore.

For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health, out of spirits,

and, if the truth must be told, out of money as well. During the past year I had

not managed my professional resources as carefully as usual; and my

extravagance now limited me to the prospect of spending the autumn

economically between my mother's cottage at Hampstead and my own chambers

in town.

The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London air was at its

heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was at its faintest; the small pulse of

the life within me, and the great heart of the city around me, seemed to be

sinking in unison, languidly and more languidly, with the sinking sun. I roused

myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left

my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs. It was one of the two

evenings in every week which I was accustomed to spend with my mother and

my sister. So I turned my steps northward in the direction of Hampstead.

Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mention in this place

that my father had been dead some years at the period of which I am now

writing; and that my sister Sarah and I were the sole survivors of a family of five

children. My father was a drawing-master before me. His exertions had made

him highly successful in his profession; and his affectionate anxiety to provide

for the future of those who were dependent on his labours had impelled him,

from the time of his marriage, to devote to the insuring of his life a much larger

portion of his income than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that

purpose. Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and sister

were left, after his death, as independent of the world as they had been during his

lifetime. I succeeded to his connection, and had every reason to feel grateful for

the prospect that awaited me at my starting in life.

The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the heath; and

the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in the shadow of the

cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother's cottage. I had hardly

rung the bell before the house door was opened violently; my worthy Italian

friend, Professor Pesca, appeared in the servant's place; and darted out joyously

to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody on an English cheer.

On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine also, the

Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction. Accident has made him the

starting-point of the strange family story which it is the purpose of these pages to

unfold.

I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meeting him at

certain great houses where he taught his own language and I taught drawing. All

I then knew of the history of his life was,

that he had once held a situation in the

University of Padua; that he had left Italy for political reasons (the nature of

which he uniformly declined to mention to any one); and that he had been for

many years respectably established in London as a teacher of languages.

Without being actually a dwarf—for he was perfectly well proportioned from

head to foot—Pesca was, I think, the smallest human being I ever saw out of a

show-room. Remarkable anywhere, by his personal appearance, he was still

further distinguished among the rank and file of mankind by the harmless

eccentricity of his character. The ruling idea of his life appeared to be, that he

was bound to show his gratitude to the country which had afforded him an

asylum and a means of subsistence by doing his utmost to turn himself into an

Englishman. Not content with paying the nation in general the compliment of

invariably carrying an umbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters and a white hat,

the Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his habits and

amusements, as well as in his personal appearance. Finding us distinguished, as

a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, the little man, in the innocence of his

heart, devoted himself impromptu to all our English sports and pastimes

whenever he had the opportunity of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could

adopt our national amusements of the field by an effort of will precisely as he

had adopted our national gaiters and our national white hat.

I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in a cricket-field; and

soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just as blindly, in the sea at Brighton.

We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together. If we had been

engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation I should, of course, have

looked after Pesca carefully; but as foreigners are generally quite as well able to

take care of themselves in the water as Englishmen, it never occurred to me that

the art of swimming might merely add one more to the list of manly exercises

which the Professor believed that he could learn impromptu. Soon after we had

both struck out from shore, I stopped, finding my friend did not gain on me, and

turned round to look for him. 

To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing

between me and the beach but two little white arms which struggled for an

instant above the surface of the water, and then disappeared from view. When I

dived for him, the poor little man was lying quietly coiled up at the bottom, in a

hollow of shingle, looking by many degrees smaller than I had ever seen him

look before. During the few minutes that elapsed while I was taking him in, the

air revived him, and he ascended the steps of the machine with my assistance.

With the partial recovery of his animation came the return of his wonderful

delusion on the subject of swimming. As soon as his chattering teeth would let

him speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must have been the Cramp.

When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me on the beach,

his warm Southern nature broke through all artificial English restraints in a

moment. He overwhelmed me with the wildest expressions of affection—

exclaimed passionately, in his exaggerated Italian way, that he would hold his

life henceforth at my disposal—and declared that he should never be happy.

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