No Name by Wilkie Collins

published 1862

[Magdalen is impersonating her older governess in order to meet people she considers her enemies]

The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for the amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress which she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material called "alpaca"), of a dark-brown colour, with a neat pattern of little star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom of this dress was the only milliner's ornament which it presented—an ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to an elderly lady….

[Some time later]After placing these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe once more. It only contained one other summer dress—the plain alpaca gown which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.

observations: Should be read with earlier entry on the book.

A lot is made to ride on this dress, perhaps a little unconvincingly, including Mrs Lecount crawling round the floor near the chair in which Magdalen sits, in order to cut out a tiny bit of the skirt. This is going to be ‘proof’ of the impersonation; with some dramatic irony Magdalen keeps almost getting rid of the dress, but doesn’t, leaving herself open to discovery.

Alpaca turns out to be a fabric ‘invented’ – if that is the word - by the textile magnate Sir Titus Salt. Apparently after coming across bales of wool of the alpaca, a kind of lama, he had it worked into a lustrous cloth which became very popular. (The Duchess of Denver, in Dorothy L Sayers Busman’s Honeymoon, claims that Jane Eyre gets married in alpaca – ‘so gloomy to have your bride, however bigamous, insisting on grey alpaca’- see this entry, though actually it is ‘a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk’ as we find here.)

I explained in this entry that it is always quite difficult to find pictures of clothes with spots on – I have no idea why this is. In general the picture above is an impressionistic illustration: no spots, and more of a reddish-brown. But it is an actual governess picture, of roughly the right era, by Vasily Perov. 

Earlier Collins (who gives us plenty of detail about clothes) describes Magdalen’s mother and sister: ‘the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders; the second more simply attired in black’ which matches nicely this picture by  Alfred Stevens:

 

-- he obviously had a couple of shawls in the studio and made good use of them: they appear in many of his pictures. He has featured on the blog before here. The picture is from the Athenaeum website.

Collins' Woman in White has also featured on the blog.