Armadale was written by Wilkie Collins and first appeared in The Cornhill Magazine (November 1864 to June 1866). Collins (1824-1889), an English novelist and opium addict, wrote mysteries and sensation novels. Unlike most mid-level novelists of his era, Collins is still well-thought-of and read today. Armadale is an example of why: it is an extremely entertaining novel with one of the century’s greatest villainesses, Lydia Gwilt.

Armadale begins in a small German town, where a dying Allan Armadale narrates his life story. When he was twenty-one he received property in the West Indies from his namesake, a wealthy cousin of his father. The property should have gone to the cousin’s son, but he had “disgraced himself beyond all redemption,”¹ so the senior Armadale gave it to younger Allan Armadale. Some weeks later a young man calling himself “Fergus Ingleby” arrives on Barbados, and he and Allan become fast friends, despite the fact that no one else likes Fergus. When an old admirer of Allan’s mother, Mr. Blanchard, sends word that he would like his daughter to meet Allan, and if things went well, marry and unite the two families, Allan is interested (he sees a portrait of her and is smitten with her) and tells Fergus about it. Fergus then poisons Allan and hops the next ship to Madeira, where the Blanchards are staying. By the time Allan recovers and catches up to Fergus, he has pretended to be Allan Armadale and married the daughter, Jane, with the help of Jane’s maid, and thereby gained the Blanchard’s property. Allan challenges Fergus to a duel, but Fergus flees rather than face Allan. Allan takes Mr. Blanchard’s yacht and pursues Fergus. The ship Fergus and Jane are on is caught in a storm and waterlogged. Allan helps rescue Jane and then sees to it that Fergus drowns. Jane retires to England and gives birth to a son who she names “Allan Armadale.” The real Allan Armadale goes on to marry another woman who bears him a child, who is also called “Allan Armadale.” After the senior Allan Armadale tells his life story and gains a promise that the letter will be sent to his son once he comes of age, Allan dies, and the book jumps forward nineteen years, to 1851.

Jane has brought up her son Allan in seclusion in England with only her friend, Reverend Brock, to help her. Allan inherits Thorpe Ambrose, the Blanchard estates in England, but the maid who helped deceive the senior Allan Armadale about Fergus attempts to extort money from Jane, and Jane dies from the strain. Allan is immature, headstrong, and not very bright, and he befriends a stranger who is found wandering about Allan’s fields in a feverish condition. This stranger calls himself “Ozias Midwinter,” and is clearly troubled. Ozias inspires dislike in everyone who meets him, including the Reverend Brock, but Allan is immune to this and befriends Ozias, who in turn becomes passionately devoted to Allan. Brock, concerned about Allan, is wary of Ozias. Ozias and Allan go on a sailing trip together, and while on the trip Ozias receives the letter which Allan Armadale, Sr., dictated in Armadale’s prologue. Ozias learns that he is the other Allan Armadale, Allan Sr.’s legal child. Ozias shows this letter to Brock and tells Brock his life story, a long, sad story filled with misery and woe. Allan is the only person ever to show Ozias compassion, and Ozias swears to protect Allan, going so far as to burn the letter, the only proof that Ozias, not Allan, is the rightful heir to the Armadale properties. Brock becomes satisfied that Ozias’ heart is true and returns home. But later in the sailing trip Ozias and Allan become stranded on the wreck of the ship which Fergus and Jane had used to flee from Allan, Sr. While on the wreck Allan has a troubling dream featuring a drowning man and three dark visions, which Ozias, who now knows about how Fergus died, takes to be a supernatural prediction about Allan’s future.

Allan moves to Thorpe Ambrose, intending to make Ozias his steward. Allan hires a lawyer, Mr. Pedgift, who recommends Mr. Bashwood, an elderly man fallen on hard times, as an instructor for Ozias in the duties of stewardship. Allan then meets the tenants of the steward’s cottage, the Milroys, and their lovely daughter Eleanor, who Allan is attracted to. Meanwhile Jane’s former maid, the red-haired adventuress Lydia Gwilt, hears about Allan’s inheritance and unmarried status from her old accomplice, Mother Oldershaw, and launches a plot to marry Allan for his money. Lydia gets a job as a governess for the Milroys and weaves her web around Allan, who falls in love with her. Ozias does as well, even though he realizes that Lydia is the woman from Allan’s premonitory dream.

But the hateful Mrs. Milroy is paranoid about women taking her husband, Major Milroy, away from her, and tricks Allan into double-checking Lydia’s references. Allan and Mr. Pedgift find that Lydia lied about her references and is probably a criminal, but Allan refuses to bring these facts to light, and when Mr. Pedgift and his father, a canny older lawyer, confront Allan with what is likely the truth of Lydia’s background, Allan fires them. Allan also quarrels with Ozias, and during the quarrel a statue is knocked over, fulfilling one of the omens from Allan’s prophetic dream. Lydia discovers that Allan is in love with Eleanor Milroy and will never marry Lydia. She also discovers Ozias’ real name. She decides to marry him and then arrange for Allan to leave Thorpe Ambrose and then die, so that Lydia can reveal Ozias’ true heritage and take control of the estate as “Mrs. Allan Armadale.” Lydia travels to London and after reconciling Allan and Ozias secretly marries Ozias. She encourages Allan to stay away from Thorpe Ambrose and then moves to Naples with Ozias.

Unfortunately, Lydia has by this time actually fallen in love with Ozias. The first two months of their marriage are wonderful, and Lydia almost completely forgets about her plot against Allan, but Ozias’ doubts and fears begin to overwhelm him, and he becomes a stranger to her. This hurts Lydia so badly that when Allan arrives in Naples she is ready to follow through on her original scheme. But her attempt to poison Allan is unsuccessful. Lydia’s first husband (they never divorced–she is a bigamist) appears and tries to blackmail her, and she convinces him to sign on to Allan’s yacht and then murders him while at sea. Lydia’s husband acquiesces, and she moves to London (telling Ozias that family matters require her to go home) and awaits word of Allan’s death. When the newspaper prints an item about the wreck of Allan’s yacht, Lydia files a legal claim to Thorpe Ambrose. But Allan has only been robbed and abandoned, and he soon reaches England. Lydia flees and takes refuge at the sanitarium of Doctor Downward, an former accomplice. Lydia connives with Doctor Downward and Mr. Bashwood (who is madly in love with Lydia and allows himself to be used by her) to lure Allan to the sanitarium. Lydia attempts to use a poison gas on Allan, but Ozias, feeling that something is wrong, switches rooms with Allan. Ozias is poisoned by the gas but is not killed. Lydia discovers what Ozias has done and rescues him. With no hope left, she leaves a sad farewell letter for Ozias and kills herself. Ozias and Allan lie about how Lydia died so that her reputation will not be further sullied, and Allan marries Eleanor.

Armadale is uneven. Like The Woman in White, its beginning is slow, and even later in the novel there are some patches when the reader’s interest might falter. Dickens is the inevitable comparison to Collins, and it is unfortunate but undeniable that Collins comes up short in a comparison between the two. Collins lacked Dickens’ knack for the light touch and the poetic description, and while Collins has his moments of wit and humor, there are not nearly as many of them as there are in Dickens. Collins does not have Dickens’ insight into human nature, and Collins does not have Dickens’ ability to reach the heights and depths of bathos and pathos. As T.S. Eliot said, “Collins...was a Dickens without the genius.”²

But while Dickens is Collins’ superior in manipulating the readers’ emotions, Collins is also good at it, and it is in that area that Armadale excels. (Eliot wrote of Armadale that it “has no merit beyond melodrama, and it has every merit that melodrama can have.”³ Both Lydia Gwilt and Ozias Midwinter become sympathetic–Ozias more than Lydia–and there are moments when Ozias’ story and portrayal are genuinely affecting. When Mr. Brock, who mistrusts Ozias, asks Ozias to stay away from Alan, Ozias responds:

"I have done what I could, sir," he said to Mr. Brock, while Allan was asleep in the railway carriage. "I have kept out of Mr. Armadale's way, and I have not even answered his last letter to me. More than that is more than I can do. I don't ask you to consider my own feeling toward the only human creature who has never suspected and never ill-treated me. I can resist my own feeling, but I can't resist the young gentleman himself. There's not another like him in the world. If we are to be parted again, it must be his doing or yours not mine. The dog's master has whistled," said this strange man, with a momentary outburst of the hidden passion in him, and a sudden springing of angry tears in his wild brown eyes, "and it is hard, sir, to blame the dog when the dog comes."⁴

There are several scenes where ordinary descriptive text gives way to something more moving. In his description of Ozias’ painful upbringing Collins shows no small amount of sympathy for the poor, and the story of Ozias’ childhood will be affecting even to the jaded modern reader.

Lydia Gwilt becomes more sympathetic as the novel progresses. She is still a wonderful villain, an adventuress and one of the first modern femmes fatale, but the difference between her and someone like L.T. Meade’s Madame Sara (see: The Sorceress of the Strand) is that Madame Sara and similar female arch-villains never become three-dimensional. They are villains and types rather than characters. (This applies equally to male arch-villains; certainly Professor Moriarty [see: “The Adventure of the Final Problem”] and Dr. Quartz [see: The Dr. Quartz Mysteries] never advance beyond two dimensions and become realistic). Lydia Gwilt is a character, and a realistic one. For the most part she is a scheming, manipulative adventuress, but she is shown to have more aspects than just those, and by the end of the novel the reader understands how and why she developed as she did. The reader might well mourn her death. The Victorian audience was not prepared for a character like Lydia, and a reviewer for the Spectator called her “fouler than the refuse of the streets.”⁵ But the modern audience, more sympathetic to the plight of women, will side with her. She may lack the vitality of a Count Fosco (see: The Woman in White), but she is more recognizably human than the good Count.

But counterbalancing Lydia Gwilt is Allan Armadale. One of Armadale’s biggest flaws is that its putative hero is so unsympathetic. Collins seemingly meant to contrast Allan with Ozias: where Allan is empty-headed, Ozias is overwhelmed by his thoughts; where Allan is all impulse, Ozias is all conscience and regret; where Allan is overwhelmingly physical, Ozias is almost purely mental and emotional. Allan is bluff and hearty and an idiot. Almost from the first the reader has far more sympathy for poor, haunted Ozias than for the unreflective, callous dolt Allan. Lydia becomes far more sympathetic than Allan or the simpering Miss Milroy, the nominal heroine of Armadale.

However, even though Armadale is uneven, it is almost compulsively readable. Despite the novel’s slow beginning it picks up speed and (despite a few fits and starts later in the novel) arrives to a roaring finish. At times Lydia Gwilt’s scheming verges on brilliant, and her machinations are entertaining to follow. The reader will root for Ozias, a sympathetic character who deserved the happy ending, complete with marriage, that Allan was given. A few individual scenes are striking, and a scene on a shipwreck is particularly creepy. The novel’s plot is complicated, but the average reader should be able to follow it without undue strain. Although Armadale is usually described as a sensation novel, it also has large elements of the Gothic, especially the family secret which haunts the present. There are also elements from mystery fiction, including James Bashwood, an early version of the corrupt and unscrupulous private detective who would later appear in greater numbers in the twentieth century. Lastly, Collins more than any other major Victorian novelist made use of the unpleasant realities of sex, so that Armadale has a procuress (Mother Oldershaw), an abortionist (Doctor Downward), and a woman who has used her body to gain favors in the past (Lydia Gwilt herself). Collins could not deal with these things directly and was forced to imply them and allude to them, but his meaning is clear enough, and adds to the feeling that the world he describes is, in its way, as real as Dickens’. Armadale lacks the great good humor of The Woman in White but there is an undeniable drive to its grimness.

Armadale is great fun, and Lydia Gwilt, entertaining and evil and sympathetic, is one of the century’s best characters.

John Sutherland, “Introduction,” in Wilkie Collins, Armadale. New York: Penguin, 1995.

¹ Wilkie Collins, Armadale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899), 29.

² T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays: 1917-1932 (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1932), 378.

³ Eliot, Selected Essays, 383.

⁴ Collins, Armadale, 83.

⁵ “Armadale,” The Spectator, June 9, 1866, 18.