Young Emigrants Research Articles

Will Ladislaw and Other Italians With White Mice

WILL LADISLAW AND OTHER ITALIANS WITH WHITE MICE Juliet McMaster University ofAlberta The well-heeledwidow, Mrs Dorothea Casaubon, has respectable relatives and friends who are eager to guard her from the upstart pretensions of the bohemian Will Ladislaw. Her sister Celia quotes the local phrase-maker: "Mrs Cadwallader said you might as well marry an Italian with white mice!" (Eliot 532). Dorothea ruefully ponders this label, and still remembers it months later, when other derogatory labels are being added. " · Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker · was a phrase which had entered emphatically into the dialogues ... at Lowick, Tipton and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of placard on poor Will ' s back than the 'Italian with white mice'" (829). The annotators of the Riverside, Penguin, Norton, and Garendon editions of Middlemarch are all silent on this rather intriguing comparison for Will Ladislaw; and since several generations of students of Middlemarch have sought information in vain, I accept the task of explanation. I feel particularly qualified, both as a long-time admirer of the much maligned hero of Middlemarch, and as one who reared hundreds ofwhite mice in her youth, including one who travelled with me (usually in my shirt) from Kenya to England and back. Italians have been frequently associated with white mice in Victorian England, both in fiction and history. I ' 11 start with the fiction. Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of Manchester life, Mary Barton (1848), features an Italian child with a pet white mouse, who together reinforce that novel ' s thesis that the most generous protectors of the poor are the other poor. Mary Barton, the working-class heroine, has much else on her mind as she hurries through the streets near her home: her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily, she saw a little Italian boy, with his humble showbox ,—a white mouse, or some such thing. (284) Victorian Review 16.2 (Winter 1990). Victorian Review The child is visually appealing, described as having "glittering tear-drops" hanging on his "long curled eye-lashes." "With his soft voice, and pleading looks, he uttered, in his pretty broken English, the word, ' Hungry! so hungry! ' " Mary, preoccupied with her own troubles, at first passes him by impatiently, telling him, "Oh, lad, hunger is nothing—nothing!" But soon she relents, and shows charity to her starving fellow-creatures, bringing them the last scraps of food from her home. The little foreigner revives as instantly as the little dog in Ruskin ' s The King ofthe Golden River (1851); and we are left with an appealing tableau in which the boy "poured forth his thanks, and shared her bounty with his little pet companion" (284). It is an unabashedly sentimental episode which reinforces the novel ' s appeal for charity to the needy, of whatever race or species, and its celebration of the mutual supportiveness of the poor. Italians and white mice are also indissolubly linked in the freelyassociating mind of Flora Finching in Little Dornt. Hearing that Amy Dorrit is in Italy, she promptly produces her cultural associations: In Italy is she really? . . . with the grapes growing everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice with them most humane . . . (590) Next after Vesuvius and its vineyards, apparently, Italy is famous for its young emigrants with their white mice. The most famous fictional Italian with white mice is undoubtedly the villainous Count Fosco of The Woman in White.1 Like other notable villains, Satan and Becky Sharp among them, Fosco is successful as a representative of evil because he is made plausibly attractive (in spite of his obesity). Marian Halcombe, the narrator who introduces him, is quite smitten by his charms (initially, at least). And his "extraordinary fondness for pet animals" is one of his attractive traits (242). Besides a cockatoo and two canaries, he keeps "a whole family of white mice," for which he has constructed, with his own hands, a gaily-painted wire pagoda. Marian Halcombe...

An Experimental Examination of an Artificial Dispersal Sink

Studies of artificial dispersal sinks (removal experiments) assume that they measure the dispersal pattern that would occur in an unmanipulated population. i conducted a removal experiment on the California ground squirrel, Spermophilus beecheyi , to test this assumption. The sex ratio of young immigrants removed from the artificial dispersal sink (0.72 males/female) was lower than that of young immigrants to an adjacent reference area (1.64 males/female), young immigrants to reference areas 1 km away (4.13 males/female), and young emigrants in an earlier study of the species (2.55 males/female). Similar results occurred in a study of the Arctic ground squirrel, S. parryii , conducted by J. E. Green. I conclude that removal data cannot be assumed to represent an accurate measure of the dispersal, or the characteristics of dispersers, occurring in unmanipulated populations of ground squirrels.

New books

Abstract L'Indo‐Chine française : Étude politique, économique et administrative sur la Cochinchine, le Cambodge, l'Annam et le Tonkin. Par J.‐L. de Lanessak, etc. Avec 5 cartes. Paris : Félix Alcan, 1889. Pp. 760. The Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times. By Oscar Montelius, Ph.D., Professor at the National Historical Museum, Stockholm. Translated from the second Swedish edition, revised and enlarged by the Author, by Eev. F. H. Woods, B.D., Vicar of Chalfont St. Peter. With Maps and 205 Illustrations. London: Macmillan and Co., 1888. Pp. xvi. and 214. Price 14s. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. Vol. xiii., 1886–87. Inverness : Northern Chronicle Office, 1888. Pp. xiv. + 372. The Tour of Dr. Richard Pococke, Lord Bishop of Ossory, through Sutherland and Caithness in 1760, with Introduction and Notes by Daniel William Kemp. Printed at the Darien Press. Published by The Sutherland Association. Edinburgh, 1888. Sketches from a Tour through Holland and Germany. By J. P. Mahaffy and J. E. Rogers. London : Macmillan and Co., 1889. Pp. xv. and 271. Price 10s. 6d. The Land of Rubens: A Companion for Visitors to Belgium. By Conrad Burken Huet. Translated from the Dutch, and edited by Albert D. Vandam. London : Sampson Low and Co., 1888. Pp. 232. Price 3s. 6d. Switzerland: its Mountains, Valleys, Lakes, and Rivers. With 250 Illustrations. New and revised edition. London : J. S. Virtue and Co., 1889. Pp. 388. Price 15s. A Winter in Albania. By H. A. Brown ; Illustrations by 0. H. Brown. Pp. viii. and 395. London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden, and Welsh. 1888. Price 10s. 6d. Naples in 1888. By E. N. Rolfe and H. Ingleby. London : Trübner and Co. Price 7s. 6d, Pp. 262. The First Ascent of the Kasaï, being some Records of Service under the Lone Star, By Chaeles Someeville Lateobe Bateman, sometime Captain and Adjutant of Gendarmerie in the Congo Free State. With 57 Illustrations and 2 Maps. London: George Philip and Son, 1889. Pp. 185. Price 21s. The Least of all Lands : Seven Chapters on the Topography of Palestine. By William Miller, C.I.E., LL.D., Principal of the Madras Christian College, and Fellow of the University of Madras. London : Blackie and Son, 1888. Pp. 247. The Statesman's Year‐Booh for 1889. Edited by J. Scott Keltie, Librarian to the Royal Geographical Society. Twenty‐sixth Annual Publication. London : Macmillan and Co., 1889. Price 10s. 6d. Commercial Geography: based on the latest Researches and Statistical Returns. A complete Manual of the Countries of the World, their chief Centres of Trade and Means of Communication, their Natural Productions, Mineral Resources, Exports, Manufactures, etc. By Dr. Cael Zehden, Professor in the Handels‐Akademie of Vienna. Translated by Findlay Muiehead, M.A. London : Blackie and Son, 1889. Pp. 592. The Colony of New Zealand: Its History, Vicissitudes, and Progress. By William Gisboene. London : E. A. Petherick and Co., 1888. Pp. 360. Price 7s. 6d. The Northern Counties Red Book : Inverness, Northern Chronicle Office. Durch Bosnien. Von Svetozak Boeoevio’. Wien: Buch und Kunstdruckerei “ Stegermiihl.” The Florida of To‐day : A Guide for Tourists and Settlers. By James Wood Davidson, A.M. Pp. 254 ; with Maps and Illustrations. New York and London : D. Appleton and Co., 1889. Price 5s. A Guide to Trinidad: A Hand‐booh for the use of Tourists and Visitors. By J. H. Collens, Port of Spain. Second edition. London: Elliot Stock, 1888. Pp. 287. Price 6s. Making a Start in Canada : Letters from Two Young Emigrants. With an Introduction by Professor Alfred J. Church, M.A. Pp. xx. and 224. London : Seeley and Co., 1889. Price 2s. 6d.