Wilkie Collins

No Thoroughfare Wilkie Collins

The 'Overture' is set in the London Foundling Hospital. In 1835 a woman who has left her child there begs to know the new name he has been given, and is told it is Walter Wilding. In 1847 she returns to adopt the boy called Walter Wilding, whom she believes to be her son. Wilding grows up to be a successful wine merchant and in 1861 takes a new partner, George Vendale. On his first day Vendale visits Jules Obenreizer, the English agent for the firm's Swiss champagne supplier Defresniers. He meets Obenreizer's niece, Marguerite, and they fall in love despite Obenreizer's attempts to prevent their relationship. Wilding, meanwhile, learns from his new housekeeper, once a nurse in the Foundling Hospital, that he is not his supposed mother's son. That boy had been adopted and taken abroad, and a second boy given the same name. He determines to find the rightful owner of his fortune. All his investigations end in 'no thoroughfare' and he dies shortly after.