No Thoroughfare
At twenty-five and owner of his own business, Walter Wilding thought his world was secure, but it was about to be rocked to its foundations.
1867
At twenty-five and owner of his own business, Walter Wilding thought his world was secure, but it was about to be rocked to its foundations.
1867
‘No Thoroughfare’ came out in 1867 as both a novel and a play, and was co-authored by Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins. It is essentially a thriller, but it has some familiar Dickensian touches, such as the moral that character is what matters, not parentage or wealth.
WHEN a tearful mother left her baby son at London’s Foundling Hospital, she went away knowing only that they had named him ‘Walter Wilding’. He was eleven when she returned and claimed him by that name, lavishing a mother’s love on him until she died thirteen years later.
As her only heir, at twenty-five Walter was now the proprietor of a prosperous vintner’s business, and he engaged a housekeeper, a former Foundling nurse, to manage his home. However, the nurse revealed that he was not the Walter Wilding his mother had brought to the hospital. That Walter Wilding was taken away at once, she believed to Switzerland.
Overcome with the feeling that he had wronged this boy, our Walter undertook to find him, but the trail always ended in ‘no thoroughfare’. The burden of his guilt consumed Walter, and he died soon after, having left his handsome property to the missing Wilding, if he be found within two years.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Who took Walter out of his orphanage?
A woman believing she was his mother.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
A woman left her baby boy at the Foundling Hospital. He was soon adopted. An English family took him to Switzerland.