Meeting place.

I have been re-reading Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White". The scene where Walter Hartright meets the mysterious woman takes place, as I now realise, at what coupossiblybly be the exact spot where my wife and I met for the first time; on the Finchley Road in London near the crossroads with Fortune Green Road (which becomes West End Lane) and Platt's Lane.

I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four roads met--the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to London. I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and was strolling along the lonely high-road--idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like--when, in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me.

Hartright's encounter with Anne Catherick may well have been much further down the Finchley Road and this is much more likely given the location of his Collins's childhood home on which Hartright's home may be based. In that case they may have met closer to Swiss Cottage but I wonder if the road would have been a 'lonely high road' this far south. He also intended to 'stroll home in the purer air by the most roundabout way I could take; to follow the white winding paths across the lonely heath; and to approach London through its most open suburb'.

As a further coincidence, my wife comes from Cumberland (now part of Cumbria) but not from the coastal part. Our meeting was a lot more pleasant at a bus stop which now no longer exists. Perhaps I should campaign for two blue plaques. One for us and one for Wilkie Collins.

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