Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation

by Andrew Lycett

  The combination of Wilkie’s opium intake and his chronic illnesses contributed to a coarsening in his later fiction, which lacked the verve of his earlier work. Although he wrote many interesting novels during his last fifteen years, they were often vehicles for his ideas rather than his creative imagination.

  His heyday as a novelist occurred between the publication of Basil in 1852 and Man and Wife in 1870. During this period he helped develop the sensation genre as a potent and irreverent guide to the hidden side of Victorian existence, highlighting its hypocrisies in a manner that was often more informative and entertaining than Dickens’s. The criticism that his books relied too much on plot was overplayed, the literary equivalent of the brickbats hurled at the Pre-Raphaelites for their excessive detail. Wilkie may have planned his stories carefully, but his manuscripts attest to the spontaneity and intensity of his writing. Along the way, he created a host of memorable characters, from the feckless Basil and the lively Magdalen Vanstone, through the villainous Count Fosco and the redoubtable Marian Halcombe, to the honourable Sir Patrick Lundie. The Moonstone stands out as one of the most sophisticated novels of the nineteenth century.

  After his death, Wilkie’s reputation suffered a downturn, the nadir coming when the library collection established in his name in the East End of London was transferred to a new site and lost. The revival began quietly, with T.S. Eliot leading the way with his piece on Wilkie and Dickens in the Times Literary Supplement in 1927. At around the same time, Dorothy Sayers started work on a biography of Wilkie. Thirty years later she was forced to retire from the project, having been defeated by her inability to make any headway into the story of Wilkie’s two women, Caroline and Martha.

  This problem became less imposing as a result of the forensic biographies written in 1989 by William Clarke, the husband of one of the last direct descendants of Martha Rudd, and in 1991 by Catherine Peters. These two books coincided with renewed interest in Wilkie among academics, who discovered that he offered an illuminating and often unusual entrée into the period. He wrote about people at the margins of nineteenth-century society – the dispossessed, the disabled and the mad; he offered interesting observations on science and psychology; and he was sympathetic to women, whom he regarded as victims of a patriarchal legal system. All these topics tallied with fields of study that were finding their way onto university syllabuses.

  Helped by new, well-annotated editions from Oxford, Penguin and other publishers, the general public began to rediscover and enjoy Wilkie’s books. His stories proved exciting and readable – a welcome antidote to some of the crimped literature that was fashionable in the late twentieth century. And the more Wilkie was studied, the more he came to be regarded as an innovative writer playing with fictional forms, using multiple narrators, and even dabbling with alternative consciousness – themes that came together in his masterpiece The Moonstone. By the late twentieth-century, his influence could be seen in a range of unabashed populist authors, such as Sarah Waters and Susan Hill.

  It is an irony typical of Wilkie that his expansive novels are returning to fashion at a time when people’s attention spans have been reduced by exposure to electronic media. It is also a testament to his sheer page-turning readability. In this context, his own colourful life – with its vertiginous changes of fortune, passed in close proximity to the literary and artistic establishments of his day – is a fitting and most engaging reflection of the complexities of the Victorian age he inhabited.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS FOR NAMES AND PUBLICATIONS

  WC – Wilkie Collins

  WmC – William Collins

  HC – Harriet Collins

  CAC – Charles Allston Collins

  KC – Katey Collins (née Dickens)

  CD – Charles Dickens

  CW – Charles Ward

  FL – Frederick Lehmann

  NL – Nina Lehmann

  DW – David Wilkie

  EP – Edward (Smyth) Pigott

  WHH – William Holman Hunt

  HW — Household Words

  P. – Pilgrim edition of Dickens’s Letters (see Bibliography)

  RP – Reserved Photocopy (in BL)

  ODNB – Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

  ABBREVIATIONS FOR LIBRARIES AND OTHER SOURCES OF LETTERS

  BL – British Library

  NYPL – New York Public Library

  NAL – National Art Library

  NPG – National Portrait Gallery

  Mitchell – Mitchell Library, Glasgow

  Berg – Berg Collection, NYPL

  Princeton – Firestone Memorial Library, Princeton University, NJ

  Houghton – Houghton Library, Harvard University

  Texas – Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  Huntington – Huntington Library, San Marino, California

  Fales – Fales Library, New York University

  Folger – Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC

  Harrowby – Harrowby Manuscripts Trust, Sandon, Staffordshire Manx – Manx National Heritage, Archives and Public Library,

  Douglas, Isle of Man

  Bolton – Bolton Central Library, Bolton, Lancashire

  Lewis – Paul Lewis Collection, UK

  Hanes – Susan Hanes, USA

  Rosenbach – Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, Pa.

  Maine – Maine Historical Society, USA

  Clarke – Faith Clarke Collection, UK

  Canterbury – Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK

  Illinois – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill.

  Pembroke – Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK

  I have tried, as far as possible, to give the names of the libraries and other institutions where the various letters can be consulted. As far as Wilkie Collins is concerned, his correspondence is also gathered in the four volumes of the Collected Letters, edited by William Baker, Andrew Gasson, Graham Law and Paul Lewis (see Bibliography).

  In referencing books, I have used a shortened title if the full title of the book can be found in the Bibliography.

  Given the wide range of texts, I have not provided references for quotations from Wilkie Collins’s own fictional works. A list of these can be found on here. Apart from the original editions, Chatto and Windus, Wilkie’s publisher towards the end of his life, put out a variety of comprehensive editions, including the New Illustrated Library and the Piccadilly Novels. Many of Wilkie’s books are still in print. I recommend the well-annotated versions from Oxford and Penguin.

  1 ‘Nothing in this world is hidden for ever.’: Wilkie Collins, No Name, First Scene, Chapter 4

  2 For a version of his physical appearance and domestic set up, see Yates, ‘Celebrities at Home’, reprinted from The World, 26 December 1877

  3 ‘his tiny delicate hands’: Nathaniel Beard referred to Wilkie’s ‘pretty little hands and feet, very like a woman’s’ in ‘Some Recollections of Yesterday’, Temple Bar, July 1894

  4 ‘those most mysterious of mysteries’: Henry James, Nation, 9 November 1865, pp.593–5

  5 ‘the first and greatest of English detective novels’: T.S. Eliot, ‘Wilkie Collins and Dickens’, Times Literary Supplement, 4 August 1927. T.S. Eliot also referred to The Moonstone as ‘the first, the longest and the best of Modern English detective novels’ in his introduction to the book, published by OUP in 1928

  6 ‘the Regent’s Park’: the definitive article would later be lost, for this and the New and Marylebone Roads

  7 ‘lucrative appointment’: WmC to Washington Allston, 4 November 1818, quoted WC, Memoirs

  8 ‘Shandean profusion’: WC, Memoirs

  9 ‘his painting Disposal of a Favourite Lamb’: for details of WmC’s paintings, see appendix to WC, Memoirs

  10 ‘simple yet impressive’: WC, Memoirs

  11 ‘an unpublished memoir’: now at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  12 ‘honourably shrunk’
: WC, Memoirs

  13 ‘to abstain from any compliance’: resolution made on Sunday, September 29th, 1816 in St Clement’s Church at Hastings, see WC, Memoirs

  14 ‘opposite to each other by the fireside’: Wright (ed.), Correspondence of Washington Allston

  15 ‘the most beautiful Fancy-figure I ever saw’: quoted Holmes, Coleridge

  16 ‘poetical associations’: WC, Memoirs

  17 ‘helping William gain election’: WC, Memoirs

  18 ‘Sommerset [sic] House’: Washington Allston to WmC, 18 May 1821, quoted Wright (ed.), Correspondence of Washington Allston

  19 ‘sighing for years’: Cunningham, Life of Sir David Wilkie

  20 ‘Edward Bulwer Lytton conjured up’: Flanders, The Invention of Murder, p.43. This book provides much of the background on the Thurtell case

  21 ‘When Wilkie Collins and his friend’: see Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

  22 ‘He sees’: WC, Memoirs

  23 ‘simply a gentleman, mild and pleasing’: article by ‘A Lady’, Dublin Literary Gazette, 15 May 1830

  24 ‘whatever of poetry and imagination’: Men and Women, Vol.III, No.36, Saturday 5 February 1887, pp.281–2

  25 ‘nest of portrait painters’: quoted Taylor, Life of Benjamin Haydon

  26 ‘Your godson grows a strapping fellow’: WmC to David Wilkie, April 17 1828, WC, Memoirs

  27 ‘No one attempted to approach’: WC, Memoirs

  28 ‘I could go on’: WmC to HC, 2 October 1828, quoted WC, Memoirs

  29 ‘Here he first met’: see WC, Memoirs. Irving’s celebrity status was lampooned in Hazlitt’s ‘The Spirit of the Age’, 1825

  30 ‘Mr Dodsworth continues his sermons’: WmC to HC, 17 October 1831, quoted WC, Memoirs

  31 ‘to Mr Dodsworth’s, heard an excellent sermon’: WmC to HC, 2 September 1833, Morgan. For background on William Dodsworth see his ‘Autobiographical Memoir’ in From Reformation to the Permissive Society: a miscellany in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Lambeth Palace Library, edited by Melanie Barber and Stephen Taylor with Gabriel Sewell, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010

  32 ‘The worthy Academician’: Story, Linnell

  33 ‘Go on praying’: letter of 4 October 1835 from Weston House, near Chipping Norton, quoted WC, Memoirs

  34 ‘At home very poorly’: HC diary, 22 November 1835, NAL

  35 ‘by the blessing of God’: WmC to HC, 17 October 1831, Morgan

  36 ‘says you may with much chance of benefit’: WmC to HC, 2 September 1833, Morgan

  37 ‘a popular educative series for youth’: William would have approved of Taylor’s preface to his book on Bunyan, which warned parents against expecting their children to read ‘all the many hours a wet Sabbath presents’, lest they ‘make that day hated, which ought to be loved’: http://tarquintarsbookcase.blogspot.com/​2009/10/before-fodors-there-was-​reverend-isaac.html

  38 ‘the society of Christians’: written 26 May 1834, see WC, Memoirs

  39 ‘quite out of his element’: WC to Richard Dana Jr, 17 June 1850, Texas

  40 as he told David Wilkie: 14 January 1837, WC, Memoirs

  41 ‘sang, chiefly in Italian’: Mrs E.M. Ward, Reminiscences, p.34

  42 ‘a very sincere kind of man’: Edward M. Ward to his father Charles, 8 April 1838, quoted Dafforne, Life and Works

  43 ‘fallen in love with a woman’: see Ernst Freiherr von Wolzogen, Wilkie Collins: Ein biographisch-kritischer, Versuch, 1885

  44 ‘gave us . . . in a carriage one day’: CD to Georgina Hogarth, 25 November 1853, Berg, P. v7, p.210

  45 ‘Willy very tiresome all day’: HC diary, 24 July 1837, NAL

  46 ‘in disgrace again’: HC diary, 6 October 1837, NAL

  47 ‘After a short stay with the Carpenters’: see DW to Miss Wilkie, 19 August 1838, Cunningham, The Life of Sir David Wilkie

  48 ‘all in the highest spirits’: DW to Miss Wilkie, 19 August 1838, Cunningham, The Life of Sir David Wilkie

  49 ‘Cole published a 136 page pamphlet’: London, Hatchard’s, 1834

  50 ‘assumes a more than papal infallibility’: Atheneaum, No. 363, pp.740–1, 11 October 1834

  51 ‘nothing new here’: WC to HC, 14 October 1840, Morgan

  52 ‘show-off manner’: WC to HC, 22 November 1839 and 14 October 1840, Morgan

  53 ‘£90 a year’: WC to Emanuel Deutsch, 20 November 1872, BL

  54 ‘The oldest of the boys’: ‘Reminiscences of a Story Teller’, Universal Review, 15 June 1888, p.183

  55 ‘French frog’: Yates, ‘Celebrities at Home’, pp.145–56

  56 ‘passion for pastry’: Universal Review, 15 June 1888

  57 ‘another of the principal’s arguments’: see A Manual of Practical Observations on our Public Schools, published by Seeley, Burnside and Seeley, 1847

  58 ‘If it had been Collins’: WC to William Winter, 3 September 1881, Berg

  59 ‘85 Oxford Terrace’: now 167 Sussex Gardens

  60 ‘begged his mother’: WC to HC, 14 October 1840, Morgan

  61 ‘two alarmist pamphlets’: ‘Anarchy and Order. Facts for the consideration of all classes in the community, more especially for the mechanic, artisan, &c.’ and ‘London, its Danger and Safety; suggestions for its present and future protection, etc.’, both published by Staunton and Sons, 9 Strand, in the revolutionary year of 1848

  62 ‘The Prison and the School’: published by Staunton and Sons

  63 ‘an hour or two in the day’: Men and Women, 5 February 1887

  64 ‘Don’t say a word’: WmC to HC, 10 August 1841, Morgan

  65 ‘Master at the great house’: WmC to HC, 10 September 1841, Morgan

  66 ‘but as I find’: ibid.

  67 ‘If it were not for the Academy’: Pope (ed.), Haydon Diary, v5, 15 June 1841

  68 ‘most amiable of men’: ibid., 5 October 1843

  69 ‘Rizzio’s blood: WC to HC, 13 June 1842, Pembroke

  70 ‘one knee on the ground’: WC, Memoirs

  71 ‘as deeply and brilliantly blue’: WC, Memoirs

  72 ‘Every sentence that fell’: WC to HC, 24 August 1842, Morgan

  73 ‘A woman is wanted in the house’: WC to HC, 1842/3, Morgan

  74 ‘In 1841 Joseph published’: A Winter in the Azores, John van Voorst, London, 1841, 2 vols

  75 ‘In an anonymously published book’: Evening Thoughts by A Physician, John van Voorst, London, 1850

  76 ‘confirmed a few months later’: 13 May 1844

  77 ‘Mrs C to be embraced’: WC to HC, 13 January 1844, Pembroke

  78 ‘(I) don’t take much interest in Matrimony’: WC to HC, 21 September 1844, Morgan

  79 ‘worst Suffolk street’: WC to HC, 16 September 1845, Morgan

  80 ‘Considering that he is a lamb’: ibid

  81 ‘“The Evil One” (whom you mention’): ibid

  82 ‘the actual difference between imprisonment’: WC to HC, 30 September 1845, Morgan

  83 ‘not published until 1999’: by Princeton University Press

  84 ‘old tea-bags’: WC to unknown n.d. (1841–5?) Folder 179, box 1, Mortlake Collection, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University

  85 ‘their seven-month-old daughter’: Margaret Ward, born 1 December 1845

  86 ‘But, at fifteen’: Henrietta Ward, born on 1 June 1832 at 6 Newman St.

  87 ‘made us all shiver’: Ward, Reminiscences, p.43

  88 ‘He impressed great caution and secrecy’: Ward, Memories of Ninety Years. Much of the detail comes from this source

  89 ‘Samuel Carter Hall’: 1800–89. In his native Ireland this great networker had known Daniel Maclise, as well as the poet Thomas Moore, whose poem, Lalla Rookh, inspired one of the epigrams in Wilkie’s Volpurno

  90 ‘Although favourably reviewed in The Observer’: 31 December 1848

  91 ‘After reading it on a Boxing Day train’: The Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson: An Abridgement, edited by Derek
Hudson, OUP, 1967

  92 ‘follow my father’s profession’, WC to Richard Dana Jr., 12 January 1849, Princeton

  93 ‘exceedingly good’: WC to HC, 2 August 1847, Morgan

  94 ‘The disappointments we have met with’: WC to Miss Clarkson, [5/12 June] 1849, Morgan

  95 ‘Frith painted a scene directly from The Good Natur’d Man’: WC reminded Ned Ward of this on 1 April 1862 when he had been writing No Name: ‘I read “The Good Natured Man”, and “The Rivals” again – while I was writing it – and saw you once more in “Croaker” as plainly as I see this paper. I have been engaged in far more elaborate private theatrical work, since that time – but the real enjoyment was at the T. R. Blandford Square.’

  96 ‘Still needing a publisher’: see letters to Bentley starting 30 August 1849, Berg, with many others from Bentley Archives, University of Illinois

  97 ‘cursed confused chirping’: WC to CW, 19 March 1850, private

  98 ‘Need we remind a painter’s son’: Athenaeum, 16 March 1850

  99 ‘The anonymous reviewer in the Spectator’: Spectator, 11 March 1850

  100 ‘his future would be devoted to writing books.’: Alexander Gray, Reminiscences of Rambles Around the World. Unpublished memoir, 1898?, property of Donald Whitton

  101 ‘deep red’: WC to HC, 14 August 1850, Morgan

  102 ‘and fifty other succulent dishes’: WC to CW, 15 August 1850, private

  103 ‘busily engaged’: Ward’s comment was quoted in WC to HC, 14 August 1850, Morgan

  104 ‘I think you told me’: CD to Augustus Egg, 8 March 1851, P. v6, p.310

  105 ‘Frank Stone using his position as art correspondent’: see http://www.victorianweb.org​/art/illustration/fstone/​contreras1.html

  106 ‘mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting’: ‘Old Lamps for New Ones’, Household Words, 12, 15 June 1850, 12–14