Read Complete Works of Wilkie Collins Online
Authors: Wilkie Collins
Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1163 page)
When Penrose can travel, he accompanies me to Beaupark. Stella and her little son and Mrs. Eyrecourt will be the only other guests in my house. Time must pass, and the boy will be older, before I may remind Stella of Romayne’s last wishes on that sad morning when we two knelt on either side of him. In the meanwhile, it is almost happiness enough for me to look forward to the day —
NOTE. — The next leaf of the Diary is missing. By some accident, a manuscript page has got into its place, bearing a later date, and containing elabourate instructions for executing a design for a wedding dress. The handwriting has since been acknowledged as her own, by no less a person than — Mrs. Eyrecourt.
This didactic novel attacks vivisection.
Collins always liked animals and during his research corresponded with the Surgeon-General, C. T. Gordon, writing in July 1882 ‘I am endeavouring to add my small contribution in aid of the good cause, by such means as Fiction will permit — and I am especially obliged to you for valuable “facts” which I could not have discovered for myself.’
The first edition
HEART AND SCIENCE
CONTENTS
I. PREFACE TO READERS IN GENERAL
I. PREFACE TO READERS IN GENERAL
You are the children of Old Mother England, on both sides of the Atlantic; you form the majority of buyers and borrowers of novels; and you judge of works of fiction by certain inbred preferences, which but slightly influence the other great public of readers on the continent of Europe.