Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1659 page)

Let me see; where was I when the “Trovatore” began? At the following passage apparently, for the sentence is left unfinished:

“The further we enter into this interesting subject, the more light — ” What had I got to say about light when the “Trovatore” began? Was it, “flows in upon us”? No; nothing so commonplace as that. I had surely a good long metaphor, and a fine round close to the sentence. “The more light” — shines? beams? bursts? dawns? floods? bathes? quivers? Oh, me! what was the precious next word I had in my head when the “Trovatore” took possession of my poor crazy brains? It is useless to search for it. Strike out “the more light,” and try something else.

“The further we enter into this interesting subject, the more prodigally we find scattered before us the gems of truth which — so seldom ride over to see us now.”

“So seldom ride over to see us now?” Mercy on me, what am I about? Ending my unfortunate sentence by mechanically taking down a few polite words spoken by the melodious voice of one of the charming girls on the garden terrace under my window. What do I hear in a man’s voice? “Regret being so long an absentee, but my schools and my poor — ” Oh, a young clerical visitor; I know him by his way of talking. All young clergymen speak alike — who teaches them, I wonder? Let me peep out of window.

I am right. It
is
a young clergyman — no whiskers, apostolic hair, sickly smile, long frock-coat, a wisp of muslin round his neck, and a canonical black waistcoat with no gap in it for the display of profane linen. The charming girl is respectfully devouring him with her eyes. Are they going to have their morning chat under my window? Evidently they are. This is pleasant. Every word of their small, fluent, ceaseless, sentimental gabble comes into my room. If I ask them to get out of hearing, I am rude. If I go to the window, and announce my presence by a cough, I confuse the charming girl. No help for it but to lay the pen down again, and wait. This is a change for the worse, with a vengeance. The “Trovatore” was something pleasant to listen to; but the reverend gentleman’s opinions on the terrace flowers which he has come to admire, on the last volume of modern poetry which he has borrowed from the charming girl, on the merits of the church system in the Ages of Faith, and on the difficulties he has had to contend with in his Infant-school, are, upon the whole, rather wearisome to listen to. And this is the house that I entered, in the full belief that it would offer me the luxury of perfect quiet to work in! And downstairs sits Lady Jinkinson, firmly believing that she has given me such an opportunity of distinguishing myself with my pen as I have never before enjoyed in all my life! Patience, patience.

Half an hour; three-quarters of an hour. Do I hear him taking his leave? Yes, at last. Pen again; paper again. Where was I?

“The further we enter into this interesting subject, the more prodigally do we find scattered before us the gems of truth, which — ”

What was I going to say the gems of truth did, when the young clergyman and the charming girl began their sentimental interview on the terrace? Gone — utterly gone. Strike out the gems of truth, and try another way.

“The further we enter into this interesting subject, the more its vast capabilities — ” A knock at the door.

“Yes.”

“Her ladyship wishes me to say, sir, that luncheon is ready.”

“Very well.”

“The further we enter into this interesting subject, the more clearly its vast capabilities display themselves to our view. The mind, indeed, can hardly be pronounced competent — ”

A knock at the door.

“Yes.”

“Her ladyship wishes me to remind you, sir, that luncheon is ready.”

“Pray beg Lady Jinkinson not to wait for me.”

“The mind, indeed, can hardly be pronounced competent to survey the extended field of observation — ”

A knock at the door.

“Yes.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but her ladyship desires me to say that a friar’s omelet has just come up, which she very much wishes you to taste. And she is afraid it will get cold, unless you will be so good as to come downstairs at once.”

“Say I will come directly.”

“The mind, indeed, can hardly be pronounced competent to survey the extended field of observation, which” — which? — which? — Gone again! What else could I expect? A nice chance literature has in this house against luncheon.

I descend to the dining-room, and am politely told that I look as if I had just achieved a wonderful morning’s work. “I dare say you have not written in such perfect quiet as this for months past?” says Lady Jinkinson, helping me to the friar’s omelet. I begin with that dainty; where I end is more than my recollection enables me to say. Everybody feeds me, under the impression that I am exhausted with writing. All the splendid fellows will drink wine with me, “to set me going again.” Nobody believes my rueful assertion that I have done nothing, which they ascribe to excessive modesty. When we rise from table (a process which is performed with extreme difficulty, speaking for myself), I am told that the carriage will be ready in an hour. Lady Jinkinson will not hear of any objections. “No! No!” she says. “I have not asked you here to overwork yourself. I really can’t allow that.”

I get back to my room with an extraordinary tightness in my waistcoat, and with slight symptoms of a determination of sherry to the head. Under these circumstances, returning to work immediately is not to be thought of. Returning to bed is by far the wiser proceeding. I lie down to arrange my ideas. Having none to arrange, I yield to nature, and go to sleep.

When I wake, my head is clear again. I see my way now to the end of that bit about “the extended field of observation,” and make for my table in high spirits. Just as I sit down comes another knock at the door. The carriage is ready. The carriage! I had forgotten all about it. There is no way of escape, however. Hours must give way to me when I am at home; I must give way to hours when I am at Lady Jinkinson’s. My papers are soon shuffled together in my case, and I am once more united with the hospitable party downstairs. “More bright ideas?” cry the ladies, interrogatively, as I take my place in the carriage. “Not the dimmest vestige of one,” I answer. Lady Jinkinson shakes her parasol reproachfully at me. “My dear friend, you were always absurdly modest when speaking of yourself; and, do you know, I think it grows on you.”

We get back in time to dress for dinner. After dinner there is the social evening and more “Trovatore.” After that, cigars with the splendid fellows in the billiard-room. I look over my day’s work, with the calmness of despair, when I get to bed at last. It amounts to four sentences and a half, every line of which is perfectly worthless as a literary composition.

The next morning I rise before the rest of the family are up, leave a note of apology on my table, and take the early train for London. This is very ungrateful behavior to people who have treated me with extreme kindness. But here, again, I must confess the hard truth. The demands of my business in life are imperative; and, sad to say, they absolutely oblige me to dispense with Lady Jinkinson.

I have now been confessing my misanthropical sentiments at some length, but I have not by any means done yet with the number of my dear friends whom I could dispense with. To say nothing of my friend who borrows money of me (an obvious nuisance), there is my self-satisfied friend, who can talk of nothing but himself, and his successes in life; there is my inattentive friend, who is perpetually asking me irrelevant questions, and who has no power of listening to my answers; there is my accidental friend, whom I always meet when I go out; there is my hospitable friend, who is continually telling me that he wants so much to ask me to dinner, and who never does really ask me by any chance. All these intimate associates of mine are persons of fundamentally irreproachable characters, and of well-defined positions in the world; and yet so unhappily is my nature constituted, that I am not exaggerating when I acknowledge that I could positively dispense with every one of them. To proceed a little further, now that I have begun to unburden my mind —

A double knock at the street door stops my pen suddenly. I make no complaint, for I have been, to my own amazement, filling these pages for the last three hours, in my parlor after dinner, without interruption. A well known voice in the passage smites my ear, inquiring for me on very particular business, and asking the servant to take in the name. The servant appears at my door, and I make up my mind to send these leaves to the printer, unfinished as they are. No necessity, Susan, to mention the name; I have recognised the voice. This is my friend who does not at all like the state of my health. He comes, I know beforehand, with the address of a new doctor, or the recipe of a new remedy; and he will stay for hours, persuading me that I am in a bad way. No escaping from him, as I know by experience. Well, well, I have made my confession, and eased my mind. Let my friend who doesn’t like the state of my health end the list, for the present, of the dear friends whom I could dispense with. Show him in, Susan — show him in.

SKETCHES OF CHARACTER. — II.

A SHOCKINGLY RUDE ARTICLE.

[Communicated by a Charming Woman.]

BEFORE I begin to write, I know that this will be an unpopular composition in certain select quarters. I mean to proceed with it, however, in spite of that conviction, because when I have got something on my mind I must positively speak. Is it necessary after that to confess that I am a woman? If it is, I make the confession — to my sorrow. I would much rather be a man. I hope nobody will be misled, by my beginning in this way, into thinking that I am an advocate of the rights of women. Ridiculous creatures! they have too many rights already; and if they don’t hold their chattering tongues, one of these days the poor dear, deluded men will find them out.

The poor dear men! Mentioning them reminds me of what I have got to say. I have been staying at the seaside, and reading an immense quantity of novels and periodicals, and all that sort of thing, lately; and my idea is, that the men writers (the only writers worth reading) are in the habit of using each other very unfairly in books and articles, and so on. Look where I may, I find, for instance, that the large proportion of the bad characters in their otherwise very charming stories are always men. As if women were not a great deal worse! Then, again, most of the amusing fools in their books are, strangely and unaccountably, of their own sex, in spite of its being perfectly apparent that the vast majority of that sort of character is to be found in ours. On the other hand, while they make out their own half of humanity (as I have distinctly proved) a great deal too bad, they go to the contrary extreme the other way, and make out our half a great deal too good. What in the world do they mean by representing us as so much better, and so much prettier, than we really are? Upon my word, when I see what angels the dear, nice, good men make of their heroines, and when I think of myself, and of the whole circle of my female friends besides, I feel quite disgusted — I do, indeed.

I should very much like to go into the whole of this subject at once, and speak my sentiments on it at the fullest length. But I will spare the reader, and try to be satisfied with going into a part of the subject instead; for, considering that I am a woman, and making immense allowances for me on that account, I am really not altogether unreasonable. Give me a page or two, and I will show in one particular, and, what is more, from real life, how absurdly partial the men writers are to our sex, and how scandalously unjust they are to their own.

Bores.
— What I propose is, that we take for our present example characters of Bores alone. If we were only to read men’s novels, articles, and so forth, I don’t hesitate to say we should assume that all the Bores in the human creation were of the male sex. It is generally, if not always, a man, in men’s books, who tells the long-winded story, and turns up at the wrong time, and makes himself altogether odious and intolerable to every body he comes in contact with, without being in the least aware of it himself. How very unjust, and, I must be allowed to add, how extremely untrue! Women are quite as bad, or worse. Do, good gentlemen, look about you impartially, for once in a way, and own the truth. Good gracious! is not society full of Lady-Bores? Why not give them a turn when you write next?

Two instances: I will quote only two instances out of hundreds I could produce from my own acquaintance. Only two; because, as I said before, I am reasonable about not taking up room. I can put things into a very small space when I write, as well as when I travel. I should like the literary gentleman who kindly prints this (I would not allow a woman to print it for any sum of money that could be offered me) to see how very little luggage I travel with. At any rate, he shall see how little room I can cheerfully put up with in these pages.