Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2342 page)

A domestic story he had met with in the State Trials struck him greatly by its capabilities, and I may preface it by mentioning another subject, not entered in the Memoranda, which for a long time impressed him as capable of attractive treatment. It was after reading one of the witch-trials that this occurred to him; and the heroine was to be a girl who for a special purpose had taken a witch’s disguise, and whose trick was not discovered until she was actually at the stake. Here is the State Trials story as told by Dickens. “There is a case in the State Trials, where a certain officer made love to a (supposed) miser’s daughter, and ultimately induced her to give her father slow poison, while nursing him in sickness. Her father discovered it, told her so, forgave her, and said ‘Be patient my dear — I shall not live long, even if I recover: and then you shall have all my wealth.’ Though penitent then, she afterwards poisoned him again (under the same influence), and successfully. Whereupon it appeared that the old man had no money at all, and had lived on a small annuity which died with him, though always feigning to be rich. He had loved this daughter with great affection.”

A theme touching closely on ground that some might think dangerous, is sketched in the following fancy. “The father (married young) who, in perfect innocence, venerates his son’s young wife, as the realisation of his ideal of woman. (He not happy in his own choice.) The son slights her, and knows nothing of her worth. The father watches her, protects her, labours for her, endures for her, — is for ever divided between his strong natural affection for his son as his son, and his resentment against him as this young creature’s husband.” Here is another, less dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him when he was at Bonchurch. “The idea of my being brought up by my mother (me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once took notice of when I was a little child, and who lives in the great house and drives about.”

Very admirable is this. “The girl separating herself from the lover who has shewn himself unworthy — loving him still — living single for his sake — but never more renewing their old relations. Coming to him when they are both grown old, and nursing him in his last illness.” Nor is the following less so. “Two girls
mis-marrying
two men. The man who has evil in him, dragging the superior woman down. The man who has good in him, raising the inferior woman up.” Dickens would have been at his best in working out both fancies.

In some of the most amusing of his sketches of character, women also take the lead. “The lady un peu passée, who is determined to be interesting. No matter how much I love that person — nay, the more so for that very reason — I must flatter, and bother, and be weak and apprehensive and nervous, and what not. If I were well and strong, agreeable and self-denying, my friend might forget me.” Another not remotely belonging to the same family is as neatly hit off. “The sentimental woman feels that the comic, undesigning, unconscious man, is ‘Her Fate.’ — I her fate? God bless my soul, it puts me into a cold perspiration to think of it.
I
her fate? How can
I
be her fate? I don’t mean to be. I don’t want to have anything to do with her — Sentimental woman perceives nevertheless that Destiny must be accomplished.”

Other portions of a female group are as humorously sketched and hardly less entertaining. “The enthusiastically complimentary person, who forgets you in her own flowery prosiness: as — ’I have no need to say to a person of your genius and feeling, and wide range of experience’ — and then, being shortsighted, puts up her glass to remember who you are.” — ”Two sisters” (these were real people known to him). “One going in for being generally beloved (which she is not by any means); and the other for being generally hated (which she needn’t be).” — ”The bequeathed maid-servant, or friend. Left as a legacy. And a devil of a legacy too.” — ”The woman who is never on any account to hear of anything shocking. For whom the world is to be of barley-sugar.” — ”The lady who lives on her enthusiasm; and hasn’t a jot.” — ”Bright-eyed creature selling jewels. The stones and the eyes.” Much significance is in the last few words. One may see to what uses Dickens would have turned them.

A more troubled note is sounded in another of these female characters. “I am a common woman — fallen. Is it devilry in me — is it a wicked comfort — what is it — that induces me to be always tempting other women down, while I hate myself!” This next, with as much truth in it, goes deeper than the last. “The prostitute who will not let one certain youth approach her. ‘O let there be some one in the world, who having an inclination towards me has not gratified it, and has not known me in my degradation!’ She almost loving him. — Suppose, too, this touch in her could not be believed in by his mother or mistress: by some handsome and proudly virtuous woman, always revolting from her.” A more agreeable sketch than either follows, though it would not please M. Taine so well. “The little baby-like married woman — so strange in her new dignity, and talking with tears in her eyes, of her sisters ‘and all of them’ at home. Never from home before, and never going back again.” Another from the same manuscript volume not less attractive, which was sketched in his own home, I gave upon a former page.

The female character in its relations with the opposite sex has lively illustration in the Memoranda. “The man who is governed by his wife, and is heartily despised in consequence by all other wives; who still want to govern
their
husbands, notwithstanding.” An alarming family pair follows that. “The playful — and scratching — family. Father and daughter.” And here is another. “The agreeable (and wicked) young-mature man, and his devoted sister.” What next was set down he had himself partly seen; and, by enquiry at the hospital named, had ascertained the truth of the rest. “The two people in the Incurable Hospital. — The poor incurable girl lying on a water-bed, and the incurable man who has a strange flirtation with her; comes and makes confidences to her; snips and arranges her plants; and rehearses to her the comic songs(!) by writing which he materially helps out his living.”

Two lighter figures are very pleasantly touched. “Set of circumstances which suddenly bring an easy, airy fellow into near relations with people he knows nothing about, and has never even seen. This, through his being thrown in the way of the innocent young personage of the story. ‘Then there is Uncle Sam to be considered,’ says she. ‘Aye to be sure,’ says he, ‘so there is! By Jupiter, I forgot Uncle Sam. He’s a rock ahead, is Uncle Sam. He must be considered, of course; he must be smoothed down; he must be cleared out of the way. To be sure. I never thought of Uncle Sam. — By the bye, who
is
Uncle Sam?’“

There are several such sketches as that, to set against the groups of women; and some have Dickens’s favourite vein of satire in them. “The man whose vista is always stopped up by the image of Himself. Looks down a long walk, and can’t see round himself, or over himself, or beyond himself. Is always blocking up his own way. Would be such a good thing for him, if he could knock himself down.” Another picture of selfishness is touched with greater delicacy. “‘Too good’ to be grateful to, or dutiful to, or anything else that ought to be. ‘I won’t thank you: you are too good.’ — ’Don’t ask me to marry you: you are too good.’ — In short, I don’t particularly mind ill-using you, and being selfish with you: for you are
so
good. Virtue its own reward!” A third, which seems to reverse the dial, is but another face of it: frankly avowing faults, which are virtues. “In effect — I admit I am generous, amiable, gentle, magnanimous. Reproach me — I deserve it — I know my faults — I have striven in vain to get the better of them.” Dickens would have made much, too, of the working out of the next. “The knowing man in distress, who borrows a round sum of a generous friend. Comes, in depression and tears, dines, gets the money, and gradually cheers up over his wine, as he obviously entertains himself with the reflection that his friend is an egregious fool to have lent it to him, and that
he
would have known better.” And so of this other. “The man who invariably says apposite things (in the way of reproof or sarcasm) that he don’t mean. Astonished when they are explained to him.”

Here is a fancy that I remember him to have been more than once bent upon making use of: but the opportunity never came. “The two men to be guarded against, as to their revenge. One, whom I openly hold in some serious animosity, whom I am at the pains to wound and defy, and whom I estimate as worth wounding and defying; — the other, whom I treat as a sort of insect, and contemptuously and pleasantly flick aside with my glove. But, it turns out to be the latter who is the really dangerous man; and, when I expect the blow from the other, it comes from
him
.”

We have the master hand in the following bit of dialogue, which takes wider application than that for which it appears to have been intended.

“‘There is some virtue in him too.’

“‘Virtue! Yes. So there is in any grain of seed in a seedsman’s shop — but you must put it in the ground, before you can get any good out of it.’

“‘Do you mean that
he
must be put in the ground before any good comes of
him?
’

“‘Indeed I do. You may call it burying him, or you may call it sowing him, as you like. You must set him in the earth, before you get any good of him.’“

One of the entries is a list of persons and places meant to have been made subjects for special description, and it will awaken regret that only as to one of them (the Mugby Refreshments) his intention was fulfilled. “A Vestryman. A Briber. A Station Waiting-Room. Refreshments at Mugby. A Physician’s Waiting-Room. The Royal Academy. An Antiquary’s house. A Sale Room. A Picture Gallery (for sale). A Waste-paper Shop. A Post-Office. A Theatre.”

All will have been given that have particular interest or value, from this remarkable volume, when the thoughts and fancies I proceed to transcribe have been put before the reader.

“The man who is incapable of his own happiness. Or who is always in pursuit of happiness. Result, Where is happiness to be found then? Surely not Everywhere? Can that be so, after all? Is
this
my experience?”

“The people who persist in defining and analysing their (and everybody else’s) moral qualities, motives and what not, at once in the narrowest spirit and the most lumbering manner; — as if one should put up an enormous scaffolding for the building of a pigstye.”

“The house-f of Toadies and Humbugs. They all know and despise one another; but — partly to keep their hands in, and partly to make out their own individual cases — pretend not to detect one another.”

“People realising immense sums of money, imaginatively — speculatively — counting their chickens before hatched. Inflaming each other’s imaginations about great gains of money, and entering into a sort of intangible, impossible, competition as to who is the richer.”

“The advertising sage, philosopher, and friend: who educates ‘for the bar, the pulpit, or the stage.’“

“The character of the real refugee — not the conventional; the real.”

“The mysterious character, or characters, interchanging confidences. ‘Necessary to be very careful in that direction.’ — ’In what direction?’ — ’B’ — ’You don’t say so. What, do you mean that C —
 
— ?’ — ’Is aware of D. Exactly.’“

“The father and boy, as I dramatically see them. Opening with the wild dance I have in my mind.”

“The old child. That is to say, born of parents advanced in life, and observing the parents of other children to be young. Taking an old tone accordingly.”

“A thoroughly sulky character — perverting everything. Making the good, bad — and the bad, good.”

“The people who lay all their sins negligences and ignorances, on Providence.”

“The man who marries his cook at last, after being so desperately knowing about the sex.”

“The swell establishment, frightfully mean and miserable in all but the ‘reception rooms.’ Those very showy.”

“B. tells M. what my opinion is of his work, &c. Quoting the man you have once spoken to as if he had talked a life’s talk in two minutes.”

“A misplaced and mis-married man; always, as it were, playing hide and seek with the world; and never finding what Fortune seems to have hidden when he was born.”

“Certain women in Africa who have lost children, carry little wooden images of children on their heads, and always put their food to the lips of those images, before tasting it themselves. This is in a part of Africa where the mortality among children (judging from the number of these little memorials) is very great.”