Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:34:25.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Clyde K. Hyder
Clyde K. Hyder*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Inscribed on a tombstone in Kensal Green Cemetery are the following words: “In memory of Wilkie Collins, author of ‘The Woman in White’ and other works of fiction.” This inscription, written (as his will shows) by Collins himself, pays tribute to the book which probably stands highest among his works in the esteem of his readers.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1939 , pp. 297 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Private information.

2 Entry of death at Somerset House.

3 Private information.

4 Wilkie Collins's will.

5 Unpublished portions of Dickens's letters to Collins (written in 1861) apparently refer to the “Dutter” and “the Dutter's mama.” A distant relative of the family into which Elizabeth Harriet (incidentally, Harriet was the name of Collins's mother) married mentions “Wilkie Collins's daughter.” An unpublished letter written by Collins in 1880 appears to mention “Mama.” Hall Caine, on the other hand, My Story (New York, 1909), p. 333, speaks of Collins's “affectionate adopted daughter.“

6 The entry of the son's birth gives his name as William Charles Collins Dawson, the mother's name as Martha Dawson, formerly Rudd, the father's name as William Dawson, and the father's profession as Barrister at Law (Collins had received legal training at Lincoln's Inn). “Martha Dawson” was the informant.

7 The Recollections of Sir Henry Dickens, K. C. (London, 1934), p. 54.

8 The passage by Millais is quoted in S. M. Ellis's Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others (London, 1931), p. 27.

9 Ellis, S. M., op. cit., p. 28.Google Scholar

10 In a letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, dated June 22, 1880, Collins speaks of his plan for continuing the story begun in The Fallen Leaves—a plan never to be carried out: “The married life—in the second part—will be essentially a happy life, in itself. But the outer influence of the world which surrounds this husband and wife—the world whose unchristian prejudices they have set at defiance—will slowly undermine their happiness and will, I fear, make the close of the story a sad one.“

11 As in The Evil Genius and “Brother Griffith's Story of a Plot in Private Life,” in The Queen of Hearts.

12 The Critic, April 12, 1890, p. 182.

13 Some of the “Cases Worth Looking at,” in My Miscellanies, were drawn from J. Peuchet's Mémoires tirés des Archives de la Police de Paris (Paris, 1838).

14 See, for example, Hall Caine's My Story (New York, 1909), p. 329.

15 The chief details may be found in iii, 5 ff., “Affaire de Madame de Douhault“; vi, 5–92, “Suite de L'Affaire de Madame de Douhault.”

16 A brief resume of the case may be found in Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe Stècle (Paris, 1870), vi, 1157.

17 In an address to the Emperor in later years, Madame de Douhault is made to say: “J'ai soixante-six ans, j'existe au milieu de trente millions d'individus; et tous les rapports qui meliaient à la société sont brisés! Je ne suis civilement ni fille, ni épouse, ni Française, ni étrangère!” She finally died in wretched circumstances.

18 The choice of title was difficult. Collins explains that he smoked an entire case of cigars before finding a suitable title. Chewing the end of his last cigar, he looked at the North Foreland Lighthouse and thus addressed the building: “You are ugly and stiff and awkward . . . as stiff and as weird as my white woman. White woman!—woman in white! The title, by Jove!” The story is told in an article in The World, Dec. 26, 1877, pp. 4–6.

19 For a discussion of the White Lady of Avenel, a character in Scott's Monastery, and several legendary white ladies, see Coleman 0. Parsons, “Association of the White Lady with Wells,” Folk-Lore, xliv (September, 1933), 295–305.

20 According to The World (loc. cit.), Collins had been asked to take up a case of wrongful imprisonment in an asylum. His short story “Fatal Fortune” deals with such a theme, which also interested Charles Reade. See Readiana (London, 1883), pp. 113–126.

21 The Times, October 30, 1860, p. 6.

22 The Times, loc. cit., pointed out that Collins was “a whole fortnight out of his reckoning. . . . We could easily show that Lady Glyde could not have left Blackwater Park before the 9th or 10th of August.” The fact that Dickens and the readers of All the Year Around did not observe the error, The Times adds, is a tribute to Collins's narrative skill. Collins acknowledged the error in a letter to his publisher, commenting, however, that “Shakespeare has made worse mistakes—that is one comfort, and readers are not critics who test an emotional book by . . . rules of arithmetic, which is a second consolation. Nevertheless we will set it right the first opportunity. . . .” The letter is quoted in Edward Marston's After Work (London, 1904), p. 85.

23 The World, loc. cit.

24 From “Reminiscences of a Story-Teller,” The Universal Review, i, 182–192.

25 The World, loc. cit.

26 The italics are mine.