419 ‘heartily on the German side’: WC to Emil Lehmann, 7 August 1870, Princeton
420 ‘one civilising influence’: ibid.
421 The 1871 census for Marylebone Cavendish Square, district 9, p.40, shows that twenty-seven-year-old Alice Rudd was the cook in the household of John H. Davis, physician, at 24 Harley Street
422 ‘As he complained to Harper and Brothers’: WC to Harper Brothers, 13 January 1872, Maine
423 Birth of Harriet Dawson, 14 May 1871
424 ‘he consulted his new solicitor Tindell’: WC to William Tindell, 16 April 1871, Mitchell
425 ‘how ‘drunk’ he was with ‘this fine air’’: WC to William Tindell, 15 August 1871, Mitchell
426 ‘his medical regime had been extended’: see WC to F.C. Beard, 9 September 1871, Princeton
427 ‘a new stock of Moselle’: WC to Reade, 20 October 1871, Private
428 ‘enlisted his friend W.H. Hooper’: see Life and Letters of Frederick Walker ARA by John George Marks, London, Macmillian, 1891. Walker wrote to Hooper on 6 September 1871, Wilkie’s letter was written around the 11th September
429 ‘My story is not addressed’: WC to Arthur Locker, Unknown, September–November 1871
430 ‘pressed by so many proposals’: WC to Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, 30 October 1871, Texas
431 ‘took up an offer from George Bentley’: Richard Bentley, born in 1794, died in 1871. George Bentley (1828–95) had a son, also called Richard (1854–1936), who joined the firm.
432 ‘Whatever may be said against the vanity of existence’: Nation, 7 March 1872
433 ‘Sunday reading’: Athenaeum, 17 February 1872
434 ‘a puritanical reaction was setting in’: see The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women’s Reading 1835–1880 by Sally Mitchell, Bowling Green Press, 1981
435 ‘going away soon to get a little rest’: WC to John Hollingshead, 27 January 1872, Huntington
436 ‘positively resolved not to saddle’: WC to C.S. Carter, 27 February 1872, Private
437 ‘short, moderately thick-set’: Reeve, From Life
438 ‘the same sweet fellow as ever’: WC to FL, 15 August 1872, Susan Hanes
439 ‘The principle [sic] female character’: ibid.
440 ‘a flat denial of the right of property’: WC to Hunter Rose, 13 July 1872, Princeton
441 ‘his elder daughter Marian broke her leg’: see WC to William Tindell, 18 June 1872, Mitchell
442 ‘horrible sore on his leg’: WC to FL, 15 August 1872, Private
443 ‘something which feels like liquid velvet’: ibid.
444 ‘I am comfortably established’: WC to Tindell, 27 September 1872, Mitchell
445 ‘with great effect and nervous force’: Bancroft, Recollections, p.167
446 ‘the services of my friends were not required’: WC to Wybert Reeve, 23 February 1873
447 ‘Two of Britain’s most illustrious surgeons’: Birmingham Daily Post, 12 April 1873
448 ‘life’s idle business has ended for me’: WC to WHH, 11 May 1873, Huntington
449 ‘Nothing would incude me to modify the title’: WC to George Bentley, 18 March 1873, Berg
450 ‘that fanatical old fool Mudie’: WC to George Bentley, 20 May 1873, Berg
451 ‘one of the most signal triumphs’: Sunday Times, 25 May 1873
452 ‘the Speculator’ WC to William F Tindell, 21 July 1873, Mitchell
453 ‘His turn was not a great success’: Pall Mall Gazette, 30 June 1873
454 ‘I have heard he is to read’: Georgina Hogarth to Annie Fields, 30 August 1873, Huntington
455 ‘The least I can do’: WC to Squire Bancroft, 17 July 1873
456 ‘his last payment of £25’: this was on 20 January 1873 – see Wilkie Collins’s bank account at Coutts
457 ‘They spent £100’: see Clarke, Secret Life
458 ‘He asked Tindell to advise’: WC to William Tindell, 18 July 1873, Mitchell
459 ‘only the prospect of composing a new Christmas story’: with the help of input in the United States, this turned out to be ‘The Dead Alive’ or ‘John Jago’s Ghost’
460 ‘You will find friends here wherever you go’: WC in ‘Wilkie Collins’s Recollections of Charles Fechter’, contributed to K. Field, Charles Albert Fechter
461 ‘He never sent me sixpence.’: WC, ‘Considerations on the Copyright Question’, International Review, New York, June 1880
462 ‘not quite what is suggested by his portraits’: Boston Commonwealth, 1 November 1873
463 ‘a stylish suit’: quoted Reeve Recollections of Wilkie Collins. Another version of this story has it that his clothes were gnawed by rats on board the Algeria. He had a cheap new suit rustled up in New York and was later complimented for being well-dressed. See Walford, Memories of Victorian London
464 ‘his second night in New York’: 27 September 1873
465 ‘Collins enjoyed his dinner’: journal of John Bigelow, quoted Hanes, Wilkie Collins’s American Tour, 1873–4
466 ‘his creepy 1855 story The Ostler’: originally in Holly Tree Inn, Christmas Number of HW, 1855
467 ‘no actor’: Troy Daily Press, 9 October 1873
468 ‘unquestionably a failure’: Syracuse Daily Courier, 13 October 1873
469 ‘nervous prostration and a severe cold’: letter sent by Charles Brelsford to newpapers, quoted Hanes, Wilkie Collins’s American Tour, pp.34–5
470 ‘greatly preferred Baltimore’: WC to Jane Bigelow, 2 January 1882, NYPL
471 ‘opened a recruiting office for prostitutes’: New York Daily Graphic, 11 November 1873
472 ‘Some of the audience went to sleep’: New York Herald, 11 November 1873
473 ‘getting on famously’: WC to Frank Archer, 6 January 1874, Private
474 ‘going “out West”’: WC to FL, 2 January 1874, Princeton
475 ‘landscapes ‘as flat, as monotonous’’: from ‘John Jago’s Ghost’
476 ‘I feel the “sleeping car”’: WC to Sebastian Schlesinger, 17 January 1874, Houghton
477 ‘after two days and a night’s.’: Men and Women – A Weekly Biographical and Social Journal, vol.III No.36., Saturday 5 February, 1887, pp.281–2
478 ‘N.B. You remember our name’: WC to William Tindell, 27 January 1874, Mitchell
479 ‘Don’t tell anybody’: WC to Jane Bigelow, 17 January 1874, NYPL
480 ‘the cream of New England’s intelligentsia’: this dinner took place on 16 February 1874
481 ‘a religious community at Wallingford in Connecticut’: this trip was arranged by Boston publisher William F. Gill
482 ‘Mr Collins thought our system of communism’: quoted Hanes, Wilkie Collins’s American Tour, p.87
483 ‘A kinder, warmer-hearted set of people’: Walford, Memories of Victorian London
484 ‘Wilkie had earned £2,500’: Hanes, Wilkie Collins’s American Tour, p.91. He packaged a selection of his readings from America in The Frozen Deep, and Other Stories, Richard Bentley, 1874. The English version was dedicated to Wendell Holmes
485 ‘My native climate has already’: WC to Isabelle Frith, 2 April 1874, NAL
486 ‘a thirty page booklet’: this is available in the National Archives
487 ‘written another story, A Fatal Fortune’: Sarah Wise in Inconvenient People, p.200, says ‘A Fatal Fortune’ is based on the true case of a mis-certified, eccentric very rich young man, Old Etonian Oxford graduate, James Tovey-Tennent, who wished to marry against his family’s wishes See also The Times, 27 April 8 and 9 May 1867
488 ‘a huge explosion on a barge’: also badly affected was Hepworth Dixon’s house in 6 St James’s Terrace
489 ‘a Christmas Box’: WC to William Tindell, 29 December 1874, Mitchell
490 ‘there is really no news here’: WC to Jane Bigelow, 31 December 1874, NYPL
491 ‘My own impression’: WC to George Smith, 23 October 1871, Berg
492 ‘He seems to have a good chance’: WC to S
ebastian Schlesinger, 30 December 1876, Houghton
493 ‘to allow Wilkie to vent his spleen’: The World, 20 April 1875
494 ‘Anything less literary’: Observer, 28 March 1875
495 ‘If a man has the misfortune’: Pall Mall Gazette, 4 June 1875
496 ‘For literary ingenuity’: quoted John Coleman, Charles Reade As I Knew Him, London, Treherne & Company, 1903
497 ‘Reade’s mistress Mrs Seymour’: when Mrs Seymour died in September 1879, Wilkie showed his unusual admiration for her in a letter to Reade in which he stated how much he ‘appreciated her fine qualities as an artist,’ and he ‘sincerely admired and prized her bright true and generous nature as a woman.’ WC to Charles Reade, 29 September 1879, Private
498 ‘For literary ingenuity’: quoted Coleman, Charles Reade
499 ‘the idlest man living’: WC to George Bentley, 27 March 1875, Berg
500 ‘wandering about the Eastern coast’: WC to George Bentley, 12 September 1875, Berg
501 ‘got an idea of another new story’: ibid.
502 ‘There was leavening too’: in the book, Swedenborg was the mentor of Mary’s mother. The 1875/76 annual report of the Swedenborg Society noted that The Two Destinies ‘evidently show(ed) that the doctrine of Swedenborg . . . is finding its way into popular literature, however imperfectly’
503 ‘work, walk, visit’: WC to FL, 26 April 1876, Princeton
504 ‘wandering about the south coast’: WC to Frank Archer, 26 July 1876, Private
505 ‘an amazingly silly book’: Saturday Review, 20 January 1877
506 ‘I am indeed sorry’: WC to Henry P Bartley, 17 October 1876, Princeton
507 ‘a little rest and change’: WC to Augustin Daly, 22 September 1877, Houghton
508 ‘a trip to Venice’: this was the high spot of the journey, where he was bowled over the ‘feast of magnificent colour’ in the galleries. WC to WHH, 24 July 1886. Wilkie and Caroline’s progress can be charted by the cheques he cashed with various correspondent banks and agencies en route, including £100 with S & A Blumenthal in Venice on 23 November, £50 with P Perrero in Genoa on 6 December, £100 with Nigra Freres in Turin on 7 December. See WC’s bank accounts, Coutts
509 ‘her former mother in law’: Mary Ann Graves died on 8 May 1877
510 ‘a Christmas profile of Wilkie’: The World, 26 December 1877
511 ‘put forward various alternatives’: WC to Augustin Daly, 25 September 1877, Houghton
512 ‘the greatness of Napoleon’: WC’s admiration for Napoleon had caused him to compare Count Fosco to the French Emperor. ‘He is a most remarkable likeness, on a large scale, of the great Napoleon. His features have Napoleon’s magnificent regularity—his expression recalls the grandly calm, immovable power of the Great Soldier’s face.’ (The Woman in White)
513 ‘all sorts of impediments’: WC to NL, 28 December 1877, Princeton
514 ‘I am (say) half alive’: WC to James Payn, 13 February 1878, Texas
515 ‘he gave Harriet a wedding gift of £50’: see WC’s bank accounts, Coutts
516 ‘a couple of fibs’: Henry was born on 9 December 1854, Harriet on 3 February 1851
517 ‘an extravagant wedding dinner’: my thanks to Jeanette Iredale for a copy of the menu
518 ‘an incorrigible heretic’: WC to William Winter, 5 August 1878. Winter was a friend of Augustin Daly, who came to London in a short-lived attempt to revive his theatrical career. Wilkie helped out with local contacts such as Trollope. He also gave him the manuscript of Iolani, his first as yet unpublished novel. This was the version which was later sold at auction in New York and which did not appear in book form until 1999. Daly soon returned to New York where he regained his position as the city’s leading theatre manager
519 ‘never sufficiently-to be-damned-and-blasted-rheumatic gout’: WC to William A. Seaver, 6 August 1878, Princeton
520 ‘unlike the ‘big, portentous, heavy’ male characters’: Eytinge, The Memoirs of Rose Eytinge
521 ‘cooked a Don Pedro pie’: Beard, ‘Some Recollections’
522 ‘Wilkie had to chase up payment’: WC to Chatto & Windus, 30 December 1878, Princeton
523 ‘excites and exhausts me’: WC to George Bentley, 24 March 1879, Berg
524 ‘I was mad when I did it’: Standard, 18 January 1879. For funeral, Daily News, 22 January 1879
525 ‘Wilkie called on Chatto to cost 2000 copies’: WC to Andrew Chatto, 21 October 1878, Princeton
526 ‘mocked his attempt to rewrite’: Sunday Times, 27 July 1879
527 ‘All his characters are forced and unnatural’: Saturday Review, 2 August 1879
528 ‘He agreed, on condition’: WC to James R. Osgood, 18 January 1882
529 ‘In the published Recollections’: ‘Wilkie Collins’s Recollections of Charles Fechter’ in K. Field, Fechter
530 ‘Wilkie Collins . . . still lingered’: Hawthorne, Shapes That Pass
531 ‘He also stressed the depth of his research’: this included reading deeply on poisoners, such as the multiple murderer Anna Maria Zwanziger – as featured in Lady Duff Gordon’s 1856 translation of von Feuerbach’s Narrative of Remarkable Criminal Trials
532 ‘some tremendous letters from Roman Catholics’: WC to Jane Bigelow, 6 September 1881, NYPL
533 ‘reduced to the ‘nastiest drink’’: WC to Charles Kent, 8 January 1882, Princeton
534 ‘my knees tremble on the stairs’: WC to NL, 22 June 1881, Princeton
535 ‘I don’t remember whether Dante’s Hell’: WC to William Ralston, 20 October 1881, Baylor University
536 ‘Considerations on the Copyright Question’: International Review, New York, June 1880 and in a pamphlet published by Trubner &. Co. that year
537 ‘Ashmed-Bartlett added’: letter to WC, 20 December 1881, Watt collection, Berg
538 ‘The Air and the Audience’: written 1881, first published 1885 by C. Allen Thorndike Rice, publisher and editor in chief of the North American Review. Republished as ‘The Use of Gas in Theatres’ in the Mask, October 1924, and WCSJ, 6 (1986), pp.19–26
539 ‘declined an invitation to the Savoy’s opening’: WC to Richard D’Oyly Carte, 8 October 1881
540 ‘What is sometimes rather invidiously called ‘censorship’: quoted Shellard and Nicholson, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets
541 ‘Some critic said “The Woman In White”’: WC to FL, 5 July 1882, Princeton
542 ‘so mercilessly excited me’: WC to William Winter, 14 January 1883, Princeton
543 ‘kings of fiction’: WC to Paul Hamilton Hayne, 3 May 1884, Syracuse University
544 ‘Yesterday, being out for a little walk’: WC to NL, 1 March 1883, Texas
545 ‘His diet was singular’: Reeve, From Life
546 ‘after being serialised in various newspapers’: the copy for serialisation was set up by the Liverpool Post and distributed to other outlets
547 ‘Swinburne’s posthumous put-down’: A.C. Swinburne, ‘Wilkie Collins’, Fortnightly Review, 1 November 1889, pp.589–99
548 ‘Benjulia now ‘matched’ Fosco’: WC to William Winter, 3 July 1883, Princeton
549 ‘‘a great advance’ on The Black Robe’: WC to Count Robert de Heussey, 3 November 1882, Princeton
550 ‘Hawtrey recalled’: Charles Hawtrey, The Truth at Last, edited by Somerset Maugham, London, Thornton Butterworth, 1924
551 ‘outrageous improbability of the characters’: The Times, 11 June 1883
552 ‘notoriously volatile ‘Adelphi audience’’: WC to Winter, 3 July 1883, Princeton
553 ‘a capital little vessel’: Wilkie to EP, 1 August 1883
554 ‘Come – the sooner the better’: WC to Harriet Bartley, 11 July 1883, Princeton
555 ‘misquoted Pope’: WC to EP, 1 August 1883, Huntington
556 ‘thorough salting’: WC to William Winter, 5 October 1884, Clarke Collection
557 ‘turned the colour of a cooked lobster’: WC to Paul Hamilton Hayne, 28 Ja
nuary 1885, Private
558 ‘enough to kill a dozen people’: Bancroft, Empty Chairs
559 ‘Collins drink a wineglassful of laudanum’: New York World, 29 September 1889
560 ‘in an intellectual rather than visual manner’: see Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination
561 ‘Charles Kent was unable to sleep’: WC to Charles Kent, 8 August 1884, Fales and 17 August 1884, Princeton
562 ‘not that he lost confidence’: when his friend Pigott was laid low with a cough, Wilkie told him, ‘If you could only take opium!’: WC to EP, 20 Nov? 1885, Huntington
563 ‘devilish drugs’: WC to Nannie Wynne, 27 November 1885, Private
564 ‘And if it should turn out’: WC to Chatto, 23 March 1887, Princeton
565 ‘The Evil Genius’: was dedicated to WHH
566 ‘would describe Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee’: WC to Mrs Wynne, 25 June 1887, Private
567 ‘Nobody seems to know’: WC to Charles Kent, 11 May 1886, Texas
568 ‘the strong impression that your acting’: WC to Mary Anderson, 6 April 1884, Private
569 ‘looked forward to a ‘conjugal embrace’’: WC to Nannie Wynne, 19 March 1886, Private
570 ‘excellent friends Opium and Quinine’: WC to Nannie Wynne, 1 June 1887, Private
571 ‘not the Christian name of another wife’: WC to Nannie Wynne, 23 December 1886, Private. Nannie’s mother died in Monte Carlo in 1898. In 1904 Nannie herself married Sir Alexander Lawrence, 4th Baronet and grandson of Lord Lawrence, the former Viceroy of India
572 ‘an exchange with Napoleon Sarony’: WC to Napoleon Sarony, 19 March 1887, Folger
573 ‘his ‘good genius’: WC to A. P. Watt, 6 February 1888, Pembroke
574 ‘The Bartleys are within two doors’: WC to Frank Beard, 26 July 1886, Princeton
575 ‘Wilkie Collins . . . has disappeared’: WC to Sebastian Schlesinger, 26 August 1888, Houghton
576 ‘Wellington Crescent’: this was the parade where Nina Lehmann had gone on holidays as a child – and again in the 1860s
577 ‘As for me, I gave up’: WC to Alexander Gray, 26 May 1888, Donald Whitton
578‘Be very careful about draughts’: WC to EP, 19 March 1886, Huntington
579 ‘That’s me, Padrona’: WC to to Nina Lehmann, 2 February 1887, Princeton
Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation Page 44
