Bismarck weekly tribune., 1889-10-11

SA@S '.
wILK1E COLLINS AT HIS DESK.
By view of the life and writings of Wilkie
Collins one can easily see that his method and
that of his school was natural evolution
from that Of those Immediately preceding
them. Beginning with the accession Of
Charles II we have the wildly extravagant
and licentious school in which Claude Duval
was popular hero and all the fine gentle
men were lbertines After this came that
era of intense sentimentality, of ardent
'gush," swearing eternal friendship" and
all that sort Of thing, which lasted three
quarters of a century, and was satirized near
" as much longer. In the early days Of John
Wesley all the reading young people were
saturated with this sort of thing, and corfe-
sponded with each other under the names of
s'Sylvander" and "Parmelia," s'Clovis,"
"Clarissa" and "Alonzo."
Every person of sentiment had an extra
name, and Of course many without senti-
ment adopted the fashion. Queen Anne was
"Airs. Freeman" to her correspondent, and
her intimate friends were ''Mrs Morley'' and
"Mrs. Masham" John Wesley was s'Clean-
der," and wrote gushing letters to s'Me-
lissa." About the time of the American
Revolution this style OF novel had reached
the last phase of f1oridness and corruption, and
was satirized on the stage and in the Comics
till even kitchen girls were ashamed of it.
Then sentiment ran to the exaltation of the
domestic affections for a long period-the
period of Children Of the Abbey" etc. The
fathers were fonder than all fathers before
them, the daughters ''called heaven to wit
ness'' on the slightest provocation, husbands
sank insensible on the graves of their wives
and wives fell and expired on the coff1ns of
their husbands. And this style still ruled
when Wilkie Collins made his advent in
literature
He was the son of the eminent rustic
painter, William Collins, and, another paint
er's name being added, his full name was
William Wilkie Collins. Born in London in
January, 1924, and taken from school at an
early age to be put in the. tea trade, he
changed his whole plan Of life on coming of
age and began to study law. In l848 he
wrote an affectionate biography Of his father,
which was SO well received that he changed
his plan again, and thenceforth was devoted
entirely to, literature The lawyer reading
some of his productions can easily perceive
the effect Of law studies on the writer's mind
and perceive at the same time that the study
was not thorough enough to save him from
some serious blunders In Man and Wife,"
for instance, the plot is most ingeniously
built up on legal technicalities, yet the points
he makes are certainly "bad law England
and Scotland were at that time pretty hard
on wives, it must be confessed, but nothing
like so hard as the novelist makes out.
That. school of fiction in which plot out
veloping rapidly when Wilkie Collins began
a. 1on ~ ta
near perfection. s.The Dead Secret was in
the highest style of the new school, and the
publication in 1860 Of ''The Woman in
White' actually seemed to mark new era
in fiction. AS it came out serially the sue
cessive numbers were eagerly looked for by
ali reading England, and in America mill
ion young hearts were as profoundly moved
as most people were the previous year by the
successive dispatches of the Franco-Austrian
war. Thereafter there appeared to bs no
Improvement in construction Of plot though,
as matter Of course, there will long be
question as to the comparative merits Of his
early and later novels, as it is matter Of
taste. 1t is interesting therefore to discover
how he built up such complicated scheme,
and he once explained it fully in letter to
an American lady.
His general plan was to get the central idea
first. In s'The Woman in White' this plan
was criminal conspiracy by people in good
society, and not otherwise criminal and
the keynote was the robbing OF woman Of
her right to name and title. This done,
he wrote the climax first. Similarly Mrs
Stowe wrote the dying scene Of Uncle Tom
first, and then built the story to it. Mr.. Col
Inns got most of his characters in mind,
thought long and hard to find the sother
woman" then gave it up and was contem-
plating another plan when, as he says, ANNE
Catherick comes in and says Try me- ;"
This illustrates a trick of the mind with
which all writers and machinists, indeed all
men who think hard, are familiar. The
thinker strives long and earnestly to formu-
late an idea, fails and abandons the quest,
then suddenly from an unexpected source q
totally different and unsought idea comes
rushing into the mind, and very often it
proves far more suitable than the one first
sdimly conceived The mental exertion brings,
not what it was trying to bring, but some
thing different and far better. The Wo-
man in: White is his most popular novel,
and, as usual in such cases, quite an army Of
critics have scored tho public for its taste,
but the author himself and Charles Dickens
thought the public perfectly right. It IS now
OF interest to find that the novelist, like otheg
msn, offten failed on his hrst plan and had to
try again. Thus, In this case he began with
q striking incident and let the characters
themselves state the facts which led up to II,
found this to be . mistake, threw all that
was done away and made Q new framework.
Thenf for the development:
$'s.I Ihe scene of my opening chapters is in