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Wilkie Collins

I was born on the 8th of January, 1824, at No. 11, New Cavendish Street, Portland Place, London. I am the eldest of the two sons (and two only children) of the late William Collins (Royal Academician), the celebrated painter of the Coast scenery and cottage life of England.

For the first twelve years of my life, I was taught in the usual way at a well reputed private school. I learnt as little as possible; and that little (consisting mainly of the rudiments of Latin and Greek) has not been of the slightest use to me in my after-life.

In the year 1837, my father decided to go to Italy to find fresh subjects for his brush among the people and the scenery of that country. My mother was to accompany him, and the question was, whether his two boys were to go too.

With two exceptions, all my father's friends declared that it would be madness on his part to interrupt the education of two boys, one 13 years old and one 9 by taking them to a foreign country and exposing them to foreign influences, at a time when they ought to be subjected to the wholesome discipline and restraint of an English school. The two exceptions already mentioned happened, however, to be two very remarkable people, capable of seeing possibilities of education in other systems than the system conventionally recognized about them. They were, my godfather, Sir David Wilkie, (the great Scotch painter); and the famous Mrs. Somerville, the authoress of "Physical Geography." These two reminded my father that what his boys might lose in Latin and Greek, they might gain in knowledge of modern languages, and in acquiring habits of observation among people and scenes entirely new to them.
Wilkie was my father's dearest friend; and, for Mrs. Somerville's powers, he felt the highest respect. He took us to Italy with him. We remained abroad for two years; and there, and in that way, I picked up the only education which I can sincerely say has been of some real use to me.

Returning from Italy, I went back to school (a private school), and the classics. In due time, it became a question next of Oxford and the classics, or of Cambridge and the Mathematics. My good father left me free to choose my own profession; only telling me that, if I liked it too, he would like to see me in the Church. I hardly know which prospect I most disliked--going to a University or going into the Church. To escape both, I declared for Commerce, and at seventeen or eighteen years old, I was placed in a merchant's office.

Here I remained--I think for four years. I should probably not have remained four days, if I had not had a pursuit of my own to follow which really engaged my interest. In plain English, I was already an author in secret. There is hardly any form of audacious literary enterprise proper to my age, which I did not perpetrate in secret, while I was supposed to be in a fair way of becoming one of the solid commercial props of my native country. Towards the end of the four years, I had grown wise enough to descend from epic poems and tragedies in blank verse, to unassuming little articles and stories, some of which found their way modestly into the small periodicals of the time. Thus self-betrayed as unfit for mercantile pursuits, I abandoned commerce, and tried reading for the Bar. My reading lasted, as well as I can remember, six weeks -- and then I began a novel by way of importing a little variety into my legal studies. I continued, however, to be a member of the Inn of Court (Lincoln's Inn) at which I had been entered as a student; and (no examination being obligatory, in my time) I was five years afterwards called to the Bar. I am now a Barrister of some fifteen years standing, without having ever put on a wig and gown.