Wilkie Collins, página 12 de 36

"In relation to the purely literary side of the question," as Mr. Wilkie Collins says, there can be no doubt that his studies of character in My Ladys Money do seem to be drawn from nature. The story is constructed with his accustomed skill, the details fit together as usual with the precision of the facts in a criminal trial.

Though perhaps this story does not equal, from a literary point of view, some of Collinss previous effortsit being less sensational and less complicated in its plotit is, nevertheless, one of the best he has ever written. It is an able and eloquent protest against the false state of society and that cruel sentiment which prevents an erring woman ever returning to the path of virtue. Aside from its moral purpose, the story is exceedingly interesting. It should be read thoughtfully by everyone.

The Law and the Lady is one of the most ingenious and most repulsive of Wilkie Collinss novels, and we doubt, if having begun, that anyone would leave it unfinished. The heroine marries a man and soon discovers that she is his second wife, and that he has been tried in Scotland for the murder of his first, the jury returning a verdict of" Not proven," which, not establishing his innocence, simply declared that the evidence was not sufficient to convict him. She resolves to devote her life to the task of proving her husbands guiltlessness, and sets to work, without his knowledge. When he becomes aware that she has learned his secret, he leaves the country, convinced that she must despise him. The narrative of the wifes labors is intensely interesting, and marked by the ingenuity in handling and adapting evidence in which Mr. Collins is pre-eminent. In time the two are reunited, and later the wifes task is accomplished. Two characters, so original as horrible, figure in the story, Miserrinius Dexter and his niece, Ariel. Though Dexter could not possibly belong to real life, he is the most striking and absorbing personage in the book. Whether the author violates physiological probabilities by endowing this mere atomy with the furious passions which controlled him, we shall not undertake to decide ; but it is certain that the rules of Scottish courts must differ widely from ours if they permit a witness under examination to argue and declaim as did Mr. Dexter at the trial of Macallan. Like all the authors novels, this one is wholly devoid of warmth and tenderness and the light of human affections : even in the love of Macallan and Valeria there is a somber reserve. But his admirers will find in the story no reason to abate their admiration for his power of construction and development.

Miss or Mrs.? is a story in outline, and maybe the only instance in which Mr. Wilkie Collins has wasted his material; an entire novel might be constructed in his architectural style from its Incidents. There are several specimens of Mr. Wilkie Collinss neat, precise humor in this story, and the rudiments of at least one capital character. We hope to meet Lady Winwood on a wider field of action, and should be very glad to hear details of her household policy, and the final pulverization of her ladyships step- daughters.

A curious story of two brothers who are tried for a murder and found guilty under strongly convicting circumstances. After pleading innocence of the crime, they strangely make a confession to the effect that they murdered the man, who at the last moment turns up alive. The author, in a note, says whatever seems improbable in the story is a fact, and whatever reads like truth is pure invention. Truth or fiction, however, the little book will while away an hour very pleasantly.

Mr. Wilkie Collins brings to his work, along with other and valuable qualities, the special talent of the private detective and the criminal lawyer. Almost no modern novelist stands in any comparison with him for skill in constructing the engrenage, as a Frenchman would call it, of personal complication, for subtle delicacy in fitting together wheel and spring, pivot and pinion of his dramatic clockwork, in such fascinating interplay as shall lead the attention of the breathless spectator smoothly, imperceptibly, but inevitably to the final wind-up of the catastrophe. This skill in combining events is supplemented by, or rather cognate with, his shrewd analysis of character and motive. It is his favorite plan to suppose a case of private relation where virtuous personages or important interests are threatened by the schemes of some clever villain. Against him Mr. Collins, in the person of his beneficent and equally clever hero or heroine, straight sets his wits to defend the interests or persons attacked. The resulting struggle is carried on with the most exquisite skill of fence, involving both practical device and metaphysical penetration and shrewdness, till the final triumph of the right and confusion of the wrong-doers. In this book the metaphysical element assumes unusual importance. The book is in so far an exception to the usual run of Mr. Collinss works, that it is less a leaf from the records of Scotland Yard than an extract from the diary of a psychologist. There is a villain and a protecting genius, as usual ; but the villain is only a half one after all, and we are less interested in the actual facts of his rascality than in the causes which lead him to it, and the temperament which renders it possible. In the leading character, poor Miss Finch herself, the author develops an interesting question of medical psychology. A young girl, blind almost from her birth, loves one of two twin brothers, who has, in the process of medical treatment for epilepsy, been terribly disfigured in complexion by the use of nitrate of silver. From Lucillas instinctive horror of dark objects, the injudicious and timid concealment by the lover of his dusky hue, and the treacherous advantage taken of these things by the other twin, Nugent, to supplant his brother the whole complicated by Lucillas temporary restoration to sight and subsequent relapse arises the whole intrigue of the story

The joint-effort of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins, apart from its merits or demerits, must excite curiosity and interest. It is clear that in " No Thoroughfare " the latter gentleman has had the lions share of the labour, whatever of lions share may fall to him besides. Mr. Dickenss portion is merely incidental, though some of his touches are surpassing fine and unmistakably marked. Mr. Collinss superb inventive faculty shows itself throughout, though under a little restriction here unfolding, doubling up, coiling, and uncoiling in its brilliant, baffling, serpentine fashion. And the result is exactly such as might be expected. Mr. Wilding is a little over-done, but full of humor ; and Joey Ladle, the cellar-man who insists on being a good pecking-machine is admirable. This is one of Joeys happiest deliverances : " Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it ; but I says, I have been accustomed to take my wine in at the pores of the skin, and took that way, it acts different." But we mustnt say more on the matter, at once for our own sake and that of both writers and readers.

"Im sick to death of novels with an earnest purpose. Im sick to death of outbursts of eloquence, and large-minded philanthropy, and graphic descriptions, and unsparing anatomy of the human heart, and all that sort of thing. Good gracious me ! Isnt it the original intention or purpose, or whatever you call it, of a work of fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story? And how many of these books, I should like to know, do that? Why, so far as telling a story is concerned, the greater part of them might as well be sermons as novels. Oh, dear me! what I want is something that seizes hold of my interest, and makes me forget when it is time to dress for dinnersomething that keeps me reading, reading, reading, in a breathless state, to find out the end." Wilkie Collins confession of faith as a novelist is comprised in the above speech of his sprightly heroine, Miss Jessie Yelverton, in The Queen of Hearts. He is emphatically a story-writer. He is unrivaled in the construction of an elaborate and intricate plot, and he certainly succeeds in making his readers "go on reading, reading, reading, in a breathless state, to find out the end." Wilkie Collins career has been a progressive one. There are some ardent novel readers who will doubtless remember the publication of Antonina, and a few years later of Basil two books of singular power. Soon after Mr. Dickens commenced the publication of Household Words, there appeared in that periodical a number of short stories which were remarkable for the perfection of their style, the elaboration and originality of their plots and their general artistic finish. Then came a novel, The Dead Secret, also published in Household Words, in which the wonderful skill of the author in con structing and unfolding a plot was for the first time fully displayed. The Woman in White followed, and the claims of Wilkie Collins to be considered a great novelist were at once firmly established. He is, however, no mere weaver of intricate plotsno teller of elaborately constructed stories only. Few characters in modern fiction are as well drawn and sustained as that of Count Fosco, the cool, sensible, intellectual villain in The Woman in White. Collins also possesses, in common with Anthony Trollope, the power of delineating a heroine who shall be neither a dressed-up doll nor an impossible angel. Rachel Verinder in The Moonstone bears witness to the truth of this assertion. This novel is the best that Mr. Collins has given to the world and possibly the best he has ever written. The story is singularly original; and when we remember the force and extent of Hindoo superstition, we can scarcely venture to pronounce it improbable. And how admirably is the story told! Clear, lucid and forcible in style, never straying into the alluring but pernicious paths of description or dissertation, the narrative moves onward in its unbroken and entrancing course. Let the impatient reader, hurrying to reach the denouement, skip half a dozen pages. Instantly the thread of the story is broken, the tale becomes incomprehensible, the incidents lose their coherence. The Moonstone is a perfect work of art, and to remove any portion of the cunningly constructed fabric destroys the completeness and beauty of the whole.

Wilkie Collins has given us in this novel one more instance of his strange capacity for weaving extra plots. Armadale, from beginning to end, is a lurid labyrinth of improbabilities. It produces upon the reader the effect of a literary nightmare. Miss Gwilt, Mrs. Oldershaw, and Doctor Le Doux of the Sanatorium are enough to make any story in which they figure disagreeably sensational; and Mr. Collins seizes every possible opportunity of working up the horror they inspire to the highest point. If it were the object of art to make ones audience uncomfortable without letting them know why, Mr. Wilkie Collins would be beyond all doubt a consummate artist. To the accomplishment of this object he devotes great ingenuity, a curious genius for arranging and contriving mysteries, and a good deal of what may be called galvanic power. There is a sort of unearthly and deadly look about the heroes and heroines of his narrative, and though it is necessary for the purpose of the plot that they should keep moving, we feel, that every, one of their motions is due, not to a natural process, but to the sheer force and energy of the authors will. They dodge each other up and down the stage after the manner of puppets at a puppet-show, and after watching their twistings and turnings from first to last we come away full of admiration of the strings and the unseen fingers that are directing everything from behind the curtain. An ordinary novelist would let the villains murder their intended victim at once, and have done with it. Not so Mr. Wilkie Collins. A hundred agencies are brought into play to suspend our interest through this long volume. Spies, detective officers, lawyers, and two or three virtuous and watchful amateurs counterplot day and night against the villains. Each dogs the other till he is tired, and when he is tired the other dogs him. They overhear each others secrets from behind trees, or lurk unsuspected under windows, keeping diaries sometimes of their proceedings. To heighten the absorbing interest of this contest of intelligences, railways, telegraphy, post-offices, presentiments, and dreams are freely used ; and the wonders of science do duty side by side with the marvels of the supernatural world. As a whole the effect is clever, powerful, and striking, though grotesque, monotonous, and, to use a French word, bizarre. There can be no mistake about the talent displayed. What strikes one as wanting is that humor which is the salt of all great genius, and that sense of proportion and beauty which is the soul of all real art.

If the only test of fiction is that it shall secure interest, then Mr. Wilkie Collins has succeeded to the full with this novel. The construction is almost perfect, and the interest is so graduated, and the plot so skillfully developed, that no portion can be skipped without loss. Mr. Collins is facile princeps in invention, and introduces no detail that is not of importance in reference to the whole. His novels, indeed, are too complete and self-contained to wholly satisfy any taste that is still simple enough to look at life as it is with anything of the pause and wonder that must often overtake the disinterested observer. There are so many loose threads always to be seen even upon the right side of the tapestry of life, that such an one is persecuted with the wish to get a look at the other side, which remains inscrutably hidden. No real story can ever be so completely told that everything at the end can be satisfactorily wound-up and disposed of. Mr. Wilkie Collinss characters seldom go their own way. They are kept rigidly moving on the puppet-strings of his plot. He is versatile in his knack of pulling a very large number about so cleverly that, while they cross and recross each others paths in every imaginable way, they never really knock against each other. Take an instance: was it at all likely that Mr. Arnold Brinkworth, who was wholly unsuspicious of the risk he was running in visiting, as his wife, at Craig Fernie "Hottle," the woman Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn had promised to marry, should have been so oblivious as not to have looked after the letter which he had carried to Anne Silvester, and with whose contents he was fully acquainted? Had he been alive to the risks he ran, his want of attention to her and her interests might have had some excuse. But the letter needed to be lost, to make the leading complication of the novel; and accordingly Bishopriggs, the smug waiter at the "hottle," is called in to do his part. All the complications arise out of most glaring improbabilities; it is only Mr. Wilkie Collinss consummate invention which, by decoy circlings, diverts the mind from dwelling on them in a way which would prove fatal to the story.

The special charm of No Name is the uncertainty in which the reader is kept. The most experienced of novel-readers is unable to predict whether Magdalen succeeds in her scheme, or marries Capt. Kirke, or retires from the scene to die, baffled and broken-hearted. Each crisis in the progress of the story takes the public by surprise. The death of the elder Vanstone, the marriage of Magdalen with his son, the trust by which Noel Vanstone prolongs the contest, even after his decease to quote the word which he himself preferred to the vulgar one of death are all startling surprises, unpredicted and unforeseen Much higher praise cannot be given. There is, too, both about Capt. Wragge and Old Mazey, a dry, delicate humour, for which before one should hardly have given Mr. Collins credit. No Name has added to the authors fame and many readers have derived so much pleasure in reading it, that it is hard to speak ungratefully of this book. Still it is fair to warn the novel-reading public that, if they want really to enjoy the great sensation novel, they should read it at the rate of not more than a chapter a day.

The author of The Woman in White and of No Name has had reprinted and published a collection of articles contributed by him to Household Words, and perhaps to other periodicals. The two papers which will attract most attention are probably those entitled respectively, "To Think, or Be Thought For," and "Dramatic Grub-street," inasmuch as upon their first appearance they provoked both private and public remonstrance, and they are now reprinted because Mr. Collins has seen a reason to abandon the convictions the expression of which called down upon him the aforesaid remonstrances. It is undoubted that this publication did not add much to the authors brilliant fame, but it is useful as a sort of meter by which one may measure his prodigious growth. This edition includes both original volumes.

This extraordinary work ranks among the foremost purely melodramatic or sensation novels of modern times. Mr. Collins has thrown a force and power into this story, of which the reader has only seen intimations in his former works. After opening the narrative with a cheerful sketch of Professor Pesea, an Italian Refugee, combining in his small person all the pleasant traits of his nation, the author at once begins his work, and in a few sentences throws a weird and mystic glow over the story, which we feel to deepen and extend, until the disclosure of the plot by the discovery of the register and subsequent death of Sir Percival Glyde. This effort is all the more remarkable when we examine the simplicity of the means employed, which consist of a series of Runic repetitions so strongly exemplied in Edgar Poes compositions. The misfortune which must attach to all novels of the terrific school, is, that the termination of necessity explains that which the imagination has been before allowed to dwell upon, and a feeling of disappointment must succeed the denouement however horrible that may be. This, Mr. Collins has avoided as far as practicable, in withdrawing the attention of the reader from the eclaircissement, by relating a tremendous interview, tremendous from the self-control exercised by both parties, between Hartright and Count Fosca, a villain of entirely new stamp, except in his fondness for pets, in which he resembles, if we remember correctly, one of the Council of Three who, while condemning thousands to the guillotine, would fondle his cat with feminine tenderness. But we will not spoil the plot, plain yet complex, elaborate but not confused. What we can do, however, is to advise those who enjoy the stronger forms of light literature, to lose no time in reading this most interesting novel.

Mr. Wilkie Collins can tell a story well, and he has an ingenious knack of stringing stories together. After Dark consisted of a series of stories, and admirable they were, and The Queen of Hearts is a work of the same description. The author lives in the region of fiction; but he does not aim at the higher objects contemplated by the more gifted writers of his class. He does not affect to be profound, philosophical, or didactic. His great object is so to write as to sustain interest and to amuse. But, though he does not aim at anything beyond that, thanks to his sympathies with many of the better qualities of human nature, he achieves something much higher.

A Rogues Life was published in a magazine some twenty years before it was made into a book. It is a very clever story, and the interest is well sustained throughout. There is just about enough of it, inasmuch as a short tale like this is more interesting than some of the authors longer works, wherein the complicated plots and lengthened mysteries are too apt to weary the reader before his curiosity is satisfied. We cannot help feeling quite an affection for the "Rogue," perhaps because most of the other characters in the story are as selfish, more wicked, and not so frankly conceited as he is, and have none of his courage, audacity, and cleverness to redeem them. We must all sympathize in his marriage, though it is not celebrated under the most favorable circumstances, he being liable to the extreme penalty of the law at the time. It seems hard that he should be captured, tried, and sentenced to transportation immediately after securing his wife; but this proves the beginning of his upward career of prosperity and respectability, and we leave him happily settled with Alicia in Australia. We do not wish to destroy the interest of a book which is so dependent on the plot, by telling more of the story, and therefore leave it without further comment to new readers.

The main actor in this play, that was co-written with Mr. Charles Dickens, is Richard Wardour, a man of violent passions, who has been supplanted in the affections of the woman to whom he was ardently attached. He discovers his successful rival in a comrade in an arctic expedition. Eager, mad for revenge, he determines to kill him. They go forth together in the rear of a party dispatched in search of succor, Richard Wardour with murder in his thoughts, Frank Aldersley unsuspecting, conding. Companionship in suffering restores the heart of humanity to Richard Wardour. Instead of being the destroyer of his rival, he becomes his savior.

Amigo y colaborador de Dickens, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) alcanzó gran fama por sus novelas, con las que contribuyó a la creación del género detectivesco y logró altísimas cotas de calidad en la urdimbre de las tramas novelescas. En "La mujer de blanco" (novela cargada de misterio, reflejo de los claroscuros de la era victoriana y de lectura compulsiva) se teje una intriga irresistible que iran relatando varios de sus protagonistas, entre los que destacan la energica y perspicaz Marian Halcombe y el extravagante y muy maquiavelico conde Fosco. Otras obras de Wilkie Collins en Alianza Editorial: "La Piedra Lunar".

The Ostler" was originally published in 1855 as a short story, which later became the foundation for the much longer story The Dream Woman. It is one of Wilkie Collins first supernatural stories, revolving around the forty-year-old Isaac Scatchard, who has a very strange dream of a young woman or wasnt it a dream, but a ghost? Seven years later he even gets more lost when he encounters a woman who looks very much like his strange dream creature .

A good bookshelf is not complete without this charming little tale. It is founded on what was related to the author as a fact, as to the first obtaining of the well-known cast of the face of Shakespeare, by a stonemason, who was repairing the church at Stratford-on Avon. He was found out, and by the local authorities forthwith threatened with severe penalties; and not knowing how far his deed was culpable, and their threats dangerous, he thought it best to make a hasty retreat from the place with his treasure. It was only for love and admiration of the poet that he had been prompted to procure the memorial for himself, but he was advised afterwards to turn it to profitable account. His casts, neatly mounted on black marble, were soon spread far and wide through England and America. From this fact, or tradition, the story of Mr. Wray and his family is conceived. The title of the story, as of a Mysterious Cash-Box," arises from the opening scene, where a pretty and interesting girl comes into a chemists shop, which is also the branch bank of a little country town. She asks leave to put a written bill in the window, advertising that "Mr. Reuben Wray, pupil of the late celebrated John Kemble, gives lessons on elocution and delivery at two-and-sixpence an hour." That pupils are prepared for the stage, and various announcements, the long advertisement also sets forth. Speculation was soon afloat in the town of Tidbury-on-the-Marsh, about this Mr. Wray and the fair stranger who had brought the announcement to the bank window. Mr. Dark, one of the partners, had seen one of the gentlemen who lodged at No. 12, with a large cash-box, and it puzzled him how a man with a cash-box needed to give lessons in reading at half-a-crown an hour. The connection between the mask and the mystery may now be guessed. The story is very pleasantly told, and what Mr. Collins calls a slight sketch, is a beautifully-drawn picture of domestic life and quite a tale for an English or American winter fireside.

The setting for the six stories in this book is an episode in the life of a travelling portrait-painter, which we are made to learn through the charmingly simple narrative of his wifes diary. Disabled for a time by weakness of the eyes from working at his profession, his wife suggests that he should fill up the consequent deficit in their purse by dictating to her "after dark," when her household work is done, some of the good stories he has gathered in the course of his wanderings. The well-known necessity for getting a "sitter" to talk of something that will interest him and make him forget that he has to look dignified, renders the portrait-painter ingenious in extracting personal anecdotes and bits of striking experience, so that he has two sources of unusual knowledge about men and their fortunesobservation of his sitters themselves, and a peculiar opportunity of learning what they have to tell about others. In the prologue to each of his stories our painter, in After Dark, gives us something of what he has gathered from the former source; he describes one of his sitters or the persons with whom a certain commission brought him into contact, and tells us the conversation that led to his eliciting the succeeding story. These prologues are carefully and agreeably written, and have the negative charm, in these days of spasmodic writing fast rising into the importance of a positive meritof being free from all affectation. Of the tales themselves, the main element is the excitement either of curiosity or of terror; their great merit consists either in the effective presentation of a mystery or the effective working up of striking situations. Yet the writer does not care to interest us in his personages, but only in what happens to them. Mr. Wilkie Collins seems to be without a rival in the skillful movement of a ghost or murder story, and he knows how to give the thrill of terror, without mingling that sort of offence to refined sensibilities which causes terror to pass into horror and disgust. Three admirable stories of this class are "The terribly strange Bed,""Gabriels Wedding," and "The Yellow Mask." The author of After Dark seeks his moving incidents in modern life, and he usually, in the end, interprets the supernatural into the natural.