Klimaszewski Brief Lives: Wilkie Collins

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-78094-006-9
Verlag: Hesperus Press Ltd.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 152 Seiten

Reihe: Brief Lives

Author of the first detective novel in English, Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular authors in Victorian England. In this illuminating biography, Melisa Klimaszewski situates the writer within his own milieu and demonstrates how his work sparks new understandings of Victorian life and letters. A close friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, Collins secured his own fame with sensational novels that feature intricate legal plots, mistaken identities, and complex crimes. Boldly challenging the mores of Victorian society by maintaining two families and shunning the institution of marriage, Collins was also one of the most unconventional public figures of his day. His life story, succinctly told in this elegant biography, promises to instruct and to entertain.

Melisa Klimaszewski is a Visiting Assistant Professor at DePauw University. She has published articles on Victorian servants and domesticity and has edited Hesperus' edition of Charles Dickens' A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Klimaszewski, Melisa

Leseproben

From Willie to Wilkie

On 8th January 1824, Harriet Collins gave birth to her first child, William Wilkie Collins, in what was then the northwest London neighbourhood of Marylebone The healthy, light-haired baby boy was born with a noticeable physical irregularity: a large bulge on the right side of his forehead. The firm protuberance, looking something like a tennis ball trying to press its way out of his cranium, is visible in depictions spanning Collins’ life, from an early sketch of him as an infant to photographs of the elderly Collins. These images show not a grotesque, shocking deformity but rather an insistent and unmasked oddity on a large forehead. Photographs of Collins as an adult show his hair combed back – no awkward attempts to spread his front locks over the bulge and no turning to one side to mask it.

The forehead peculiarity immediately marked the boy, whose first nickname was Willie, as unusual. Although he was sensitive about the irregularities in his appearance and the large size of his head, a sense of being different from others did not traumatise him. Having such a temperament was most fortunate for the young man because, as he matured, his extremities did not keep pace with the rest of his growing body. His hands and feet remained extremely tiny. Searching for shoes and boots, Collins often sought sizes smaller than the average woman’s, and he could slip into items made for young children. These challenges, though, did not cause Collins to long for normalcy. He admired those with more ideal physical forms, but he did not develop an intense or bitter desire to fit in with the masses. In fact, from a young age, Collins was comfortable confronting and disputing social custom.

In his distaste for traditional mores, young Willie could not have differed more from his father, who highly valued proper appearances and social acceptance. William Collins, born 18th September 1788, sought a type of artistic success that was linked to entry in elite circles. The son of a Scotswoman and an Irishman settled in England, William Collins sold paintings to provide a key source of income after his father died bankrupt in 1812. The senior William Collins had been an art dealer and freelance journalist whose abolitionist work ‘The Slave Trade: A Poem Written in 1788’ inspired his friend George Morland to compose a painting of the same name that was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Eventually, the junior William Collins would also find patrons at the very top of Victorian society In 1818, the Prince Regent bought Collins’ and Collins became a Royal Academician in 1820.

With a stable career and income, William could now consider marrying a beautiful Scottish woman whom he had admired for years: Harriet Geddes. Harriet and William met at a small artists’ ball in Edinburgh in 1814, when neither deemed it practical to pursue a romance. They bumped into one another every couple of years, but it was not until a chance meeting in London in 1821 that Collins intensified the relationship. Now they courted as two adults, mature in their love and in their acknowledgment of financial as well as familial obstacles. She had no dowry, and his mother wanted to delay the match because of worries about William’s financial stability. The circumstances surrounding the actual marriage are interesting. On 16th September 1822, the two married in Scotland, where William was travelling as part of the entourage surrounding George IV’s official visit. Wilkie Collins’ biography of his father states that the couple wed in Scotland to place themselves well away from the objections of William’s mother. The unpopular Marriage Act of 1822, repealed after its stipulations had been in effect for just seven months, prevented a couple from marrying over parental opposition. The provisions of the Act, though, did not come into effect untilist September 1822, which leaves one wondering why the couple had not simply taken vows in England earlier.

William expressed especially ardent concern about Harriet making a trip to Edinburgh by herself in a letter from 24th August 1822. He suggests that the trip might be manageable with a protective escort, then writes, ‘And yet, I feel so nervous at the idea of your journey in your present state of health, and without me, that I am quite miserable.’ Why, after a prolonged courtship, did the couple suddenly feel compelled to wed during William’s trip? What motivated William to underscore that his companionship was most appropriate at this particular time? It seems most peculiar, after over seven years of patience, to hasten the nuptials with Harriet in a fragile ‘state of health’. Although Wilkie, quoting this letter in would not have aimed at raising questions about his parents’ earlier chastity, it is at least possible that Harriet’s health was affected by a pregnancy that did not result in a healthy birth. William hoped in the same letter that a consecrated union might ‘brighten our present prospects’. The marriage was not scandalised by its association with Scotland, the site of many elopements due to its more permissive marriage laws, but the couple, for whatever reason, was certainly eager in the autumn of 1822 to seal their union officially

By nineteenth-century standards, Harriet Geddes married herself out of a state of spinsterhood at the age of thirty-two Her younger sister Margaret had wed previously, and Harriet had overcome the challenge of finding a way to support herself financially in a society that closed professions to women. The eldest child of Harriet Easton and Alexander William Reynolds Geddes, Harriet sought employment after her father, a former army officer, experienced a financial downfall. She nearly began a career as a theatre actress, which would have placed her forever outside the realm of genteel social circles. Displaying their bodies on stage for pay and calling deliberate attention to themselves, actresses were presumed to have relaxed morals and were often likened to prostitutes. Harriet’s enjoyment of plays was rekindled later in life through her son’s theatrical pursuits, but in her youth, it was replaced with governessing. Funded by a concerned evangelical, Harriet pursued studies that enabled her to work as a schoolmistress before securing posts as a private governess for several years, not only supporting herself but also helping to bolster her family’s finances. Once Harriet married William Collins and left governessing, she showed no desire to pursue employment or studies of her own; indeed, she disapproved of many women who focused on non-domestic pursuits. Cultivating an interest in stage performance as the young wife of an increasingly respected artist would have been out of the question.

Harriet’s sister Margaret, who took the name Carpenter in marriage and had eight children, did continue a more public career as the family’s reputation continued to rise in the art world. Margaret impressively displayed portraits at the Royal Academy, where women were denied official membership, for over half a century. Her talent garnered critical praise as well as loyal patrons, and several of her works are in the National Portrait Gallery. William Collins’ work continued to impress the Prince Regent, who commissioned another piece, (completed in 1825), after he assumed the throne as King George IV (1818), a portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s daughter Sara, was widely admired, and Collins was also friendly with Coleridge’s close collaborator, William Wordsworth, who would later become Poet Laureate. The famous Scottish painter, David Wilkie, was such a close friend that Collins chose to embed him in the family tree by using his surname for the middle name of his firstborn. Multiple lines of family history, then, on the maternal as well as the paternal side, pointed in artistic directions for young Willie, but he was not the son who would be known for continuing the family’s painting legacy.

Four years after Willie’s birth, Harriet and William welcomed another son into the family: Charles Allston Collins, born 25th January 1828. As Willie’s middle name honoured an artist, Charley’s paid tribute to Washington Allston, an American painter who studied at the Royal Academy Schools, was a close friend of Coleridge, and spent several years in Italy as well as England. Delicate and sickly for most of his life, Charley developed a more reserved and less confident personality than his older brother, but they were good friends. Each tried his hand at painting, often under the shadow of their father’s brush, with Charley’s work showing the most promise. The close-knit family spent much of their time together and, when separated, corresponded faithfully In a letter from William to Harriet from 17th October 1831, William transcribes messages from each boy Willie’s shows not only how central epistles were to maintaining ties with extended family but also a bit of a silly streak: ‘I have had a letter from my Aunt Christy which was put in one for you, it made us all laugh uncle George putting a message in your letter that he was a monkey ‘

Like most families in their social class, the Collinses employed domestic servants, and it would not have been abnormal for the boys to spend more time with a nursemaid and a tutor than with their own mother Harriet, however, was a solicitous and involved parent who taught her sons their lessons and tended them carefully when they were ill She remained a convivial person, but her love of entertaining would not emerge strongly again until her widowhood In the meantime, she directed her energies towards her children and...