Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hot Brandy and Water

On the conclusion of The Woman in White he made plans to escape from his desk. He first went down to Gad’s Hill Place to stay with Dickens, and then travelled up by train to Yorkshire in order to visit some friends there. In the early autumn of 1860 he was sailing with Edward Pigott in the Bristol Channel where it rained for two days and blew hard for the rest. He loved the great waves, however, and declared the voyage to be a decided success.

Then in October he travelled to Paris with Caroline, insisting on “first class all the way, with my own sitting-room in the best hotel when I get there—and every other luxury that the Capital of the civilised world can afford.” He had the means to be more lavish; the success of his latest novel had assured his prosperity. From this time forward he always travelled first class. He was at last earning a respectable income, and in the summer of the year he had opened up his own bank account at Coutts; he had previously used his mother’s account for his income and his expenses. Certainly he felt secure enough to finance the education of Carrie Graves at a private academy; she was first of all sent to a boarding school in Surrey. He had also renewed his agreement with All the Year Round for two years, thus further securing the immediate future.

He and Caroline were staying at the Hôtel Meurice, from where they ventured out to the restaurants and theatres of the capital. It is likely to have been her first journey abroad, but of course her reactions are not recorded.

On his return he discovered, to his dismay, that an unauthorised dramatisation of The Woman in White was about to appear at the Surrey Theatre on the Blackfriars Road in Lambeth. The pirated version lasted only for a short time, however, before the manager withdrew it. Collins would often be plagued by problems of dramatic copyright, since any novel could be dramatised without the consent of the novelist; only if the author arranged for a dramatisation, or organised a semi-public performance, could the rights be preserved. It testifies, if nothing else, to the immense popularity of novels dramatised for the stage.

In the following year Dickens and Collins found that one of their joint collaborations, “A Message from the Sea,” was about to be staged at the Britannia Saloon in Hoxton. On the first night the authors visited the theatre and remonstrated with the manager; he seemed to have accepted the justice of their case, and taken off the play, but then resumed performances. Dickens and Collins had no rights in the matter.

In the winter of 1860 the two novelists had journeyed to Devon in order to collect some local colour for their collaboration on “A Message from the Sea.” They stayed at a hotel in Bideford where they dined on bad fish. “No adventures whatever,” Dickens wrote. “Nothing has happened to Wilkie.

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