Re: research

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Thu, 30 Jan 1997 12:07:07 -0100 

My dear David (you dispense with the formality of a surname),

  Mr Wilkie Collins became a dear and close friend to me from
1851, when he played a part in some amateur theatricals with which
the Inimitable was astonishing a circle of friends.  We quickly
became professional associates.  He became a contributor to my
monthly journal "Household Words" in 1852, and accepted my
invitation to join the staff in 1856.  "All the Year Round,"
successor to "Household Words," also employed his prolific pen.
I helped him with his touching melodrama, "The Frozen Deep," and
we worked together, contentedly and I like to think successfully,
on two stories, "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices," and "No
Thoroughfare."
  We shared a taste for rambling, for travels directed by whim
only, and accomplished upon our own feet, or within whatever
conveyance chance offered.  Before we met, Collins had published
an excellent account of one such excursion in Cornwall, "Rambles
beyond Railways."  Together, and sometimes with our friend Mr Egg,
we explored our own country, France, Switzerland and Italy.  When
not falling down mountains, as he did in the holiday on which we
based our "Lazy Tour," Collins was the most accommodating and
stimulating of companions.
  He has been charged with Bohemianism, and I do not attempt to
defend him against the charge,  His private life was, to say the
least, irregular.  But perhaps that was, in part at least, why
he fascinated me so.  As an older man, I was able to accompany him
to scenes of dissipation as an observer only if I so chose -
invaluable experience for a writer of fiction.
  Nor was I ashamed to learn from a younger colleague.  Collins
led us all in the shaping of the mystery story, with such novels as
"The Woman in White," and "The Moonstone."  I hope he learned from
my practice and advice.  I believe I did from his.
  It gives me pleasure, my dear David, to memorialise the friendship
I enjoyed with Mr Collins.

Faithfully yours,


Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________


>Dear Mr. Dickens,
>       Please illuminate me on your relationship with Wilkie Collins. Thanks,
>David
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author