Wilkie-Along Post IV: The back view is the loveliest view

Here we are, the final epochs in the SENSATIONAL life of Wilkie Collins. Thank you, Alice, for finding this book and then hosting this readalong, cos our readalongs are the best readalongs. #fact

In these final chapters and Wilkie's final years, he travels around the US on a less-than-successful tour, stages a few more plays, can't really match the success of his early work, continues to fight for copyright laws, has a few grandkids and then dies. You'd think this would be where the book ends but no, we get another chapter that, in the same vein as the rest of the book, talks about a bunch of people that are not Wilkie. I do not care if his ex-son-in-law had to file for bankruptcy.

Anyway, let's just get to a bunch of bullet points

• Wilkie does a reading tour around the US and things aren't so great. Only partially filled venues with a consistent criticism that Wilkie isn't the most engaging reader. Which is weird because he was an actor so you'd think this wouldn't be that big of a stretch. Or maybe he was a terrible actor the whole time and Lycett didn't make that clear. One review says: "We should counsel Mr Wilkie Collins to adopt the tone and method of a lecturer, which anyone can acquire, rather than attempt those of an actor which lie beyond his reach."

• Also we get this amazing line: "He has many fine qualities but he has an unusual amount of conceit and self-satisfaction - and I do not think any one can think Wilkie Collins a greater man than Wilkie Collins thinks himself." I never really got this sense at any other point in the book and I don't know if that is because the woman who said this is alone in this belief or that Lycett has been glossing over this behavior. 
• Wilkie becomes friends with a guy due to a shared "interest in mildly pornographic pictures of women". Of course.

• The book says Wilkie visited "Oneida, a community in Connecticut." Except Oneida is in New York. NOW this community, which practiced their own communal sex beliefs and rituals that Wilkie was down with (including pantagamy), had a few off-shoots, including a group in Wallingford, Connecticut. This is where it seems that Wilkie actually went. So yeah, minor error, BUT STILL.*
• Wilkie makes the hero in one of his short stories a Roman Catholic, prompting Lycett to declare that it "shows that Wilkie was not always prejudiced in matters of religion." Which, let's be honest, is pretty much the equivalent of someone saying they're not racist cos they have a black friend. 

• Throughout his life Wilkie talks about how much he HAAAAATES the institution of marriage and will not consider it at all and wants to live his bachelor life while having his two mistresses. Then he apparently starts calling some little girl "Mrs Collins" and looks forward to a "conjugal embrace" with the girl. And WTF?? Lycett says my reaction is me just taking this the wrong way and there was nothing weird about this and the girl's mother was included in the exchanges (which, does that mean there was a Victorian version of CC-ing someone?).
• Wilkie says he thinks "the back view of a finely-formed woman the loveliest view...The line of beauty in those quarters enchants me, when it is not overladen by fat." Thanks for that "no fatties" line thrown in at the end, Wilks. 
• Oscar Wilde had a brother named Willie. Willie Wilde. This makes me smile each time I say that name. I realize this has nothing to do with Wilkie but it comes up in the book and I didn't know this fact before so there you go.

And there we go. Wilkie's life and the lives of a lot of people around him (and around them...) I do now want to read a LOT more Wilkie so there will be many more readalongs in the future. 

*Also, fun fact, this sex commune is also the group that is responsible for the Oneida silverware. 

Wilkie-Along Post III: Bringing the sensation novel into the home

Summer Wilkie Readalong, post the third! And can I say thank you to Alice (aka Reading Rambo aka Readalong Queen) for keeping this week's section short cos the holiday weekend was eating into my reading time. But there was important stuff to do, like watch The Muppets Take Manhattan in the park.

#important

This epoch dealt with Wilkie not so much falling out with Caroline but sort of drifting away and picking up a new mistress, Martha. There's also a lot about Victorian publishing rules which is now added to the list of things I sort of skimmed over. There's less talk of venereal diseases, more issues with gout and rheumatism (which, I mean, could have been more STIs cos medical science at that point had only come so far) and the deaths of both Wilkie's mother and BFF (although there had been some drama there) Dickens. Oh also Wilkie and Martha have two daughters together but Wilkie basically doesn't talk about them. So. Father of the year, over there.

Alright, let's list out some stuff that happened

• The section starts with Wilkie's meeting of Martha, which Lycett describes as "a buxom wench" and really Lycett? What are you doing? 

• In this description we also get "she was as near as Wilkie could reasonably get to his ideal of the broad-buttocked Italian woman". I don't know if any of this is coming from Wilkie's writing or just Lycett's feelings on the lady. I mean, if Wilkie specifically talked about her butt whyyyyyy aren't we getting those direct quotes, because they would probably be hilarious. Anyway, call back to the first epoch and Wilkie losing his virginity to the "voluptuous Roman lady".
• There's a paragraph about how Victorian men were sexually aroused by women in inferior positions and this is apparently what Wilkie saw in Martha? Lycett seems to have a problem with her.
• In addition to commenting on women's hats and crinolines (earlier epochs), he's now giving footwear advice. He advised a woman, Nina Lehmann, "not to be afraid to wear thick boots. It was wrong to think that women could not look attractive in such footwear, he declared with an air of authority, adding that men understood such matters." I would love to see this from Nina's pov where she is just rolling her eyes at him. Or who knows, maybe he can speak with authority on the topic of women's fashion. Then I'm sort of wishing we could have some time traveling and get him to be a judge on Project Runway.

Wilkie does

• One day Wilkie is working with the window opened and a kitten wanders in and drapes itself on Wilkie. This makes it difficult to write but no one can resist an adorable kitten.
• Caroline gets married to a twenty-three year old and Lycett seems VERY JUDGY about this. "She was thirty-seven and quite what she saw in the mere stripling was hard to determine." I'm sorry she decided she wanted to find someone and get married and didn't want to wait around for gouty, opium addicted Wilkie. 
• Dickens, continuing to be a dick to Caroline, wrote to a friend saying that Caroline's wedding was probably a sham affair and an attempt to trick Wilkie into marrying her via emotional blackmail. 

• Publishers make Wilkie remove the word "damn" from his work and Wilkie does it but is annoyed. In his words "Readers who object to expletives in books are - as to my experience - readers who object to a great many other things in books, which they are too stupid to understand." 
• Later more "inappropriate language" is cut from his work and Wilkie is VERY unhappy, claiming he does not look to young people as the court of appeal and maybe his work isn't meant for children.   

So there we go. Until next week!

Wilkie-Along Post II: Wilkie's Unduly Assertive Women

Are you ready for some more Wilkie? Because it's post II of our Wilkie Summer Readalong, hosted by Alice aka Reading Rambo.

So this week we read Epochs 2 and 3, Wilkie starts making money from his writing and also is basically common law married to a woman but DEFINITELY not freal married cos he does not approve of said institution.

I actually took a bunch of notes for this section. And by a bunch of notes I mean I wrote down a page number and then key phrases like "daisy hat" or "pretentious breezes". Stuff that was ridiculous and made me laugh. So I am pretty much going to bullet things out, just like I did last time around. #AintBroke #DontFix

But before I do that, I need to confess that whenever Lycett wandered away from talking about Wilkie or Dickens, I faded. Not even a guy named Egg could keep me interested. That's not to say these little tangents couldn't be interesting and I kept thinking how I would rather someone like Bryson was tackling those parts cos his books are like 46% tangents and I love them.

Anyway, let's list out ridiculous things that happened in these sections

• "But here, to confuse matters, were to apparent opposites that Wilkie regarded as very similar. As he stated in his letter...he believed 'that the Novel and the Play are twin-sisters in the family of Fiction, that the one is drama narrated, as the other is drama acted.'" I reread this section like five times because...yeah, that seems like a pretty good working description of the difference between a play and a novel. Why are these apparently opposites? Is the opposite of a play a novel? Or vice versa? I tried Googling to see if that is a thing and Google has no idea what I'm talking about (it gave me a definition for "novel" the adjective and told me "work" is the opposite of play). Basically, Wilkie thinks these two similar things are indeed similar. 

• Dickens and Wilkie (and Egg) go on vacation together and get on each others' nerves. Actually it seems like Wilkie mostly got on Dickens nerve by being stingy and cos he would whistle opera hits off-tune.
• We also learned from this section that Dickens referred to himself as "Inimitable" in letters. As in, that is the name he gives to himself. "Inimitable bringing up the rear". So not only does he refer to himself in the third person but he gave himself a nickname. 

• Wilkie had a cat named Snooks. That is all.
• Wilkie hates the giant hats he sees women wearing when he's in Kent. Just real judgey about these women and their hats, which he does say are "as wide as umbrellas" so he may have a point BUT he also talks about how ugly the women are that are wearing said hats so shut up, Fivehead.
• Dickens and Wilkie attended a production of Paradise Lost where the draw was that Eve would be naked. Just Eve apparently. Except the producers were unable to find a woman with "to her knees" to play that part. Dickens was duly disappointed.

Dickens, basically

• Wilkie starts seeing a woman named Caroline who is below his station and also has a daughter (her husband died). He tells people that Caroline had been held prisoner by a name who controlled her through mesmerism (hypnotism) but she managed to escape when he threatened to kill her. Even Lycett is like "So this story is pretty much just bullshit."
• Also, Wilkie Collins believes in mesmerism and when someone explains cold readings to him, he is INSULTED at the idea that this isn't real. I do sort of like the idea of Wilkie writing a book inspired by the Long Island Medium.

The Woman in White that could have been

• Hans Christian Andersen "annoyed Wilkie by surreptitiously attaching some daisies to his hat and allowing him to walk thus into the village."
• Wilkie continues to be annoyed at women's fashion, writing "his protestations about the proliferation of crinolines." Perhaps concern yourself less with judging women's clothing choices. (BTW, I would totally have read this lifestyle piece he wrote. I am a hypocrite.)
• Wilkie had a temporary maid who kept busting in on him while he was in the bathroom. He wrote to Ward telling him "I have reason to believe...[she] must have seen My Person!"

• Wilkie decides to hang out in London instead of going to the beach and talks about how the air in London is "so much healthier than those pretentious humbugs the seaside breezes" and WAS the air in London really ever healthier than pretty much anywhere else in the country? Also HOW are the breezes pretentious? 

Alright, this was pretty long, so sorry about that. But there was a LOT of important stuff to get through. So until next week!

Wilkie-along Post I: Sympathetic treatment of strong, independent women

Right, we're going with "Wilkiealong" for this, cos all readalongs must have some sort of nickname?

Anyway, post the first (cos the other one was the intro and thus does not count) in this Wilkie Collins biography A Life of Sensation readalong, hosted by Alice, our fearless leader. Which, now that I'm thinking about the title, doesn't necessarily mean a "sensational life" so much as a life where things are sensed. Or at least that's another way to read it. You know, like smell or touch. Which is basically how all of us do this life thing. Wilkie included. And now I've said the word "sensation" so much to myself that it's lost meaning.

This is off to a great start.

Our biography of Wilkie Collins begins with his dad, and how William Collins was a painter. Not like, a super famous painter. Not even a particularly interesting one with crazy stories. Definitely not, like, the rock star of painters. More like...the accountant of painters.

Anyway, there's a good amount of boring stuff about his dad and I skimmed a lot of this because really, let's get to the Wilkie. Also there are multiple Williams and Wilkies (there's a David Wilkie and then Wilkie Wilkie whose name is actually William and was sometimes called that or Willie and staaahp) and Harriets in this early section and, past-people, could you PLEASE come up with some additional names? Variety is the spice of life.

Anyway, let's focus on Wilkie stuff:

• Wilkie's head looks like that, likely cos of some issues during birth where some old-timey forceps were used. 
• Wilkie's mom lacked an outlet for her creative spirit and suffered from "nerves". Wilkie would later "write sympathetically about women with anxiety disorders" so good on him.
• The Collins family travelled to Italy for art, but then spent almost no time in Florence cos it was Christmas/New Years and stuff wasn't open and also it snowed a lot. You guys probably could have planned that better.
• Wilkie may or may not have lost his virginity around age twelve to a "voluptuous Roman lady". Will this lead into his tastes later? 

• While at school Wilkie is told that he can "tell a lie beautifully" and he seems to take this as a compliment, which does not appear to be how it was meant. But Wilkie is an optimist / hears what he wants to hear.
• Wilkie was small for his age and the boys at school bullied him by making him tell them stories. I feel like some crucial detail is lost here, or bullying was very different back then.
• Wilkie gets a job doing something with tea but the job is boring and leaves him time to write so good for us.

• Wilkie travels around Europe a bit getting stuck in France twice and needing his mom to send him money so he can get home. Come on, Wilks
• Wilkie decides he "does not take much interest in Matrimony". I mean, not that anyone was asking him to get married, but still. He takes a stance and he sticks with it.
• Wilkie helps his 31 year-old friend elope with a 15 year-old (ewww). But DON'T WORRY, they weren't rushing into anything cos the "passion for each other had been clear for four years". You know, when he was 27 and she was 11. EW EW EW EW EW

• Wilkie doesn't give out his books for free, not even to friends. In fact, when his publisher gave out a few free copies to Wilkie's friends, Wilkie said nuh uh, you gotta pay for those. No word if they actually did pony up or just gave him the book back.

Alright, there have been some treats here but I'm hoping for some more sensation in the next section. UNTIL NEXT WEEK!

Title quote from page 62

Lycett, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation. Windmill, 2013.