Basil

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Basil

by Wilkie Collins

LETTER OF DEDICATION.

TO CHARLES JAMES WARD, ESQ.

IT has long been one of my pleasantest anticipations to look forward
to the time when I might offer to you, my old and dear friend, some
such acknowledgment of the value I place on your affection for me, and
of my grateful sense of the many acts of kindness by which that
affection has been proved, as I now gladly offer in this place. In
dedicating the present work to you, I fulfil therefore a purpose
which, for some time past, I have sincerely desired to achieve; and,
more than that, I gain for myself the satisfaction of knowing that
there is one page, at least, of my book, on which I shall always look
with unalloyed pleasure--the page that bears your name.

I have founded the main event out of which this story springs, on a
fact within my own knowledge. In afterwards shaping the course of the
narrative thus suggested, I have guided it, as often as I could, where
I knew by my own experience, or by experience related to me by others,
that it would touch on something real and true in its progress. My
idea was, that the more of the Actual I could garner up as a text to
speak from, the more certain I might feel of the genuineness and value
of the Ideal which was sure to spring out of it. Fancy and
Imagination, Grace and Beauty, all those qualities which are to the
work of Art what scent and colour are to the flower, can only grow
towards heaven by taking root in earth. Is not the noblest poetry of
prose fiction the poetry of every-day truth?

Directing my characters and my story, then, towards the light of
Reality wherever I could find it, I have not hesitated to violate some
of the conventionalities of sentimental fiction. For instance, the
first love-meeting of two of the personages in this book, occurs
(where the real love-meeting from which it is drawn, occurred) in the
very last place and under the very last circumstances which the
artifices of sentimental writing would sanction. Will my lovers excite
ridicule instead of interest, because I have truly represented them as
seeing each other where hundreds of other lovers have first seen each
other, as hundreds of people will readily admit when they read the
passage to which I refer? I am sanguine enough to think not.

So again, in certain parts of this book where I have attempted to
excite the suspense or pity of the reader, I have admitted as
perfectly fit accessories to the scene the most ordinary street-sounds
that could be heard, and the most ordinary street-events that could
occur, at the time and in the place represented--believing that by
adding to truth, they were adding to tragedy--adding by all the force
of fair contrast--adding as no artifices of mere writing possibly
could add, let them be ever so cunningly introduced by ever so crafty
a hand.

Allow me to dwell a moment longer on the story which these pages
contain.

Believing that the Novel and the Play are twin-sisters in the family
of Fiction; that the one is a drama narrated, as the other is a drama
acted; and that all the strong and deep emotions which the Play-writer
is privileged to excite, the Novel-writer is privileged to excite
also, I have not thought it either politic or necessary, while
adhering to realities, to adhere to every-day realities only. In other
words, I have not stooped so low as to assure myself of the reader's
belief in the probability of my story, by never once calling on him
for the exercise of his faith. Those extraordinary accidents and
events which happen to few men, seemed to me to be as legitimate
materials for fiction to work with--when there was a good object in
using them--as the ordinary accidents and events which may, and do,
happen to us all. By appealing to genuine sources of interest _within_
the reader's own experience, I could certainly gain his attention to
begin with; but it would be only by appealing to other sources (as
genuine in their way) _beyond_ his own experience, that I could hope
to fix his interest and excite his suspense, to occupy his deeper
feelings, or to stir his nobler thoughts.

In writing thus--briefly and very generally--(for I must not delay you
too long from the story), I can but repeat, though I hope almost
unnecessarily, that I am now only speaking of what I have tried to do.
Between the purpose hinted at here, and the execution of that purpose
contained in the succeeding pages, lies the broad line of separation
which distinguishes between the will and the deed. How far I may fall
short of another man's standard, remains to be discovered. How far I
have fallen short of my own, I know painfully well.

One word more on the manner in which the purpose of the following
pages is worked out--and I have done.

Nobody who admits that the business of fiction is to exhibit human
life, can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity,
while human nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition.
Nobody can assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results,
when they are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am
asked why I have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to
be found in the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words
express. I have a right to appeal to that truth; for I guided myself
by it throughout. In deriving the lesson which the following pages
contain, from those examples of error and crime which would most
strikingly and naturally teach it, I determined to do justice to the
honesty of my object by speaking out. In drawing the two characters,
whose actions bring about the darker scenes of my story, I did not
forget that it was my duty, while striving to portray them naturally,
to put them to a good moral use; and at some sacrifice, in certain
places, of dramatic effect (though I trust with no sacrifice of truth
to Nature), I have shown the conduct of the vile, as always, in a
greater or less degree, associated with something that is selfish,
contemptible, or cruel in motive. Whether any of my better characters
may succeed in endearing themselves to the reader, I know not: but
this I do certainly know:--that I shall in no instance cheat him out
of his sympathies in favour of the bad.

To those persons who dissent from the broad principles here adverted
to; who deny that it is the novelist's vocation to do more than merely
amuse them; who shrink from all honest and serious reference, in
books, to subjects which they think of in private and talk of in
public everywhere; who see covert implications where nothing is
implied, and improper allusions where nothing improper is alluded to;
whose innocence is in the word, and not in the thought; whose morality
stops at the tongue, and never gets on to the heart--to those persons,
I should consider it loss of time, and worse, to offer any further
explanation of my motives, than the sufficient explanation which I
have given already. I do not address myself to them in this book, and
shall never think of addressing myself to them in any other.

-----

Those words formed part of the original introduction to this novel. I
wrote them nearly ten years since; and what I said then, I say now.

"Basil" was the second work of fiction which I produced. On its
appearance, it was condemned off-hand, by a certain class of readers,
as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having
designed and written, my story with the strictest regard to true
delicacy, as distinguished from false--I allowed the prurient
misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book
to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling
myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me
no other feeling than a feeling of contempt. I knew that "Basil" had
nothing to fear from pure-minded readers; and I left these pages to
stand or fall on such merits as they possessed. Slowly and surely, my
story forced its way through all adverse criticism, to a place in the
public favour which it has never lost since. Some of the most valued
friends I now possess, were made for me by "Basil." Some of the most
gratifying recognitions of my labours which I have received, from
readers personally strangers to me, have been recognitions of the
purity of this story, from the first page to the last. All the
indulgence I need now ask for "Basil," is indulgence for literary
defects, which are the result of inexperience; which no correction can
wholly remove; and which no one sees more plainly, after a lapse of
ten years, than the writer himself.

I have only to add, that the present edition of this book is the first
which has had the benefit of my careful revision. While the incidents
of the story remain exactly what they were, the language in which they
are told has been, I hope, in many cases greatly altered for the
better.

WILKIE COLLINS.

Harley Street, London, July, 1862.

BASIL.

PART I.

I.

WHAT am I now about to write?

The history of little more than the events of one year, out of the
twenty-four years of my life.

Why do I undertake such an employment as this?

Perhaps, because I think that my narrative may do good; because I hope
that, one day, it may be put to some warning use. I am now about to
relate the story of an error, innocent in its beginning, guilty in its
progress, fatal in its results; and I would fain hope that my plain
and true record will show that this error was not committed altogether
without excuse. When these pages are found after my death, they will
perhaps be calmly read and gently judged, as relics solemnized by the
atoning shadows of the grave. Then, the hard sentence against me may
be repented of; the children of the next generation of our house may
be taught to speak charitably of my memory, and may often, of their
own accord, think of me kindly in the thoughtful watches of the night.

Prompted by these motives, and by others which I feel, but cannot
analyse, I now begin my self-imposed occupation. Hidden amid the far
hills of the far West of England, surrounded only by the few simple
inhabitants of a fishing hamlet on the Cornish coast, there is little
fear that my attention will be distracted from my task; and as little
chance that any indolence on my part will delay its speedy
accomplishment. I live under a threat of impending hostility, which
may descend and overwhelm me, I know not how soon, or in what manner.
An enemy, determined and deadly, patient alike to wait days or years
for his opportunity, is ever lurking after me in the dark. In entering
on my new employment, I cannot say of my time, that it may be mine for
another hour; of my life, that it may last till evening.

Thus it is as no leisure work that I begin my narrative--and begin it,
too, on my birthday! On this day I complete my twenty-fourth year; the
first new year of my life which has not been greeted by a single kind
word, or a single loving wish. But one look of welcome can still find
me in my solitude--the lovely morning look of nature, as I now see it
from the casement of my room. Brighter and brighter shines out the
lusty sun from banks of purple, rainy cloud; fishermen are spreading
their nets to dry on the lower declivities of the rocks; children are
playing round the boats drawn up on the beach; the sea-breeze blows
fresh and pure towards the shore----all objects are brilliant to look
on, all sounds are pleasant to hear, as my pen traces the first lines
which open the story of my life.

II.

I am the second son of an English gentleman of large fortune. Our
family is, I believe, one of the most ancient in this country. On my
father's side, it dates back beyond the Conquest; on my mother's, it
is not so old, but the pedigree is nobler. Besides my elder brother, I
have one sister, younger than myself. My mother died shortly after
giving birth to her last child.

Circumstances which will appear hereafter, have forced me to abandon
my father's name. I have been obliged in honour to resign it; and in
honour I abstain from mentioning it here. Accordingly, at the head of
these pages, I have only placed my Christian name--not considering it
of any importance to add the surname which I have assumed; and which I
may, perhaps, be obliged to change for some other, at no very distant
period. It will now, I hope, be understood from the outset, why I
never mention my brother and sister but by their Christian names; why
a blank occurs wherever my father's name should appear; why my own is
kept concealed in this narrative, as it is kept concealed in the
world.

The story of my boyhood and youth has little to interest--nothing that
is new. My education was the education of hundreds of others in my
rank of life. I was first taught at a public school, and then went to
college to complete what is termed "a liberal education."

My life at college has not left me a single pleasant recollection. I
found sycophancy established there, as a principle of action;
flaunting on the lord's gold tassel in the street; enthroned on the
lord's dais in the dining-room. The most learned student in my
college--the man whose life was most exemplary, whose acquirements
were most admirable--was shown me sitting, as a commoner, in the
lowest place. The heir to an Earldom, who had failed at the last
examination, was pointed out a few minutes afterwards, dining in
solitary grandeur at a raised table, above the reverend scholars who
had turned him back as a dunce. I had just arrived at the University,
and had just been congratulated on entering "a venerable seminary of
learning and religion."

Trite and common-place though it be, I mention this circumstance
attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first
cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I
was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort
of necessary evil, to be patiently submitted to. I read for no
honours, and joined no particular set of men. I studied the literature
of France, Italy, and Germany; just kept up my classical knowledge
sufficiently to take my degree; and left college with no other
reputation than a reputation for indolence and reserve.

When I returned home, it was thought necessary, as I was a younger
son, and could inherit none of the landed property of the family,
except in the case of my brother's dying without children, that I
should belong to a profession. My father had the patronage of some
valuable "livings," and good interest with more than one member of the
government. The church, the army, the navy, and, in the last instance,
the bar, were offered me to choose from. I selected the last.

My father appeared to be a little astonished at my choice; but he made
no remark on it, except simply telling me not to forget that the bar
was a good stepping-stone to parliament. My real ambition, however,
was, not to make a name in parliament, but a name in literature. I had
already engaged myself in the hard, but glorious service of the pen;
and I was determined to persevere. The profession which offered me the
greatest facilities for pursuing my project, was the profession which
I was ready to prefer. So I chose the bar.

Thus, I entered life under the fairest auspices. Though a younger son,
I knew that my father's wealth, exclusive of his landed property,
secured me an independent income far beyond my wants. I had no
extravagant habits; no tastes that I could not gratify as soon as
formed; no cares or responsibilities of any kind. I might practise my
profession or not, just as I chose. I could devote myself wholly and
unreservedly to literature, knowing that, in my case, the struggle for
fame could never be identical--terribly, though gloriously
identical--with the struggle for bread. For me, the morning sunshine
of life was sunshine without a cloud!

I might attempt, in this place, to sketch my own character as it was
at that time. But what man can say--I will sound the depth of my own
vices, and measure the height of my own virtues; and be as good as his
word? We can neither know nor judge ourselves; others may judge, but
cannot know us: God alone judges and knows too. Let my character
appear--as far as any human character can appear in its integrity, in
this world--in my actions, when I describe the one eventful passage in
my life which forms the basis of this narrative. In the mean time, it
is first necessary that I should say more about the members of my
family. Two of them, at least, will be found important to the progress
of events in these pages. I make no attempt to judge their characters:
I only describe them--whether rightly or wrongly, I know not--as they
appeared to me.

III.

I always considered my father--I speak of him in the past tense,
because we are now separated for ever; because he is henceforth as
dead to me as if the grave had closed over him--I always considered my
father to be the proudest man I ever knew; the proudest man I ever
heard of. His was not that conventional pride, which the popular
notions are fond of characterising by a stiff, stately carriage; by a
rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice;
by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical
braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of
this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride,
which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary
observers ever detected at all.

Who that observed him in communication with any of the farmers on any
of his estates--who that saw the manner in which he lifted his hat,
when he accidentally met any of those farmers' wives--who that noticed
his hearty welcome to the man of the people, when that man happened to
be a man of genius--would have thought him proud? On such occasions as
these, if he had any pride, it was impossible to detect it. But seeing
him when, for instance, an author and a new-made peer of no ancestry
entered his house together--observing merely the entirely different
manner in which he shook hands with each--remarking that the polite
cordiality was all for the man of letters, who did not contest his
family rank with him, and the polite formality all for the man of
title, who did--you discovered where and how he was proud in an
instant. Here lay his fretful point. The aristocracy of rank, as
separate from the aristocracy of ancestry, was no aristocracy for
_him._ He was jealous of it; he hated it. Commoner though he was, he
considered himself the social superior of any man, from a baronet up
to a duke, whose family was less ancient than his own.

Among a host of instances of this peculiar pride of his which I could
cite, I remember one, characteristic enough to be taken as a sample of
all the rest. It happened when I was quite a child, and was told me by
one of my uncles now dead--who witnessed the circumstance himself, and
always made a good story of it to the end of his life.

A merchant of enormous wealth, who had recently been raised to the
peerage, was staying at one of our country houses. His daughter, my
uncle, and an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant
was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a
curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe
was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright
bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political refugee,
dependent for the bread he ate, on the money he received for teaching
languages. He might have been a beggar from the streets; and still my
father would have treated him as the principal guest in the house, for
this all-sufficient reason--he was a direct descendant of one of the
oldest of those famous Roman families whose names are part of the
history of the Civil Wars in Italy.

On the first day, the party assembled for dinner comprised the
merchant's daughter, my mother, an old lady who had once been her
governess, and had always lived with her since her marriage, the new
Lord, the Abbe, my father, and my uncle. When dinner was announced,
the peer advanced in new-blown dignity, to offer his arm as a matter
of course to my mother. My father's pale face flushed crimson in a
moment. He touched the magnificent merchant-lord on the arm, and
pointed significantly, with a low bow, towards the decrepit old lady
who had once been my mother's governess. Then walking to the other end
of the room, where the penniless Abbe was looking over a book in a
corner, he gravely and courteously led the little, deformed, limping
language-master, clad in a long, threadbare, black coat, up to my
mother (whose shoulder the Abbe's head hardly reached), held the door
open for them to pass out first, with his own hand; politely invited
the new nobleman, who stood half-paralysed between confusion and
astonishment, to follow with the tottering old lady on his arm; and
then returned to lead the peer's daughter down to dinner himself. He
only resumed his wonted expression and manner, when he had seen the
little Abbe--the squalid, half-starved representative of mighty barons
of the olden time--seated at the highest place of the table by my
mother's side.

It was by such accidental circumstances as these that you discovered
how far he was proud. He never boasted of his ancestors; he never even
spoke of them, except when he was questioned on the subject; but he
never forgot them. They were the very breath of his life; the deities
of his social worship: the family treasures to be held precious beyond
all lands and all wealth, all ambitions and all glories, by his
children and his children's children to the end of their race.

In home-life he performed his duties towards his family honourably,
delicately, and kindly. I believe in his own way he loved us all; but
we, his descendants, had to share his heart with his ancestors--we
were his household property as well as his children. Every fair
liberty was given to us; every fair indulgence was granted to us. He
never displayed any suspicion, or any undue severity. We were taught
by his direction, that to disgrace our family, either by word or
action, was the one fatal crime which could never be forgotten and
never be pardoned. We were formed, under his superintendence, in
principles of religion, honour, and industry; and the rest was left to
our own moral sense, to our own comprehension of the duties and
privileges of our station. There was no one point in his conduct
towards any of us that we could complain of; and yet there was
something always incomplete in our domestic relations.

It may seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous, to some persons, but it
is nevertheless true, that we were none of us ever on intimate terms
with him. I mean by this, that he was a father to us, but never a
companion. There was something in his manner, his quiet and unchanging
manner, which kept us almost unconsciously restrained. I never in my
life felt less at my ease--I knew not why at the time--than when I
occasionally dined alone with him. I never confided to him my schemes
for amusement as a boy, or mentioned more than generally my ambitious
hopes, as a young man. It was not that he would have received such
confidences with ridicule or severity, he was incapable of it; but
that he seemed above them, unfitted to enter into them, too far
removed by his own thoughts from such thoughts as ours. Thus, all
holiday councils were held with old servants; thus, my first pages of
manuscript, when I first tried authorship, were read by my sister, and
never penetrated into my father's study.

Again, his mode of testifying displeasure towards my brother or
myself, had something terrible in its calmness, something that we
never forgot, and always dreaded as the worst calamity that could
befall us.

Whenever, as boys, we committed some boyish fault, he never displayed
outwardly any irritation--he simply altered his manner towards us
altogether. We were not soundly lectured, or vehemently threatened, or
positively punished in anyway; but, when we came in contact with him,
we were treated with a cold, contemptuous politeness (especially if
our fault showed a tendency to anything mean or ungentlemanlike) which
cut us to the heart. On these occasions, we were not addressed by our
Christian names; if we accidentally met him out of doors, he was sure
to turn aside and avoid us; if we asked a question, it was answered in
the briefest possible manner, as if we had been strangers. His whole
course of conduct said, as though in so many words--You have rendered
yourselves unfit to associate with your father; and he is now making
you feel that unfitness as deeply as he does. We were left in this
domestic purgatory for days, sometimes for weeks together. To our
boyish feelings (to mine especially) there was no ignominy like it,
while it lasted.

I know not on what terms my father lived with my mother. Towards my
sister, his demeanour always exhibited something of the old-fashioned,
affectionate gallantry of a former age. He paid her the same attention
that he would have paid to the highest lady in the land. He led her
into the dining-room, when we were alone, exactly as he would have led
a duchess into a banqueting-hall. He would allow us, as boys, to quit
the breakfast-table before he had risen himself; but never before she
had left it. If a servant failed in duty towards _him,_ the servant
was often forgiven; if towards _her,_ the servant was sent away on the
spot. His daughter was in his eyes the representative of her mother:
the mistress of his house, as well as his child. It was curious to see
the mixture of high-bred courtesy and fatherly love in his manner, as
he just gently touched her forehead with his lips, when he first saw
her in the morning.

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