By Allan W. Atlas

It was in or around 1990 that I met Wilkie Collins (1824–89) for the first time, our introduction courtesy of the phenomenally popular Woman in White. First serialized in Charles Dickens’s All the Year Round from 26 November 1859 to 25 August 1860 and then issued as a three-decker by Sampson Low, Son & Co. in August 1860,[1] The Woman in White made Collins a superstar and enjoyed a very healthy first-week sales of 1,350 copies.[2] It also spawned a variety of spin-offs: everything from perfumes, bonnets, and cloaks to music, this in the form of comic songs, waltzes, and galops. There was even a mysterious female composer in early-1860s Virginia who dubbed herself “The Veiled Lady” and dedicated her No Name Waltz to “The Woman in White,” which combination of penname and dedication likely alludes both to the novel itself and to the veiled Anne Catherick, the “woman in white” of Collins’s novel. (Note that the title of the waltz is itself derived from Collins’s 1862 novel No Name, his very next work.)

Figure 1

Figure 1. Wilkie Collins, about age fifty. Photograph by Napoleon Sarony, New York, 1873–74. Private collection of Andrew Gasson.

Looking back at that introduction, I can say that my initial experience with The Woman in White echoed that of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later four-term prime minister) William Ewart Gladstone (1809–96), who, while reading the work at home one evening, became so engrossed in it that he forgot to keep an appointment at the theater. I, too, could not put down The Woman in White. And though I could not have possibly realized it at the time, it was that meeting that marked the genesis of A Wilkie Collins Songbook.

Having become thoroughly hooked, I spent the next five or six years reading virtually nothing but Collins (at least in terms of fiction), slowly but surely working my way through the entirety of his thirty-five or so novels, novellas, and collections of short stories, a body of work that extends from 1844 to 1888. It was fascinating to follow him from the early successes of the 1850s, through the virtuosity and fame of the ’60s—a decade bookended by The Woman in White and The Moonstone (1868)—and then, despite some bright spots and claims by diehard apologists, on to what can only be called the decline of both his literary powers and his reputation during the 1870s and ’80s, a decline marked at least in part by the falling out of favor of the so-called “sensation” novel. As the pre-Raphaelite poet-critic Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) famously remarked about Collins’s late emphasis on social issues:

What brought good Wilkie’s genius nigh perdition?
Some demon whispered—“Wilkie! have a mission.”[3]

Not until T. S. Eliot began the process of rehabilitation in 1927 by calling The Moonstone “the great book which contains the whole of English detective fiction in embryo”[4] did Collins begin a comeback, one that truly got into high gear in the 1990s and continues up through today, with the Wilkie Collins Society, its Journal, eight biographies, two editions of his letters, and an ever-growing number of critical studies.

As for the “making” of The Wilkie Collins Songbook: having decided to dive into Collins, I proceeded in chronological order, filling the opening flyleaves (and sometimes the inside of the front cover) of each work with notes about its references to music. At what point “reading for fun” took a more serious turn I cannot say, but as I neared the end of the adventure, I began to think about an article, and in 1999 “Wilkie Collins on Music and Musicians” appeared in The Journal of the Royal Musical Association (vol. 124), with three other articles following in short order.[5]

Some words about the nature of Collins’s references to music are called for, since they vary widely in terms of substance and specificity. When, for instance, he refers to the classical canon, he may (1) cite specific composers and pieces (or just one or the other) without further comment; (2) tell us about his own personal likes and dislikes in particularly cutting and even mean-spirited fashion; or (3) complain about trends in London’s musical life. To give a brief example, Collins disliked the “modern German” school as exemplified by Schumann and placed the blame for its origins squarely on Beethoven:

. . . the great Bootmann [a joke at the expense of both Schumanns] is playing the “Nightmare Sonata” . . . you fancy you hear four modern German composers playing, instead of one, and not a ghost of a melody among the four (Miss or Mrs?, 1871/73).

The whole violin part of “The Great K.S.” [Kreutzer Sonata] appeared to me to be the musical expression of a varying and violent stomach ache, with intervals of hiccups (letter to Nina Lehmann, 12 June ?1860–62).

As for music in London:

“Is there no Italian music in London?” Carmina asked . . . the advertised programmes . . . would have led an ignorant stranger to wonder whether any such persons as Italian . . . French . . . and English composers had ever existed. The music offered to the public was of exclusively German (and for the most part modern German) origin (Heart and Science, 1882).

What Collins did like was melody, especially as that appeared in bel canto opera and, above all, in Mozart:

Not a note of Donizetti’s delicious music [Lucrezia Borgia] . . . (The Woman in White).

I have set it [a music box] going again. It’s a song they call “Batti, Batti”; it’s a song in an opera of Mozart’s. Ah! beautiful! beautiful! . . . all music is comprehended in that song (The Dead Secret, 1857).

As for the “everyday” repertory, Collins generally cites songs simply by their title and without further comment. Thus, in the American version of the short story eventually called The Biter Bit (1858), Matthew Sharpin, a wannabe detective, is spying on Mr. Jay (falsely accused of stealing £200) through a peephole that he (Sharpin) drilled in the wall that separates their adjoining hotel rooms, after which Sharpin reports to his superiors in writing:

After writing a few lines . . . [Mr. Jay] bent back in his chair, and amused himself by humming the tunes of popular songs. I recognized “My Mary Anne [sic],” “Bobbin’ Around,” and “Old Dog Tray” among other melodies (The Atlantic Monthly, April 1858).[6]

At times, the songs serve a dramatic purpose. Two examples will suffice. In The Guilty River (1886), Cristel Toller, the daughter of a tenant miller on the estate of the wealthy and well-traveled Gerard Roylake, asks Gerard if he knows the song “The Nervous Man.” Gerard, who doubles as narrator, tells us, “In spite of my efforts to prevent her, she burst out with the first verse of a stupid comic song,” and then remarks on its “vulgarity.” In the end, though, class differences—and, let us hope, musical tastes—are reconciled, and Cristel and Gerard join hands in marriage.

Somewhat more hidden is the reason for the appearance of “Alice Gray” in My Lady’s Money (1879), where the song is sung (though without reference to its title) by Old Sharon, a down-and-out, slovenly, disbarred attorney turned private investigator. Now, “Alice Gray” features a heartbroken protagonist who cannot win Alice over because “her heart it is another’s, / She never can be mine.” And so it was with Old Sharon, but we only learn that four chapters later; his love had jilted him like a “hot potato” fifty years earlier (and he had not brushed his hair since).

Back to the “making.” In terms of Collins, the articles mentioned above gave way to more than a decade-long drought. And though I cannot point to a particular moment at which any thoughts about Collins were reawakened, I can say that they were certainly stirred in 2017 or 2018, when I had occasion to look at Dale Cockrell’s Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook[7] and came to appreciate its collection of unrelated songs unified around a nonmusical theme with a basis in the real world. Thus one Songbook helped bring about another.

I got to work by rereading those note-filled flyleaves and making a few basic decisions from which I never wavered: (1) the Songbook had to speak in equal measure to musicologists, to Victorianists of all stripes, and to the Collins crowd in particular; (2) it would include the “everyday” music only, and extend beyond just the songs cited in Collins to pieces that either celebrate or are associated with his works in one way or another, including four that were inspired by The Woman in White (see, for example, the strikingly colorful title page in figure 2); (3) the commentaries on the individual songs would be rather grab-bag-like, with each being, in effect, a short, highly concentrated, often one-viewpoint “biography” of the song; and (4) the Songbook would not necessarily represent a “critical edition” of the songs, as instead I chose a single source for each song (sometimes there was only one, sometimes it was simply whatever I could get my hands on) that was more or less contemporary with Collins. The main criterion was simply this: was this a version of the song with which Collins and his readers could have been familiar?

Figure 2

Figure 2. Walter Burnot, “The Woman in White” (London: E. A. Hart, [ca. 1872]), title page. Private collection of Andrew Gasson.

I began to work in earnest in November 2019, gathering materials, engaging with the literature (especially the Victorian primary sources), knocking off the two sections of the introduction that dealt only with Collins (“Collins: A Thumbnail Biography” and “Collins and Music”), editing the pieces for which I already had copies, and mulling over the possibility of a trip to England.

And then, while I was still very much in need of copies of a number of songs, there came COVID-19, library lockdowns, and a general retreat to the safety of the great indoors, where, though I am too old to think “computer first,” I quickly learned that the online resources in the areas in which I was searching, both musical and nonmusical, were nothing short of stupendous. In fact, I still wonder if while sitting in a world-class library in England, I would have discovered that no. 10 in the Songbook, “The Toast Be, Dear Woman,” came to be associated with the twelfth toast (one specifically in honor of women) at the 1863 July Fourth celebrations at New York’s Tammany Hall? Why would I have looked for it there in the first place?[8] On the other hand, my mouse (as in, the computer peripheral) has an imagination that is both boundless in its curiosity and lightning fast.

In closing, I can say that “the making of” A Wilkie Collins Songbook was an exhilarating experience, one in which I learned something new every day. Indeed, I fell in love and became obsessed with the project, and I hope that those who use the Songbook will not only find it worthwhile in terms of both scholarship and what I like to think of as “entertainment value,” but will also feel the sheer joy that resides in every note and every word.

Finally, the Songbook benefited tremendously from the sharp, skillful editing of Esther Criscuola de Laix, to whom: thank you!


Allan W. AtlasNow gainfully retired, Allan W. Atlas is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he headed the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments and edited its journal. Indeed, it was his activity as a performer on the English concertina (including with the New York Victorian Consort) that played an important role in developing his scholarly interests in Victorian music. Other research areas over the years have included the fifteenth century, Pergolesi, Puccini, Vaughan Williams, and the great tanguista Astor Piazzolla.

 

 

 

 


[1] It appeared simultaneously in New York’s Harper’s Weekly and was afterward issued in New York by Harper & Brothers to coincide with publication in London.

[2] This sales figure is based on Graham Law, “The Professional Writer and the Literary Marketplace,” in The Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins, ed. Jenny Bourne Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 97. We can appreciate Woman’s success by comparing its sales to the account given in an article that appeared just a few years earlier, “Literature for the People,” The Times, 9 February 1854, 10: “The average edition of works sent forth by our principal publishers varies from 500 to 1,500 copies” (cited after Richard Altick, “Nineteenth-Century Best-Sellers: A Further List,” Studies in Bibliography 22 [1969], 198).

[3] Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Wilkie Collins,” Fortnightly Review 52 (1 November 1889): 598.

[4] T. S. Eliot, “Homage to Wilkie Collins: An Omnibus Review of Nine Mystery Novels,” New Criterion (January 1927), https://tseliot.com/essays/homage-to-wilkie-collins.

[5] “Collins, Count Fosco, and the Concertina,” Wilkie Collins Society Journal, n.s., 2 (1999): 56–60, also available online; “Musical References in the Works of Wilkie Collins: An Inventory,” New Collins Society Newsletter 3, no. 1 (2000), of which a revised and expanded version is in the works; and “Wilkie Collins, Mr. Vanstone, and the Case of Beethoven’s ‘No Name’ Symphony,” Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): 215–38.

[6] There is a little mystery here. When the story was published in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1858), its title was “Who Is the Thief”; note that all three of Mr. Jay’s songs originated in the United States. When Collins published the story in England a year later in a collection of short stories titled The Queen of Hearts, he renamed it “Brother Griffith’s Story of the Biter Bit” and replaced the specific song references with the phrase “tunes of certain popular songs”—even though the three songs originally mentioned were as well known in London as they were, say, in New York!

[7] Dale Cockrell, ed., The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook. Music of the United States of America, vol.  22 / Recent Researches in American Music, vol. 71 (Middleton, Wis.: A-R Editions, 2011).

[8] The toasts are discussed in Society of Tammany (Columbian Order), Celebration at Tammany Hall, on Saturday, July 4, 1863 (New York: Baptist and Taylor, 1863), 51–53.