The hugely popular Victorian author of `The Moonstone’ and `The Woman in White’, Wilkie Colllins (1824-1889) had numerous, longstanding links to Kent, despite not being a native of the country. These can, however, divided into two groups. One was due to his visits on the grounds of health, particularly to the seaside resorts of Ramsgate and Broadstairs. The other was due to his strong friendship and collaborations (despite some periods of argument and estrangement) with the Kent-based Charles Dickens (seen entry for Dickens). The landscape of Kent inspired a large number of scenes in his works from `Poor Mrs Finch’ (1872), `The Law and the Lady’ (1875) and `The Fallen Leaves’ (1879). Most importantly, Church Hill Cottage, which Collins rented in 1859 for some weeks, just outside Broadstairs, was the place where much of his great `The Women in White’ (1860), largely regarded as the precursor to the modern detective story, was written. In his letters, on August 7th of that year Collins writes:
`Hot as the sun is, there is a fresh breeze flowing in from the sea all day long. There is nothing but the down between us and “the great water” – we are on the Ramsgate road, just outside Broadstairs – and we have got the cottage all to ourselves.’ (`The Letters of Wilkie Collins, Volume 1, 1838-1865), ed William Baker and W Clarke, Macmillan, , London1999, 175)
On the 18th:
`We are very quiet here. No visitor but Charley. I am shut up at my desk everyday from 10 till 2 or 3, slowly and painfully launching my new serial novel. The story is the longest and most complicated I have ever tried yet – and the difficulties at the beginning or it are all but insuperable’ (Ibid, 176)
This work was `The Women in White.’ According to lore, the book’s title was inspired by him while in the middle of a long walk along the North Foreland Lighthouse, while looking up at the strong, flashing light above him. That tale however does not figure in any of his own writings.
While his visits to Ramsgate, now commemorated by a blue plaque at the English Channel facing 27 Wellington Crescent (part of the same group where Coleridge had stayed earlier in the century – see entry for him) had been recommended in later life by his doctor Frank Beard, they reached back to childhood holidays there. In addition to health, it seems to have been from the late 1860s a place where he could accommodate his, for the time, unconventional personal life. While in a long term relationship with Caroline Grave, despite a period when she went off and married someone else, his dislike of the institution of marriage meant he never formally eloped with her. In 1868, he began a relationship with Martha Rudd, then only 19 years old, with whom he had two daughters and a son over the following five years. His time in Ramsgate, when both partners were in town in this decade, was therefore divided between Welllington Crescent with Martha and his family (whom he visited under the pseudonym William Dawson), and 14 Nelson Crescent, where a further blue plaque was installed in 2011.
In one biography of him, William M Clarke writes of how his annual or semi-annual visits to Ramsgate `became so much a part of his life that some of his friends increasingly assumed he would eventually settle down there.’ (Clarke, `The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins’, Ivan R Dee, Chicago, 1988,1991, 172) In a letter to his friend Edward Piggott, he `was convinced that Ramsgate air kept him in a state of preservation. “Beard [his doctor] seems to think that my destiny is to live in Ramsgate. With two houses to keep going in London, I don’t quite see how I am to accommodate myself to this future’ (Ibid, 173) He remained, therefore, firmly ensconced in London as his full time home.
The other great cause of Collin’s link with Kent was because of Dickens. They had met in 1851, and became almost immediate friends. In 1852, Collins began his habit of holidaying with the Dickens, staying with the older author and his family at Camden Crescent in Dover. It was during his visit that he completed his first full novel, `Basil’. In 1855, after a period of misunderstanding and frostiness in their relationship, Collins holidayed with Dickens in Italy, France, and then for six weeks in Folkestone at 3 Albion Villas along the sea front. Here he began `After Dark’. Collins was also one of the first visitors to Gad’s Hill, Higham, near Rochester, when Dickens had achieved his childhood ambition of purchasing the place. This coincided with that of Hans Christian Anderson who apparently overstayed his welcome, something which figured in a short story `The Bachelor Bedroom.’ Despite ups and downs, the two continued collaborations till almost the end of Dickens’s life. (see https://www.wilkie-collins.info/wilkie_collins_dickens.htm for more details).