Hide and Seek
– Wilkie Collins
First published in 1854, this is an early novel of the
writer of the still read The Woman in
White and The Moonstone. In Hide and Seek, a deaf and mute girl is
rescued from exploitation under the big top. To minimize the risk of losing
her, her adopted father hides her origins under the cover of a modest
middle-class family life. But her security and a family secret are threatened
by a surly figure from the past, seeking the truth of the girl’s origins and bent
on revenge.
Always clever and inventive, Collins also shows a kind
tender side as he introduces us readers to the quiet life of a unsuccessful
artist who has endearingly opted
for a career of painting portraits of family members,
dogs, and horses of crude manufacturers in order to provide comforts for his bedridden wife. This lovely
couple has adopted the afflicted young girl. The murky origins of
the girl are revealed as the surly stranger gets on her trail.
This book, then, is almost a detective novel. Of course, the probability of
events happening in this world is quite low, but one always trusts Collins to
carry our interest through admittedly long-winded sections or coincidences that
in another writer (Dickens in Oliver
Twist, say) would make us snort in indignation. At only 29 years of age, in only his third
novel, Collins got a handle on what he was doing as a writer.
Collins focuses our interest on a variety of characters.
The action is not sensational, as much action was to be in 1860s efforts such
as The Woman in White. Unusually for
a novelist of that time, Collins sets up a person with a disability as a main
character, drawing on John Kitto’s deafness memoir The Lost Senses. Moreover, the character is happy, able to
establish relationships with others, helpful to an invalid in the house and ambitious for a career of her own. She is
never an object of pity, though she does star in some sorrowful scenes. What
helps, of course, is that she is a beautiful as a Pre-Raphelite Madonna:
It is impossible to
describe how deliciously soft, bright, fresh, pure, and delicate this
young lady is, merely as an object to look at.... Even her face alone--simply
as a face--could not escape perpetual discussion; and that, too, among
Valentine's friends, who all know her well, and loved her dearly. It
was the oddest thing in the world, but no one of them could ever
agree with another ... as to which of her personal attractions ought
to be first selected for approval, or quoted as particularly
asserting her claims to the admiration of all worshippers of beauty.
The other remarkable point in this novel is Collins’
comic sense. Collins could see humor in situations such as the drunken son
sneaking back into his father’s house or the incompetent artist boring his
audience with contradictory explications of the symbolism in his clichéd
paintings. The novel opens with a narration of the typical Victorian Sunday
which is both humorous and critical of conventional religion. I’m probably
overstating this, but I find Collins’ humor much easier to take than Dickens’
facetiousness.
This novel was published about ten weeks after the
outbreak of the Crimean War. Collins always felt that public attention was
accordingly distracted and hurt sales of the book. In about 1860, he revised it
by cutting verbiage and tacking on a happy ending. Indeed, it is a better novel
– more bittersweet and thus more realistic - if the reader doesn’t read the
final three paragraphs.
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