



Produced by James Rusk





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