To Kate Field, 10 September 1875

ALS to Kate Field [Friday] 10 September 1875. Single sheet of book folded, laid paper 180x221mm. Watermark E TOWGOOD  Fine. 

The Public Face of Wilkie Collins III 96

	Lowestoft September 10th 1875 Dear Miss Field One line to say  that I hope you  were not prevented  by accident or illness from favouring me with  a visit as you proposed. I am here - for  the moment - in pouring  rain, with a very  rheumatic back and  shoulders. Possibly  I may try the coast  further north in a  day or two. But, in
	any event, I propose to be back in London in  a fortnight. If I  can be of any service to  you, pray let me know  it. Letters addressed  to 90. Gloucester Place  will follow me wherever  I may go. Vy truly yours Wilkie Collins I keep your play, until  we can talk [del: illegible] about  it. That book is [deleted character] anything
	but easy to dramatise. The  writer was the least dramatic  of modern novelists - or  one of the least, at any rate.

NOTES

Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1 October 1838 - 19 May 1896) was an American writer and actor. She was also an advocate of women's rights. She paid several visits to England and met Wilkie Collins on one of these in 1873 when he took her to see his play The New Magdalen at the Olympic Theatre. Kate Field published a biography of the actor Charles Fechter in 1882 to which Wilkie contributed a 20 page chapter. She is said to have had a romantic involvement with Anthony Trollope.

The play referred to by Wilkie is untraced. It could have been a play she was writing or one she was acting in.