1897
The Compleat Novelist
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James Payn (1830-1898) was a novelist and friend of
Wilkie's. They collaborated on a letter about copyright in Chamber's
Journal and Payn dedicated his novel Gwendoline's Harvest
(1870) to Collins. This short anecdote is part of a long piece on how to
write a good novel in Punch. Published after Collins's death - and
shortly before Payn's - he reveals what he did not mention in relation to
The Moonstone in his earlier reminiscence.
Although Payn talks of 'the vanity of youth' he was in fact only six years
younger than Wilkie and was aged 38 when The Moonstone was published. |
At all events, whether the ending is good or bad,
it ought to be concealed. There are some readers indeed who are so unprincipled
as to look at (what used to be) the third volume first, just as children cannot
keep their hands from the dessert when the soup is on the table; but this
conduct is contemptible. Wilkie Collins thought it criminal. I shall never
forget his dismay when, in the vanity of youth, I boasted to him of how I had
guessed the secret of "The Moonstone" at an earlier date than he had intended.
p636.
'The Compleat Novelist' by James Payn Punch
IV No.84 December 1897 pp633-640.
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