JEZEBEL'S DAUGHTER
by
Wilkie Collins
TO ALBERTO CACCIA
Let me begin by informing you, that this new novel does not present theproposed sequel to my last work of fiction—"The Fallen Leaves."
The first part of that story has, through circumstances connected withthe various forms of publications adopted thus far, addressed itself to acomparatively limited class of readers in England. When the book isfinally reprinted in its cheapest form—then, and then only, it willappeal to the great audience of the English people. I am waiting for thattime, to complete my design by writing the second part of "The FallenLeaves."
Why?
Your knowledge of English Literature—to which I am indebted for thefirst faithful and intelligent translation of my novels into the Italianlanguage—has long since informed you, that there are certain importantsocial topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (nomatter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by anarrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter theirprejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books,that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonlyassigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country on theface of the earth. When my work is undertaken with a pure purpose, Iclaim the same liberty which is accorded to a writer in a newspaper, orto a clergyman in a pulpit; knowing, by previous experience, that theincrease of readers and the lapse of time will assuredly do me justice,if I have only written well enough to deserve it.
In the prejudiced quarters to which I have alluded, one of the charactersin "The Fallen Leaves" offended susceptibilities of the sort felt byTartuffe, when he took out his handkerchief, and requested Dorine tocover her bosom. I not only decline to defend myself, under suchcircumstances as these—I say plainly, that I have never asserted a truerclaim to the best and noblest sympathies of Christian readers than inpresenting to them, in my last novel, the character of the innocentvictim of infamy, rescued and purified from the contamination of thestreets. I remember what the nasty posterity of Tartuffe, in thiscountry, said of "Basil," of "Armadale," of "The New Magdalen," and Iknow that the wholesome audience of the nation at large has done liberaljustice to those books. For this reason, I wait to write the second partof "The Fallen Leaves," until the first part of the story has found itsway to the people.
Turning for a moment to the present novel, you will (I hope) find twointeresting studies of humanity in these pages.
In the character called "Jack Straw," you have the exhibition of anenfeebled intellect, tenderly shown under its lightest and happiestaspect, and used as a means of relief in some of the darkest scenes ofterror and suspense occurring in this story. Again, in "Madame Fontaine,"I have endeavored to work out the interesting moral problem, which takesfor its groundwork the strongest of all instincts in a woman, theinstinct of maternal love, and traces to its solution the restraining andpurifying influence of this one virtue over an otherwise cruel, false,and degraded nature.
The events in which these two chief personages play their parts have beencombined with all possible care, and have been derived, to the best of myability, from natural and simple causes. In view of the distrust whichcertain readers feel, w