Basil

Basil by Wilkie Collins (1852)

Basil* (1852), by Wilkie Collins, is a first-person confessional novel in which the narrator, a young man of ancient aristocratic lineage, recounts the events of a single disastrous year of his life, writing in exile and under threat from an enemy who pursues him relentlessly. Basil, the younger son of a profoundly proud English gentleman, has chosen the law as his nominal profession while secretly dedicating himself to a literary career. One idle afternoon he boards a London omnibus and becomes instantly and overwhelmingly infatuated with a dark, beautiful young woman he glimpses there. He follows her home to a suburban house called North Villa in Hollyoake Square, and discovers she is Margaret Sherwin, daughter of a prosperous linen draper. The social gulf between a tradesman's daughter and his own ancient family is enormous, and Basil knows his father would never consent to such a match. Yet he cannot overcome his passion. He approaches Mr. Sherwin directly and proposes marriage in secret. Sherwin, though keen to ally his family with Basil's distinguished name, imposes a peculiar condition: Basil and Margaret must marry immediately, but must then live entirely apart for one full year, meeting only in the presence of a chaperone, so that Margaret, who is only seventeen, may mature further before the marriage is consummated. At the year's end she will become his wife in fact as well as in name. Basil, maddened by love and unwilling to risk losing her, agrees. The clandestine wedding takes place on a grey, rainy morning, and that very evening Basil parts from his new wife at the door, bound by his promise. During the year of probation Basil visits Margaret daily, ostensibly tutoring her in languages and literature, while secretly her husband. He is profoundly happy in her company, though he gradually perceives that her curiosity about his family runs chiefly to their wealth, their servants, their carriages, and their fashionable habits rather than to anything of deeper substance. Two domestic incidents unsettle him briefly: he overhears her demanding an expensive dress with willful petulance, and he witnesses a violent fit of temper over her canary's death. Both times her beauty and her tears disarm him completely and he abandons all thought of reproach. Into this enclosed world arrives Robert Mannion, Mr. Sherwin's confidential clerk, a striking and deeply enigmatic figure of about forty. Mannion's features are regular to the point of sculptural perfection, yet utterly expressionless; his manner is quiet, self-possessed, and without warmth, and his history is entirely unknown. He offers Basil his assistance in managing the domestic arrangements of the probationary year, claiming a quasi-paternal affection for Margaret whom he has tutored, and describing his own solitary life with words that seem to ask for sympathy but are delivered without a trace of feeling. Basil is fascinated and unsettled by him in equal measure. The catastrophe comes near the end of the year. Basil, returning home late one night, hears unmistakable sounds from a room in a hotel and discovers Margaret and Mannion together, conducting an adulterous liaison that has evidently been proceeding throughout the entire period of his courtship. The revelation destroys him utterly. In a confrontation with Mannion, Basil attacks him and leaves him badly, perhaps mortally, injured in the street. The truth about Mannion now emerges. Years before, Basil's own father had been instrumental in the public disgrace and ruin of Mannion's father, a forger. Mannion, who had been a man of education and promise, had watched his family destroyed and had nursed a cold, patient, absolute hatred of Basil's family ever since. His seduction of Margaret was not the act of passion but of deliberate revenge, planned from the moment he learned of Basil's attachment. He had used the trust placed in him by Sherwin, and the trust Basil had extended to him, as weapons. The consequences fall heavily on everyone. Margaret, confronted by her father with her guilt, suffers a physical and mental collapse and dies not long afterward. Mr. Sherwin, whose mercenary scheming had made the entire catastrophe possible, is left with nothing. Mannion, disfigured and crippled by Basil's assault but not killed, survives and renews his pursuit of Basil with implacable patience, following him as he flees to Cornwall, determined to complete his revenge. Basil's father, learning all, disowns him. His sister Clara, the one figure of unqualified goodness in the novel, remains faithful and sorrowful. The narrative closes with Basil writing from his Cornish exile, aware that Mannion is somewhere near, waiting. The novel frames itself as a confession and warning, a record of how an innocent infatuation became guilty through vanity and secrecy, and fatal in its consequences for nearly all who touched it.

By Wilkie Collins · First published 1852 · Genre: Gothic Novel, Psychological Thriller, Romantic Fiction · 27 chapters · 122,519 words

First lines

What am I now about to write?

The history of little more than the events of one year, out of the twenty-four years of my life.

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Basil is listed on Textopian as a novel by Wilkie Collins, dated 1852 CE.

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Victorian novel · Gothic fiction · mystery · suspense · family drama · social criticism · love story · betrayal · secrets · melodrama · moral conflict · London setting

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