Wilkie Collins Melodrama

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 18

Wilkie Collins Melodrama

"NO NAME" WILL BE

BROADCAST BY

YA

STATIONS

HE masterly story telling and brilliant manipulation of plot and counter-plot which distinguishes the novels of Wilkie Collins are fully displayed in No Name, the story of an illegitimate young woman, Magdalen Vanstone, and her vengeance upon the relative who has deprived her of her inheritance. No Name is the latest of the BBC’s serialised dramatisations of famous novels to be heard in this country, and the first part, "Combe-Raven," will be heard from 1YA, 2YA, 3YA and 4YA at 8.30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6. There are 12 parts in the serial, which was adapted by Howard Agg and produced by David

H. Godfrey. The leading role of Magdalen Vanstone is taken by Isabel Dean. Wilkie Collins is. best remembered these days for The Moonstone, sometimes described as the first (and best) of modern detective novels, and The Woman in White, a_ sinister masterpiece in the genre which used to be known as the Novel of Sensation. But Collins, as readers of his recently-pub-lished ‘biography will be aware, wrote many other novels besides these, and No Name is one of the best. It was published by Charles Dickens in his magazine All the Year Round, and Dickens took the greatest interest in the novel while it was being written, expressing keen enthusiasm for it, suggesting a suitable title (he listed 27 possibilities) and even offering to finish it for his friend and collaborator when the latter became ill with the rheumatism that eventually drove him to opium-addic-tion, The story of No Name combines two favourite themes of the Victorian novelist, melodrama and social protest. "Here is a book," the author wrote, "that depicts the struggle of a human creature under those opposing influences, Good ‘and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known. The character of Magdalen Vanstone personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its perversity and its error." In addition to Magdalen, the plot introduces Collins’s outstanding comic character, her accomplice Captain Wragge, an amiable charlatan and petty blackmailer who is

played in the serial by Felix Felton. Magdalen herself is a_ strong-willed young woman, brave, resourceful, and single-minded to the point of obsession. The story opens with a picture of a typical middle-class household in the West Country of England, the Vanstones. All is apparently solid, comfortable, and conventional. Then a series of events occurs which sweeps away the foundations of their happiness and security. The father is killed in a railway accident, the mother dies of grief, and the two daughters learn that théir parents were never legally married. Their father’s fortune is left to his elder brother, who is unwilling to help them. Madgalen, the younger daughter, fights against the stigma of illegitimacy at the same time as she relentlessly pursues her cousin Noel, who now has the fortune, in an attempt to get back what she considers to be rightfully hers. The theme was considered daring enough in its day, and brought down upon the head of the author an angry blast from Mrs. Oliphant in the Quarterly Review. But among his readers Wilkie Collins stirred up great sympathy for his heroine, and he had been careful enough to provide mitigating circumstances to excuse at least in part the unlawful cohabitation of her parents. Recent researches into Collins’s life suggest that No Name’s discussion of the social problems of illegitimacy was stimulated by incidents in his own life, particularly his clandestine liaison with Martha Rudd, who bore him a son and two daughters who never legally received their father’s name.

Several dramatised versions of the novel were made, including one by the author himself, but the only one which he officially approved was. made by his friend the actor-manager Wybert Reeve. Reeve toured the United States and Australia with his team of players, and the only recorded performances of No Name on the stage took place in Melbourne. Wilkie Collins received a total of £4600 for the book in serial and publication rights on both sides of the Atlantic. "Not so bad," he wrote to his mother in triumph, and listeners to the radio version may well agree that the book’s popularity was justified.