Wilkie Collins the wild opium addict and his women in...

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception 

• Bestselling Victorian author led private life ever bit as risque as his stories
• Secretly enjoyed 'declasse allure' of women from a lower social scale
• Had overlapping relationships with single mother and 19-year-old barmaid

Dark side: English novelist Wilkie Collins did not live up to his lauded public image

Wilkie Collins scandalised Victorian Britain with his ‘sensationalist novels’ about fallen women,  marital bigamy and illegitimacy.
But the bestselling author of The Moonstone and The Woman In White had a ‘secret’ private life just as risque as any of his stories.
A new biography of the writer reveals an almost ‘industrial’ addiction to opium and how a sexual obsession with two ‘socially inferior’ mistresses had a defining impact on his work.
Andrew Lycett, author of Wilkie Collins: A Life Of Sensation, said: ‘Wilkie was a very Victorian conundrum. He specialised in the sensationalist novel which embraced the idea of characters with deep, dark family secrets.
'But he had a very secretive life of his own and a laddish attitude to sex which influenced some of his best-known stories and characters.’
By the 1860s, Collins, who was a close friend of Charles Dickens, had established himself as a highly respected member of the literary establishment.
But his public persona hid a sexual obsession with vulnerable women from a lower social scale.
Collins, who lost his virginity at 12 and travelled around Europe picking up girls with Dickens, embarked upon long-standing and overlapping relationships with Caroline Graves, then a 25-year-old near-destitute single mother, and Martha Rudd, a 19-year-old semi-educated Norfolk barmaid.
Lycett said: ‘The fact they were from very different backgrounds to Collins was part of the attraction. Graves being almost a fallen woman only added to her “declasse allure” and his relationship with Martha, in particular, was a very sexual one.'

Scandal: Wilkie Collins had overlapping relationships with single mother Caroline Graves and 19-year-old barmaid Martha Rudd

‘It is not that he wasn’t popular with well-born women, but when it came to intimate relationships this is the type of woman he went for.’

Lycett’s biography, published next month, coincides with a renewed interest in Collins’s life and work.
Tom Hollander, star of the BBC comedy Rev, plays the author in new film The Invisible Woman – which highlights his friendship with Dickens – with Michelle Fairley starring as Graves. Collins began his relationship with Graves in 1856 aged 32. He was happy to support both her and her daughter but refused to marry her.
Their relationship hit breaking-point in the 1860s when he began his relationship with Rudd. He also refused to marry her, but she went on to bear him three children.
Collins’s unorthodox lifestyle gave him an insight into the plight of working-class women for his books and he also tackled themes of prostitution and unjust marriage laws.

Invisible touch: Tom Hollander starring as Collins and Michelle Fairley as Graves in a new film about the author