After A Shadow and Other Stories | Page 3

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[Italics are indicated by underscores James Rusk,
[email protected].]

AFTER DARK
by Wilkie Collins

PREFACE TO "AFTER DARK."
I have taken some pains to string together the various stories contained
in this Volume on a single thread of interest, which, so far as I know,
has at least the merit of not having been used before.

The pages entitled "Leah's Diary" are, however, intended to fulfill
another purpose besides that of serving as the frame-work for my
collection of tales. In this part of the book, and subsequently in the
Prologues to the stories, it has been my object to give the reader one
more glimpse at that artist-life which circumstances have afforded me
peculiar opportunities of studying, and which I have already tried to
represent, under another aspect, in my fiction, "Hide-and-Seek." This
time I wish to ask some sympathy for the joys and sorrows of a poor
traveling portrait-painter--presented from his wife's point of view in
"Leah's Diary," and supposed to be briefly and simply narrated by
himself in the Prologues to the stories. I have purposely kept these two
portions of the book within certain limits; only giving, in the one case,
as much as the wife might naturally write in her diary at intervals of
household leisure; and, in the other, as much as a modest and sensible
man would be likely to say about himself and about the characters he
met with in his wanderings. If I have been so fortunate as to make my
idea intelligible by this brief and simple mode of treatment, and if I
have, at the same time, achieved the necessary object of gathering
several separate stories together as neatly-fitting parts of one complete
whole, I shall have succeeded in a design which I have for some time
past been very anxious creditably to fulfill.
Of the tales themselves, taken individually, I have only to say, by way
of necessary explanation, that "The Lady of Glenwith Grange" is now
offered to the reader for the first time; and that the other stories have
appeared in the columns of Household Words. My best thanks are due
to Mr. Charles Dickens for his kindness in allowing me to set them in
their present frame-work.
I must also gratefully acknowledge an obligation of another kind to the
accomplished artist, Mr. W. S. Herrick, to whom I am indebted for the
curious and interesting facts on which the tales of "The Terribly
Strange Bed" and "The Yellow Mask" are founded.
Although the statement may appear somewhat superfluous to those
who know me, it may not be out of place to add, in conclusion, that
these stories are entirely of my own imagining, constructing, and

writing. The fact that the events of some of my tales occur on foreign
ground, and are acted out by foreign personages, appears to have
suggested in some quarters the inference that the stories themselves
might be of foreign origin. Let me, once for all, assure any readers who
may honor me with their attention, that in this, and in all other cases,
they may depend on the genuineness of my literary offspring. The little
children of my brain may be weakly enough, and may be sadly in want
of a helping hand to aid them in their first attempts at walking on the
stage of this great world; but, at any rate, they are not borrowed
children. The members of my own literary family are indeed increasing
so fast as to render the very idea of borrowing quite out of the question,
and to suggest serious apprehension that I may not have done adding to
the large book-population, on my own sole responsibility, even yet.
AFTER DARK.
LEAVES FROM LEAH'S DIARY.
26th February, 1827.--The doctor has just called for the third time