The woman in white; Caroline Graves ( c. 1830-1895) Kensal Green Cemetery

 

As a young man Collins probably had his romantic experiences those "intimacies" to which the Dictionary of National Biography rather ambiguously refers. But when he was thirty-five and seemingly a confirmed bachelor, he formed an attachment with a married woman ten years his junior, which greatly influenced his life and about which he remained steadfastly and discreetly silent to all but his closest friends. It began with a queerly dramatic encounter. One summer evening in 1859 Wilkie and his brother Charles were accompanying Millais, the artist, back to his house in Gower Street after he had dined with them at Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, when suddenly they were startled by a shriek from a near-by house and the appearance of in Millais's words "a young and very beautiful woman" dressed in white arid obviously terrified. She darted off and Wilkie, his curiosity and chivalrous instincts aroused, followed her into the darkness and his companions saw him no more that night. On his return next day he was rather quiet about the episode, but it seemed that he had caught up with the lady in distress and extracted from her a woeful tale of imprisonment and maltreatment by a villain in a Regent's Park villa, and of final desperate escape. While it was obvious that the fair fugitive and her plight had impressed Collins, his friends could not have guessed that he would fall head over heels in love with her. Yet this is what happened.

Britannia and Eve - Friday 01 February 1952

It was the son of the artist Millais who was responsible for perpetuating, in print at least, this heavily romanticised version of the first meeting between Wilkie Collins and Caroline Graves. No doubt the painter had been repeating the story in drawing rooms and salons for years, in front of audiences of sceptical listeners who took it with the pinch of salt it deserves. But by including the fantastic episode in his biography of his father, ‘The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais’, John Guille Millais lent it that spurious credibility which repetition in print can create for even the silliest rumours. Creating a mysterious backstory for the lower-class girl from Gloucestershire would have suited Caroline who was doing her best to do exactly the same. Caroline was not her real name (she had been christened Elizabeth), she lied about her age, she said her father was a man Courteney, and claimed her first husband, George Robert Graves, was a man of independent means. In reality she the daughter of a carpenter called John Compton, had married the penniless Graves when she was 18 and then moved to Bath and ten Clerkenwell with him and his mother. George Graves died when Caroline was just 18 and left her in straitened circumstances with a young baby to look after. How Caroline managed to scrape a living over the next four years we do not know but in 1856 the 26-year-old Caroline met Wilkie Collins in circumstances no doubt much less melodramatic than those claimed by Millais all those years later.

Although she is not mentioned on the headstone, Wilkie Collins is buried with his mistress Caroline Graves. Although the pair lived together for the best part of thirty years, Wilkie always refused to marry Caroline. Even worse after a decade of living ‘in sin’ with Caroline, Wilkie started another relationship with a younger woman called Martha Rudd with whom he went on to have three children.  This caused a rift in his relationship with Caroline and she left Wilkie to marry a plumber called Joseph Clow. The wedding took place on the 29th October 1868 at St Marylebone Church.  The witnesses were Caroline’s daughter Elizabeth and Francis Carr Beard, a doctor and close friend and medical advisor to both Wilkie and his best friend Charles Dickens (and also buried at Kensal Green). Wilkie was also present at the ceremony! The marriage did not last; within two years Caroline was back living with Wilkie who now had to maintain two separate households for the two women in his life. When he died in 1889 Wilkie left clear instructions about the disposal of his remains; a plot was to be bought at Kensal Green and a plain stone cross erected over the grave. No scarves, hatbands or feathers were to be worn and the cost of the funeral was not to exceed £25. He also wrote the inscription on the gravestone. The funeral was not well attended, Wilkies unusual domestic arrangements were simply too scandalous for most of his friends and acquaintances to contemplate attending. Caroline attended the funeral but Martha did not, she had to content herself with sending a wreath of white flowers. When Caroline died in 1895 she was buried with Wilkie;  Martha took over looking after the grave.