Collins, MORTIMER

Collins, MORTIMER, a versatile writer, was born, the son of a solicitor at Plymouth, June 29, 1827. He was educated at private schools, and held for some years a mathematical mastership in Guernsey, which he resigned in 1856 to devote himself entirely to literature. He settled at Knowl Hill in Berkshire, and kept up an incessant activity in the varied forms of articles on current politics, novels, and playful verses until his death, 28th July 1876. His physical was equal to his mental vigour: he was tall and remarkably strong, an athlete, a lover of dogs, flowers, and outdoor-life. His old-world Toryism and hatred of irreverence and irreligion, his humour, his wonderful facility in extemporising clever verse, his chess-playing, not to say his mathematics, made him a delightful companion, and endeared him to such friends as R. H. Horne, Frederick Locker, Edmund Yates, and R. D. Blackmore. His volumes of verse were Summer Songs (1860), Idylls and Rhymes (1865), and The Inn of Strange Meetings (1871). Of his numerous novels the chief are Sweet Anne Page (1868); The Marquis and Merchant (1871); Two Plunges for a Pearl (1872); Mr Carington, by 'Robert Turner Cotton' (1873); Transmigration (1874); From Midnight to Midnight (1875); and A Fight with Fortune (1876). His second wife, who died March 17, 1885, collaborated with him in Frances (1874), Sweet and Twenty (1875), and in two novels published posthumously, The Village Comedy (1876) and You Play me False (1878); and wrote alone A Broken Lily (1882). One of his most popular books was The Secret of Long Life (1871), a collection of essays at first published anonymously. The pious affection of his friends kept his memory green by editing from his papers Pen Sketches by a Vanished Hand, by Tom Taylor, (1879); Attic Salt, a selection of epigrammatic sayings from all his books, by F. Kerslake (1880); and Thoughts in My Garden, by E. Yates (1882). See his wife's account of his Life (1877), and his Select Poetical Works (1886).