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Franklin Blake consults Ezra Jennings (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Full-page ink-and-chalk chromolithograph
18.2 by 12.9 cm (framed)
Illustration of Blake's visit to Jennings' office from the "Second Period, Third Narrative" in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 380, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"I make no apology, Mr. Blake, for the place in which I am receiving you," he said. "It is the only room in the house, at this hour of the day, in which we can feel quite sure of being left undisturbed. Here are my papers ready for you; and here are two books to which we may have occasion to refer, before we have done. Bring your chair to the table, and we shall be able to consult them together."
I drew up to the table; and Ezra Jennings handed me his manuscript notes. They consisted of two large folio leaves of paper. One leaf contained writing which only covered the surface at intervals. The other presented writing, in red and black ink, which completely filled the page from top to bottom. In the irritated state of my curiosity, at that moment, I laid aside the second sheet of paper in despair.
"Have some mercy on me!” I said. “Tell me what I am to expect, before I attempt to read this."
"Willingly, Mr. Blake! Do you mind my asking you one or two more questions?"
"Ask me anything you like!"
He looked at me with the sad smile on his lips, and the kindly interest in his soft brown eyes.
"You have already told me,"he said, "that you have never— to your knowledge— tasted opium in your life."
"To my knowledge,"I repeated.
"You will understand directly why I speak with that reservation. Let us go on. You are not aware of ever having taken opium. At this time, last year, you were suffering from nervous irritation, and you slept wretchedly at night. On the night of the birthday, however, there was an exception to the rule— you slept soundly. Am I right, so far?"
"Quite right!"
"Can you assign any cause for the nervous suffering, and your want of sleep?"
"I can assign no cause. Old Betteredge made a guess at the cause, I remember. But that is hardly worth mentioning."
"Pardon me. Anything is worth mentioning in such a case as this. Betteredge attributed your sleeplessness to something. To what?"
"To my leaving off smoking."
"Had you been an habitual smoker?"
"Yes."
"Did you leave off the habit suddenly?"
"Yes."
"Betteredge was perfectly right, Mr. Blake. When smoking is a habit a man must have no common constitution who can leave it off suddenly without some temporary damage to his nervous system. Your sleepless nights are accounted for, to my mind. My next question refers to Mr. Candy. Do you remember having entered into anything like a dispute with him — at the birthday dinner, or afterwards— on the subject of his profession?"
"The question instantly awakened one of my dormant remembrances in connection with the birthday festival. The foolish wrangle which took place, on that occasion, between Mr. Candy and myself, will be found described at much greater length than it deserves in the tenth chapter of Betteredge's Narrative. The details there presented of the dispute — so little had I thought of it afterwards— entirely failed to recur to my memory. All that I could now recall, and all that I could tell Ezra Jennings was, that I had attacked the art of medicine at the dinner-table with sufficient rashness and sufficient pertinacity to put even Mr. Candy out of temper for the moment. I also remembered that Lady Verinder had interfered to stop the dispute, and that the little doctor and I had “made it up again," as the children say, and had become as good friends as ever, before we shook hands that night.
"There is one thing more,"said Ezra Jennings, "which it is very important I should know. Had you any reason for feeling any special anxiety about the Diamond, at this time last year?"
"I had the strongest reasons for feeling anxiety about the Diamond. I knew it to be the object of a conspiracy; and I was warned to take measures for Miss Verinder's protection, as the possessor of the stone."
"Was the safety of the Diamond the subject of conversation between you and any other person, immediately before you retired to rest on the birthday night?"
"It was the subject of a conversation between Lady Verinder and her daughter —"
"Which took place in your hearing?"
"Yes."
Ezra Jennings took up his notes from the table, and placed them in my hands.
"Mr. Blake,"he said, "if you read those notes now, by the light which my questions and your answers have thrown on them, you will make two astounding discoveries concerning yourself. You will find — First, that you entered Miss Verinder’s sitting-room and took the Diamond, in a state of trance, produced by opium. Secondly, that the opium was given to you by Mr. Candy — without your own knowledge — as a practical refutation of the opinions which you had expressed to him at the birthday dinner."
"I sat with the papers in my hand completely stupefied. — "The Second Period. The Truth Discovered (1848-1849). Third Narrative, Contributed by Franklin Blake," Chapter 10, p. 358-360.
To Franklin Blake the situation initially appears hopeless as the "notes" that Ezra Jennings has transcribed from Dr. Candy's feverous ravings seem to make no sense, and certainly do not point to who stole the Moonstone. At this point, Ezra Jennings, however, having correctly pieced together a narrative from Dr. Candy's delirious utterances, enlightens Franklin Blake about his role in the theft of the diamond. His theory is that Blake has hidden the Moonstone in order to protect it. To test his theory it will be necessary to "re-enact" the crime, placing Franklin Blake in the same room, and giving him a similar draught of laudanum at the same time of evening, with a mock diamond for Franklin to purloin in a drug-induced trance. All this is described twenty pages earlier in the text, so that the illustration reminds the reader how the "proceedings" of 12 June 1849 began, so that the reading of the illustration is analeptic or recursive. Dr. Jennings, immediately distinguishable by his prematurely white-streaked hair (left) earnestly gesticulates as he explains the subtext of the notes that a curious but bewildered Franklin Blake holds before him, having just read them. The room does not match the original illustration of Ezra Jennings in his study in "I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me" (11 July 1868). Although Sharp gives Jennings a case of books and small shelf of vessels (upper centre) and although two large tomes are beside him on the desk, the room is not littered with scientific apparatus and vessels of various shapes and sizes. In essence, Sharp's illustration synthesizes both the headnote vignette (Franklin Blake reading Ezra Jennings' notes) and the main illustration for 11 July 1868, but alters Jennings' demeanour radically; in the 1868, he is a depressed philosopher in a study full of medical arcana; in the 1944 illustration, he is a business-like consulting physician explaining his symptoms to a client.The gain is credibility; what is lost is the sense of mystery surrounding the philosophical, long-suffering scientist who has suffered prejudice as a result of his mixed-race origins. Against this background of suffering and substance abuse, evident in the pathetic figure in the original serial illustrations, Sharp provides a forensic detective who has pieced together the clues from Dr. Candy's delirium.
Left: The original 1868 Jewett and C. C. illustrations of Ezra Jennings: "Have you ever been accustomed to the use of opium?" (4 July 1868). Centre: Uncaptioned headnote vignette, Franklin Blake reading Ezra Jennings' notes (11 July 1868). Right: The parallel illustration to Sharp's here, "I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me." (11 July 1868). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. with sixty-six illustrations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Vol. 12 (1868), 4 January through 8 August, pp. 5-503.
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With many illustrations. First edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, [July] 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. Second edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.
_________. The Moonstone. With 19 illustrations. The Works of Wilkie Collins. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900. Volumes 6 and 7.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With four illustrations by John Sloan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by A. S. Pearse. London & Glasgow: Collins, 1910, rpt. 1930.
_________. The Moonstone. Illustrated by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.
Karl, Frederick R. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Scarborough, Ontario: Signet, 1984. Pp. 1-21.
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Richardson, Betty. "Prisons and Prison Reform." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. London and New York: Garland, 1988. Pp. 638-640.
Stewart, J. I. M. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 7-24.
Stewart, J. I. M. "A Note on Sources." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 527-8.
Vann, J. Don. "The Moonstone in All the Year Round, 4 January-8 1868." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 48-50.
Winter, William. "Wilkie Collins." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 203-219.
Last updated 31 October 2016