"The Moonstone" — "First period. Chapter 16: "'He looked at the billiard-balls,' I heard her say, 'anything rather than look at me!'"

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“He looked at the billiard-balls,” I heard her say, “anything rather than look at me!”

Harper & Bros. house illustrators

Wood engraving

17.4 x 11.5 cm

The second full-sized illustration for the tenth weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in Harper's Weekly (7 March 1868), page 149. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Illustrations courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia.

Passage Illustrated

Not feeling sure that I had really seen the Sergeant—and not desiring to make needless mischief, where, Heaven knows, there was mischief enough going on already &mdash I told Mr. Franklin that I thought one of the dogs had got into the house — and then begged him to describe what had happened between Rosanna and himself.

"Were you passing through the hall, sir?" I asked. "Did you meet her accidentally, when she spoke to you?"

Mr. Franklin pointed to the billiard-table.

"I was knocking the balls about," he said, "and trying to get this miserable business of the Diamond out of my mind. I happened to look up — and there stood Rosanna Spearman at the side of me, like a ghost! Her stealing on me in that way was so strange, that I hardly knew what to do at first. Seeing a very anxious expression in her face, I asked her if she wished to speak to me. She answered, 'Yes, if I dare.' Knowing what suspicion attached to her, I could only put one construction on such language as that. I confess it made me uncomfortable. I had no wish to invite the girl's confidence. At the same time, in the difficulties that now beset us, I could hardly feel justified in refusing to listen to her, if she was really bent on speaking to me. It was an awkward position; and I dare say I got out of it awkwardly enough. I said to her, 'I don't quite understand you. Is there anything you want me to do?' Mind, Betteredge, I didn't speak unkindly! The poor girl can't help being ugly — I felt that, at the time. The cue was still in my hand, and I went on knocking the balls about, to take off the awkwardness of the thing. As it turned out, I only made matters worse still. I'm afraid I mortified her without meaning it! She suddenly turned away. 'He looks at the billiard balls,' I heard her say. 'Anything rather than look at me!' Before I could stop her, she had left the hall. I am not quite easy about it, Betteredge. Would you mind telling Rosanna that I meant no unkindness? I have been a little hard on her, perhaps, in my own thoughts — I have almost hoped that the loss of the Diamond might be traced to her. Not from any ill — will to the poor girl: but — —" He stopped there, and going back to the billiard-table, began to knock the balls about once more.

After what had passed between the Sergeant and me, I knew what it was that he had left unspoken as well as he knew it himself. — "First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848), The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 16, p. 149.

Commentary

Again, the illustrator presents a study in contrasts: the ill-formed, volatile, despondent house-maid and reformed criminal, and the carefree, wealthy, aristocratic young man with time on his hands. And again there is misinterpretation: Rosanna Spearman misinterprets Franklin Blake's rumination over billiards as disrespect or, worse yet, disregard. In contrast to dashing dilatante Franklin Blake, a child of privilege who will over the course of the narrative inherit his father's fortune and acquire control over Rachel Verinder's, Rosanna Spearman is the product of a hard life and a sordid background, a dark-haired foil to the flighty and beautiful but equally intense Rachel:

The dark Rosanna Spearman and her only friend, the angry Limping Lucy, are two more ultimately sympathetic outcasts. From the start Collins stacks the cards of convention against Rosanna, one of Lady Verinder's maidservants, by making her "the plainest woman in the house, with the additional misfortune of having one shoulder bigger than the other," and by giving her a mysterious criminal past and a quiet temperament that make her an object of suspicion to the other household servants, who immediately suspect her involvement when the diamond disappears. Rosanna's pitiful love for Franklin Blake — whose rather curt dismissal of the whole affair leaves him looking at best aloof, at worst partially responsible for her fate — serves as a painful reminder of Collins's apparent sympathy for those sufferers who, in the face of universal public scorn, maintain a personal integrity to the point that they are willing to die for it. — Farmer, "Introduction," 21.

Related Materials

The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1890)
Illustrations by John Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for The Moonstone: A Romance (1910)
The 1944 illustrations by William Sharp for The Moonstone (1946).

Last updated 5 September 2016