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The Making of John Herncastle's Will (uncaptioned).
William Sharp
chromolithograph (from ink & chalk)
18.3 x 12.7 cm
Illustration in Part 1, Ch. 9 in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 60 in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"My father," he said, "got the papers he wanted, and never saw his brother-in-law again from that time. Year after year, on the prearranged days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by Mr. Bruff. I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in the same brief, business-like form of words: "Sir, — This is to certify that I am still a living man. Let the Diamond be. John Herncastle." That was all he ever wrote, and that came regularly to the day; until some six or eight months since, when the form of the letter varied for the first time. It ran now: "Sir, — They tell me I am dying. Come to me, and help me to make my will." Mr. Bruff went, and found him, in the little suburban villa, surrounded by its own grounds, in which he had lived alone, ever since he had left India. He had dogs, cats, and birds to keep him company; but no human being near him, except the person who came daily to do the house-work, and the doctor at the bedside. The will was a very simple matter. The Colonel had dissipated the greater part of his fortune in his chemical investigations. His will began and ended in three clauses, which he dictated from his bed, in perfect possession of his faculties. The first clause provided for the safe keeping and support of his animals. The second founded a professorship of experimental chemistry at a northern university. The third bequeathed the Moonstone as a birthday present to his niece, on condition that my father would act as executor. My father at first refused to act. On second thoughts, however, he gave way, partly because he was assured that the executorship would involve him in no trouble; partly because Mr. Bruff suggested, in Rachel's interest, that the Diamond might be worth something, after all."
"Did the Colonel give any reason, sir," I inquired, "why he left the Diamond to Miss Rachel?"
"He not only gave the reason — he had the reason written in his will," said Mr. Franklin. "I have got an extract, which you shall see presently. Don't be slovenly-minded, Betteredge! One thing at a time. You have heard about the Colonel's Will; now you must hear what happened after the Colonel's death. It was formally necessary to have the Diamond valued, before the Will could be proved. All the jewellers consulted, at once confirmed the Colonel's assertion that he possessed one of the largest diamonds in the world. The question of accurately valuing it presented some serious difficulties. Its size made it a phenomenon in the diamond market; its colour placed it in a category by itself; and, to add to these elements of uncertainty, there was a defect, in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone. Even with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various estimates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father's astonishment! He had been within a hair's-breadth of refusing to act as executor, and of allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the family. The interest he took in the matter now, induced him to open the sealed instructions which had been deposited with the Diamond. Mr. Bruff showed this document to me, with the other papers; and it suggests (to my mind) a clue to the nature of the conspiracy which threatened the Colonel's life." — "The Loss of the Diamond (1848)," Chapter 6, p. 36-37.
For the benefit of Betteredge (and the reader) Franklin Blake summarizes John Herncastle's will, and recalls the circumstances under which he dictated its three short clauses to the family attorney.
No decent man ought to die alone; and even so evil a man as John Herncastle, as a consequence of his reprehensible actions fifty years earlier at Seringapatam, deserves no better death than he receives. In this illustration of Franklin Blake's flashback, he is attended merely by two professional men, the Verinder family lawyer, Mr. Bruff (seated at the table, taking dictation from the dying man) and his personal physician. His sole companions are three dogs, two cats, and two birds (the one in the cage, upper left, being a parrot, and therefore a reminder of the owner's Indian posting as a young army officer). However, he has no female relatives to attend him or mourn his passing, unlike even the curmudgeonly carrier in David Copperfield, whose wife and brother-in-law attend his peaceful passing in I find Mr. Barkis "going out with the tide" (February 1850). The readers of Harper's Weekly, vol. XII, would have similar evidence that a man of means and status should have his family around him in his final days: indeed, on the very page facing this are two visual exempla of why a man should not die a bachelor, First and Second Floors; A Study for Bachelors, which accompanies the short article on page 35 "First and Second Floor," in which by implication a "crusty old bachelor" is angry at his social isolation while in the room above him a "merry family" of father and children engage in horse-play; the lot of the curmudgeonly bachelor, cautions the article, is "solitary dinners and childless boards" (35). Herncastle should have "tremble[d] at the prospect" of a death without family to comfort him in old age. But women of his own class to whom he had proposed marriage had utterly rejected him, just as respectable men had barred him from their clubs, because of his unsavoury reputation. The late Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania as drawn by Theodore R. Davis dies a Victorian death, surrounded on his death-bed by his wife, two sons, and two Catholic nuns (Harper's Weekly for 29 August 1868, p. 548). In contrast, Godfrey Ablewhite dies alone and in a disreputable lodging in the original serial illustration at the close of the narrative-pictorial sequence in "Look at the man's face. It is disguised — and here's the proof of it!" ("Second Period. Fifth Narrative," p. 421) and in Sharp's less dramatic depiction of the discovery of the body, Gooseberry, Cuff, and Blake find Godfrey Ablewhite dead (uncaptioned).
Sharp's John Herncastle does not look much like Jewett's, for Sharp has given us a portrait of a skeletal, old man, shrunken with age, his bony hand gesturing towards the attorney as he writes. The cat and exotic bird mentioned in the text are evident, as are the dogs, cuddled up against thew old man on the counterpane. The gentleman standing beside the Colonel, pen in hand, ready to sign, Mr. Blake, seems more interested in the quill than the dying man's dictates, so that the invalid has yet to mention the Diamond, we may assume.
Left: The original serial wood-engraving of William Jewett's "His will began and ended in three clauses." (18 January 1868). Centre: A much healthier, dark-haired, dark-bearded Herncastle is rebuffed by Julia Verinder in the original serial engraving "My lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel." (11 January 1868). Right: F. A. Fraser's depiction of Colonel John Herncastle as a handsome youth in uniform, "A cry inside hurried me into a room which appeared to serve as an armoury . . ." (1890). [Click on the 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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Reed, John R. "English Imperialism and the Unacknowledged crime of The Moonstone. Clio 2, 3 (June, 1973): 281-290.
Stewart, J. I. M. "A Note on Sources." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 527-8.
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Last updated 30 September 2016
