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"My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman." (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Chromolithograph (ink and chalk)
18.2 x 12.8 cm
Illustration for "The Prologue, Part II," in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 4 in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
While I was still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a frightful yelling on the other side of the courtyard, and at once ran towards the cries, in dread of finding some new outbreak of the pillage in that direction.
I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians (by theirdress, as I guessed, officers of the palace) lying across the entrance, dead.
A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an armoury. A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of aman whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I camein, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a daggerdripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the endof the dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me,like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his native language—"The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!" He spoke those words, and fell dead on the floor.
Before I could stir in the matter, the men who had followed me across the courtyard crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman. "Clear the room!" he shouted to me, "and set a guard on the door!" Themen fell back as he threw himself on them with his torch and his dagger.
I put two sentinels of my own company, on whom I could rely, to keep the door. Through the remainder of the night, I saw no more of my cousin. — "Prologue, The Storming of Seringapatam (1799)," p. 6.
As a result of the British army's storming of Seringapatam, the capital of the state Mysore in southern India in 1799, the British East India Company became the dominant political and economic power in the Indian subcontinent. Collins provides, then, an historical context for the "Romance" as he describes the novel in the title given in both Harper's Weekly and All the Year Round, reinforcing the sense of a documentary with extracts and testimonial narrativesoffered by eight different characters over the course of the story.Once the fictional John Herncastle has led his troops into the Moslem-controlled city, he becomes separated from his fellows as he makes his way to the Moghul armoury in search of the legendary Moonstone. By the time that the narrator, his cousin and fellow officer, catches up with Herncastle, he discovers the scene of slaughter where the diamond has been stored. The smoking torch, spreading pitchy smoke throughout the room, may imply the less benign aspects of imperialism. Certainly the conquest of the city seems to have given Herncastle a licence to pillage and murder. Sharp does not show either the narrator or the narrator's company; rather, he focusses on the face of Colonel Herncastle, who in the fray seems to have lost his sword, for his scabbard is empty. He carries no torch, and the three dead guardians of the Moonstone are represented by two lifeless hands, lower left.
Since this is the first of the book's fifteen full-page ink-and-chalk drawings reproduced as chromolithographs, Sharp is using both the colour medium and the dimensions of the illustration to underscore its importance. He reserves this type of illustration for story's most important characters (including the first appearance of the three Brahmins, Godfrey Ablewhite, and Franklin Blake) and such significant events as Franklin and Rachel's painting the doors of her sitting-room, the arrival of Sergeant Cuff, and the Brahmins' taking ship for India. Thus, the very first full-page colour drawing establishes the importance of the Englishman's theft of the stone and the almost hypnotic effect on those who possess it, for Herncastle's expression is savage, his eyes suggesting that he is in some sort of trance. Outside the window behind him, clouds of smoke billow against a night sky, implying violence and destruction follow in the wake of those who try to possess the sacred gem. Herncastle is wearing the eighteenth-century of a British army officer, as implied by the empty scabbard, epaulettes, and collar facings. The Moonstone itself in the pommel of the dagger is not quite as large as in the illustration depicting Rachel wearing it on her birthday (facing p. 100), perhaps because Sharp feels that in this first full-page illustration its effect is more important than its size or lustre.
Left: The original serial wood-engraving in Harper's of Colonel Herncastle's murdering the Brahmins in order to possess the Moonstone, "The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!" (4 January 1868). Centre: The uncaptioned headnote vignette for the initial serial instalment, The Idol of the Moon God (1868). Right: F. A. Fraser's version of the sensational opening scene, "A cry inside hurried me into a room which appeared to serve as an armoury. . ." (1910). [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.
Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa Surridge. "The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper's Weekly." Victorian Periodicals Review Volume 42, Number 3 (Fall 2009): pp. 207-243. Accessed 1 July 2016. http://englishnovel2.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2014/01/42.3.leighton-moonstone-serializatation.pdf
Nayder, Lillian. Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, & Victorian Authorship. London and Ithaca, NY: Cornll U. P., 2001.
Peters, Catherine. The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva, 1991.
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.
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 26 September 2016