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Full-page chromolithograph: Godfrey Ablewhite disguised as a sailor (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
ink-and-chalk chromolithograph.
18.4 by 12.9 cm (framed)
Illustration of scene from the "Second Period, Fifth Narrative" in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 404, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Well, Mr. Blake, he saw the sailor reading the newspaper at one table, and the mechanic reading the newspaper at another. It was dusk before the sailor got up, and left the place. He looked about him suspiciously when he got out into the street. The boy — being a boy — passed unnoticed. The mechanic had not come out yet. The sailor walked on, looking about him, and apparently not very certain of where he was going next. The mechanic appeared once more, on the opposite side of the road. The sailor went on, till he got to Shore Lane, leading into Lower Thames Street. There he stopped before a public-house, under the sign of 'The Wheel of Fortune,' and, after examining the place outside, went in. Gooseberry went in too. There were a great many people, mostly of the decent sort, at the bar. 'The Wheel of Fortune' is a very respectable house, Mr. Blake; famous for its porter and pork-pies." — "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849),""Fifth Narrative. The Story resumed by Franklin Blake," p. 416.
If this uncaptioned illustration is intended to prepare the reader for the cat-and-mouse game of the Indian sailor and the respectable mechanic, it is not effective as a realisation of Godfrey Ablewhite's trying to get aboard the Rotterdam steamer early or of his trying to get a room for the night at 'The Wheel of Fortune.' However, Sharp positions the large-scale illustration immediately ahead of the fifth narrative, as if signalling to the reader in advance of the scene at the bank the importance of the sailor to the plot. Moreover, Sharp emphasizes the sailor's height, probably unusual for an Anglo-Indian, but certainly suggestive of Godfrey's height. When last seen in Sharp's narrative-pictorial sequence, Godfrey Ablewhite was a well-dressed, upper-middle-class young man proposing to an heiress in Godfrey Ablewhite proposes to Rachel Verinder, (uncaptioned, p. 222); now, he is in far different surroundings which Sharp deliberately makes unsavoury, with ramshackle tenements and mudflats. Godfrey's greed, Sharp implies, has brought him to this unpleasant environment — although we cannot be sure of the sailor's identity at this point as the illustration requires a proleptic analysis, and the reader surmises that this is Godfrey by virtue of the sailor's height, and the role that this sailor will play in Gooseberry's account of what transpired after Luker's passing off the diamond in the bank.
Above: The highly effective climactic wood-engraving in the original serial in Harper's of the moment just before "The Discovery of the Truth," "Look at the man's face. It is a face disguised — and here's proof of it!" (1 August 1868). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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.
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 27 October 2016