Vignette: Franklin Blake, galloping off with the Diamond — uncaptioned vignette for the "The Story. First Period." — eighth illustration in the Doubleday (New York) 1946 edition of The Moonstone, p. 43. 7.2 x 10.4 cm. [Made aware of the danger in which he is placing the entire Verinder household by retaining custody of the Moonstone until Rachel's birthday in the next four weeks, Franklin Blake takes the hint from his old confidant, Gabriel Betteredge, to secure the gem in the bank at Frizinghall until he must give it to Rachel on her eighteenth birthday.] Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]

Passage Illustrated

"I don't want to alarm my aunt without reason," he said. "And I don't want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?"

"I don't want to alarm my aunt without reason," he said. "And I don't want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?"

"In one word, I told him: "Wait."

"With all my heart,"​says Mr. Franklin. "How long?"

I proceeded to explain myself.

"As I understand it, sir,"​I said, "somebody is bound to put this plaguy Diamond into Miss Rachel's hands on her birthday​— and you may as well do it as another. Very good. This is the twenty-fifth of May, and the birthday is on the twenty-first of June. We have got close on four weeks before us. Let's wait and see what happens in that time; and let's warn my lady, or not, as the circumstances direct us."

"Perfect, Betteredge, as far as it goes!" says Mr. Franklin. "But between this and the birthday, what's to be done with the Diamond?"

"What your father did with it, to be sure, sir!"​I answered. "Your father put it in the safe keeping of a bank in London. You put in the safe keeping of the bank at Frizinghall."​(Frizinghall was our nearest town, and the Bank of England wasn’t safer than the bank there.) "If I were you, sir,"​I added, "I would ride straight away with it to Frizinghall before the ladies come back."

The prospect of doing something—and, what is more, of doing that something on a horse—brought Mr. Franklin up like lightning from the flat of his back. He sprang to his feet, and pulled me up, without ceremony, on to mine. "Betteredge, you are worth your weight in gold,"​he said. "Come along, and saddle the best horse in the stables directly."

Here (God bless it!) was the original English foundation of him showing through all the foreign varnish at last! Here was the Master Franklin I remembered, coming out again in the good old way at the prospect of a ride, and reminding me of the good old times! Saddle a horse for him? I would have saddled a dozen horses, if he could only have ridden them all!

We went back to the house in a hurry; we had the fleetest horse in the stables saddled in a hurry; and Mr. Franklin rattled off in a hurry, to lodge the cursed Diamond once more in the strong-room of a bank. When I heard the last of his horse's hoofs on the drive, and when I turned about in the yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to ask myself if I hadn't woke up from a dream. — "The Story. First Period. Loss of the Diamond (1848). The events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 6, p. 43-44.

Commentary

Despite his nineteenth-century beaver-hat and clothing, and Sharp's highly realistic treatment not only of the stallion and the horseman but also of the wild Yorkshire moor through which Franklin Blake is riding, the gentleman on horseback is still the chevalier out of romance. A "bright-eyed young gentleman" with a "varnish from foreign parts," becomes in Sharp's illustration a mature, determined individual. The image of Blake on horseback here also presents him as a traveller, foreshadowing his wanderings in the East. Although Sharp may well have seen the Harper's illustrations in one of the first two illustrated volume editions or in the Peter Fenelon Collier edition of 1900, he has elected to create a less callow, more mature (and bearded) protagonist, one equal to the task of outwitting the pursuing Brahmins.

Relevant Plates from the 1868 Edition Showing Franklin Blake.

Left: The original serial wood-engraving in Harper's of Betteredge and Blake discussing the terms of Sir John Herncastle's will, "He gave me the extract from the Colonel's will." (18 January 1868). Centre: Another 1868 illustration, this showing Franklin Blake on horseback after the discussion of the will, Uncaptioned headnote vignette for "Chapter VIII (25 January 1868). Right: William Sharp's portrait vignette of the male protagonist of the story, Franklin Blake (1944). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

Bibliography

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. "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.


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Last updated 29 September 2016