"She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet."
F. A. Fraser
Wood engraving
13.8 x 8.8 cm
Seventh illustration for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in the Chatto and Windus Edition (1890), facing p. 195.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, "Stand between us for a minute or two. Don't let Rachel see me." I noticed a bluish tinge in her face which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. "The drops will put me right in a minute or two," she said, and so closed her eyes, and waited a little.
While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently remonstrating.
"You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this," he said. "Yourreputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too sacred to be trifled with."
"My reputation!" She burst out laughing. "Why, I am accused, Godfrey, as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I have stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks — and he will tell you that I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!" She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet. "Oh mamma! mamma! mamma! I must be mad — mustn't I? — not to own the truth now?" She was too vehement to notice her mother's condition — she was on her feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. "I won't let you — I won't let any innocent man — be accused and disgraced through my fault. If you won't take me before the magistrate, draw out a declaration of your innocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I tell you, Godfrey, or I'll write it to the newspapers I'll go out, and cry it in the streets!" — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder. Chapter II," pp. 194-195.
Fraser sets the scene with the kind of detailism found in a late-nineteenth-century of Ibsen or Checkhov, contrasting the Verinder ladies and the severe Miss Clack and the bland Godfrey Ablewhite (centre). The cousins are dispassionate observers of the emotional scene between the fashionably dressed Rachel (centre, on her knees) and Lady Julia Verinder in the library of the townhouse at Montagu Square, London. Here, Rachel has fled with her mother to put distance both emotional and physical between herself and the scene of the crime (which is, in fact, the setting of her disappointment with Franklin Blake when she believes she saw him steal the Moonstone). Miss Clack and Godfrey Ablewhite are wooden pillars in Fraser's illustration, supporting the strong vertical lines of the walls, their rigidity contrasting the flexible postures of their aunt and cousin, whose humanised poses and tender relationship render them far more sympathetic than the pious hypocrites behind them.
Already the rumour is abroad that Godfrey has stolen the Moonstone, and Rachel believes that she should exonerate him by revealing who has taken it. But all of this is too muchfor her mother, whose fascial toning in this illustration suggests that she is quite ill. This is not the same animated aristocrat who recently gave Sergeant Cuff his marching orders; rather, Julia Verinder's face seems softened by her recent experiences. The object of Miss Clack's censorious gaze is Rachel, whereas in the original serial illustration of the same scene, she casts an adoring glance at a much more animated Godfrey Ablewhite. He, for his part, is, despite his ordeal in Northumberland, unmarred by his near-death experience. The genuine sympathy and concern expressed for Lady Julia Verinder by her daughter foreshadow Lady Julia's death. And by themselves the illustration and the caption suggest that Rachel is indeed the thief, and that she is about to confess as much to her distressed mother. Godfrey, meanwhile, tries to read both of his wealthy cousins, even as Miss Clack regards the reader as being sympathetic to her assessment of Lady Julia and her daughter, her folded arms suggesting that she is barely tolerating this emotional display.
Left: The 1868 serial's scene in which Godfrey Ablewhite attempts to comfort Lady Julia and Rachel as Miss Clack (right) looks on admiringly, "She stopped — ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet." (fifteenth instalment). Centre: The serial's vignette in which the zealous evangelical hides a morally-improving tract in a music portfolio at the townhouse of Lady Julia Verinder in Montagu Square (11 April 1868). Right: William Sharp's full-page depiction of the sanctimonious poor relation, Miss Clack and Her Diary [uncaptioned] (1946). [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.
________. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. New York & London: Harper and Brothers, 1868, rpt. 1874.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.
_________. The Moonstone, Parts One and Two. The Works of Wilkie Collins, vols. 5 and 6. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900.
_________. 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: A Romance. Illustrated by A. S. Pearse. London & Glasgow: Collins, 1910, rpt. 1930.
_________. The Moonstone. With forty-nine illustrations by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.
Farmer, Steve. "Introduction" to Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1999. Pp. 8-34.
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
Lonoff, Sue. Chapter 7: "The Moonstone and Its Audience." Wilkie Collins and His Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship. New York: AMS Studies in the Nineteenth Century, 1982. Pp. 170-227.
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.
Robinson, Kenneth. "Chapter 12: 'The Moonstone'." Wilkie Collins: A Biography London: The Bodley Head, 1951. Pp. 200-224.
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.
Last updated 9 September 2016
