"The Moonstone" — "First period. Chapter 19: "Try to forgive me, mamma."

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"Try to forgive me, mamma"

Harper & Bros. house illustrator William Jewett ("W. J.")

Wood engraving

17.4 x 11.5 cm

The second full-sized illustration for the eleventh weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in Harper's Weekly (14 March 1868), page 165. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Illustrations courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia.

Passage Illustrated

The first person to come out of the house was my lady. She stood aside, on the top step, posting herself there to see what happened. Not a word did she say, either to the Sergeant or to me. With her lips closed, and her arms folded in the light garden cloak which she had wrapped round her on coming into the air, there she stood, as still as a statue, waiting for her daughter to appear.

In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs — very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped her tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart little straw hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She had primrose-coloured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin. Her beautiful black hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy shells — they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every movement she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was altered in her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and sudden manner on the cheek. She said, "Try to forgive me, mamma" — and then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that she tore it. In another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed into the carriage as if it was a hiding-place. — "First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848), The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 19, p. 166.

Commentary

The Moonstone is about to claim the life of Rosanna Spearman, and its curse is already affecting Rachel Verinder's relationship with Franklin Blake, with whom she distant and curt, and her own mother, who bore the brunt of Rachel's displeasure when she learned that she would not be able to depart by carriage for Frizinghall until 2:00 P. M. On the surace, then, she is apologizing to her mother for her rudeness and petulance. But perhaps for something more. After all, her stupidity in installing the diamond in her unlocked Indian cabinet contributed to its disappearance. Of course, the apology may be something of a red herring in the solution to the mystery, for its ambiguity may lead the reader to believe that Rachel is apologising for the gem's disappearance because she has connived with Rosanna Spearman to pawn it, the narrative that Sergeant Cuff seems to be pursuing at this point, since Rachel's sudden visit to her aunt seems too conveniently timed to be mere coincidence.

Steve Farmer, editor of the Broadview edition of the novel, notes that, although Rachel is a complicated character, and that Collins reveals various facets of her character (highly developed for an eighteen-year-old brought up in an isolated stratum of society with little opportunity to observe a greater range of human conduct) through her her very different relationships with Betteredge, Franklin Blake, and her mother, contemporary critics were often unimpressed with this subtlety of characterisation:

The novel's heroine, Rachel Verinder, is another figure [i. e., besides the angry women of the lower orders, Rosanna Spearman and Limping Lucy] treated unfairly by the seemingly short-sighted critics of her day. The Spectator's reviewer, for one, wrote that she is "a heroine who seems to have been borrowed from one of those old novels where everybody is miserable because nobody will talk common sense for five minutes" (882). Strong-willed, occasionally impertinent, and always assertive, Rachel is in many ways like other forceful women who populate Collins's novels. — "Introduction," p. 20.

William Jewett, the Harper's illustrator who has signed this illustration in the lower right, conveys the apprehensive mood as much through the almost tearful anguish of Rachel as through the obvious concern on the faces of the onlookers: Sergeant Cuff, studying the women's interaction carefully; and Gabriel Betteredge, regarding Cuff as much as his mistress. Samuel, the footman, and the waiting carriage are nowhere to be seen in the illustration, the focus of this character study being entirely on Julia Verinder and her daughter, whose "veil" is also not in evidence, despite her fashionable and fully realised 1860s period dress:

She said, "Try to forgive me, mamma" — and then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that she tore it. In another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed into the carriage as if it was a hiding-place. — p. 165.

Jewettt marginalises both Cuff and Betteredge to let the mother and daughter occupy centre stage on the staircase of the country-house, established by a flowering plant creeping through the balustrade. Cuff is looking for some sign of guilt on Rachel's face, but Rachel communicates only concern for her mother. The third Harper's Weekly plate for this instalment, then, contrasts the funereal mood of the group gathered near the Shivering Sand, which, they are certain, has claimed the life of Rosanna Spearman, a death which may be attributed in part to malign influence of the Moonstone.

Related Materials

The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1890)
Illustrations by John Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for The Moonstone: A Romance (1910)
The 1944 illustrations by William Sharp for The Moonstone (1946).

Last updated 28 November 2016