"The Moonstone" — "First period. Chapter 20: "For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement, like an ordinary man."

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"For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement, like an ordinary man."

"C. G. B."

Wood engraving

17.4 x 11.5 cm

The second full-sized illustration for the twelfth weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in Harper's Weekly (21 March 1868), page 181. [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.]

The illustrations appearing here are 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

"Next," proceeded the Sergeant, "and last, I propose to send one of my brother-officers to make an arrangement with that money-lender in London, whom I mentioned just now as formerly acquainted with Rosanna Spearman — and whose name and address, your ladyship may rely on it, have been communicated by Rosanna to Miss Verinder. I don't deny that the course of action I am now suggesting will cost money, and consume time. But the result is certain. We run a line round the Moonstone, and we draw that line closer and closer till we find it in Miss Verinder's possession, supposing she decides to keep it. If her debts press, and she decides on sending it away, then we have our man ready, and we meet the Moonstone on its arrival in London."

To hear her own daughter made the subject of such a proposal as this, stung my mistress into speaking angrily for the first time.

"Consider your proposal declined, in every particular," she said. "And go on to your other way of bringing the inquiry to an end."

"My other way," said the Sergeant, going on as easy as ever, "is to try that bold experiment to which I have alluded. I think I have formed a pretty correct estimate of Miss Verinder's temperament. She is quite capable (according to my belief) of committing a daring fraud. But she is too hot and impetuous in temper, and too little accustomed to deceit as a habit, to act the hypocrite in small things, and to restrain herself under all provocations. Her feelings, in this case, have repeatedly got beyond her control, at the very time when it was plainly her interest to conceal them. It is on this peculiarity in her character that I now propose to act. I want to give her a great shock suddenly, under circumstances that will touch her to the quick. In plain English, I want to tell Miss Verinder, without a word of warning, of Rosanna's death — on the chance that her own better feelings will hurry her into making a clean breast of it. Does your ladyship accept that alternative?"

My mistress astonished me beyond all power of expression. She answered him on the instant:

"Yes; I do."

"The pony-chaise is ready," said the Sergeant. "I wish your ladyship good morning."

My lady held up her hand, and stopped him at the door.

"My daughter's better feelings shall be appealed to, as you propose," she said. "But I claim the right, as her mother, of putting her to the test myself. You will remain here, if you please; and I will go to Frizinghall."

For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement, like an ordinary man. — "First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848), The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 20, p. 182.

Commentary

Visually speaking, the American Moonstone stresses this theme [surveillance, reading, and interpreting] by foregrounding scenes of men reading women, a theme highlighted by the captions. In a striking series of parallel scenes, we see Cuff reading Rachel, then Cuff reading Rosanna, and finally Cuff reading Lady Verinder. — Leighton and Surridge, p. 227.

Jewettt marginalises both Cuff and Betteredge, perhaps as lesser principles (skepticism and fidelity respectively), to permit Julia Verinder, the embodiment of maternal love and perfect confidence in her daughter, to dominate the composition — a great pyramid against two rake-thin stele. From the margins, often unobserved or discounted as something of a crank because of his obsession with roses, the professional detective (and to the people on this Yorkshire estate a rank outsider, neither aristocrat, nor servant, nor farm-labourer) is a constant observer of human nature. In this illustration, marking his last appearance for hundreds of pages, Cuff is studying Lady Julia for some sign of weakness or emotional frailty. She is, however, unwavering as she prepares to write Cuff a cheque for his services, as the inkwell and pen on the table suggest.

Thus, we take our leave textually and in illustration of the Great Cuff, whose lineage undoubtedly owes something to Charles Dickens's Detective Bucket in Bleak House (serialised monthly in 1852-53), who in turn was based on Inspector Field of the London Metropolitan Police, incorporated by Sir Robert Peel under act of Parliament in 1829. However, as J. I. M. Stewart notes in his "Introduction" to the 1966 Penguin edition of the novel, Collins in the character of Sergeant Cuff is alluding to the role that Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher (1814-1881) played in solving the Kent Road Murder case:

Cuff is himself an admirable mingling of fact and fancy. To the readers of the time, he was designed to suggest an actual policeman, Inspector Whicher, who had been one of the first products of the efforts of Charles Rowan, Richard Mayne and others to establish a body of professional detectives on the continental model within the London Police Force. He had already appeared, barely disguised, as 'Sergeant Witchem', in Household Words, which ran a series of articles on his earlier cases. Collins now drew directly upon a later case of Whicher's, known as the Road Murder [1860], and perhaps the most sensational of them all. [8]

That case's solution hinged upon finding a missing nightgown, smeared with blood, rather than, as in this 1868 novel, paint. Although the case began some seven years before Collins's creating Sergeant Cuff, the solution of the case was recent, as Constance Kent, the murderer, had returned from a French convent in 1865, confessed to the crime, and subsequently been sentenced to death — a sentence that Queen Victoria commuted to life in prison, likely out of consideration of Constance's youth, and gender. "Inspector Whicher, whose reputation suffered because of his failure to solve the case, retired in disgrace in 1863, but was somewhat vindicated by Kent's admission of guilt" (Farmer, 26). Perhaps, then, Rachel's departure and Cuff's dismissal immediately thereafter are based on Constance Kent's fleeing to France and Whicher's forced retirement.

The celebrated Scotland Yard detective Sergeant Cuff, loaned by the London Metropolitan Police to Lady Julia Verinder in Yorkshire, is thus Collins's transformation of the equally famous Detective Inspector Jonathan 'Jack' Whicher (1 October 1814–29 June 1881), one of the original eight members of the newly formed Detective Branch, founded at Scotland Yard in 1842. Whicher, the son of a Camberwell gardener, would logically have considerable expertise in horticulture, which may explain Cuff's interest in the raising of roses. Whicher was apparently also the basis for Mary Elizabeth Braddon's detective Robert Audley in the 1862-63 novel Lady Audley's Secret. Unlike American detectives such as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Cuff is neither "hard-boiled" (coarse, and violent), nor indeed a "private-eye." Rather, he is quiet, observant, and more than a little eccentric, although quite professional in his manner and dress.

Sergeant Cuff as the professional detective brought in from outside to solve a mystery in a country house, is the basis, too, for one of the staples of the classic Crime-and-Detection novel, the others being the setting, the nature of the crime (a robbery that is likely an "inside job"), false clues as to the identity of perpetrator ("red herrings"), bungling local constabulary (as epitomized by Superintendent Seegrave), a large pool of possible suspects, a reconstruction of the crime scene and a re-enactment of the crime, and a final plot twist in which one of the least likely suspects proves to be the malefactor. All of this is familiar to readers of modern "murder mystery" novels, even though, of course, the chief crime here is not a murder at all.

The manner of Sergeant Cuff's employment may strike us as odd. Lady Verinder hires him from the police at her own expense, and then dismisses him when his investigations threaten to take an awkward turn. But Scotland Yard, it seems, did then actually work that way. [Stewart, 9]

Relevant Images of Sergeant Cuff from Other Editions, 1890 to 1946

Left: William Sharp's elegant realisation of the arrival on the scene of the foremost forensic detective of the age, Sergeant Cuff (1946). Centre: F. A. Fraser's depiction of the scene in the rose garden when Cuff argues the merits of grass over gravel with Mr. Begbie, "One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses" (1890). Right: John Sloan's depiction of the visit by Cuff and Betteredge to Mrs. Yolland's cottage at Cobb's Hole, Weigh it in your hand, sir,' she said to the Sergeant. (1908) [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

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).

Additional References

Marshall, William H. Ch. 5, "The Major Novels, 1868-70." Wilkie Collins.New York: Twayne, 1970.

"The Moonstone." Wikipedia. Accessed 7 September 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moonstone

Last updated 30 November 2016