"The Moonstone" — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder," Ch. VII (Continued): "And that wretch stands there and tries to make me doubt that my mother, who was an angel on earth, is an angel in heaven now!"

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"And that wretch stands there and tries to make me doubt that my mother, who was an angel on earth, is an angel in heaven now!"

Harper & Bros. house illustrator "C. B."

Wood engraving

17.5 x 11.5 cm

The only illustration for the nineteenth weekly part of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in the Harper's Weekly (9 May 1868), page 293. [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: Rachel Lashes out against the Ablewhites and Miss Clack

"You are very kind, Drusilla," she said. "I shall hope to visit you whenever I happen to be in London. But I have accepted Mr. Bruff's invitation, and I think it will be best, for the present, if I remain under Mr. Bruff's care."

"Oh, don't say so!" I pleaded. "I can't part with you, Rachel — I can't part with you!"

I tried to fold her in my arms. But she drew back. My fervour did not communicate itself; it only alarmed her.

"Surely," she said, "this is a very unnecessary display of agitation? I don't understand it."

"No more do I," said Mr. Bruff.

Their hardness — their hideous, worldly hardness — revolted me.

"Oh, Rachel! Rachel!" I burst out. "Haven't you seen yet, that my heart yearns to make a Christian of you? Has no inner voice told you that I am trying to do for you, what I was trying to do for your dear mother when death snatched her out of my hands?"

Rachel advanced a step nearer, and looked at me very strangely.

"I don't understand your reference to my mother," she said. "Miss Clack, will you have the goodness to explain yourself?"

Before I could answer, Mr. Bruff came forward, and offering his arm to Rachel, tried to lead her out of the room.

"You had better not pursue the subject, my dear," he said. "And Miss Clack had better not explain herself."

If I had been a stock or a stone, such an interference as this must have roused me into testifying to the truth. I put Mr. Bruff aside indignantly with my own hand, and, in solemn and suitable language, I stated the view with which sound doctrine does not scruple to regard the awful calamity of dying unprepared.

Rachel started back from me — I blush to write — with a scream of horror.

"Come away!" she said to Mr. Bruff. "Come away, for God's sake, before that woman can say any more! Oh, think of my poor mother's harmless, useful, beautiful life! You were at the funeral, Mr. Bruff; you saw how everybody loved her; you saw the poor helpless people crying at her grave over the loss of their best friend. And that wretch stands there, and tries to make me doubt that my mother, who was an angel on earth, is an angel in heaven now! Don't stop to talk about it! Come away! It stifles me to breathe the same air with her! It frightens me to feel that we are in the same room together!"

Deaf to all remonstrance, she ran to the door.

At the same moment, her maid entered with her bonnet and shawl. She huddled them on anyhow. "Pack my things," she said, "and bring them to Mr. Bruff's." I attempted to approach her — I was shocked and grieved, but, it is needless to say, not offended. I only wished to say to her, "May your hard heart be softened! I freely forgive you!" She pulled down her veil, and tore her shawl away from my hand, and, hurrying out, shut the door in my face. I bore the insult with my customary fortitude. I remember it now with my customary superiority to all feeling of offence. — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder." Chapter VII (Continued): p. 294.

Rachel Shows her Mettle

Strong-willed, occasionally impertinent, and always assertive, Rachel is in many ways like other forceful women who populate Collins's novels. Her seaside duel [i. e., the altercation at the rented Brighton mansion] with Drusilla Clack and the Ablewhites midway through the novel defines a keen intellect and an ability to rise to meet any challenge, traits that place her in the company of Collins's other strong female characters. . . . — Steve Farmer, "Introduction," p. 20.

Only once Mr. Bruff takes over the narration of events does the reader learn that Godfrey has had his lawyer vet Lady Julia Verinder's will at Doctors' Commons near Saint Paul's, London, and has thus learned that Julia has left her daughter only a life-interest in the properties in London and Yorkshire. Although she has a substantial annual income, Rachel will not actually own the properties, and so would not be able to leverage the properties against loans. Mr. Bruff intimates that Lady Julia has inserted this provision to protect her teenaged daughter from fortune-hunters since she realizes that she is dying and will be leaving her daughter an orphan.

Godfrey Ablewhite, the (supposedly) disinterested philanthropist, is really Godfrey the self-serving hypocrite: "His charity masks a luxurious greed; his decency cloaks a sensuous indulgence" (Reed, 285). His name thus suggests that he a "whited sepulchre" without conscience ("God-free") whom Bruff has unmasked. That two-faced Godfrey has investigated the terms of the will suggests to Bruff (who communicates Godfrey's tactics to Rachel) that he is more interested in converting her properties into ready cash than he is in a romantic relationship with her. Consequently, when (knowing that he has had her mother's will checked) she breaks off the engagement, he acquiesces — much to his father's chagrin. Since Godfrey has not explained to his father Rachel's motives for breaking off the relationship, self-made man Mr. Ablewhite assumes that Rachel's "Herncastle blood" has asserted itself and that she has rejected Godfrey because he is lacking in aristocratic lineage and significant ancestors. With an evangelical bent, Drusilla, in trying to calm the near-apoplectic Mr. Ablewhite (a Frizinghall banker), lets slip that she was trying to bring the dying Lady Julia to salvation. This suggestion that Lady Julia was not a good Christian exasperates Rachel, motivating her rounding on Drusilla Clackas demeaning her mother's character. As Mr. Bruff observes, Drusilla would have done better not to have said so much. Moreover, the volatile Mr. Ablewhite loses all influence over Rachel when, angered over her breaking the engagement with Godfrey, he refuses to be her guardian and asserts that she is a guest in "his" house because his name is on the lease of the Brighton mansion.

At this crucial point in her life, cut off from her Verinder cousins, Drusilla Clack suffered reversals in the money market, and was forced by the loss of her investments to live in Britanny. Collins, having been in his twenties at this point, would have known that the economic bubble of the early 1840s burst because of two failures: crop failures in the mid-to-late 1840s and simultaneously a collapse in the value of railway stocks. The value of these shares had accelerated dramatically between January 1843 and August 1845. These prices proved unsustainable, and the price of such shares (where Miss Clack's investments lay, we may presume) "fell dramatically, by 18.2 per cent by the end of November 1845. After a brief recovery, prices of British railway stocks continued to fall until April 1850, with a decline of 57.5 per cent from peak to trough" (Campbell, 5) as the Railway Mania of the 1840s petered out in spectacular fashion, destroying many people's life savings. Surely, then, it is to this bursting of the speculative bubble to which Collins alludes in Miss Clack's memoire.

Since this is one of the longer instalments — eight full columns (i. e., one complete page plus three full columns of letterpress) — the magazine allocated only enough space for a single illustration, the highly dramatic moment at which Rachel denounces the judgmental Drusilla Clack. The American illustrator offers his most sympathetic treatment of Miss Clack in this financial picture of her as her ill-advised evangelical sentiment has crashed all her hopes of financial security. C. B.'s Miss Clack seems stunned and off-balance in the picture as Rachel, supported by Mr. Bruff, angrily gestures at her, intimating that she should leave. Above her, both candles are out, perhaps suggesting that her future will not be a bright one as her poverty consigns her to a remote corner of a Catholic country. The illustrator renders Rachel, dressed in mourning but animated by moral indignation, a more compelling figure than the hapless fundamentalist whose obsession with bringing her aunt and cousin to salvation through the inspirational writings of Miss Jane Ann Stamper has alienated her forever from her wealthy relative who, just minutes before, had regarded her as a "sister."

Relevant Illustrations of Miss Clack from the Serial (1868), Chatto and Windus (1890), and Doubleday Literary Guild Edition (1946)

Left: The earlier 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: F. A. Fraser's depiction of the same scene, juxtaposing Godfrey Ablewhite and Miss Clack as dispassionate observers of the mother and daughter, "She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet." (1890). 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.]

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