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Passage Illustrated: Betteredge and Blake pay Limping Lucy a Call.

Early as it was, we found the fisherman's wife astir in her kitchen. On my presentation by Betteredge, good Mrs. Yolland performed a social ceremony, strictly reserved (as I afterwards learnt) for strangers of distinction. She put a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table, and opened the conversation by saying, "What news from London, sir?"

Before I could find an answer to this immensely comprehensive question, an apparition advanced towards me, out of a dark corner of the kitchen. A wan, wild, haggard girl, with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce keenness in her eyes, came limping up on a crutch to the table at which I was sitting, and looked at me as if I was an object of mingled interest and horror, which it quite fascinated her to see.

"Mr. Betteredge," she said, without taking her eyes off me, "mention his name again, if you please."

"This gentleman's name," answered Betteredge (with a strong emphasis on gentleman), "is Mr. Franklin Blake."

The girl turned her back on me, and suddenly left the room. Good Mrs. Yolland — as I believe — made some apologies for her daughter's odd behaviour, and Betteredge (probably) translated them into polite English. I speak of this in complete uncertainty. My attention was absorbed in following the sound of the girl's crutch. Thump-thump, up the wooden stairs; thump-thump across the room above our heads; thump-thump down the stairs again — and there stood the apparition at the open door, with a letter in its hand, beckoning me out!

I left more apologies in course of delivery behind me, and followed this strange creature — limping on before me, faster and faster — down the slope of the beach. She led me behind some boats, out of sight and hearing of the few people in the fishing-village, and then stopped, and faced me for the first time.​— "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) Third Narrative. Contributed by Franklin Blake." Chapter III, p. 341.

Commentary

The image of Limping Lucy's finally confronting the man whom she blames for Rosanna's suicide is complicated by the artist's turning Franklin Blake's face away from the reader. Although we can read Lucy's anger and disdain ("the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust"), we much revert to the text to discover how Blake responds; in fact, Collins does not describe Blake's emotional reaction, leaving that for the reader to construct. The artist thrusts into the background the other two players in the scene, Betteredge and Mrs. Yolland, so that the dominating figure is the rebel against society's norms, Limping Lucy, and Franklin Blake, placed in an inferior position, is forced to justify a manifestly unfair class system. Although Blake's accuser is not in mourning (probably because she cannot afford to be), her full form, dark jacket and dress, as well as her severe face and straggling hair, contrast the slender form, the tidy haircut, and (those ultimate class-signifiers) the immaculate white trousers of the gentlemanly visitor, who seems utterly out of place in the dark, cramped parlour with the proletarian bric-a-brac, rough-hewn furniture, and drying shirt. This illustration reinforces our impressions of Limping Lucy in the plate for Chapter 20 in Betteredge's narrative, "She limped a step nearer to me, and looked as if she could have eaten me alive." in which we naturally accepted the narrator's assessment of Limping Lucy as an oddity, a malcontent who is no respecter of the class system, although as Rosanna Spearman's best friend she understands the force of Rosanna's unrequited love for her social superior, Mr. Franklin Blake — Lucy's sarcastic emphasis seems particularly pertinent here as the image of the gentleman in the plate is reinforced by his lack of perception as the the nature of the working-class experience that Rosanna and Lucy fully comprehend. Limping Lucy would seem to be a natural confederate and confidant for Rosanna Spearman, thoughtful young women who share a cynical view of male-dominated society and physical deformities that mark them as social rebels and misfits. These social isolates have somehow gravitated to one another, and Lucy now mourns her dead friend with all the fierceness of Dickens's Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities (1859), denouncing the aristocrat as the source of the working-class girl's self-loathing and the cause of her suicide. Looking fixedly at Blake, she cannot comprehend what Rosanna saw in him — but her sense of extreme loss suggests that, to her, Rosanna was more than a friend.

Rosanna's one true companion, Limping Lucy Yolland, substantiates the social commentary insinuated in the portrait of Rosanna Spearman. On a couple of occasions in the novel, Lucy calls attention, in general but very potent and provocative terms, to the abuse that she and the Rosannas of the world have suffered at the hands of the Verinders and their kind. — Steve Farmer, 21-22.

Relevant Illustrations of Limping Lucy and the Yolland Cottage from the Serial (1868), Collins Clear-Type Press (1910), and Doubleday Literary Guild Edition (1946)

Left: The earlier scene in which Lucy had confronted Betteredge in the garden, indicating she had a letter for Blake "She limped a step nearer to me, and looked as if she could have eaten me alive." (thirteenth instalment, 28 March 1868). Centre: William Sharp's vignette of Lucy's re-appearing in the parlour with Rosanna's note, Limping Lucy thrusts Rosanna's note in Blake's face [uncaptioned] (1946). Right: John Sloan's description of the Yollands' cottage, "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).

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Last updated 1 December 2016