"The Moonstone" — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) Third Narrative. Contributed by Franklin Blake," Ch. IX: "Have <em>you</em> ever been accustomed to the use of opium?"

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"Have you ever been accustomed to the use of opium?"

Harper & Bros. house illustrators; unsigned.

Wood engraving

17.5 cm high by 11.5 cm wide

Only illustration for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance in Harper's Weekly (4 July 1868), centre-page, page 421. [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: Mutual confessions: Franklin Blake & Ezra Jennings

Without a moment's hesitation I told him the truth, as unreservedly as I have told it in these pages.

He started to his feet, and looked at me with breathless eagerness as I approached the leading incident of my story.

"It is certain that I went into the room," I said; "it is certain that I took the Diamond. I can only meet those two plain facts by declaring that, do what I might, I did it without my own knowledge — —"

Ezra Jennings caught me excitedly by the arm.

"Stop!” he said. “You have suggested more to me than you suppose. Have you ever been accustomed to the use of opium?"

"I never tasted it in my life."

"Were your nerves out of order, at this time last year? Were you unusually restless and irritable?"

"Yes."

"Did you sleep badly?"

"Wretchedly. Many nights I never slept at all."

"Was the birthday night an exception? Try, and remember. Did you sleep well on that one occasion?"

"I do remember! I slept soundly."— "Second Period, Third Narrative, Contributed by Franklin Blake," Chapter 9, p. 422.

Commentary

Having quizzed Ezra Jennings as to whether in his delirium Dr. Candy said anything about the Moonstone and received an answer in the negative, Franklin Blake decides to approach the problem directly. Confessing that he must have taken the diamond since Rachel saw him remove it from the Indian cabinet, Blake is looking for a plausible explanation as to why he cannot remember having done so. Jennings asks a few pertinent questions as to symptoms before hypothesizing that Blake must have been acting under the influence of laudanum, a highly refined and very popular form of opium in nineteenth-century Britain that even Wilkie Collins took medicinally (for rheumatic gout) beginning in 1862 until his death in 1889.

He was addicted to large quantities, often boasting to his friends of his ability to consume inordinate amounts. He frequently drank a wine-glass full just before going to bed, and a daughter of Dickens reported that Collins often smoked opium during the day. Rarely was he without a small silver flask of laudanum. — Nadel 245.

Just as Jennings (himself an opium-addict), walking alongside Blake in the countryside (the backdrop of the 4 July 1868 illustration), is about to disclose what feverish Mr. Candy's disconnected ramblings about laudanum suggest to him as the cause of Franklin Blake's sleepwalking, a villager interrupts the conversation, calling Jennings away to an emergency case. In two hours, Jennings arranges for the pair to meet again at Dr. Candy's office — and the instalment ends as a classic cliff-hanger. Whatever Jennings has to reveal, however, certainly contains how Franklin Blake might have unwittingly consumed a draft of laudanum on 21 June 1848. Now we must await Jennings' proposal (perhaps based on his own use of opium as a palliative) to verify the diagnosis, which will include a novel strategy often duplicated by mystery writers since, a re-enactment of the crime.

Because of its presence in such pacifiers as Godfrey's Cordial [to which the Christian name of the novel's hypocritical antagonist may allude], Bately's Sedative Solution, and Daffy's Elixir (referred to in Oliver Twist, Ch. 2 and in Vanity Fair, Ch. 38), opium was taken by virtually every Victorian in some direct or indirect manner, sometimes in the unexpected form of liniments, plasters, lozenges and liquorice, and could be bought from pharmacists, grocers, and general foodstores. Cheaper than beer or gin, it was immensely popular with the working classes. Until 1868 it could be bought or sold without license or control and was especially popular, according to an 1862 study, in Yorkshire where Lady Verinder had her estate. — Nadel, 244.

Although Collins asserted that he was under the influence of opium throughout the writing of Miss Clack's narrative (an assertion that he made to a number of his associates, including the actress Mary Anderson), he may have been exaggerating, as he did in the matter of employing an amanuensis, an assertion that a critical examination of the handwriting in the manuscript has debunked. Apparently, he was later amazed to see what he had written, having no recollection of having penned that portion of the narrative.

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