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Sergeant Cuff and Gabriel Betteredge examining boot-prints in the sand (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
pen-and-ink wood-engraving.
15.1 x 10.7 cm
Illustration of scene from Chapter 10 but placed in Chapter 15 in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 119 in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
We had walked, I should say, a couple of hundred yards towards Cobb's Hole, when Sergeant Cuff suddenly went down on his knees on the beach, to all appearance seized with a sudden frenzy for saying his prayers.
"There's something to be said for your marine landscape here, after all," remarked the Sergeant. "Here are a woman's footsteps, Mr. Betteredge! Let us call them Rosanna's footsteps, until we find evidence to the contrary that we can't resist. Very confused footsteps, you will please to observe — purposely confused, I should say. Ah, poor soul, she understands the detective virtues of sand as well as I do! But hasn't she been in rather too great a hurry to tread out the marks thoroughly? I think she has. Here's one footstep going from Cobb's Hole; and here is another going back to it. Isn't that the toe of her shoe pointing straight to the water's edge? And don't I see two heel-marks further down the beach, close at the water's edge also? I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I'm afraid Rosanna is sly. It looks as if she had determined to get to that place you and I have just come from, without leaving any marks on the sand to trace her by. Shall we say that she walked through the water from this point till she got to that ledge of rocks behind us, and came back the same way, and then took to the beach again where those two heel marks are still left? Yes, we’ll say that. It seems to fit in with my notion that she had something under her cloak, when she left the cottage. No! not something to destroy — for, in that case, where would have been the need of all these precautions to prevent my tracing the place at which her walk ended? Something to hide is, I think, the better guess of the two. Perhaps, if we go on to the cottage, we may find out what that something is?" — "First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848)," Chapter 15, p.117.
The Shivering Sand will have claimed the life of Rosanna Spearman, and the Moonstone's curse will have claimed another victim, but at this point Cuff is still trying to trace Rosanna Spearman's to Limping Lucy Yolland's cottage at Cobb's Hole. The Sharp illustration, in contrast to those of the Shivering Sand in the original Harper's Weekly series, does not present the spot as haunted, eerie, or atmospheric as it focusses the reader's attention on the professional detective, who studies the small boot-prints scrupulously, and the amateur detective (and narrator of the first major movement of the story), Gabriel Betteredge. The backdrop emphasizes the flatness of the landscape near the Yorkshire seashore, but foregrounds the detective's walking-stick to emphasize the tininess of the boot-prints. The two observers, though equally well dressed, are a study in contrasts, for Betteredge is short and well-fed whereas Cuff is long and lean, with a gnarled pokerface and long, boney fingers. Regarding the plate analeptically, the reader looks for signs of irregularity in the boot-prints, the hideous sands of the beach, and the marine landscape in general — but Sharp leaves it to the text to describe these particulars.
Left: The American serial's depiction of the scene on the beach near the Shivering Sand as Sergeant Cuff and Betteredge examine the footprints, Uncaptioned headnote vignette for Chapter 15 (29 February 1868, p. 133). Centre: F. A. Fraser's depiction of the later incident near the Shivering Sand, "The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word (1890). Right: John Sloan's depiction of the visit by Cuff and Betteredge to Mrs. Yolland at Cobb's Hole, Weigh it in your hand, sir,' she said to the Sergeant. (1908) [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. with sixty-six illustrations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Vol. 12 (1868), 4 January through 8 August, pp. 5-503.
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With many illustrations. First edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, [July] 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. Second edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.
_________. The Moonstone. With 19 illustrations. The Works of Wilkie Collins. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900. Volumes 6 and 7.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With four illustrations by John Sloan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by A. S. Pearse. London & Glasgow: Collins, 1910, rpt. 1930.
_________. The Moonstone. Illustrated by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.
Karl, Frederick R. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Scarborough, Ontario: Signet, 1984. Pp. 1-21.
Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa Surridge. "The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper's Weekly." Victorian Periodicals Review Volume 42, Number 3 (Fall 2009): pp. 207-243. Accessed 1 July 2016. http://englishnovel2.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2014/01/42.3.leighton-moonstone-serializatation.pdf
Nayder, Lillian. Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, & Victorian Authorship. London and Ithaca, NY: Cornll U. P., 2001.
Peters, Catherine. The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva, 1991.
Reed, John R. "English Imperialism and the Unacknowledged crime of The Moonstone. Clio 2, 3 (June, 1973): 281-290.
Stewart, J. I. M. "A Note on Sources." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 527-8.
Vann, J. Don. "The Moonstone in All the Year Round, 4 January-8 1868." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 48-50.
Winter, William. "Wilkie Collins." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 203-219.
Last updated 14 October 2016