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Rachel Verinder dressed to go to Frizinghall after the arrival of Sergeant Cuff (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
pen-and-ink wood-engraving.
9.7 x 5.8 cm
Illustration of scene from Chapter 18 in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 143 in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs — very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped her tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart little straw hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She had primrose-coloured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin. Her beautiful black hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy shells — they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every movement she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was altered in her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and sudden manner on the cheek. She said, "Try to forgive me, mamma" — and then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that she tore it. In another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed into the carriage as if it was a hiding-place.
Sergeant Cuff was just as quick on his side. He put Samuel back, and stood before Miss Rachel, with the open carriage-door in his hand, at the instant when she settled herself in her place.
"What do you want?" says Miss Rachel, from behind her veil. — "First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848)," Chapter 18, p. 342-343.
Sharp is not interested in the drama of Rachel Verinder's departure, a sign of her intention to frustrate rather than aid Sergeant Cuff's investigate. Rather, he offers a sympathetic portrait of an attractive brunette who studies the viewer as the viewer studies her. Honest and forthright, she is hardly the typical, plotting Collinsian heroine, a Lydia Gwilp or Magdalen Vanstone, but she holds the key to the disappearance of the Moonstone and will not readily yield the information that Sergeant Cuff requires to identify the thief. Sharp shows neither the physical setting nor the other characters involved (Lady Julia, Cuff, and Betteredge), but focuses on the appealing image of the young heroine, whose uncooperativeness is at odds with her honest gaze.
Although sympathetic, Sharp's portrait is not entirely consistent with Collins's in that the bonnet (of a slightly earlier period than the novel's chronological setting of mid-century) does not permit the viewer to see either her ears or pearl earrings. In this respect, the earnest young woman in travelling garb depicted by William Jewett in Harper's Weekly is a more accurate representation, while George Du Maurier offers a more accurate delination of a young Englishwoman of wealth and fashion in "Do you think a young lady's advice worth having?".
Left: The American serial's depiction of the scene in which Rachel hastily leaves for Frizinghall as as Sergeant Cuff and Betteredge watch from the porch, "Try to forgive me, mamma." (14 March 1868, p. 165). Centre: F. A. Fraser's depiction of the close relationship between Rachel and her mother, "She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet" (1890). Right: Alfred Pearse's depiction of Rachel's showing off the Moonstone to her cousins on her birthday, "'Exquisite! exquisite!'" (1910). [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 17 October 2016