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The Brahmins waylay Godfrey Ablewhite in the house in Northumberland Street (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
chalk-and-ink chromolithograph.
18.2 by 12.8 cm
Illustration of a scene positioned in Chapter 5 of the "Second Period," but which actually occurs four chapters earlier in the text of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 220, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Merely premising that the polite stranger was Mr. Luker, of Lambeth, we will now follow Mr. Godfrey home to his residence at Kilburn.
He found waiting for him, in the hall, a poorly clad but delicate and interesting-looking little boy. The boy handed him a letter, merely mentioning that he had been entrusted with it by an old lady whom he did not know, and who had given him no instructions to wait for an answer. Such incidents as these were not uncommon in Mr. Godfrey's large experience as a promoter of public charities. He let the boy go, and opened the letter.
The handwriting was entirely unfamiliar to him. It requested his attendance, within an hour's time, at a house in Northumberland Street, Strand, which he had never had occasion to enter before. The object sought was to obtain from the worthy manager certain details on the subject of the Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and the information was wanted by an elderly lady who proposed adding largely to the resources of the charity, if her questions were met by satisfactory replies. She mentioned her name, and she added that the shortness of her stay in London prevented her from giving any longer notice to the eminent philanthropist whom she addressed.
Ordinary people might have hesitated before setting aside their own engagements to suit the convenience of a stranger. The Christian Hero never hesitates where good is to be done. Mr. Godfrey instantly turned back, and proceeded to the house in Northumberland Street. A most respectable though somewhat corpulent man answered the door, and, on hearing Mr. Godfrey's name, immediately conducted him into an empty apartment at the back, on the drawing-room floor. He noticed two unusual things on entering the room. One of them was a faint odour of musk and camphor. The other was an ancient Oriental manuscript, richly illuminated with Indian figures and devices, that lay open to inspection on a table.
He was looking at the book, the position of which caused him to stand with his back turned towards the closed folding doors communicating with the front room, when, without the slightest previous noise to warn him, he felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind. He had just time to notice that the arm round his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor by (as he judged) two men. A third rifled his pockets, and — if, as a lady, I may venture to use such an expression — searched him, without ceremony, through and through to his skin. — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder," Chapter 1, p. 185-186.
Some Victorian readers would have recalled another actual crime when they read that Godfrey Ablewhite and Septimus Luker had been lured away and then attacked by the Indians. The Murray Case was never as notorious as the Road Murder [1860], but it figured prominently in the newspapers, and crowds of people gathered at the scene of the encounter. In July of 1861, a Major Murray was accosted in the street by a man who addressed him by name and then persuaded him (for business reasons) to go to Northumberland-chambers, an address off the Strand. Leading Murray into his room, the stranger, a Mr. Roberts, asked him to be seated; but after Murray had complied, to quote The Times, "he observed the stranger approaching him from behind, and the next instant he experienced a stunning sensation and fell forward on the floor. He had been struck by a bullet." Murray managed to recover and eventually killed his attacker — and in that he differs from Collins's victims, who are mugged and bound before they can defend themselves from their mysterious brown-skinned assailants. Nor are there bullets in the novel, for the Indians are not after personal revenge, only clues to the missing Moonstone. But Collins seems to have borrowed the outlines and the address of the Murray case, for Godfrey, like the Major, is decoyed to a house in Northumberland Street, Strand. — Lonoff, "Wilkie Collins and His Readers, 179.
Whereas the incident serves as the basis for a frontispiece in the Pearse narrative-pictorial sequence (forcing to read the plate proleptically, in anticipation of this dramatic scene), in Sharp's illustrations the dynamic chromolithograph occurs thirty-five pages after the incident in the text, compelling the reader to recall the assault and to read the plate analeptically. Sharp juxtaposes the three Brahmins against violent shadows they cast upon the walls of the small room as they assault the terrified and surprised Godfrey.
The placement of the sixteen chromolithographs in the volume seems entirely random as the facing pages of text are not associated with the images. A lack of captioning and even a reference to a page or chapter number makes these full-page illustrations far more difficult to interpret than the thirty-five vignettes, which are generally juxtaposed against the passages realised. In this instance, for example, the facing text concerns the dialogue leading up to the Godfrey's marriage proposal to Rachel. The connection between the illustration and the textual context is tenuous. However, should she accept, he believes at this point that all his money problems will be behind him and he will be able to pay off all debts and recover the pawned diamond because he will control her inheritance. The Brahmins have not been looking for the diamond itself, but for a pawn ticket or other documentation that establishes precisely when he took out the loan with Septimus Luker. An interesting touch in Sharp's reaisation of the mugging is that, despite the fact that the scene occurs in a house in London, the Brahmins are barefoot and eastern dress, in contrast to the fashionably dressed Godfrey.
Left: The American serial's depiction of the moment just prior to the Northumberland Street assault on Godfrey Ablewhite, "Without the slightest previous noise to warn him, he felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind." (4 April 1868). Centre: Alfred Pearse's reiteration of the Fraser illustration as the frontispiece for the volume, He felt himself suddenly seized round the neck. (1910). Right: F. A. Fraser's highly convincing rendition of the mugging, "He had just time to notice that the arm around his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor." (1890). [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
Lonoff, Sue. Chapter 7: "The Moonstone and Its Audience." Wilkie Collins and His Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship. New York: AMS Studies in the Nineteenth Century, 1982. Pp. 170-227.
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 20 October 2016