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Headnote Vignette: Franklin Blake (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
pen-and-ink wood-engraving.
4.2 by 3.3 cm
Illustration at the beginning of Chapter 1 in the "Second Period, Third Narrative" in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 273, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[The letter just arrived from Mathew Bruff] informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in returning to England.
By daybreak the next morning, I was on my way back to my own country.
The picture presented of me, by my old friend Betteredge, at the time of my departure from England, is (as I think) a little overdrawn. He has, in his own quaint way, interpreted seriously one of his young mistress’s many satirical references to my foreign education; and has persuaded himself that he actually saw those French, German, and Italian sides to my character, which my lively cousin only professed to discover in jest, and which never had any real existence, except in our good Betteredge's own brain. But, barring this drawback, I am bound to own that he has stated no more than the truth in representing me as wounded to the heart by Rachel's treatment, and as leaving England in the first keenness of suffering caused by the bitterest disappointment of my life. — "Second Period. Third Narrative. Contributed by Franklin Blake," Chapter 1, p. 273-274.
Just as the image of handsome, young, fashionably dressed but somewhat equivocal Franklin Blake dominates the original serial illustrations in Harper's Weekly, Sharp offers the viewer more images of Franklin Blake than of any other character.He appears in a dozen of the fifty illustrations, the majority of these being in the second half of the novel; on the other hand, his nemesis, Godfrey Ablewhite, appears in nine of Sharp's fifty illustrations. In contrast, Blake appears in only two of the eight illustrations in the Chatto and Windus edition (1890), three of the four illustrations in the Scribner's edition (1908), and four of the seven Collins Clear-type edition (1910).
Having read the novel carefully in its entirety, Sharp does not fall into the error made by William Jewett and C. B., the Harper's illustrators, who depicted a youthful Franklin Blake with an American moustache. Collins makes clear that he has a beard, perhaps to distinguish him from smooth-cheeked Godfrey Ablewhite. The beardless Franklin Blake of the introductory illustrations in instalment three of Harper's Weekly, (notably "He gave me the extract from the Colonel's will" in Chapter 6) is interpreted very differently by A. E. Fraser and Alfred Pearse simply because, like William Sharp but unlike William Jewett and the second American illustrator who contributed to Harper's Weekly, these later illustrators had already read the subsequent description of Franklin Blake on Rachel's eighteenth birthday: while smooth-faced Godfrey Ablewhite and his sisters respond excitedly to the alluring yellow diamond, Blake is "stroking his beard" pensively, wondering if Julia Verinder will consider the gift in the same light as he has construed it — not a gift, but a punishment for recent rejection of him. By the time that the American illustrators executed the later scenes, they must have discovered that Collins had described Blake as bearded, the style for upper-class young men after the Crimean War; however, it was too late to adjust the image and provide him with a beard, and so for purposes of visual continuity Franklin Blake had to stay beardless for the remainder of the serial. They should have realized from painting scene in the fourth instalment (Chapter 8) onward that they had erred in giving Blake only a moustache, an impossibility if he is "tugging at his beard, and looking anxiously towards the window" at Lady Julia Verinder in Chapter 9. The "portrait" image image complements the "portrait" text that Franklin Blake makes of himself at the opening of his narrative, again indicating Sharp's careful reading of the novel for purposes of illustration.
Left: The American serial's 23 May 1868 Ch. I: Uncaptioned headnote vignette, Franklin Blake while at a desert encampment reads the letter from Mathew Bruff announcing his father's death. Right: John Sloan's realisation of Blake's finding his own night-gown in the japanned tin box, "I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark." in the Charles Scribner's Sons Edition (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.
Richardson, Betty. "Prisons and Prison Reform." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. London and New York: Garland, 1988. Pp. 638-640.
Stewart, J. I. M. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 7-24.
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 23 October 2016