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Vignette: Mr. Candy, Dr. Jennings' Assistant (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
pen-and-ink wood-engraving.
13 by 4.8 cm
Illustration of scene from Chapter 4 of the "Second Period, Third Narrative" in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 302, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Come in," he called out, irritably, "whoever you are!"
The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. His nose presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of the West. His forehead rose high and straight from the brow. His marks and wrinkles were innumerable. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force of the extraordinary contrast—it had turned completely white. The line between the two colours preserved no sort of regularity. At one place, the white hair ran up into the black; at another, the black hair ran down into the white. I looked at the man with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say, I found it quite impossible to control. His soft brown eyes looked back at me gently; and he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at him, with an apology which I was conscious that I had not deserved.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I had no idea that Mr. Betteredge was engaged." He took a slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Betteredge. "The list for next week,” he said. His eyes just rested on me again — and he left the room as quietly as he had entered it.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Mr. Candy's assistant," said Betteredge. — "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849). The Events related in several Narratives. Third Narrative. Contributed by Franklin Blake," Chapter 4, p. 302-303.
The original serial introduced readers to an Anglo-Indian physician with a bent for scientific enquiry and a previous opium addiction that has destroyed his health and now threatens his life — Mr. Ezra Jennings, Dr. Candy's medical assistant, by a research scientist and practising physician in his own rite. Collins's introduction of the learned scientist of mix race enables him to confront racial discrimination in Great Britain's far-flung empire, and to use a brilliant scientific researcher to resolve the problem of Franklin Blake's having stolen the Moonstone, but also of having no memory of having committed the crime. Dr. Jennings proposes a simple solution: Blake was acting as it were in a trance, under the influence of laudanum, an opium derivative that Dr. Candy (put out by Blake's denigration of the benefits of medicine) had secretly slipped into something that Framnklin Blake consumed after Rachel Verinder's birthday dinner. To test his opium hypothesis, Jennings proposes a staged re-enactment of the night of the crime, with Franklin Blake's first consuming a draft of laudanum.
The original American serial had depicted an Ezra Jennings who resembled in form and skin tone the Brahmins who have the mission of reacquiring the Moonstone, although neither the Indian priests nor Jennings look particularly Anglo-Indian. The original serial offers several portraits of Ezra Jennings, notably the illustration of the experimental physician in his laboratory, "I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me." (Part 28: 11 July 1868). The Harper's illustrators conceived of Ezra Jennings as a mournful, intellectual Anglo-Indian with a keen scientific curiosity, which they signalled by surrounding him with pieces of experimental apparatus as he writes in his medical journal. Unfortunately, other series of illustrations for the novel have minimized Jennings' importance in resolving the mystery of the Moonstone's disappearance, not depicting him at all or showing him in company with Betteredge as he tests his hypothesis with a laudanum experiment on Franklin Blake.
Left: The American serial's 11 July 1868 character study, suggestive of a Renaissance treatment of a saint or philosopher in his study, "I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me." Centre: The laudanum experiment itself, as conducted by Ezra Jennings, Rachel Verinder, Mathew Bruff, and Gabriel Betteredge, "Let me pour out the water," she whispered. (25 July 1868). Right: John Sloan's group study of Ezra Jennings' laudanum experiment, "He opened the bedroom door, and went out." (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 25 October 2016