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Headnote vignette, Seventh Narrative: Mr. Candy's letter in Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Pen-ank-ink drawing.
3.5 x 5.7 cm
Vignette of the retired physician's writing-desk, with a symbolic snuffed candle in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Frizinghall, Wednesday, September 26th, 1849. — Dear Mr. Franklin Blake, you will anticipate the sad news I have to tell you, on finding your letter to Ezra Jennings returned to you, unopened, in this enclosure. He died in my arms, at sunrise, on Wednesday last.
I am not to blame for having failed to warn you that his end was at hand. He expressly forbade me to write to you. "I am indebted to Mr. Franklin Blake," he said, "for having seen some happy days. Don’t distress him, Mr. Candy — don't distress him."
His sufferings, up to the last six hours of his life, were terrible to see. In the intervals of remission, when his mind was clear, I entreated him to tell me of any relatives of his to whom I might write. He asked to be forgiven for refusing anything to me. And then he said—not bitterly—that he would die as he had lived, forgotten and unknown. He maintained that resolution to the last. There is no hope now of making any discoveries concerning him. His story is a blank. — "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849), Seventh Narrative," p. 434.
The spent candle symbolizes not merely Dr. Candy's having concluded his brief epistle to Franklin Blake, but the premature snuffing of of Ezra Jennings' life: the candle still had some reserve. The original serial artists, William Jewett and "C. B.," do not treat this sentimental subject in the Harper's Weekly illustrations, and even Sharp's illustration is suggestive rather than descriptive.
The seventh "narrative" is another piece of documentary evidence in the Collinsian manner, a letter from the enfeebled local physician, Dr. Candy, to the reinvigorated and recently exonerated Franklin Blake. Candy's long-term memory is so impaired that he has not been able to converse coherently for any length of time, and yet here is a highly coherent and even moving account of Ezra Jennings' death, penned for a man whom he counted as a freiend — perhaps his only friend. In light of our having seen Dr. Candy in earlier scenes in the text, his incoherence and his own embarrassment about it have already been evident. And yet the letter is a model of well-organized prose. Its account comes as something as a shock to the reader, especially since Sharp has only obliquely alluded to it in the uncaptioned headnote vignette. Perhaps we are to believe that the matters treated of in the letter involve strictly short-term memory, but too many of the writer's comments bear upon a complete recollection of past matters — for example, "He bore a hard life bravely" (p. 435) in the face of racial prejudice — for such an account to be entirely credible, given the letter-writer's supposed disability.
Candy is ostensibly writing to Franklin Blake to advise him of the painful manner of Ezra Jennings' death because Blake had written to Jennings, but received no answer, in connection with his part in restoring Blake to Rachel Verinder's affection and trust. Jennings was deeply grateful to Franklin Blake because the wealthy young Englishman accepted Jennings as an intellectual equal, even though his mixed-race background had made him something of a social outcast in Yorkshire, and, moreover, because the challenge that Blake's situation posed Jennings enabled the scientific physician to exercise his intellectual powers in a righteous cause, giving meaning and purpose to his final days.
The death scene itself, symbolised by Sharp's uncaptioned headnote vignette, is full of the kind of pathos or sentimentality so satisfying to Victorian readers but so often derided by their modern counterparts. The married joy of Franklin and Rachel Blake will be Ezra Jennings' legacy, a conclusion in line with Dickens's notion of "streaky bacon" plot construction.
Left: Franklin Blake is shocked to see the deterioration in Dr. Candy's condition, "He started impulsively to his feet and looked at me." (27 June 1868, p. 405).Centre: The original 1868 Jewett and C. B. illustration of Ezra Jennings: "Have you been accustomed to the use of laudanum?" (3 July 1868). Right: The serial's portrait of the lonely scientist who turns detective to assist a patient, "I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me." (11 July 1868). [Click on 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 3 November 2016