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The Three Brahmins, rowing away from the East Indiaman (uncaptioned).
William Sharp
Chalk-ank-ink chromolithograph.
18.3 x 13 cm
Full-page chromolithograph of the Three Brahmins, rowing away from an East Indiaman in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (Doubleday, 1946), facing p. 436. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The discipline of a ship (as all seafaring persons know) becomes relaxed in a long calm. The discipline of my ship became relaxed. Certain gentlemen among the passengers got some of the smaller boats lowered, and amused themselves by rowing about, and swimming, when the sun at evening time was cool enough to let them divert themselves in that way. The boats when done with ought to have been slung up again in their places. Instead of this they were left moored to the ship's side. What with the heat, and what with the vexation of the weather, neither officers nor men seemed to be in heart for their duty while the calm lasted.
On the third night, nothing unusual was heard or seen by the watch on deck. When the morning came, the smallest of the boats was missing — and the three Hindoos were next reported to be missing, too.
If these men had stolen the boat shortly after dark (which I have no doubt they did), we were near enough to the land to make it vain to send in pursuit of them, when the discovery was made in the morning. I have no doubt they got ashore, in that calm weather (making all due allowance for fatigue and clumsy rowing), before day-break. — "Epilogue. The Finding of the Diamond: II, The Statement of the Captain (1849)," p. 440-441.
Sharp deploys several illustrations late in the sequence, notably a full-page chromolithograph of the three Brahmins rowing away from the East Indiaman bound for Bombay, to re-establish the strand of the plot dealing with the fate of the three Brahmins who disguised themselves as "jugglers" or travelling acrobats at the beginning of the story in order to regain custody of the religious cult-object stolen by Europeans fifty years earlier. Switching ships, the trio elude the authorities and thereby evade prosecution for the murder of the perfidious Godfrey Ablewhite by switching from the Rotterdam steamer, departing from central London's Tower Wharf, to an East Indiaman, sailing directly from the port of Plymouth on the English Channel for India's largest city, Bombay (Mombai). Becalmed off the Indian coast, they once again elude the police by jumping ship (taking advantage of a conveniently placed lifeboat), and make their way to Somnauth to restore the Moonstone to the idol of the Hindu Moon God. This aspect of the story, the return journey of the Brahmins, is neglected in the original serial illustrations in Harper's Weekly, which conclude with the re-installation and departure scene at the temple, in Part Thirty-two (8 August 1868), "Never more were they to look upon one another's faces", in which, in deference to the commands of their deity, they separate.
William Sharp devotes three of his last illustrations to the fate of self-sacrificing Brahmins, who, having returned home having accomplished their life's mission, must separate forever: The East Indiaman in full sail (p. 439), the present full-page illustration, and Ornamental tailpiece: The Temple of the Moon God at Somnauth, p. 444. These emphasize the importance of the Moonstone as a religious object, and throw the romance of Franklin Blake and Rachel Verinder into the background, so that we construe Sharp's final illustrations as a "Post-Colonial" reading of the mid-Victorian text. The illustration also makes the reader aware, once again, of the role of coincidence in the plot, for the Brahmins could not have escaped arrest at Bombay unless the means of escape providentially presented itself off the Indian coast. In this, the first of the East Indiaman illustrations, logically the ship should be shown becalmed at night, rather than in full-sail, since the Brahmins have successfully made their get away by first light.
Left: An oversized version of the Diamond presides over the temple, Uncaptioned headnote vignette for "Chapter XI"< (8 February 1868, p. 405).​Centre: The original 1868 Jewett and C. B. illustration of the idol: frontispiece of the Collier edition (The Idol of the Moon) (1900). Right: the serial's final illustration, "Never more were they to look upon one another's faces." (8 August 1868, p. 503). [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