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Vignette: Godfrey Ablewhite followed through the streets near the London docks, in Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Pen-ank-ink drawing.
12.8 x 7.5 cm
The penultimate illustration of Godfrey Ablewhite 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.
"Well, sir, the cab went from Lombard Street to the Tower Wharf. The sailor with the black beard got out, and spoke to the steward of the Rotterdam steamboat, which was to start next morning. He asked if he could be allowed to go on board at once, and sleep in his berth over-night. The steward said, No. The cabins, and berths, and bedding were all to have a thorough cleaning that evening, and no passenger could be allowed to come on board, before the morning. The sailor turned round, and left the wharf. When he got into the street again, the boy noticed for the first time, a man dressed like a respectable mechanic, walking on the opposite side of the road, and apparently keeping the sailor in view. The sailor stopped at an eating-house in the neighbourhood, and went in. The boy — not being able to make up his mind, at the moment — hung about among some other boys, staring at the good things in the eating-house window. He noticed the mechanic waiting, as he himself was waiting — but still on the opposite side of the street. After a minute, a cab came by slowly, and stopped where the mechanic was standing. The boy could only see plainly one person in the cab, who leaned forward at the window to speak to the mechanic. He described that person, Mr. Blake, without any prompting from me, as having a dark face, like the face of an Indian." — "Fifth Narrative. The Story resumed by Franklin Blake," p. 415 (facing the wood-engraving).
The book as illustrated by William Sharp contains nine images of the hypocritical Godfrey Ablewhite, but he remains a shadowy figure at best even at the end of the story, when we learned of his "hidden life," with a mistress and a villa he cannot afford. Only once in the original Harper's Weekly series do we see Godfrey Ablewhite in disguise, and that moment is the discovery of his corpse in the upper room of the public house appropriately named 'The Wheel of Fortune' since Godfrey has gambled his life to own the Moonstone: "Look at the man's face. It is a face disguised — and here's the proof of it!" (1 August 1868, p. 485). The intention of the house illustrators may have been simply to maintain suspense and leave the reader wondering whether the tall man disguised as a sailor is an agent of the Brahmins or, in fact, somebody whom we have already met. However, the omission renders the thief an enigma. In contrast, William Sharp depicts Godfrey Ablewhite in disguise three times, twice on the London docks, and once as a lifeless body; only one of the three illustrations actually reveals the thief's face, which bears little resemblance to that of the suave confidence man seen in the early part of the novel, notably in Uncaptioned vignette: Godfrey Ablewhite. Of the nine Sharp illustrations involving Godfrey Ablewhite, four concern his disguising himself as an Anglo-Indian sailor (including two which depict him as a man murdered in the upper room of the East End public house) and five depict him as a privileged young man of the upper middle class, smooth-faced, suave, and self-confident.
Above: The highly effective climactic wood-engraving in the original serial in Harper's of the moment just before "The Discovery of the Truth," "Look at the man's face. It is a face disguised — and here's proof of it!" (1 August 1868). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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 27 October 2016