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Godfrey Ablewhite. (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Wood-block engraving from pen-and-ink sketch
7.9 x 5 cm
Illustration in Part 1, Ch. 8 in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 53 in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
My lady's second sister (don't be alarmed; we are not going very deep into family matters this time) — my lady's second sister, I say, had a disappointment in love; and taking a husband afterwards, on the neck or nothing principle, made what they call a misalliance. There was terrible work in the family when the Honourable Caroline insisted on marrying plain Mr. Ablewhite, the banker at Frizinghall. He was very rich and very respectable, and he begot a prodigious large family — all in his favour, so far. But he had presumed to raise himself from a low station in the world — and that was against him. However, Time and the progress of modern enlightenment put things right; and the misalliance passed muster very well. We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you can scratch me, if I scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament, whether you are a Dustman or a Duke? That’s the modern way of looking at it — and I keep up with the modern way. The Ablewhites lived in a fine house and grounds, a little out of Frizinghall. Very worthy people, and greatly respected in the neighbourhood. We shall not be much troubled with them in these pages — excepting Mr. Godfrey, who was Mr. Ablewhite's second son, and who must take his proper place here, if you please, for Miss Rachel's sake.
With all his brightness and cleverness and general good qualities, Mr. Franklin's chance of topping Mr. Godfrey in our young lady's estimation was, in my opinion, a very poor chance indeed.
In the first place, Mr. Godfrey was, in point of size, the finest man by far of the two. He stood over six feet high; he had a beautiful red and white colour; a smooth round face, shaved as bare as your hand; and a head of lovely long flaxen hair, falling negligently over the poll of his neck. But why do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession; a ladies’ man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women; strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves; — he was vice-president, manager, referee to them all. Wherever there was a table with a committee of ladies sitting round it in council there was Mr. Godfrey at the bottom of the board, keeping the temper of the committee, and leading the dear creatures along the thorny ways of business, hat in hand. I do suppose this was the most accomplished philanthropist (on a small independence) that England ever produced. As a speaker at charitable meetings the like of him for drawing your tears and your money was not easy to find. He was quite a public character. The last time I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to the theatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage; and she sent me to Exeter Hall to hear Mr. Godfrey. The lady did it, with a band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief and a glass of water. Crowds at the performance with the legs. Ditto at the performance with the tongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person (I allude to Mr. Godfrey) — the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please — you ever met with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved him. What chance had Mr. Franklin — what chance had anybody of average reputation and capacities — against such a man as this? — "First Period. The Loss of the Diamond (1848). The events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 8, p. 52-54.
Ironically, Betteredge regards "public character" Godfrey Ablewhite as more attractive to women in general, and therefore to Rachel Verinder in particular. Betteredge's judgment, ill-founded though it may be, is useful in setting him up as Franklin Blake's romantic rival and as his ultimate antagonist. Betteredge has incorrectly assumed, too, that Godfrey's motives with respect to the charities that he helps to direct are purely altruistic. Attorney Bruff will reveal another side of Godfrey's character entirely, giving Rachel sufficient information to make up her mind about Godfrey's motivations in proposing marriage. William Sharp distinguishes Godfrey from Franklin not merely by the lack of a beard and fastidiousness in his dress; there is a certain smugness in his portrait of Godfrey Ablewhite which prepares the reader for the revelations about his "hidden life."
Illustrators after the Harper's Weekly serialisation had not been especially interested in Godfrey Abelwhite, who appears just six times, and prominently in only four of the 1868 illustrations, , , and the scenes in which he is mugged by the Brahmins in Northumberland Street, later proposes marriage to a grieving Rachel Verinder; then, rejected by his fiancée, makes up with Miss Clack so that he can mend his bridges with the wealthy, charitable ladies in their circle; and, finally is discovered murdered in the garret of a public house. Although the narrative strategy that he has adopted in The Moonstone does not permit Collins to develop the character of Godfrey that lies behind the attractive veneer which has so seduced Miss Clack, the real sociopath emerges in the brief allusions to him by Mathew Bruff.
Whereas F. A. Fraser depicts Godfrey only as the victim of the Brahmins' mugging in "He had just time to notice that the arm around his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor.", and both Sloan and Pearse introduce Godfrey Ablewhite in conjunction with the diamond — 'Lord bless us! it was a Diamond!' and "Exquisite! exquisite!", William Sharp devotes a more significant proportion of his forty-nine illustrations (nine in total) to Rachel Verinder's hypocritical cousin, even depicting him stealing the Moonstone from a sleep-walking Franklin Blake in Godfrey Ablewhite taking the Moonstone from Franklin Blake . Sharp's vignette presents an effective study of Godfrey Ablewhite's face, contrasting it with the strong, bearded face of Franklin Blake earlier, but does not give the reader any sense of his height, a feature that will be significant later on in the story.
Left: The original serial wood-engraving of William Jewett's "He gave me the extract from the Colonel's will." (18 January 1868). Centre: F. A. Fraser's realisation of the scene in the Brahmins frisk Godfrey, "He had just time to notice that the arm around his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor." (1890). Right: John Sloan's depiction of the tall, blond Godfrey with his sisters, Betteredge, and Rachel as she shows off her birthday present in the frontispiece, "Lord bless us! it was a Diamond!" (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.
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 30 September 2016