[Rachel Verinder strolling on the beach at Brighton] — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) Third Narrative. Contributed by Mathew Bruff, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn Square," Ch. I: p. 341. The initial illustration for the twenty-second instalment in Harper's Weekly (30 May 1868), page 341. Wood-engraving, 7.4 x 5.6 cm. (2 ⅞ by 2 ¼ inches). [In the nineteenth headnote vignette, the Verinders' family attorney, Matthew Bruff, as he walks outdoors with Rachel (and therefore with little fear of being overheard), reveals is that Godfrey has recently had his solicitors vet Lady Julia Verinder's will, recently filed, in an effort to discover how wealthy Rachel is after her mother's death. Her response is to cancel her engagement with Godfrey.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]
The illustrations appearing here are courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia.
Passage Illustrated: Mr. Bruff communicates Godfrey's vetting of the will to Rachel.
The first consideration which now naturally occurred to me was this. Would Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite hold to his engagement, after what his lawyer had discovered for him?
It depended entirely on his pecuniary position, of which I knew nothing. If that position was not a desperate one, it would be well worth his while to marry Miss Verinder for her income alone. If, on the other hand, he stood in urgent need of realising a large sum by a given time, then Lady Verinder's Will would exactly meet the case, and would preserve her daughter from falling into a scoundrel's hands.
In the latter event, there would be no need for me to distress Miss Rachel, in the first days of her mourning for her mother, by an immediate revelation of the truth. In the former event, if I remained silent, I should be conniving at a marriage which would make her miserable for life.
My doubts ended in my calling at the hotel in London, at which I knew Mrs. Ablewhite and Miss Verinder to be staying. They informed me that they were going to Brighton the next day, and that an unexpected obstacle prevented Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite from accompanying them. I at once proposed to take his place. While I was only thinking of Rachel Verinder, it was possible to hesitate. When I actually saw her, my mind was made up directly, come what might of it, to tell her the truth.
I found my opportunity, when I was out walking with her, on the day after my arrival.
"May I speak to you," I asked, "about your marriage engagement?" — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) Third Narrative. Contributed by Matthew Bruff, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn Square," Ch. I: p. 309.
Commentary: Rachel and Bruff walking on the Brighton strand
Mr. Bruff is drawn with greater conviction than previously, as in his interview with Miss Clack — as, for example, in April 18's "You are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack, as I supposed"; since the latter part of Miss Clack's narrative the reader has been waiting to learn what Mr. Bruff told Rachel about Godfrey Ablewhite and why Godfrey did not oppose her cancelling the engagement. What Bruff now reveals is that Godfrey had his solicitors vet Lady Julia Verinder's will, recently filed (as were all wills for Kent and Middlesex) at Doctors' Commons. What Godfrey has learned is simply that marrying Rachel will not solve his financial difficulties as she is not, technically, femme sole after all; rather, Rachel's interests in the Yorkshire estate and the townhouse at Montagu Square are mere "life" interests, and that she will inherit the use rather than the ownership of said properties.
The image in the vignette follows from Miss Clack's mentioning in the previous instalment that the lawyer and the heiress left the house to get some air, so that the vignette effects a transition from the May 9th number of Harper's Weekly and this; in other words, the image is an integral part of the "curtain," and not a mere ornament, and signals a shift in perspective from Miss Clack's somewhat limited knowledge of events to Mathew Bruff's more informed, intelligent perspective. Whereas Miss Clack, a highly biased and not overly bright observer, recounts the events leading up to Julia Verinder's death, Mathew Bruff sheds light upon Godfrey Ablewhite's financial problems as well as the robbery of Septimus Luker and the intriguing visit by the Brahmin to the attorney's office. That the figures in the vignette are those of Rachel Verinder and Mathew Bruff is not immediately apparent, however, so that one must read the opening chapter of this new narrative carefully in order to determine that the well-dressed, upper-middle-class figures are not, for example, Godfrey Ablewhite and Drusilla Clack. The setting (implying an absence of eavesdroppers) confers upon the speakers the privilege of candour, so that the reader is reasonably assured by the little illustration that what the pair say will advance the reader's understanding of plot and character.
Related Materials
- The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
- Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
- Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1890)
- Illustrations by John Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
- Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for The Moonstone: A Romance (1910)
- The 1944 illustrations by William Sharp for The Moonstone (1946).
Bibliography
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 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
Lonoff, Sue. Chapter 7, "The Moonstone and Its Audience." Wilkie Collins and His Readers: A Study of the Rhetoric of Authorship. New York: AMS Press, 1982. Pp. 170-230.
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.
Created 30 November 2016
Last updated 1 November 2025