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Sergeant Cuff on the Cliffs (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
chalk-and-ink chromolithograph.
18.2 x 12.7 cm
Illustration of scene from Chapter 19 of the "First Period," but placed in Chapter 1 of "The Second Period," in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, facing p. 188, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
As I got near the shore, the clouds gathered black, and the rain came down, drifting in great white sheets of water before the wind. I heard the thunder of the sea on the sand-bank at the mouth of the bay. A little further on, I passed the boy crouching for shelter under the lee of the sand hills. Then I saw the raging sea, and the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and the driven rain sweeping over the waters like a flying garment, and the yellow wilderness of the beach with one solitary black figure standing on it — the figure of Sergeant Cuff.
He waved his hand towards the north, when he first saw me. "Keep on that side!"he shouted. "And come on down here to me!"
I went down to him, choking for breath, with my heart leaping as if it was like to leap out of me. I was past speaking. I had a hundred questions to put to him; and not one of them would pass my lips. His face frightened me. I saw a look in his eyes which was a look of horror. He snatched the boot out of my hand, and set it in a footmark on the sand, bearing south from us as we stood, and pointing straight towards the rocky ledge called the South Spit. The mark was not yet blurred out by the rain—and the girl's boot fitted it to a hair.— "The Story. First Period. Loss of the Diamond (1848). The events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder," Chapter 19, p. 147-148.
In Sharp's narrative-pictorial sequence, Sergeant Cuff and Gabriel Betteredge track Rosanna Spearman to the Shivering Sand before ascertaining that she has committed suicide. The illustration of the roaring North Sea is situated in the "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849). First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack, Niece of the late Sir John Verinder," Chapter 1, facing p. 188, but in fact is analeptic in that it refers to events forty pages earlier. Without a full-page format at their disposal, earlier illustrators focussed in this chapter on Sergeant Cuff's finding the boot-print rather than on the atmospheric scene of the raging North Sea near the Shivering Sand. Like King Lear, Sergeant Cuff appears to be defying the tempest, accompanied by the stalwart Betteredge, kneeling behind him, presumably examining the boot-print as Cuff has directed. The other figures are the boy who has delivered the boot and perhaps the fisherman named Yolland. Shortly the estate servants will arrive to create a dramatic tableau, admirably sketched by William Jewett in 1868.
Left: The American serial's depiction of the scene on the beach when the estate workers arrive as they have heard the rumour of Rosanna Spearman's death, "In the fewest words the Sergeant showed them the evidence of the foot marks." (14 March 1868). Centre: F. A. Fraser's depiction of Cuff's pointing out Rosanna Spearman's boot-print, "The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word." (1890). Right: The serial's vignette of Cuff and Betteredge earlier, looking at the boot-print in the sand, Uncaptioned headnote vignette for "Chapter XVI" (29 February 1868). [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 19 October 2016