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"I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark."
John Sloan
Half-tone lithograph
13.9 x 8.9 cm
Third illustration for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone in the Charles Scribner's Sons Edition (1908), facing p. 432.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand, I laid myself down over the brink, and felt with my right hand under the overhanging edges of the rock. My right hand found the chain.
I drew it up without the slightest difficulty. And there was the japanned tin case fastened to the end of it.
The action of the water had so rusted the chain, that it was impossible for me to unfasten it from the hasp which attached it to the case. Putting the case between my knees and exerting my utmost strength, I contrived to draw off the cover. Some white substance filled the whole interior when I looked in. I put in my hand, and found it to be linen.
In drawing out the linen, I also drew out a letter crumpled up with it. After looking at the direction, and discovering that it bore my name, I put the letter in my pocket, and completely removed the linen. It came out in a thick roll, moulded, of course, to the shape of the case in which it had been so long confined, and perfectly preserved from any injury by the sea.
I carried the linen to the dry sand of the beach, and there unrolled and smoothed it out. There was no mistaking it as an article of dress. It was a nightgown.
The uppermost side, when I spread it out, presented to view innumerable folds and creases, and nothing more. I tried the undermost side, next — and instantly discovered the smear of the paint from the door of Rachel's boudoir!
My eyes remained riveted on the stain, and my mind took me back at a leap from present to past. The very words of Sergeant Cuff recurred to me, as if the man himself was at my side again, pointing to the unanswerable inference which he drew from the smear on the door.
"Find out whether there is any article of dress in this house with the stain of paint on it. Find out who that dress belongs to. Find out how the person can account for having been in the room, and smeared the paint between midnight and three in the morning. If the person can't satisfy you, you haven't far to look for the hand that took the Diamond."
One after another those words travelled over my memory, repeating themselves again and again with a wearisome, mechanical reiteration. I was roused from what felt like a trance of many hours — from what was really, no doubt, the pause of a few moments only — by a voice calling to me. I looked up, and saw that Betteredge's patience had failed him at last. He was just visible between the sandhills, returning to the beach.
The old man's appearance recalled me, the moment I perceived it, to my sense of present things, and reminded me that the inquiry which I had pursued thus far still remained incomplete. I had discovered the smear on the nightgown. To whom did the nightgown belong?
My first impulse was to consult the letter in my pocket — the letter which I had found in the case.
As I raised my hand to take it out, I remembered that there was a shorter way to discovery than this. The nightgown itself would reveal the truth, for, in all probability, the nightgown was marked with its owner's name.
I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.
I found the mark, and read —
My Own Name.
There were the familiar letters which told me that the nightgown was mine. I looked up from them. There was the sun; there were the glittering waters of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advancing nearer and nearer to me. I looked back again at the letters. My own name. Plainly confronting me — my own name. — "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849). Third Narrative. Contributed by Franklin Blake." Chapter 3, p. 430-431.
As instructed by Rosanna Spearman's letter, Blake aided by Betteredge goes in search of the metal box at the South Spit, near the Shivering Sand. The suspense here is of a very different order: in a conventional crime-and-detection novel, the investigator sorts out clues and narratives to determine who has committed the crime; here, however, the person responsible for the crime learns of his responsibility, so that the narrative interest is on character rather than event. Specifically, having long guessed that Franklin Blake in some sort of trance took the Moonstone, the reader wonders how he will react to evidence of his involvement in the crime. And, of course, the reader of the story in this illustrated volume can look ahead at any time to inspect this illustration, a very different kind of reading experience compared to that of the American reader of the Harper's Weekly serial, in which this scene, illustrated as a mere headnote vignette does not occur until 30 May 1868, instalment twenty-two. In the original weekly serialisation this startling revelation comes at the very end of the instalment, and therefore constitutes a curtain that forces the reader to purchase next week's issue.
Here, then, in both the illustration and the accompanying text is a moment of self-revelation akin to both the epiphany of a James Joyce short story and to the termination of Oedipus's investigation into the murder of Laius: the detective discovers that he himself must be the criminal. Amidst the lonely northern shore with his companion nowhere to be seen, Franklin Blake, every inch a gentleman in his clothing, stares in wonder and amazement at his own name sewn into the collar-band of the paint-smeared linen nightgown. Shortly Betteredge will arrive, and he will have to explain his discovery and, with the old steward, propound a reasonable theory of the crime. In a program of just four illustrations John Sloan reiterates one character aboveall others (Franklin Blake), rendering him the point of narrative continuity and the focus of the reader's attention. Here, he shares the spotlight with nobody else, except perhaps by implication Rosanna Spearman, who sought to protect him by hiding the incriminating garment.
Left: The American serial's Headnote vignette (30 May 1868) showing Franklin Blake, examining the nightgown. Right: William Sharp's realisation of the dramatic recovery of Rosanna Spearman's japanned box, Uncaptioned full-page chromolithograph, Second Narrative, Chapter 1 (1946). [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.
________. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. New York & London: Harper and Brothers, 1868, rpt. 1874.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.
_________. The Moonstone, Parts One and Two. The Works of Wilkie Collins, vols. 5 and 6. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900.
_________. 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. With forty-nine illustrations by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.
Farmer, Steve. "Introduction" to Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1999. Pp. 8-34.
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
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.
Last updated 10 September 2016