"The Moonstone" — "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder," Ch. VII: "I don't think he put his arm round my waist to support me," etc. (2 May 1868) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated: Godfrey Rebuilds His Relationship with Miss Clack.

"Have you seen Rachel yet?" I asked.

He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have snatched my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had not paralysed me with astonishment.

"I have seen Rachel," he said with perfect tranquillity. "You are aware, dear friend, that she was engaged to me? Well, she has taken a sudden resolution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere. That is the only reason she will give, and the only answer she will make to every question that I can ask of her."

"What have you done on your side?" I inquired. "Have you submitted."

"Yes," he said with the most unruffled composure, "I have submitted."

His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable, that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a dream, "What does it mean?"

"Permit me to tell you," he replied. "And suppose we sit down?"

He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was very affectionate. I don't think he put his arm round my waist to support me — but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his ways with ladies were very endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can answer for that, if I can answer for nothing more.​— "Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder." [Chapter VII: p. 278]

Passage Suggested by the Main Illustration for the Seventeenth Instalment

My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, "Stand between us for a minute or two. Don't let Rachel see me." I noticed a bluish tinge in her face which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. "The drops will put me right in a minute or two," she said, and so closed her eyes, and waited a little.

While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently remonstrating.

"You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this," he said. "_Your_​ reputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too sacred to be trifled with."

"My reputation!" She burst out laughing. "Why, I am accused, Godfrey, as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I have stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks — and he will tell you that I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!" She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet. "Oh mamma! mamma! mamma! I must be mad — mustn't I? — not to own the truth now?" She was too vehement to notice her mother's condition — she was on her feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. "I won't let you — I won't let any innocent man — be accused and disgraced through my fault. If you won't take me before the magistrate, draw out a declaration of your innocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I tell you, Godfrey, or I'll write it to the newspapers. I'll go out, and cry it in the streets!"​["Second period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848-1849.) First Narrative. Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder," Chapter II," 11 April 1868: 230]

Commentary: Background re. "Portable Property" and Not-so-portable Property

Having already mugged the pawnbroker, Septimus Luker, the Indians know where the Moonstone is lodged, and who is likely to redeem it, for they have his banker's receipt for a gem (undoubtedly the Moonstone). Now they know that Godfrey Abelwhite does not have the jewel, but they are reasonably sure as to when he will attempt to redeem it. Already the rumour is abroad that Godfrey has stolen the Moonstone, and Rachel believes that she should exonerate him by revealing who has taken it. But all of this is too much for her mother, who is evidently quite ill, as the illustration indicates by her thin face and gaunt form. This is not the same animated aristocrat who recently gave Sergeant Cuff his marching orders. The object of Miss Clack's adoring glance in the 11 April (main) illustration, Godfrey Ablewhite (lately mugged by the three Indians in Northumberland Street), is, despite his ordeal, unchanged: large, blonde, and solicitous. The genuine sympathy and concern expressed for Lady Julia Verinder by her daughter foreshadow Lady Julia's death. And by themselves the main illustration and the caption suggest that Rachel is indeed the thief, and that she is about to confess as much to her distressed mother. Godfrey, meanwhile, tries to read both of his wealthy cousins, even as Miss Clack reads purely "Christian" and altruistic motives into his rushing over to Lady Julia and her daughter. Were he so fortunate as to marry Rachel, then all of her property (including the Moonstone, presumably) would be his, and he would therefore no longer be a thief, but merely a, upper-middle-class husband exercising control over his wife's considerable estate.

Commentary: Miss Clack's as an Ironic Narrative Voice

Clack is a comic distortion of the other passionate women in the novel. Cloaking all her prejudices and greed beneath excessive religiosity, she seeks attention, love, and money. Godfrey Ablewhite is a truly Godlike hero for her because of his good looks, smooth ways, and ostentatious virtues displayed for various philanthropic groups. In the course of her spying and interference, Clack is appalled by his proposal to Rachel — little knowing that his declaration springs from financial necessity, not love — and easily taken in by his facile explanations for his indifference to the philanthropy groups. Like Jane Hardie in Hard Cash, but without her ultimate dignity and selflessness, Clack thinks that her emotional and sexual responses to Ablewhite are signs of righteous spirituality. . . . Clack's amorous delusions, and the passions and reserve of Rachel and Rosanna, are a far cry from power-crazed Marion in Strathmore or lascivious Archbold in Hard Cash. [Kalikoff, p. 122]

The conversation closes the instalment, so that the reader must have felt impelled to purchase the next instalment to learn more about Godfrey Ablewhite's reaction to Rachel's rejection, and the collapse of his plans for solvency by acquiring as her husband control of Rachel's vast fortune. But, like other resilient Collins villains such as Count Fosco in The Woman in White, Godfrey Ablewhite quickly recovers his equanimity and determines to pursue another avenue of escape from his debts and the possible ignominy if his embezzlement is detected and made known. The picture here renders him doubly ridiculous as he attempts to explain his emotional behaviour and then rationalizes about his having lost a fortune in having lost his fianceé, but through the good graces of his cousin, Drusilla Clack, having regained his identity as a committee-man and charity organizer, Godfrey will not be cut out of any rich widows' wills. With the peculiarly undersized chair that he has but lately occupied in one hand, Godfrey hugs the adoring Drusilla with the other (and gives her an interesting and rather knowing look). The illustrator has made Drusilla Clack and the sociopathic Godfrey Ablewhite an odd-looking couple, underscoring the unlikelihood of the supremely plain Drusilla's ever realizing a romantic relationship with her tall, blonde, handsome cousin​ — a temporarily lapsed "Christian hero" who has explained his conduct to her satisfaction. The sly cast of his facial expression (which we see, but which his adoring disciple does not) betrays his entirely selfish motives, and prepares readers for the eventual revelation that he is indeed the one who stole and pawned the Moonstone.

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 28 November 2016

Last updated 7 November 2025