The Moonstone: looking at dates

I thought it might be useful to include some key events that take place in 1848 when The Moonstone is set and 1868 when The Moonstone was written. All information is taken from The Annuls of London and The Timetables of History

1848

London reforms sewer systems since sewage had been directly emptied into the Thames creating health problems such as cholera outbreaks as well as a terrible smell. (For those who followed the Neverwhere blog this is before the Great Stink of 1858 so sewer reform was slow but there had been several cholera outbreaks in the 1840s which started the slow wheels of reform.)

First railway bridge across the Thames carrying the London and South Western line from Richmond to Windsor.

Waterloo station opened in Belgravia. It included a special daily “funeral express to take mourners to Brookwood Cemetery near Woking. (Station pictured at left.)

Chopin gave his first public performance in England in Belgravia which sold out and was considered a great success.

The Communist Manifesto is issued by Marx and Engels.

The Principles of Political Economy by J.S. Mill is published.

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell is published

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood begins when William Holman Hunt wrote a letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti to see if they might share studio space.

Queen’s College was established in Harley street for the higher education of women. Male tutors from Kings college were first used so women took courses with chaperones.

As mentioned in an earlier post revolutions are breaking out across Europe.

1868

The last public execution at Newgate prison was held.

The London Underground was expanding rapidly in all directions to accommodate the transportation needs of the city.

The Victoria Embankment along the Thames opened to foot traffic. (Illustration at left.)

The first traffic light with red and green gas lights was installed between Bridge Street and Great George street. The Express reported on December 8^th , “ which will serve to foot passengers by way of caution, and at the same time remind drivers of vehicles and equestrians that they ought at this point to slacken their speed.”

Horse racing started at a leisure park in Hornsey.

Charles Darwin publishes The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. (On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 for additional context.)

Judging a Book by its Cover

I just wanted to add a second quick post today. The longevity and success of The Moonstone means that it has been issued and reissued and I find the cover art of these books fascinating as they are wildly different. Does the cover show the shivering sands, the diamond, India or the god from whom the stone was taken? Each cover choice seems to highlight a different aspect of what is important to the mystery of the moonstone. Some of the covers are shown below. They tend to fall into four categories: focus on a woman or women (either in fancy dress or at the shivering sands), an exterior of a home or street(generally Gothic looking), the diamond, the Indians or an exoticized image of the god. In the case of older covers these foreign representations seem offensive and on one the quote from Dorothy L. Sayers is larger than Collins name.

Women's Roles in Collins

I saw a lovely run through of The Moonstone right before the holiday break and I have been thinking about the women's roles.

I have always found women in Collins novels to be more assertive than one would expect from a Victorian novelist, which might speak to our misconceptions about Victorian women, but in particular Collins shows women acting forcefully on their own behalf which makes them feel very modern.

Lady Julia Verinder is clearly a force to be reckoned with. She is a long time widow she runs her esta

te. She has shunned a brother because of his questionable morals. She has taken pains to make sure that her estate is protected for her daughter. This is no small feat given the complexity of inheritance laws during the era and the favoring of male family members or husbands in how property was dispersed and controlled.

Additionally, Lady Verinder has been hiding a serious illness. Most critics feel the strange turn the novel takes about Lady Verinder's health issues is tied his own mother, who became sick and died while Collins was writing The Moonstone. His grief over his mother influenced the strength with which she is depicted and described. (Rachel with her mother as Godfrey Ablewhite and Miss Clack look on in the Arthur Fraser Illustration above.)

Rachel Verinder is much like her mother. She bears the brunt of public accusation and scorn both for the moonstone and a broken engagement. She conceals information to protect those she loves even at great personal expense. What interests me particularly about Rachel is the loss of identity she experiences when she discovers someone to have been untrue. In a complex intellectual move she experiences a diminution in herself because she failed to have the good judgement to make good decisions about others. (Rachel Verinder confronting Franklin Blake in another Arthur Fraser illustration at left.)

She also reminds me of another heroine in the Collins novel The Law and The Lady. Published in 1875 it follows the adventures of Valeria Brinton who discovers that her new husband married her under a false name. She further learns that her husband had a Scottish verdict of "not proven" in a trial on the murder of his first wife. When her husband flees in disgrace Valeria turns detective to prove her husband innocent and save their marriage. Similarly, Rachel is willing to shun convention to protect those she loves.

Collins is also interested in the plight of working class characters and that ambiguous class of genteel poverty in which Miss Clack resides.

Rosanna Spearman we are told from the outset has had a difficult life and been a thief and in an institution for reform. Many Victorian reform institutions for women were for prostitutes. While Rosanna is specifically identified as a thief she expresses a very un-Victorian trait, an open expression of her love and desire for a man who is her social superior. Spearman also works to conceal information for one whom she cares about. She is plain and has dealt with both the difficult unmentioned childhood and almost complete isolation from her fellow servants in the household in Yorkshire. The combination of both the lack of resources available to her and the tragic bravery she shows in the story are meant to give us both a critique the circumstances that led to her situation and evoke sympathy from the reader or audience.

Miss Clack is a delightful narrative voice in that she provides a complete contrast to Betteridge and her language, peppered with religious platitudes and moral aphorisms and her entirely different view of certain members of the family lets us clearly know we are in the world of first person testimony and that while the various narrators will stick to what they know their opinions will be colored by their prejudices. Clack is also a figure that was problematic to the Victorians and later eras. She is an extra woman, raised to be in the upper classes but not married off because of either lack of funds or lack of interest. Now beyond the age of marriage the question remains of what these women are to do, particularly women with diminishing incomes and a class based desire not to engage in work. Clack, like so many other single women turns to charitable work as she herself relies on charity from her wealthier family members.

It is important to consider that although Clack is a figure of fun in the novel. Women's groups were responsible for campaigning for many noble causes including stricter labor laws, particularly child labor, women's suffrage, and the anti-slavery movement. It was the growth of schools (championed by many of these women) that led to wider literacy that gave Collins a broad reading audience for his serialized works. So while Clack with her tracts is certainly humorous it is important to think of her in context in a world that would have had deep limitations for her because of her upbringing, her modest circumstances and the roles available to her as a woman.

Colonialism and Revolution in The Moonstone

One of the interesting things in thinking about The Moontstone and watching the development of the script as Rob has gone through drafts is how we think about the characters of the Indians as they appear in Victorian England and the history of the moonstone.

What surprised me about The Moonstone when I first read it is that Collins seems to show sympathy for the Indians about original theft of the stone from the statue of the moon god. It may be of interest to know that while Collins does not name the god the description fits with that of Chandra also sometimes known or combined with the god Soma. He pulls the moon across the sky in his chariot and is sometimes depicted riding on an Antelope. He is also a fertility god and associated with vegetation.

While Collins seems to rely on the exoticized east to use the three Indian travelers to create a sense of mystery and fear surrounding their presence in relation to the moonstone.


The status of the stone is already fraught. It has been stolen from the statue city of Somnauth and by a string of thefts and murders has ended up in a cache of stolen gems of Tipu Sahib. The story we are given about how Colonel Hearncastle killed (dishonorably) to possess the stone depicts the ugliness of colonialism and the looting that occurred throughout the British control of India. The stone inherited by Rachel Verinder is stolen goods and taken through violence.

A sense of sympathy is created for the three Indians, whom, we are told by the traveler Murthwaite, have forsaken home and caste to retrieve the stone. Collins also doesn't discount or minimize the mysticism of the Indians or any potential mystical associations with the stone. The Indians practicing scrying, looking into the future in a pool of ink is taken seriously by all but Betteredge. The fears many characters voice over the curse associated with the stone are again taken seriously so the Indians are not belittled as superstitious in comparison to the English.

At the same time it is difficult not to grapple with the fact that to a modern audience any depiction of three Indians in England at this time can seem racially charged, something I think Rob's adaptation goes to great pains to minimize. Ultimately the story is not about the fears of the other, the foreign. The fears and mystery lie in the actions and motivations of the family. One feels the stone might be best with the Indians as a form of restitution.

However, I don't want to minimize what Collin's audience would have known about British History in India. "The Storming of Serringpatam" in 1799 in which the stone is taken was a major British victory that ushered in the time of British rule in Southern India (and extended the reaches of the East India Company) in ways that were brutal to the local population. The novel is set in 1848 which is a year of revolutions in Europe (which colors and adds danger to Franklin Blake's European travels). It is also the year of Chartist demonstrations in London where many in the working classes rallied for reforms. Readers would have been aware of the cultural shifts and unrest in both England and abroad. Property, ownership, class and entitlement were not as solidly entrenched as they might have seemed.

Collins reading audience would have known of the earlier battle but also of the recent 1857 Sepoy Rebellion in which Indian troops near Delhi rebelled brought about the dissolution of the East India company in striking contrast to the time at which the gem was taken. Many of Collins' contemporaries referred to horrors inflicted on the English during this time period to portray Indians in a brutal and negative light which Collins seems to avoid but at the same time his readers would have read newspaper accounts about the violence of the Indian uprising and might have been prepared to view the three Indians as figures of fear.

Murthwaite is an interesting comparison to this. His presence in the story is because he is a noted traveler and valued for the conversation he will bring to the various dinner parties he attends when he is not traveling the world. He also acts as an interpreter for the actions and the language of the Indians for the other characters in the story. One source for the character of Murthwaite is John William Shaw Wyllie an Anglo-Indian traveller whom Collins would have met at his club. He also likely referred to the books Talboys Wheeler's The History of India and the Life of Sir David Baird by Theodore Hook.

A Meta-Treat: Layers of Story-Telling

Last night we blocked a particularly challenging set of pages where we join Franklin and Rachel as they travel from Yorkshire to London, meet Sergeant Cuff  and Mister Bruff there, rush off to the bank to trace the Moonstone to a sailor, who we follow through various alleyways and into the inn known as The Wheel of Fortune. We continue with Cuff telling us the backstory of Mister Godfrey Ablewhite, including for us information learned by Septimus Lucker and related to Cuff by way of interrogation.

It's parts like these that tend to blow my mind. Character A relates to the audience the private experience of character B, as learned from character C in a private interview. B and C had an interaction where B told C about this event. C told A about it. And now A is talking to us. A is therefore relating some of character C's point of view as well as his own and the speculation over the actions of B is tainted by B's telling, C's motives and A's opinion of the whole thing. Ka-POW!*

 

 *the sound of my brain exploding

Detective Fever

"Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach...and a nasty thumping at the top of your head?...I call it the detective-fever."

- Gabriel Betteridge, The Moonstone

The Moonstone is certainly one of the first detective novels. As such, it both sets many of the standards that will be followed in the genre but at the same time it is a bit more fluid than the standard detective novel.

In The Moonstone many characters play detective in addition to Sergeant Cuff of the Detective Police.

Gabriel Betteridge, Lady’ Julia’s house steward, describes detective fever. He can’t resist asking the servants his own questions.

Mr. Bruff, the family lawyer turns detective both to discover who looked at Lady Verinder’s will, and setting a watch on the bank.

Ezra Jennings pieces together Doctor Candy’s fevered ravings and makes a sensible narrative of them.

Franklin Blake turns amateur detective assembling the evidence of all the other characters to piece together the story.

Sergeant Cuff however represents many of the traits that would become standard to the professional detective. The unassuming appearance, the eccentric behavior, the use of misdirection to elicit answers, would all become part of the trope of the detective.

In this stage adaptation of The Moonstone, we lose the local police Superintendent Seagrave of Frizinghall, who acts as the bumbling, pompous foil to the deductions of Sergeant Cuff, who comes from London. Cuff is a member of the detective-police, a newly established in London where a detective, who specialized in solving crimes would be in charge of cases as opposed to the usual police officers.

Betteridge describes Cuff, "He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice was melancholy; his long lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or an undertaker--or anything else you like, except what he really was."

In fact, Sergeant Cuff is likely based on a real London police detective, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher traces Whicher's rise, fall and and investigation of the shocking murder of a three-year-old child, Saville Kent. Whicher is pictured at left. Whicher came to suspect a half-sister, Constance Kent and was ridiculed in Punch and his career ruined. Later, Constance Kent confessed but it was too late to resuscitate his career or the shambles of his life.

The new role of the clever detective and the emerging science of deduction was of interest to Collins and his friend Charles Dickens, who wrote several short pieces in his weekly paper Household Words, "The Detective Police," "On Duty with Inspector Field" and and "Three Detective Anecdotes" in which he met, profiled and praised the new order of detectives.

Collins also establishes the Detective with an eccentricity. Cuff loves roses and wants to cultivate them when he retires. He is described whistling "The Last Rose of Summer" an Irish Air by Thomas Moore, that was further popularized as Mendelssohn used it as the source for a fantasia. The lyrics are below.

'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming all alone
All her lovely companions are faded and gone.
No flower of he kindred, no rose bud is nigh
To reflect back her blushes and give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! to pine on the stem
Since the lovely are sleeping, go sleep thou with them
Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow, when friendships decay
And from love's shining circle the gems drop away
When true hearts lie wither'd and fond ones are flown
Oh! who would inhabit this bleak world alone!

The lyrics seems to have additional significance given the role the roses picked for Franklin Blake's button hole play for both Rosanna Spearman mental state and what Rachel Verinder will go through after the theft of the diamond. The decay in the song is not unlike the decay inherited with the moonstone that seems to be destroying and scattering the family unit.

It is also interesting to note that the reader, or, in our case, the audience is asked to participate in this detective-fever. We are given the various accounts related to the missing moonstone and asked to piece them together. In doing so, we are asked to peer into the lives and motivations of the characters and lift the veil of Victorian domestic life.

The Vast Victorian: Tracts, Serving and Juggling

I am sorry to be so slow to get some new information up. While you are waiting for a variety of other dramaturgical tidbits I wanted to pass on some interesting reading material that will be of use to a number of you.

The Victorian Web (a project out of Brown University) has a wide variety of interesting materials on how, religion, science and social roles were viewed during the era. The section on tracts and the sorts of evangelical groups that would use tracts and would agitate for literacy (across classes) as a means to exposing children to religion will be of particular interest to Miss Clack. (Above: American tracts of the same era targeting children.)

Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management is a great book about the variety of things a lady would need to know to run a household. The entire book is online and the sections on the mistress of the house, servants, the doctor and legal memoranda will be of interest for this production not only for those playing servants, doctors and the lawyer but just to get a sense of the time period. Victorian recipes for the common hog are just a bonus.

Victorian writer, William Hazlitt, wrote many things, but his article, The Indian Jugglers, originally published in Table Talk in 1828 may be of interest. It quickly ceases to be about juggling, but the initial description of the jugglers may be of use to those thinking about how the Indian jugglers would be perceived by Victorians.