The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1868 in the magazine All the Year Around (edited by Charles Dickens). It is widely considered the first English language detective novel.


Wes:

            The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins turned out to be a really interesting Victorian tale of mystery and multi-faceted detective work. I enjoyed reading it after reading about Charles Dickens’ relationship with Collins and the fact that this book was also written in serial form over many months just as many of Dickens’ works were. It also has the reputation of being one of the first detective novels, that has become an important genre ever since. I won’t be writing much about the plot or the characters. Suffice it to say I just enjoyed it. To me it is a classic of the Victorian era which I seem to have centered a lot of my novel reading upon over the years. I will just note a few interesting thoughts I had about the book. 

I enjoyed the “narrative” arrangement that Collins used to advance the plot. We see only what the characters saw and how they interpreted the things under their observation. I noticed that some of the characters had a distinctively different style, comparing in particular, Mr. Betteredge, Mr. Bruff, Mr. Blake, and Miss Clack. Even though these characters each had a certain character style, they all had the characteristic Victorian style of detailed elaboration of conversations and happenstances that I can’t see people today ever writing down. A novelist convention from that era for sure!

            Mr. Betteredge’s narrative was particularly interesting. He had a flair for description and loyalty to the family and to all humanity that really reflected the usual serious English butler’s outlook. I liked his bandying about with Sergeant Cuff and his amateur detective intuitions as the Sergeant’s investigation proceeded. The constant referral to Robinson Crusoe throughout (he allegedly wore out six copies of the book) was a very innovative concept. It made me wonder whether Wilkie Collins spent a lot of nights in his leisure chair perusing that volume for his “spiritual guidance.”

            Collins reveals a definite disdain for Christians with his description of Miss Clack’s continual and laughable efforts to proselytize Rachel and Mrs. Verinder. The villain also turned out to be Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite who revealed his real character to be quite hypocritical in contrast to his public persona as the zealous and self-righteous missionary type. He turns out to have stolen the diamond for necessary money to prevent the revelation that he had betrayed a trusteeship by sacking the account completely and facing imminent discovery. His desperate need for money was the reason that he acquiesced to Rachel’s rejecting his marriage proposal when he found he could not loot her estate to save himself. Turns out he also has a mistress who threatened to reveal herself to Rachel if he proceeded with his marriage plan.  

            This book had a definite page-turning or suspense building motif to it. One kept expecting the key clue to emerge but the author would repeatedly stop just short by introducing some complicating factor that would put the proceeding information in doubt. It almost reads like one of the mini-series of today where each show ends with a suspense item looming to draw the viewer to the next show or the Victorian reader to the next installment. This is a very clever device that Collins used that made me marvel at how he could maintain the depth of this story for so long. For example, we were continually led to believe that Mr. Luker had the diamond but then during the opium experiment I was expecting Mr. Blake to reveal his hiding place somewhere in his room after all. That would then fulfil Sgt. Cuff’s prediction that the diamond was not stolen, just lost.

            I didn’t see the need for Ablewhite to die at the hands of the Indian men. They didn’t do that before when they accosted Mr. Luker and him earlier. But perhaps they could not take a chance on his stopping them from leaving the country. There were some details about the 3 Indian guys that I wonder about now, like what was the significance of the bottle of ink that the boy dropped early in the story. And what was the significance of that boy whom it was suggested was a medium? What were they using him for and what happened to him? What was the identity of the fellow who discovered the rooming site of Ablewhite in his sailor disguise?

I really enjoyed this book even though it took a little longer to read it as I struggle to memorize my 156 lines for a play next month. I will probably have more questions and comments for discussion this month because there was a lot of interesting stuff in this book. I will also want to read his other great novel, Woman in White, some time. After reading this book, I definitely had an attack of the megrims (a great word – pg. 113!) knowing it was over.  Overall, I rate this book as a 2 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best).

Allison:

            I have a confession to make about our bookclub. I don't always read the book. This month, with my son out of school and my job demanding extra hours of work at home, I had hardly any quiet to sit and read. Even the refuge of my daily F train commute was invaded with project planning for the bookstore. So, I didn't fully read The Moonstone. But, what I couldn't read, I supplemented by listening to it (don’t worry! I did actually experience the whole book). I filled the dead space of daily housekeeping, standing at the sink with dishes and swabbing bathroom surfaces, with an audio narration of the mystery. I have heard only a few audio books, but at the bookstore I have witnessed hundreds of authors read their work—let me tell you, authors reading their work is the worst. So indulgent, so insufferably boring, and somehow, just false (exceptions apply, of course). But, a professional voice over artist is quite different. The ego is eliminated and the story is manifested. The Moonstone was especially fun, with its various narrations. The reader spoke in a British accent that he nuanced between speakers—Miss Clack was perhaps the most delightfully ludicrous, as he narrated for hours in a shrill pomp, a caricature of feminine stuffiness.

            I do feel like I cheated though. The vocalizations painted in much of the scenery that if I were physically reading, I'd have to invent for myself. And I wondered frequently if how the actor's rendering of the story might compare to an interpretation I'd have come to on my own. He supplied very different voices, different inflections for each character, but did these variations exist in the text? This would have been an important consideration had I been solely reading because the dueling multi-person narrative is the central device Collins uses to tell his story. How many narrators? Let's see: Betteredge, Miss Clack, Bruff, Blake, Jennings, Sergeant Cuff, Mr. Candy (not to mention an long letter written by Rosanna Spark) and a spattering of officials summarizing the end. That's a lot! Over seven main voices to color and differentiate—seven unique motivations to flesh and illuminate, all while maintaining momentum and strategic reveal of information so that the readers are inundated with "detective fever" as Betteredge called it, eager to play along.

            I had only a mild case of "detective fever." I read a lot of mysteries and edit a crime fiction magazine with my husband and the mechanics of "the reveal" are never as interesting to me as the characters. Reading The Moonstone, I couldn't help but compare Collins' work against The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Dickens. Collins and Dickens were friends and spirited competitors alike. In fact, Dickens was the first to publish a serial version of The Moonstone in his magazine All the Year Around. Drood was Dickens' attempt to write the perfect mystery, hoped to trump all predecessors in its masterful plotting and he might have done so if he hadn't died. Do I think Drood's potential superior to The Moonstone? Yes. Does it matter? Eh…not so much. They were both satisfying to me in the same way. Like eating an expensive chocolate truffle followed by a Hershey bar. I might comment, oh the expensive truffle more delicious, but I'd still happily eat the Hershey bar. In fact, you would find it hard to tear anything chocolate away from me.

            As I was Googling around the internet trying to find the publication date, I discovered a terse two-line poem written about Wilkie by a poet, Swinburne, that appeared in a literary journal in 1889. It said:

           

            What brought good Wilkie's genius nigh perdition?

            Some demon whispered—'Wilkie! have a mission'. (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/collins/dickens1.html)

This brief, slightly snarky poem, sort of sums up what I thought about Wilkie's story. I found all of the characters tremendously entertaining, but their foibles followed a formula from which Collins' did not deviate. Every character had some obsession that they followed to the most extreme. With Betteredge, it was an almost religious devotion to the unorthodox oracle Robinson Crusoe. He imbibed in the book like it were a sacred text, which was hilarious, often laugh-out-loud absurd. Sergeant Cuff had his roses, and Miss Clack, her puritan religious pamphlets that she spent pages and pages of her narrative trying to stuff into unwilling characters' hands. Less ridiculous was Jennings' addiction to opium, which paralleled Wilkie Collins' own malady. The Moonstone was written, by Collins' own account during a opiate haze. From the introduction by Sandra Kemp of my Penguin Classic edition: "…Collins claimed that he had little recollection of writing the novel, that he had to dictate large portions of the story as he lay sick in bed (relieved only by opium), and that he didn't recall the finale at all" (x). Such an idea, that he could have produced this work and been so stupefied that he didn't even remember, is almost unbelievable, and as Kemp notes, probably an exaggeration. Nevertheless, opium plays a far more sympathetic role in The Moonstone than it did in Dickens' Drood. Jennings' curse of need makes almost a martyr of him, and his death, as relayed by Mr. Candy, is reaching the outer echelons of drama into parodist effect. But I don't think that was Collins' intent. I think he romanticized opium because he had to, because he was in the thick of it. Dickens' portrait of opium was far more grotesque and filthy and unsavory, and likely what it looked like to those on the outside.

            In my Drood post, I mentioned that Donna Tart said Dickens' was a generous writer who revealed the genius of how he built his narratives for fledgling writers to discover. Collins is different because he's not revealing a blueprint of an architectural masterpiece. Instead it's a formula—a specific set of rules that can be followed to achieve a desired result. Formulas can be brilliant, in that once perfected, they are infallible. In a right triangle, a²+b² is going to equal c².

            Likewise, I eat the chocolate and I am happy. 

I give this book a 4 on Dad's scale of 1-10 (1 being the best). But a 4 seems so low, for how much I enjoyed it… Maybe a 3. It's really funny, and only slightly racist and misogynist for its day.