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Where have you been for so long?
I am reading Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868). It's not quite the first time—I read it once in high school, but remembered mostly that I really liked it. I still really like it. If it's the first detective novel, it's a great way to start a genre. I have not quite finished the book, but I have gotten far enough into the final act to meet Ezra Jennings:
The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. His nose presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of the West. His forehead rose high and straight from the brow. His marks and wrinkles were innumerable. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick closely-curling hair which by some freak of Nature had lost its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force of the extraordinary contrast—it had turned completely white. The line between the two colours preserved no sort of regularity. At one place, the white hair ran up into the black; at another, the black hair ran down into the white. I looked at the man with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say, I found it quite impossible to control. His soft brown eyes looked back at me gently; and he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at him with an apology which I was conscious that I had not deserved.
He's the former family doctor's distrusted assistant, half-English, with a tragic backstory and a disreputable character; he says of himself that "Physiology says, and says truly, that some men are born with female constitutions—and I am one of them!" Some pages after that we discover that he also has a terminal illness and an opium addiction. And a heart of gold, but that went without saying from those eyes.
I feel . . . attacked?
The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. His nose presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of the West. His forehead rose high and straight from the brow. His marks and wrinkles were innumerable. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick closely-curling hair which by some freak of Nature had lost its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force of the extraordinary contrast—it had turned completely white. The line between the two colours preserved no sort of regularity. At one place, the white hair ran up into the black; at another, the black hair ran down into the white. I looked at the man with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say, I found it quite impossible to control. His soft brown eyes looked back at me gently; and he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at him with an apology which I was conscious that I had not deserved.
He's the former family doctor's distrusted assistant, half-English, with a tragic backstory and a disreputable character; he says of himself that "Physiology says, and says truly, that some men are born with female constitutions—and I am one of them!" Some pages after that we discover that he also has a terminal illness and an opium addiction. And a heart of gold, but that went without saying from those eyes.
I feel . . . attacked?
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OK and now I'm picturing him as a young-ish Boris Karloff.
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I didn't remember him! I remembered the trick of the Moonstone's disappearance (and I think now that film noir owes The Moonstone and its imitators a huge psychological twist ending debt), but not the attributes of the magnificently liminal person who revealed it. I think this is worse than the time I forgot about Owen Davies. I mean, he asks at the end to be forgotten, but I'm not sure I should have done as he wished.
OK and now I'm picturing him as a young-ish Boris Karloff.
He was certainly beautiful, but was he sharp-faced enough?
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The comment on Romani Gipsy people as being dark skinned really gets to me- it's such a racist trope.
I have Romani ancestry via my paternal great grandfather who was full blood Roma- that makes me Didaki- part Romani.
As a result, I'm dark eyed (almost black) dark haired and very pale skinned like all the Romani kids I ever taught.
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I don't believe the character of Ezra Jennings is Romani. I thought at first that he might be Jewish because of his coloring and his profile and that line about "the ancient people of the East," but he says later that he "was born, and partly brought up, in one of our colonies. My father was an Englishman; but my mother—" which I took to mean we should read him as Anglo-Indian.
I understand that doesn't change the association of the comparison. It's the nineteenth century. It's common in the text. Jennings uses it himself, describing how others see him.
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I haven't read any of his other novels! (I was reminded to pick up The Moonstone by a conjunction of
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That one is definitely on my list, because of everything you said about it.
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I have not, although I know of it. I didn't realize it was intertextual with Collins. Which one should be read first?
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Please do it next year! I will of course not participate, but I am deeply in favor of benefiting!
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But I was surprised and pleased as there were obviously a couple of nominators.
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It's ridiculous.
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But The Moonstone while not technically the first detective novel, is the first proper - it does put all the pieces in place so very well, considering that was never what Collins was trying to do. And Sergeant Cuff is also accidentally very much a template for many of his spiritual descendents, complete with rose-growing quirk. (WHich is just that almost everybody's got a quirk in Collins, though.)
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I loved it! I'm trying to decide what to go for next.
And when you've been reading a lot of Victorian Lit, which I had, No Name's Magdalen makes a refreshing change. Also there's a sinister housekeeper with a pet frog. (or toad, possibly. It's been a long while since I read No Name.)
But The Moonstone while not technically the first detective novel, is the first proper
What's the technical first?
almost everybody's got a quirk in Collins, though.
I noticed that and approved. It made me much fonder of whole swathes of the main cast than usually happens with me.
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It deepends in what sense and if it needs to be a novel, rather than a short story, as there were many short crime/detective stories that predated it, but there's an 18th C crime novel of sorts Caleb Williams, a Danish 19th C novella Præsten i Vejlbye and Emile Gaborieau published Monsieur Lecoq in the same year as The Moonstone.
The Moonstone set the pattern for so much of the Golden Age stuff, though, and I'd say nobody would dispute that, but the law of human nature is that there's always someone who would dispute everything!
(I had to Google the above because I couldn't remember where I'd been reading it, because I read a lot of things both about Victorians and classic crime and I had no idea any more. The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders, possibly. Which is very interesting anyway - about the Victorians and their obsession with crime and murder & the literature that came out of it.)
I noticed that and approved. It made me much fonder of whole swathes of the main cast than usually happens with me.
:-D
(I'm never forgiving that guy who wrote a horror novel where Wilkie Collins was a serial killer. I mean, I shouldn't have read it, because obviously a horror novel on that subject was bound not to end well, as that's the duty of horror, but still.)
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*nods in solemn agreement*
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Thanks! I knew about preceding short stories, but I didn't know about other novels. Præsten i Vejlbye sounds excellent.
The Moonstone set the pattern for so much of the Golden Age stuff, though, and I'd say nobody would dispute that, but the law of human nature is that there's always someone who would dispute everything!
It was astonishing to me how many tropes it appeared to anticipate, meaning only that it really created them. Plus it was better on women and what I would call postcolonialism if it weren't the actual height of the British Empire than many, many, many of its successors.
(I'm never forgiving that guy who wrote a horror novel where Wilkie Collins was a serial killer. I mean, I shouldn't have read it, because obviously a horror novel on that subject was bound not to end well, as that's the duty of horror, but still.)
Was that Dan Simmons' Drood (2009)? If so, totally don't forgive Dan Simmons.
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Indeed! (I once had to write an essay on something like that, but I have forgotten every word of it since. I really wanted to write something else, but it was one of those chosen essay things and I was never good at working out what I wanted to write, so always ended up doing something the teacher wanted me to write.)
I also think, now that I've read Dracula, that The Woman in White must surely have been an influence, but I have read a lot less on sensation, gothic and horror fiction, so I don't know if people have commented on that.
Was that Dan Simmons' Drood (2009)? If so, totally don't forgive Dan Simmons.
Yes! I am indeed never forgiving Dan Simmons. It was one of those books where I wasn't even glad I read it; my life would have been better if I hadn't!
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Because of the multiple-narrator found-footage kind of feel?
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I don't think I've read anything of hers and she sounds amazing.