Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
that bring the colony home to England and carry among them the spoils of war of
the diamonds. The Vandeleur brothers as well as the abundance of characters in
The Sign of Four – Jonathan Small and Tonga, Captain Morstan, the Sholtos and
Dr. Watson – testify to the literary interest in the “flotsam and jetsam of Empire”
(Siddiqi 233) and also to the possible disturbance they impose. However, the description
of the “tranquil English home” (Doyle, Sign 167-168) is a staple in both
The Sign of Four and The Moonstone (Collins, Moonstone 296) (Mehta 612).
One of the hallmarks of sensational fiction, the genre Wilkie Collins wrote in,
is the proximity of crime to the domestic (Mukherjee 166). This also holds true for
The Moonstone which grew out of this tradition and is concerned with the immediate
impact of colonial crime on the domestic sphere and the intrusion of Others
into the home. The proximity of the Other is suggested through the presence of
the Shivering Sands in the English landscape of Yorkshire (Carens 248). It implies
that the English Yorkshire landscape is much closer to the colonial Other than
might be evident at first glance. The interior of the Verinders’ house itself betrays
its long involvement with the East. Rachel puts the Indian diamond into the Indian
cabinet, for the purpose of “two beautiful native productions to admire each
other” (Collins, Moonstone 84-85). Her Indian cabinet belongs to the furniture and
forms part of the English interior. Similarly, the crimes of the Rajah’s Diamond,
Mrs. Vandeleur’s unchecked spending, covered by the diamond as well as Thomas
Vandeleur’s desertion in India belong to the inside of the London house as the
proverbial “skeleton” ( Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 75) in the cupboard.
The country house, on the other hand, is a metonymic representation of a selfsufficient
and ordered national community (Kenny 204). Since the beginning of
industrialisation, the urban centres overtook the countryside in importance so that
the image of the country house is a nostalgic remnant. It is nevertheless used to
set off the peaceful rural areas from the mysterious imperial regions. Prince Florizel
unravels the story of the Rajah’s Diamond on the bank of the Seine which,
however, seems like “some country river” (Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 130) in her tranquillity.
Through the sinking of the diamond he tries to restore the purely rural
which is supposedly untainted by and independent of imperialism.
In both The Moonstone and “The Rajah’s Diamond”, the contrast between roses
and flowers and the diamonds is stressed, to juxtapose the exotic and the domestic
rural. Sergeant Cuff explicitly states: “I also think a rose much better worth looking
at than a diamond” (Collins, Moonstone 177). Instead of probing into the unsolved
case of the Moonstone he prefers a discussion of the “dog rose” with the
Verinder’s gardener (177) 15. After retirement, he devotes himself to his true pas-
15 In the context of the establishment of the detective police the depiction of policemen as something
thoroughly English harks back to Dickens’ attempts to popularise detectives in London.
In Detecting the Nation Caroline Reitz argues that the detective police was only slowly accepted in
England and was formerly regarded as outright un-English. Sergeant Cuff therefore has to
“forge relationships with those figures who initially set themselves against him” (Reitz 60).