ABSTRACT
This chapter argues music's association with the East in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and other nineteenth-century English literary works is much more complex than simply identifying drumming with India. It goes further by suggesting that these works form a family of writing. The chapter traces how opium is yoked with music in literature and how fears of hybridity are significant: East and West were perceived to meet not only in geographical terms, but within the English body itself, ingested through opium and penetrating through the ear. Such fears of Eastern invasion were voiced and popularized by a number of Western writers, alongside a consideration of music. The fear was that malign Chinese had invaded the heart of London to exact retribution for the Opium Wars by similarly enslaving the English to poppy-juice. While Indian shawls, cabinets and jewels were prized demonstrations of luxury in the middle of Victoria’s reign, the tom-tom belonged to the street.
