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diff --git a/old/pldlp10h.htm b/old/pldlp10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1646eaf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pldlp10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1997 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, by Andrew Lang +(#5 in our series by Andrew Lang) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: December, 1996 [EBook #738] +[This file was first posted on December 7, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE PUZZLE OF DICKENS’S LAST PLOT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +INTRODUCTION<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Forster tells us that Dickens, in his later novels, from <i>Bleak House</i> +onwards (1853), “assiduously cultivated” construction, “this +essential of his art.” Some critics may think, that since +so many of the best novels in the world “have no outline, or, +if they have an outline, it is a demned outline,” elaborate construction +is not absolutely “essential.” Really essential are +character, “atmosphere,” humour.<br> +<br> +But as, in the natural changes of life, and under the strain of restless +and unsatisfied activity, his old buoyancy and unequalled high spirits +deserted Dickens, he certainly wrote no longer in what Scott, speaking +of himself, calls the manner of “hab nab at a venture.” +He constructed elaborate plots, rich in secrets and surprises. +He emulated the manner of Wilkie Collins, or even of Gaboriau, while +he combined with some of the elements of the detective novel, or <i>roman +policier</i>, careful study of character. Except <i>Great Expectations</i>, +none of his later tales rivals in merit his early picaresque stories +of the road, such as <i>Pickwick</i> and <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. +“Youth will be served;” no sedulous care could compensate +for the exuberance of “the first sprightly runnings.” +In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets of Ralph Nickleby, +of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least of the innumerable attractions. +But Dickens was more and more drawn towards the secret that excites +curiosity, and to the game of hide and seek with the reader who tried +to anticipate the solution of the secret.<br> +<br> +In April, 1869, Dickens, outworn by the strain of his American readings; +of that labour achieved under painful conditions of ominously bad health +- found himself, as Sir Thomas Watson reported, “on the brink +of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of apoplexy.” +He therefore abandoned a new series of Readings. We think of Scott’s +earlier seizures of a similar kind, after which <i>Peveril</i>, he said, +“smacked of the apoplexy.” But Dickens’s new +story of <i>The Mystery</i> <i>of Edwin Drood</i>, first contemplated +in July, 1869, and altered in character by the emergence of “a +very curious and new idea,” early in August, does not “smack +of the apoplexy.” We may think that the mannerisms of Mr. +Honeythunder, the philanthropist, and of Miss Twinkleton, the schoolmistress, +are not in the author’s best vein of humour. “The +Billickin,” on the other hand, the lodging-house keeper, is “in +very gracious fooling:” her unlooked-for sallies in skirmishes +with Miss Twinkleton are rich in mirthful surprises. Mr. Grewgious +may be caricatured too much, but not out of reason; and Dickens, always +good at boys, presents a <i>gamin</i>, in Deputy, who is in not unpleasant +contrast with the pathetic Jo of <i>Bleak House</i>. Opinions +may differ as to Edwin and Rosa, but the more closely one studies Edwin, +the better one thinks of that character. As far as we are allowed +to see Helena Landless, the restraint which she puts on her “tigerish +blood” is admirable: she is very fresh and original. The +villain is all that melodrama can desire, but what we do miss, I think, +is the “atmosphere” of a small cathedral town. Here +there is a lack of softness and delicacy of treatment: on the other +hand, the opium den is studied from the life.<br> +<br> +On the whole, Dickens himself was perhaps most interested in his plot, +his secret, his surprises, his game of hide and seek with the reader. +He threw himself into the sport with zest: he spoke to his sister-in-law, +Miss Hogarth, about his fear that he had not sufficiently concealed +his tracks in the latest numbers. Yet, when he died in June, 1870, +leaving three completed numbers still unpublished, he left his secret +as a puzzle to the curious. Many efforts have been made to decipher +his purpose, especially his intentions as to the hero. Was Edwin +Drood killed, or did he escape?<br> +<br> +By a coincidence, in September, 1869, Dickens was working over the late +Lord Lytton’s tale for <i>All The Year Round</i>, “The Disappearance +of John Ackland,” for the purpose of mystifying the reader as +to whether Ackland was alive or dead. But he was conspicuously +defunct! (<i>All</i> <i>the Year Round</i>, September-October, +1869.)<br> +<br> +The most careful of the attempts at a reply about Edwin, a study based +on deep knowledge of Dickens, is “Watched by the Dead,” +by the late ingenious Mr. R. A. Proctor (1887). This book, to +which I owe much aid, is now out of print. In 1905, Mr. Cuming +Walters revived “the auld mysterie,” in his “Clues +to Dickens’s Edwin Drood” (Chapman & Hall and Heywood, +Manchester). From the solution of Mr. Walters I am obliged to +dissent. Of Mr. Proctor’s theory I offer some necessary +corrections, and I hope that I have unravelled some skeins which Mr. +Proctor left in a state of tangle. As one read and re-read the +fragment, points very dark seemed, at least, to become suddenly clear: +especially one appeared to understand the meaning half-revealed and +half-concealed by Jasper’s babblings under the influence of opium. +He saw in his vision, “<i>that</i>, I never saw <i>that</i> before.” +We may be sure that he was to see “<i>that</i>” in real +life. We must remember that, according to Forster, “such +was Dickens’s interest in things supernatural that, but for the +strong restraining power of his common sense, he might have fallen into +the follies of spiritualism.” His interest in such matters +certainly peeps out in this novel - there are two specimens of the supernormal +- and he may have gone to the limited extent which my hypothesis requires. +If I am right, Dickens went further, and fared worse, in the too material +premonitions of “The Signalman” in <i>Mugby</i> <i>Junction.<br> +<br> +</i>With this brief preface, I proceed to the analysis of Dickens’s +last plot. Mr. William Archer has kindly read the proof sheets +and made valuable suggestions, but is responsible for none of my theories.<br> +<br> +ANDREW LANG.<br> +ST. ANDREWS,<br> +<i>September</i> 4, 1905.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE STORY - DRAMATIS PERSONAE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +For the discovery of Dickens’s secret in <i>Edwin Drood</i> it +is necessary to obtain a clear view of the characters in the tale, and +of their relations to each other.<br> +<br> +About the middle of the nineteenth century there lived in Cloisterham, +a cathedral city sketched from Rochester, a young University man, Mr. +Bud, who had a friend Mr. Drood, one of a firm of engineers - somewhere. +They were “fast friends and old college companions.” +Both married young. Mr. Bud wedded a lady unnamed, by whom he +was the father of one child, a daughter, Rosa Bud. Mr. Drood, +whose wife’s maiden name was Jasper, had one son, Edwin Drood. +Mrs. Bud was drowned in a boating accident, when her daughter, Rosa, +was a child. Mr. Drood, already a widower, and the bereaved Mr. +Bud “betrothed” the two children, Rosa and Edwin, and then +expired, when the orphans were about seven and eleven years old. +The guardian of Rosa was a lawyer, Mr. Grewgious, who had been in love +with her mother. To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his wife’s +engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to hand over +to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and Rosa decided +to marry.<br> +<br> +Grewgious was apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin’s +maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male parents +died), was Edwin’s “trustee,” as well as his uncle +and devoted friend. Rosa’s little fortune was an annuity +producing £250 a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father’s share +in an engineering firm.<br> +<br> +When the story opens, Edwin is nearly twenty-one, and is about to proceed +to Egypt, as an engineer. Rosa, at school in Cloisterham, is about +seventeen; John Jasper is twenty-six. He is conductor of the Choir +of the Cathedral, a “lay precentor;” he is very dark, with +thick black whiskers, and, for a number of years, has been a victim +to the habit of opium smoking. He began very early. He takes +this drug both in his lodgings, over the gate of the Cathedral, and +in a den in East London, kept by a woman nicknamed “The Princess +Puffer.” This hag, we learn, has been a determined drunkard, +- “I drank heaven’s-hard,” - for sixteen years <i>before</i> +she took to opium. If she has been dealing in opium for ten years +(the exact period is not stated), she has been very disreputable for +twenty-six years, that is ever since John Jasper’s birth. +Mr. Cuming Walters suggests that she is the mother of John Jasper, and, +therefore, maternal grandmother of Edwin Drood. She detests her +client, Jasper, and plays the spy on his movements, for reasons unexplained.<br> +<br> +Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, the <i>fiancée</i> of his +nephew, and his own pupil in the musical art. He makes her aware +of his passion, silently, and she fears and detests him, but keeps these +emotions private. She is a saucy school-girl, and she and Edwin +are on uncomfortable terms: she does not love him, while he perhaps +does love her, but is annoyed by her manner, and by the gossip about +their betrothal. “The bloom is off the plum” of their +prearranged loves, he says to his friend, uncle, and confidant, Jasper, +whose own concealed passion for Rosa is of a ferocious and homicidal +character. Rosa is aware of this fact; “a glaze comes over +his eyes,” sometimes, she says, “and he seems to wander +away into a frightful sort of dream, in which he threatens most . . +. ” The man appears to have these frightful dreams even +when he is not under opium.<br> +<br> +<br> +OPENING OF THE TALE<br> +<br> +<br> +The tale opens abruptly with an opium-bred vision of the tower of Cloisterham +Cathedral, beheld by Jasper as he awakens in the den of the Princess +Puffer, between a Chinaman, a Lascar, and the hag herself. This +Cathedral tower, thus early and emphatically introduced, is to play +a great but more or less mysterious part in the romance: that is certain. +Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the +Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep. He pronounces it “unintelligible,” +which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible +also. He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the +eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope +to understand the sleepers? He is being watched by the hag, who +hates him.<br> +<br> +Jasper returns to Cloisterham, where we are introduced to the Dean, +a nonentity, and to Minor Canon Crisparkle, a muscular Christian in +the pink of training, a classical scholar, and a good honest fellow. +Jasper gives Edwin a dinner, and gushes over “his bright boy,” +a lively lad, full of chaff, but also full of confiding affection and +tenderness of heart. Edwin admits that his betrothal is a bore: +Jasper admits that he loathes his life; and that the church singing +“often sounds to me quite devilish,” - and no wonder. +After this dinner, Jasper has a “weird seizure;” “a +strange film comes over Jasper’s eyes,” he “looks +frightfully ill,” becomes rigid, and admits that he “has +been taking opium for a pain, an agony that sometimes overcomes me.” +This “agony,” we learn, is the pain of hearing Edwin speak +lightly of his love, whom Jasper so furiously desires. “Take +it as a warning,” Jasper says, but Edwin, puzzled, and full of +confiding tenderness, does not understand.<br> +<br> +In the next scene we meet the school-girl, Rosa, who takes a walk and +has a tiff with Edwin. Sir Luke Fildes’s illustration shows +Edwin as “a lad with the bloom of a lass,” with a <i>classic +profile</i>;<i> and a gracious head of long, thick, fair</i> <i>hair</i>, +long, though we learn it has just been cut. He wears a soft slouched +hat, and the pea-coat of the period.<br> +<br> +<br> +SAPSEA AND DURDLES<br> +<br> +<br> +Next, Jasper and Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at +their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd +epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a “Monument,” +a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter +Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt, “as +contractor for rough repairs.” In the crypt “he habitually +sleeps off the fumes of liquor.” Of course no Dean would +entrust keys to this incredibly dissipated, dirty, and insolent creature, +to whom Sapsea gives the key of his vault, for no reason at all, as +the epitaph, of course, is to be engraved on the outside, by Durdles’s +men. However, Durdles insists on getting the key of the vault: +he has two other large keys. Jasper, trifling with them, keeps +clinking them together, so as to know, even in the dark, by the sound, +which is the key that opens Sapsea’s vault, in the railed-off +burial ground, beside the cloister arches. He has met Durdles +at Sapsea’s for no other purpose than to obtain access at will +to Mrs. Sapsea’s monument. Later in the evening Jasper finds +Durdles more or less drunk, and being stoned by a <i>gamin</i>, “Deputy,” +a retainer of a tramp’s lodging-house. Durdles fees Deputy, +in fact, to drive him home every night after ten. Jasper and Deputy +fall into feud, and Jasper has thus a new, keen, and omnipresent enemy. +As he walks with Durdles that worthy explains (in reply to a question +by Jasper), that, by tapping a wall, even if over six feet thick, with +his hammer, he can detect the nature of the contents of the vault, “solid +in hollow, and inside solid, hollow again. Old ‘un crumbled +away in stone coffin, in vault.” He can also discover the +presence of “rubbish left in that same six foot space by Durdles’s +men.” Thus, if a foreign body were introduced into the Sapsea +vault, Durdles could detect its presence by tapping the outside wall. +As Jasper’s purpose clearly is to introduce a foreign body - that +of Edwin who stands between him and Rosa - into Mrs. Sapsea’s +vault, this “gift” of Durdles is, for Jasper, an uncomfortable +discovery. He goes home, watches Edwin asleep, and smokes opium.<br> +<br> +<br> +THE LANDLESSES<br> +<br> +<br> +Two new characters are now introduced, Neville and Helena Landless, +<a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> twins, orphans, +of Cingalese extraction, probably Eurasian; very dark, the girl “almost +of the gipsy type;” both are “fierce of look.” +The young man is to read with Canon Crisparkle and live with him; the +girl goes to the same school as Rosa. The education of both has +been utterly neglected; instruction has been denied to them. Neville +explains the cause of their fierceness to Crisparkle. In Ceylon +they were bullied by a cruel stepfather and several times ran away: +the girl was the leader, always “<i>dressed as a boy, and</i> +<i>showing the daring of a man</i>.” Edwin Drood’s +air of supercilious ownership of Rosa Bud (indicated as a fault of youth +and circumstance, not of heart and character), irritates Neville Landless, +who falls in love with Rosa at first sight. As Rosa sings, at +Crisparkle’s, while Jasper plays the piano, Jasper’s fixed +stare produces an hysterical fit in the girl, who is soothed by Helena +Landless. Helena shows her aversion to Jasper, who, as even Edwin +now sees, frightens Rosa. “You would be afraid of him, under +similar circumstances, wouldn’t you, Miss Landless?” asks +Edwin. “Not under any circumstances,” answers Helena, +and Jasper “thanks Miss Landless for this vindication of his character.”<br> +<br> +The girls go back to their school, where Rosa explains to Helena her +horror of Jasper’s silent love-making: “I feel that I am +never safe from him . . . a glaze comes over his eyes and he seems to +wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most,” +as already quoted. Helena thus, and she alone, except Rosa, understands +Jasper thoroughly. She becomes Rosa’s protectress. +“<i>Let whomsoever it most</i> <i>concerned look well to it</i>.”<br> +<br> +Thus Jasper has a new observer and enemy, in addition to the omnipresent +street boy, Deputy, and the detective old hag of the opium den.<br> +<br> +Leaving the Canon’s house, Neville and Edwin quarrel violently +over Rosa, in the open air; they are followed by Jasper, and taken to +his house to be reconciled over glasses of mulled wine. Jasper +drugs the wine, and thus provokes a violent scene; next day he tells +Crisparkle that Neville is “murderous.” “There +is something of the tiger in his dark blood.” He spreads +the story of the <i>fracas</i> in the town.<br> +<br> +Grewgious, Rosa’s guardian, now comes down on business; the girl +fails to explain to him the unsatisfactory relations between her and +Edwin: Grewgious is to return to her “at Christmas,” if +she sends for him, and she does send. Grewgious, “an angular +man,” all duty and sentiment (he had loved Rosa’s mother), +has an interview with Edwin’s trustee, Jasper, for whom he has +no enthusiasm, but whom he does not in any way suspect. They part +on good terms, to meet at Christmas. Crisparkle, with whom Helena +has fallen suddenly in love, arranges with Jasper that Edwin and Landless +shall meet and be reconciled, as both are willing to be, at a dinner +in Jasper’s rooms, on Christmas Eve. Jasper, when Crisparkle +proposes this, denotes by his manner “some close internal calculation.” +We see that he is reckoning how the dinner suits his plan of campaign, +and “<i>close</i> calculation” may refer, as in Mr. Proctor’s +theory, to the period of the moon: <i>on Christmas Eve there will be +no moonshine at</i> <i>midnight</i>. Jasper, having worked out +this problem, accepts Crisparkle’s proposal, and his assurances +about Neville, and shows Crisparkle a diary in which he has entered +his fears that Edwin’s life is in danger from Neville. Edwin +(who is not in Cloisterham at this moment) accepts, by letter, the invitation +to meet Neville at Jasper’s on Christmas Eve.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile Edwin visits Grewgious in his London chambers; is lectured +on his laggard and supercilious behaviour as a lover, and receives the +engagement ring of the late Mrs. Bud, Rosa’s mother, which is +very dear to Grewgious - in the presence of Bazzard, Grewgious’s +clerk, a gloomy writer of an amateur unacted tragedy. Edwin is +to return the ring to Grewgious, if he and Rosa decide not to marry. +The ring is in a case, and Edwin places it “in his breast.” +We must understand, in the breast-pocket of his coat: no other interpretation +will pass muster. “Her ring - will it come back to me?” +reflects the mournful Grewgious.<br> +<br> +<br> +THE UNACCOUNTABLE EXPEDITION<br> +<br> +<br> +Jasper now tells Sapsea, and the Dean, that he is to make “a moonlight +expedition with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins to-night.” +The impossible Durdles has the keys necessary for this, “surely +an unaccountable expedition,” Dickens keeps remarking. The +moon seems to rise on this night at about 7.30 p.m. Jasper takes +a big case-bottle of liquor - drugged, of course and goes to the den +of Durdles. In the yard of this inspector of monuments he is bidden +to beware of a mound of quicklime near the yard gate. “With +a little handy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones,” says +Durdles. There is some considerable distance between this “mound” +of quicklime and the crypt, of which Durdles has the key, but the intervening +space is quite empty of human presence, as the citizens are unwilling +to meet ghosts.<br> +<br> +In the crypt Durdles drinks a good deal of the drugged liquor. +“They are to ascend the great Tower,” - and why they do +that is part of the Mystery, though not an insoluble part. Before +they climb, Durdles tells Jasper that he was drunk and asleep in the +crypt, last Christmas Eve, and was wakened by “the ghost of one +terrific shriek, followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog, a long +dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person’s dead.” +Durdles has made inquiries and, as no one else heard the shriek and +the howl, he calls these sounds “ghosts.”<br> +<br> +They are obviously meant to be understood as supranormal premonitory +sounds; of the nature of second sight, or rather of second hearing. +Forster gives examples of Dickens’s tendency to believe in such +premonitions: Dickens had himself a curious premonitory dream. +He considerably overdid the premonitory business in his otherwise excellent +story, <i>The</i> <i>Signalman</i>, or so it seems to a student of these +things. The shriek and howl heard by Durdles are to be repeated, +we see, in real life, later, on a Christmas Eve. The question +is - when? More probably <i>not</i> on the Christmas Eve just +imminent, when Edwin is to vanish, but, on the Christmas Eve following, +when Jasper is to be unmasked.<br> +<br> +All this while, and later, Jasper examines Durdles very closely, studying +the effects on him of the drugged drink. When they reach the top +of the tower, Jasper closely contemplates “that stillest part +of it” (the landscape) “which the Cathedral overshadows; +but he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously.”<br> +<br> +There is a motive for the scrutiny in either case. Jasper examines +the part of the precincts in the shadow of the Cathedral, because he +wishes to assure himself that it is lonely enough for his later undescribed +but easily guessed proceedings in this night of mystery. He will +have much to do that could not brook witnesses, after the drugged Durdles +has fallen sound asleep. We have already been assured that the +whole area over which Jasper is to operate is “utterly deserted,” +even when it lies in full moonlight, about 8.30 p.m. “One +might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper’s +own gate-house.” The people of Cloisterham, we hear, would +deny that they believe in ghosts; but they give this part of the precinct +a wide berth (Chapter XII.). If the region is “utterly deserted” +at nine o’clock in the evening, when it lies in the ivory moonlight, +much more will it be free from human presence when it lies in shadow, +between one and two o’clock after midnight. Jasper, however, +from the tower top closely scrutinizes the area of his future operations. +It is, probably, for this very purpose of discovering whether the coast +be clear or not, that Jasper climbs the tower.<br> +<br> +He watches Durdles for the purpose of finding how the drug which he +has administered works, with a view to future operations on Edwin. +Durdles is now in such a state that “he deems the ground so far +below on a level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower +into the air as not.”<br> +<br> +All this is apparently meant to suggest that Jasper, on Christmas Eve, +will repeat his expedition, <i>with Edwin</i>, whom he will have drugged, +and that he will allow Edwin to “walk off the tower into the air.” +There are later suggestions to the same effect, as we shall see, but +they are deliberately misleading. There are also strong suggestions +to the very opposite effect: it is broadly indicated that Jasper is +to strangle Edwin with a thick black-silk scarf, which he has just taken +to wearing for the good of his throat.<br> +<br> +The pair return to the crypt, Durdles falls asleep, dreams that Jasper +leaves him, “and that something touches him and something falls +from his hand. Then something clinks and gropes about,” +and the lines of moonlight shift their direction, as Durdles finds that +they have really done when he wakens, with Jasper beside him, while +the Cathedral clock strikes two. They have had many hours, not +less than five, for their expedition. The key of the crypt lies +beside Durdles on the ground. They go out, and as Deputy begins +stone-throwing, Jasper half strangles him.<br> +<br> +<br> +PURPOSE OF THE EXPEDITION<br> +<br> +<br> +Jasper has had ample time to take models in wax of all Durdles’s +keys. But he could have done that in a few minutes, while Durdles +slept, if he had wax with him, without leaving the crypt. He has +also had time to convey several wheelbarrowfuls of quicklime from Durdles’s +yard to Mrs. Sapsea’s sepulchre, of which monument he probably +took the key from Durdles, and tried its identity by clinking. +But even in a Cathedral town, even after midnight, several successive +expeditions of a lay precentor with a wheelbarrow full of quicklime +would have been apt to attract the comment of some belated physician, +some cleric coming from a sick bed, or some local roysterers. +Therefore it is that Dickens insists on the “utterly deserted” +character of the area, and shows us that Jasper has made sure of that +essential fact by observations from the tower top. Still, his +was a perilous expedition, with his wheelbarrow! We should probably +learn later, that Jasper was detected by the wakeful Deputy, who loathed +him. Moreover, next morning Durdles was apt to notice that some +of his quicklime had been removed. As far as is shown, Durdles +noticed nothing of that kind, though he does observe peculiarities in +Jasper’s behaviour.<br> +<br> +The next point in the tale is that Edwin and Rosa meet, and have sense +enough to break off their engagement. But Edwin, represented as +really good-hearted, now begins to repent his past behaviour, and, though +he has a kind of fancy for Miss Landless, he pretty clearly falls deeper +in love with his late <i>fiancée</i>, and weeps his loss in private: +so we are told.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHRISTMAS EVE<br> +<br> +<br> +Christmas Eve comes, the day of the dinner of three, Jasper, Landless, +and Edwin. The chapter describing this fateful day (xiv.) is headed, +<i>When shall</i> <i>these Three meet again</i>? and Mr. Proctor argues +that Dickens intends that <i>they shall</i> meet again. The intention, +and the hint, are much in Dickens’s manner. Landless means +to start, next day, very early, on a solitary walking tour, and buys +an exorbitantly heavy stick. We casually hear that Jasper knows +Edwin to possess no jewellery, except a watch and chain and a scarf-pin. +As Edwin moons about, he finds the old opium hag, come down from London, +“seeking a needle in a bottle of hay,” she says - that is, +hunting vainly for Jasper.<br> +<br> +Please remark that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and has +saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the +day when he clearly means to kill Edwin. This was a most injudicious +indulgence, in the circumstances. A maiden murder needs nerve! +We know that “fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state +of” Jasper’s “nerves” on the day after the night +of opium with which the story opens. On December 24, Jasper returned +home, the hag at his heels. The old woman, when met by Edwin, +has a curious film over her eyes; “he seems to know her.” +“Great heaven,” he thinks, next moment. “Like +Jack that night!” This refers to a kind of fit of Jasper’s, +after dinner, on the first evening of the story. Edwin has then +seen Jack Jasper in one of his “filmy” seizures. The +woman prays Edwin for three shillings and sixpence, to buy opium. +He gives her the money; she asks his Christian name. “Edwin.” +Is “Eddy” a sweetheart’s form of that? He says +that he has no sweetheart. He is told to be thankful that his +name is not Ned. Now, Jasper alone calls Edwin “Ned.” +“‘Ned’ is a threatened name, a dangerous name,” +says the hag, who has heard Jasper threaten “Ned” in his +opium dreams.<br> +<br> +Edwin determines to tell this adventure to Jasper, <i>but not on this +night</i>: to-morrow will do. Now, <i>did</i> he tell the story +to Jasper that night, in the presence of Landless, at dinner? +If so, Helena Landless might later learn the fact from Neville. +If she knew it, she would later tell Mr. Grewgious.<br> +<br> +The three men meet and dine. There is a fearful storm. “Stones +are displaced upon the summit of the great tower.” Next +morning, early, Jasper yells to Crisparkle, who is looking out of his +window in Minor Canon Row, that Edwin has disappeared. Neville +has already set out on his walking tour.<br> +<br> +<br> +AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE<br> +<br> +<br> +Men go forth and apprehend Neville, who shows fight with his heavy stick. +We learn that he and Drood left Jasper’s house at midnight, went +for ten minutes to look at the river under the wind, and parted at Crisparkle’s +door. Neville now remains under suspicion: Jasper directs the +search in the river, on December 25, 26, and 27. On the evening +of December 27, Grewgious visits Jasper. Now, Grewgious, as we +know, was to be at Cloisterham at Christmas. True, he was engaged +to dine on Christmas Day with Bazzard, his clerk; but, thoughtful as +he was of the moody Bazzard, as Edwin was leaving Cloisterham he would +excuse himself. He would naturally take a great part in the search +for Edwin, above all as Edwin had in his possession the ring so dear +to the lawyer. Edwin had not shown it to Rosa when they determined +to part. He “kept it in his breast,” and the ring, +we learn, was “<i>gifted with</i> <i>invincible force to hold +and drag</i>,” so Dickens warns us.<br> +<br> +The ring is obviously to be a <i>pièce de</i> <i>conviction</i>. +But our point, at present, is that we do not know how Grewgious, to +whom this ring was so dear, employed himself at Cloisterham - after +Edwin’s disappearance - between December 25 and December 27. +On the evening of the 27th, he came to Jasper, saying, “I have<i> +just left Miss Landless</i>.” He then slowly and watchfully +told Jasper that Edwin’s engagement was broken off, while the +precentor gasped, perspired, tore his hair, shrieked, and finally subsided +into a heap of muddy clothes on the floor. Meanwhile, Mr. Grewgious, +calmly observing these phenomena, warmed his hands at the fire for some +time before he called in Jasper’s landlady.<br> +<br> +Grewgious now knows by Jasper’s behaviour that he believes himself +to have committed a superfluous crime, by murdering Edwin, who no longer +stood between him and Rosa, as their engagement was already at an end. +Whether a Jasper, in real life, would excite himself so much, is another +question. We do not know, as Mr. Proctor insists, what Mr. Grewgious +had been doing at Cloisterham between Christmas Day and December 27, +the date of his experiment on Jasper’s nerves. Mr. Proctor +supposes him to have met the living Edwin, and obtained information +from him, after his escape from a murderous attack by Jasper. +Mr. Proctor insists that this is the only explanation of Grewgious’s +conduct, any other “is absolutely impossible.” In +that case the experiment of Grewgious was not made to gain information +from Jasper’s demeanour, but was the beginning of his punishment, +and was intended by Grewgious to be so.<br> +<br> +But Dickens has been careful to suggest, with suspicious breadth of +candour, another explanation of the source of Grewgious’s knowledge. +If Edwin has really escaped, and met Grewgious, Dickens does not want +us to be sure of that, as Mr. Proctor was sure. Dickens deliberately +puts his readers on another trail, though neither Mr. Walters nor Mr. +Proctor struck the scent. As we have noted, Grewgious at once +says to Jasper, “<i>I have just come</i> <i>from Miss Landless</i>.” +This tells Jasper nothing, but it tells a great deal to the watchful +reader, who remembers that Miss Landless, and she only, is aware that +Jasper loves, bullies, and insults Rosa, and that Rosa’s life +is embittered by Jasper’s silent wooing, and his unspoken threats. +Helena may also know that “Ned is a threatened name,” as +we have seen, and that the menace comes from Jasper. As Jasper +is now known to be Edwin’s rival in love, and as Edwin has vanished, +the murderer, Mr. Grewgious reckons, is Jasper; and his experiment, +with Jasper’s consequent shriek and fit, confirms the hypothesis. +Thus Grewgious had information enough, from Miss Landless, to suggest +his experiment - Dickens intentionally made that clear (though not clear +enough for Mr. Proctor and Mr. Cuming Walters) - while his experiment +gives him a moral certainty of Jasper’s crime, but yields no legal +evidence.<br> +<br> +But does Grewgious know no more than what Helena, and the fit and shriek +of Jasper, have told him? Is his knowledge limited to the evidence +that Jasper has murdered Edwin? Or does Grewgious know more, know +that Edwin, in some way, has escaped from death?<br> +<br> +That is Dickens’s secret. But whereas Grewgious, if he believes +Jasper to be an actual murderer, should take him seriously; in point +of fact, he speaks of Jasper in so light a tone, as “our local +friend,” that we feel no certainty that he is not really aware +of Edwin’s escape from a murderous attack by Jasper, and of his +continued existence.<br> +<br> +Presently Crisparkle, under some mysterious impression, apparently telepathic +(the book is rich in such psychical phenomena), visits the weir on the +river, at night, and next day finds Edwin’s watch and chain in +the timbers; his scarf-pin in the pool below. The watch and chain +must have been placed purposely where they were found, they could not +float thither, and, if Neville had slain Edwin, he would not have stolen +his property, of course, except as a blind, neutralised by the placing +of the watch in a conspicuous spot. However, the increased suspicions +drive Neville away to read law in Staple Inn, where Grewgious also dwells, +and incessantly watches Neville out of his window.<br> +<br> +About six months later, Helena Landless is to join Neville, who is watched +at intervals by Jasper, who, again, is watched by Grewgious as the precentor +lurks about Staple Inn.<br> +<br> +<br> +DICK DATCHERY<br> +<br> +<br> +About the time when Helena leaves Cloisterham for town, a new character +appears in Cloisterham, “a white-headed personage with black eyebrows, +<i>buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout</i>, with a buff waistcoat, +grey trowsers, and something of a military air.” His shock +of white hair was unusually thick and ample. This man, “a +buffer living idly on his means,” named Datchery, is either, as +Mr. Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena +Landless. By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his +clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, “is off duty here,” +at his chambers, Dickens hints that Bazzard is Datchery. But that +is a mere false scent, a ruse of the author, scattering paper in the +wrong place, in this long paper hunt.<br> +<br> +As for Helena, Mr. Walters justly argues that Dickens has marked her +for some important part in the ruin of Jasper. “There was +a slumbering gleam of fire in her intense dark eyes. Let whomsoever +it most concerned look well to it.” Again, we have been +told that Helena had high courage. She had told Jasper that she +feared him “in no circumstances whatever.” Again, +we have learned that in childhood she had dressed as a boy when she +ran away from home; and she had the motives of protecting Rosa and her +brother, Neville, from the machinations of Jasper, who needs watching, +as he is trying to ruin Neville’s already dilapidated character, +and, by spying on him, to break down his nerve. Really, of course, +Neville is quite safe. There is no <i>corpus delicti</i>, no carcase +of the missing Edwin Drood.<br> +<br> +For the reasons given, Datchery might be Helena in disguise.<br> +<br> +If so, the idea is highly ludicrous, while nothing is proved either +by the blackness of Datchery’s eyebrows (Helena’s were black), +or by Datchery’s habit of carrying his hat under his arm, not +on his head. A person who goes so far as to wear a conspicuous +white wig, would not be afraid also to dye his eyebrows black, if he +were Edwin; while either Edwin or Helena <i>must</i> have “made +up” the face, by the use of paint and sham wrinkles. Either +Helena or Edwin would have been detected in real life, of course, but +we allow for the accepted fictitious convention of successful disguise, +and for the necessities of the novelist. A tightly buttoned surtout +would show Helena’s feminine figure; but let that also pass. +As to the hat, Edwin’s own hair was long and thick: add a wig, +and his hat would be a burden to him.<br> +<br> +What is most unlike the stern, fierce, sententious Helena, is Datchery’s +habit of “chaffing.” He fools the ass of a Mayor, +Sapsea, by most exaggerated diference: his tone is always that of indolent +mockery, which one doubts whether the “intense” and concentrated +Helena could assume. He takes rooms in the same house as Jasper, +to whom, as to Durdles and Deputy, he introduces himself on the night +of his arrival at Cloisterham. He afterwards addresses Deputy, +the little <i>gamin</i>, by the name “Winks,” which is given +to him by the people at the Tramps’ lodgings: the name is a secret +of Deputy’s.<br> +<br> +<br> +JASPER, ROSA, AND TARTAR<br> +<br> +<br> +Meanwhile Jasper formally proposes to Rosa, in the school garden: standing +apart and leaning against a sundial, as the garden is commanded by many +windows. He offers to resign his hopes of bringing Landless to +the gallows (perhaps this bad man would provide a <i>corpus</i> <i>delicti</i> +of his own making!) if Rosa will accept him: he threatens to “pursue +her to the death,” if she will not; he frightens her so thoroughly +that she rushes to Grewgious in his chambers in London. She now +suspects Jasper of Edwin’s murder, but keeps her thoughts to herself. +She tells Grewgious, who is watching Neville, - “I have a fancy +for keeping him under my eye,” - that Jasper has made love to +her, and Grewgious replies in a parody of “God save the King”!<br> +<br> +<br> +“On Thee his hopes to fix<br> +Damn him again!”<br> +<br> +<br> +Would he fool thus, if he knew Jasper to have killed Edwin? He +is not certain whether Rosa should visit Helena next day, in Landless’s +rooms, opposite; and Mr. Walters suggests that he may be aware that +Helena, dressed as Datchery, is really absent at Cloisterham. +However, next day, Helena is in her brother’s rooms. Moreover, +it is really a sufficient explanation of Grewgious’s doubt that +Jasper is lurking around, and that not till next day is a <i>private</i> +way of communication arranged between Neville and his friends. +In any case, next day, Helena is in her brother’s rooms, and, +by aid of a Mr. Tartar’s rooms, she and Rosa can meet privately. +There is a good deal of conspiring to watch Jasper when he watches Neville, +and in this new friend, Mr. Tartar, a lover is provided for Rosa. +Tartar is a miraculously agile climber over roofs and up walls, a retired +Lieutenant of the navy, and a handy man, being such a climber, to chase +Jasper about the roof of the Cathedral, when Jasper’s day of doom +arrives.<br> +<br> +<br> +JASPER’S OPIUM VISIONS<br> +<br> +<br> +In July, Jasper revisits the London opium den, and talks under opium, +watched by the old hag. He speaks of a thing which he often does +in visions: “a hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where +a slip would be destruction. Look down, look down! You see +what lies at the bottom there?” He enacts the vision and +says, “There was a fellow traveller.” He “speaks +in a whisper, and as if in the dark.” The vision is, in +this case, “a poor vision: no struggle, no consciousness of peril, +no entreaty.” Edwin, in the reminiscent vision, dies very +easily and rapidly. “When it comes to be real at last, it +is so short that it seems unreal for the first time.” “And +yet I never saw <i>that</i> before. Look what a poor miserable +mean thing it is. <i>That</i> must be real. It’s over.”<br> +<br> +What can all this mean? We have been told that, shortly before +Christmas Eve, Jasper took to wearing a thick black-silk handkerchief +for his throat. He hung it over his arm, “his face knitted +and stern,” as he entered his house for his Christmas Eve dinner. +If he strangled Edwin with the scarf, as we are to suppose, he did not +lead him, drugged, to the tower top, and pitch him off. Is part +of Jasper’s vision reminiscent - the brief, unresisting death +- while another part is a separate vision, is <i>prospective</i>, “premonitory”? +Does he see himself pitching Neville Landless off the tower top, or +see him fallen from the Cathedral roof? Is Neville’s body +“<i>that</i>” - “I never saw <i>that</i> before. +Look what a poor miserable mean thing it is! <i>That</i> must +be real.” Jasper “never saw <i>that</i>” - the +dead body below the height - before. <i>This</i> vision, I think, +is of the future, not of the past, and is meant to bewilder the reader +who thinks that the whole represents the slaying of Drood. The +tale is rich in “warnings” and telepathy.<br> +<br> +<br> +DATCHERY AND THE OPIUM WOMAN<br> +<br> +<br> +The hag now tracks Jasper home to Cloisterham. Here she meets +Datchery, whom she asks how she can see Jasper? If Datchery is +Drood, he now learns, <i>what he did not know before, that there</i> +<i>is some connection between Jasper and</i> <i>the hag</i>. He +walks with her to the place where Edwin met the hag, on Christmas Eve, +and gave her money; and he jingles his own money as he walks. +The place, or the sound of the money, makes the woman tell Datchery +about Edwin’s gift of three shillings and sixpence for opium. +Datchery, “with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden +look.” It does not follow that he is <i>not</i> Drood, for, +though the hag’s love of opium was known to Drood, Datchery is +not to reveal his recognition of the woman. He does what any stranger +would do; he “gives a sudden look,” as if surprised by the +mention of opium.<br> +<br> +Mr. Walters says, “Drood would not have changed countenance on +hearing a fact he had known six months previously.” But +if Drood was playing at being somebody else, he would, of course, give +a kind of start and stare, on hearing of the opium. When he also +hears from the hag that her former benefactor’s name was Edwin, +he asks her how she knew that - “a fatuously unnecessary question,” +says Mr. Walters. A needless question for Datchery’s information, +if he be Drood, but as useful a question as another if Drood be Datchery, +and wishes to maintain the conversation.<br> +<br> +<br> +DATCHERY’S SCORE<br> +<br> +<br> +Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in cryptic +chalk strokes. He does this, says Mr. Walters, because, being +Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand. +But nobody would <i>write</i> secrets on a door! He adds “a +moderate stroke,” after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters, +“Edwin Drood would have learned nothing new whatever” from +the hag.<br> +<br> +But Edwin would have learned something quite new, and very important +- that the hag was hunting Jasper. Next day Datchery sees the +woman shake her fists at Jasper in church, and hears from her that she +knows Jasper “better far than all the reverend parsons put together +know him.” Datchery then adds a long thick line to his chalked +score, yet, says Mr. Walters, Datchery has learned “nothing new +to Edwin Drood, if alive.”<br> +<br> +This is an obvious error. It is absolutely new to Edwin Drood +that the opium hag is intimately acquainted with his uncle, Jasper, +and hates Jasper with a deadly hatred. All this is not only new +to Drood, if alive, but is rich in promise of further revelations. +Drood, on Christmas Eve, had learned from the hag only that she took +opium, and that she had come from town to Cloisterham, and had “hunted +for a needle in a bottle of hay.” That was the sum of his +information. Now he learns that the woman knows, tracks, has found, +and hates, his worthy uncle, Jasper. He may well, therefore, add +a heavy mark to his score.<br> +<br> +We must also ask, How could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know “the +old tavern way of keeping scores? Illegible except to the scorer. +The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against him,” +as Datchery observes. An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to England, +would not argue thus with herself: she would probably know nothing of +English tavern scores. We do not hear that Helena ever opened +a book: we do know that education had been denied to her. What +acquaintance could she have with old English tavern customs?<br> +<br> +If Drood is Datchery, then Dickens used a form of a very old and favourite +<i>ficelle</i> of his: the watching of a villain by an improbable and +unsuspected person, in this case thought to be dead. If Helena +is Datchery, the “assumption” or personation is in the highest +degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her possibilities, +and the personation is very absurd.<br> +<br> +Here the story ends.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +FORSTER’S EVIDENCE<br> +<br> +<br> +We have some external evidence as to Dickens’s solution of his +own problem, from Forster. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a> +On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he began to work at his tale, Dickens, +in a letter, told Forster, “I have a very curious and new idea +for my new story. Not communicable (or the interest of the book +would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work.” +Forster must have instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should +be communicated to <i>him</i>, for he tells us that “<i>immediately +after</i> I learnt” - the secret. But did he learn it? +Dickens was ill, and his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly +criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out. “Fules +and bairns should not see half-done work,” and Dickens may well +have felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely +simmering in the author’s own fancy.<br> +<br> +Forster does not tell us that Dickens communicated the secret in a letter. +He quotes none: he says “I was told,” orally, that is. +When he writes, five years later (1874), “Landless was, <i>I think</i>, +to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the +murderer,” he is clearly trusting, not to a letter of Dickens’s, +but to a defective memory; and he knows it. He says that a nephew +was to be murdered by an uncle. The criminal was to confess in +the condemned cell. He was to find out that his crime had been +needless, and to be convicted by means of the ring (Rosa’s mother’s +ring) remaining in the quicklime that had destroyed the body of Edwin.<br> +<br> +Nothing “new” in all this, as Forster must have seen. +“The originality,” he explains, “was to consist in +the review of the murderer’s career by himself at the close, when +its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but +some other man, were the tempted.”<br> +<br> +But all this is not “hard to work,” and is not “original.” +As Mr. Proctor remarks, Dickens had used that trick twice already. +(“Madman’s Manuscript,” <i>Pickwick</i>; “Clock +Case Confession,” in <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>.) +The quicklime trick is also very old indeed. The disguise of a +woman as a man is as ancient as the art of fiction: yet Helena <i>may</i> +be Datchery, though nobody guessed it before Mr. Cuming Walters. +She ought not to be Datchery; she is quite out of keeping in her speech +and manner as Datchery, and is much more like Drood.<br> +<br> +<br> +“A NEW IDEA”<br> +<br> +<br> +There are no new ideas in plots. “All the stories have been +told,” and all the merit lies in the manner of the telling. +Dickens had used the unsuspected watcher, as Mr. Proctor shows, in almost +all his novels. In <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, when Jonas finds +that Nadgett has been the watcher, Dickens writes, “The dead man +might have come out of his grave and not confounded and appalled him +so.” Now, to Jasper, Edwin <i>was</i> “the dead man,” +and Edwin’s grave contained quicklime. Jasper was sure that +he had done for Edwin: he had taken Edwin’s watch, chain, and +scarf-pin; he believed that he had left him, drugged, in quicklime, +in a locked vault. Consequently the reappearance of Edwin, quite +well, in the vault where Jasper had buried him, would be a very new +idea to Jasper; would “confound and appall him.” Jasper +would have emotions, at that spectacle, and so would the reader! +It is not every day, even in our age of sixpenny novels, that a murderer +is compelled to visit, alone, at night, the vault which holds his victim’s +“cold remains,” and therein finds the victim “come +up, smiling.”<br> +<br> +Yes, for business purposes, this idea was new enough! The idea +was “difficult to work,” says Dickens, with obvious truth. +How was he to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out +of the vault? As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery +for Drood, and then think, “No, that is impossible, and also is +stale. Datchery cannot be Drood,” and thus the reader would +remain in a pleasant state of puzzledom, as he does, unto this day.<br> +<br> +If Edwin is dead, there is not much “Mystery” about him. +We have as good as seen Jasper strangle him and take his pin, chain, +and watch. Yet by adroitly managing the conduct of Mr. Grewgious, +Dickens persuaded Mr. Proctor that certainly, Grewgious knew Edwin to +be alive. As Grewgious knew, from Helena, all that was necessary +to provoke his experiment on Jasper’s nerves, Mr. Proctor argued +on false premises, but that was due to the craft of Dickens. Mr. +Proctor rejected Forster’s report, from memory, of what he understood +to be the “incommunicable secret” of Dickens’s plot, +and I think that he was justified in the rejection. Forster does +not seem to have cared about the thing - he refers lightly to “the +reader curious in such matters” - when once he had received his +explanation from Dickens. His memory, in the space of five years, +may have been inaccurate: he probably neither knew nor cared who Datchery +was; and he may readily have misunderstood what Dickens told him, orally, +about the ring, as the instrument of detection. Moreover, Forster +quite overlooked one source of evidence, as I shall show later.<br> +<br> +<br> +MR. PROCTOR’S THEORY<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Proctor’s theory of the story is that Jasper, after Edwin’s +return at midnight on Christmas Eve, recommended a warm drink - mulled +wine, drugged - and then proposed another stroll of inspection of the +effects of the storm. He then strangled him, somewhere, and placed +him in the quicklime in the Sapsea vault, locked him in, and went to +bed. Next, according to Mr. Proctor, Durdles, then, “lying +drunk in the precincts,” for some reason taps with his hammer +on the wall of the Sapsea vault, detects the presence of a foreign body, +opens the tomb, and finds Drood in the quicklime, “his face fortunately +protected by the strong silk shawl with which Jasper has intended to +throttle him.”<br> +<br> +<br> +A MISTAKEN THEORY<br> +<br> +<br> +This is “thin,” very “thin!” Dickens must +have had some better scheme than Mr. Proctor’s. Why did +Jasper not “mak sikker” like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn? +Why did he leave his silk scarf? It might come to be asked for; +to be sure the quicklime would destroy it, but why did Jasper leave +it? Why did the intoxicated Durdles come out of the crypt, if +he was there, enter the graveyard, and begin tapping at the wall of +the vault? Why not open the door? he had the key.<br> +<br> +Suppose, however, all this to have occurred, and suppose, with Mr. Proctor, +that Durdles and Deputy carried Edwin to the Tramps’ lodgings, +would Durdles fail to recognize Edwin? We are to guess that Grewgious +was present, or disturbed at his inn, or somehow brought into touch +with Edwin, and bribed Durdles to silence, “until a scheme for +the punishment of Jasper had been devised.”<br> +<br> +All this set of conjectures is crude to the last degree. We do +not know how Dickens meant to get Edwin into and out of the vault. +Granting that Edwin was drugged, Jasper might lead Edwin in, considering +the licence extended to the effects of drugs in novels, and might strangle +him there. Above all, how did Grewgious, if in Cloisterham, come +to be at hand at midnight?<br> +<br> +<br> +ANOTHER WAY<br> +<br> +<br> +If I must make a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his “filmy” +seizures, was “in a frightful sort of dream,” and bungled +the murder: made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and +women have often recovered. In Jasper’s opium vision and +reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over. +Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault. +He was apt to have a seizure after opium, in moments of excitement, +and <i>he had been at the</i> <i>opium den through the night of December</i> +23, for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on +December 24, the day of the crime. Grant that his accustomed fit +came upon him during the excitement of the murder, as it does come after +“a nicht wi’ opium,” in chapter ii., when Edwin excites +him by contemptuous talk of the girl whom Jasper loves so furiously +- and then anything may happen!<br> +<br> +Jasper murders Edwin inefficiently; he has a fit; while he is unconscious +the quicklime revives Edwin, by burning his hand, say, and, during Jasper’s +swoon, Edwin, like another famous prisoner, “has a happy thought, +he opens the door, and walks out.”<br> +<br> +Being drugged, he is in a dreamy state; knows not clearly what has occurred, +or who attacked him. Jasper revives, “look on’t again +he dare not,” - on the body of his victim - and <i>he</i> walks +out and goes home, where his red lamp has burned all the time - “thinking +it all wery capital.”<br> +<br> +“Another way,” - Jasper not only fails to strangle Drood, +but fails to lock the door of the vault, and Drood walks out after Jasper +has gone. Jasper has, before his fit, “removed from the +body the most lasting, the best known, and most easily recognizable +things upon it, the watch and scarf-pin.” So Dickens puts +the popular view of the case against Neville Landless, and so we are +to presume that Jasper acted. If he removed no more things from +the body than these, he made a fatal oversight.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile, how does Edwin, once out of the vault, make good a secret +escape from Cloisterham? Mr. Proctor invokes the aid of Mr. Grewgious, +but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot. I venture +to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to +Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas +appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost +love, Rosa’s mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but +too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. “A night +of memories and sighs” he might “consecrate” to his +lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to +have helped Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day. But he could +get out of that engagement. He would wish to see Edwin and Rosa +together, and Edwin was leaving Cloisterham. The date of Grewgious’s +arrival at Cloisterham is studiously concealed. I offer at least +a conceivable motive for Grewgious’s possible presence at the +churchyard. Mrs. Bud, his lost love, we have been told, was buried +hard by the Sapsea monument. If Grewgious visited her tomb, he +was on the spot to help Edwin, supposing Edwin to escape. Unlikelier +things occur in novels. I do not, in fact, call these probable +occurrences in every-day life, but none of the story is probable. +Jasper’s “weird seizures” are meant to lead up to +<i>something</i>. They may have been meant to lead up to the failure +of the murder and the escape of Edwin. Of course Dickens would +not have treated these incidents, when he came to make Edwin explain, +- nobody else could explain, - in my studiously simple style. +The drugged Edwin himself would remember the circumstances but mistily: +his evidence would be of no value against Jasper.<br> +<br> +Mr. Proctor next supposes, we saw, that Drood got into touch with Grewgious, +and I have added the circumstances which might take Grewgious to the +churchyard. Next, when Edwin recovered health, he came down, perhaps, +as Datchery, to spy on Jasper. I have elsewhere said, as Mr. Cuming +Walters quotes me, that “fancy can suggest no reason why Edwin +Drood, if he escaped from his wicked uncle, should go spying about instead +of coming openly forward. No plausible unfantastic reason could +be invented.” Later, I shall explain why Edwin, if he is +Datchery, might go spying alone.<br> +<br> +It is also urged that Edwin left Rosa in sorrow, and left blame on Neville +Landless. Why do this? Mr. Proctor replies that Grewgious’s +intense and watchful interest in Neville, otherwise unexplained, is +due to his knowledge that Drood is alive, and that Neville must be cared +for, while Grewgious has told Rosa that Edwin lives. He also told +her of Edwin’s real love of her, hence Miss Bud says, “Poor, +poor Eddy,” quite <i>à propos</i> <i>de bottes</i>, when +she finds herself many fathoms deep in love with Lieutenant Tartar, +R.N. “‘Poor, poor Eddy!’ thought Rosa, as they +walked along,” Tartar and she. This is a plausible suggestion +of Mr. Proctor. Edwin, though known to Rosa to be alive, has no +chance! But, as to my own remark, “why should not Edwin +come forward at once, instead of spying about?” Well, if +he did, there would be no story. As for “an unfantastic +reason” for his conduct, Dickens is not writing an “unfantastic” +novel. Moreover, if things occurred as I have suggested, I do +not see what evidence Drood had against Jasper. Edwin’s +clothes were covered with lime, but, when he told his story, Jasper +would reply that Drood never returned to his house on Christmas Eve, +but stayed out, “doing what was correct by the season, in the +way of giving it the welcome it had the right to expect,” like +Durdles on another occasion. Drood’s evidence, if it was +what I have suggested, would sound like the dream of an intoxicated +man, and what other evidence could be adduced? Thus I had worked +out Drood’s condition, if he really was not killed, in this way: +I had supposed him to escape, in a very mixed frame of mind, when he +would be encountered by Grewgious, who, of course, could make little +out of him in his befogged state. Drood could not even prove that +it was not Landless who attacked him. The result would be that +Drood would lie low, and later, would have reason enough for disguising +himself as Datchery, and playing the spy in Cloisterham.<br> +<br> +At this point I was reinforced by an opinion which Mr. William Archer +had expressed, unknown to me, in a newspaper article. I had described +Edwin’s confused knowledge of his own experience, if he were thoroughly +drugged, and then half strangled. Mr. Archer also took that point, +and added that Edwin being a good-hearted fellow, and fond of his uncle +Jasper, he would not bring, or let Grewgious bring, a terrible charge +against Jasper, till he knew more certainly the whole state of the case. +For that reason, he would come disguised to Cloisterham and make inquiries. +By letting Jasper know about the ring, he would compel him to enter +the vault, and then, Mr. Archer thinks, would induce him to “repent +and begin life afresh.”<br> +<br> +I scarcely think that Datchery’s purpose was so truly honourable: +he rather seems to be getting up a case against Jasper. Still, +the idea of Mr. Archer is very plausible, and, at least, given Drood’s +need of evidence, and the lack of evidence against Jasper, we see reason +good, in a novel of this kind, for his playing the part of amateur detective.<br> +<br> +<br> +DICKENS’S UNUSED DRAFT OF A CHAPTER<br> +<br> +<br> +Forster found, and published, a very illegible sketch of a chapter of +the tale: “How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a Member of the Eight Club, +Told by Himself.” This was “a cramped, interlined, +and blotted” draft, on paper of only half the size commonly used +by Dickens. Mr. Sapsea tells how his Club mocked him about a stranger, +who had mistaken him for the Dean. The jackass, Sapsea, left the +Club, and met the stranger, <i>a young</i> <i>man</i>, who fooled him +to the top of his bent, saying, “If I was to deny that I came +to this town to see and hear you, Sir, what would it avail me?” +Apparently this paper was a rough draft of an idea for introducing a +detective, as a <i>young</i> man, who mocks Sapsea just as Datchery +does in the novel. But to make the spy <i>a young</i> man, whether +the spy was Drood or Helena Landless, was too difficult; and therefore +Dickens makes Datchery “an elderly buffer” in a white wig. +If I am right, it was easier for Helena, a girl, to pose as a young +man, than for Drood to reappear as a young man, not himself. Helena +<i>may</i> be Datchery, and yet Drood may be alive and biding his time; +but I have disproved my old objection that there was no reason why Drood, +if alive, should go spying about in disguise. There were good +Dickensian reasons.<br> +<br> +<br> +A QUESTION OF TASTE<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Cuming Walters argues that the story is very tame if Edwin is still +alive, and left out of the marriages at the close. Besides, “Drood +is little more than a name-label, attached to a body, a man who never +excites sympathy, whose fate causes no emotion, he is saved for no useful +or sentimental purpose, and lags superfluous on the stage. All +of which is bad art, so bad that Dickens would never have been guilty +of it.”<br> +<br> +That is a question of taste. On rereading the novel, I see that +Dickens makes Drood as sympathetic as he can. He is very young, +and speaks of Rosa with bad taste, but he is really in love with her, +much more so than she with him, and he is piqued by her ceaseless mockery, +and by their false position. To Jasper he is singularly tender, +and remorseful when he thinks that he has shown want of tact. +There is nothing ominous about his gaiety: as to his one fault, we leave +him, on Christmas Eve, a converted character: he has a kind word and +look for every one whom he meets, young and old. He accepts Mr. +Grewgious’s very stern lecture in the best manner possible. +In short, he is marked as faulty - “I am young,” so +he excuses himself, in the very words of Darnley to Queen Mary! (if +the Glasgow letter be genuine); but he is also marked as sympathetic.<br> +<br> +He was, I think, to have a lesson, and to become a good fellow. +Mr. Proctor rightly argues (and Forster “thinks”), that +Dickens meant to kill Neville Landless: Mr. Cuming Walters agrees with +him, but Mr. Proctor truly adds that Edwin has none of the signs of +Dickens’s doomed men, his Sidney Cartons, and the rest. +You can tell, as it were by the sound of the voice of Dickens, says +Mr. Proctor, that Edwin is to live. The impression is merely subjective, +but I feel the impression. The doom of Landless is conspicuously +fixed, and why is Landless to be killed by Jasper? Merely to have +a count on which to hang Jasper! He cannot be hanged for killing +Drood, if Drood is alive.<br> +<br> +<br> +MR. PROCTOR’S THEORY CONTINUED<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Proctor next supposes that Datchery and others, by aid of the opium +hag, have found out a great deal of evidence against Jasper. They +have discovered from the old woman that his crime was long premeditated: +he had threatened “Ned” in his opiated dreams: and had clearly +removed Edwin’s trinkets and watch, because they would not be +destroyed, with his body, by the quicklime. This is all very well, +but there is still, so far, no legal evidence, on my theory, that Jasper +attempted to take Edwin’s life. Jasper’s enemies, +therefore, can only do their best to make his life a burden to him, +and to give him a good fright, probably with the hope of terrifying +him into avowals.<br> +<br> +Now the famous ring begins “to drag and hold” the murderer. +He is given to know, I presume, that, when Edwin disappeared, he had +a gold ring in the pocket of his coat. Jasper is thus compelled +to revisit the vault, at night, and there, in the light of his lantern, +he sees the long-lost Edwin, with his hand in the breast of his great +coat.<br> +<br> +Horrified by this unexpected appearance, Jasper turns to fly. +But he is confronted by Neville Landless, Crisparkle, Tartar, and perhaps +by Mr. Grewgious, who are all on the watch. He rushes up through +the only outlet, the winding staircase of the Cathedral tower, of which +we know that he has had the key. Neville, who leads his pursuers, +“receives his death wound” (and, I think, is pitched off +the top of the roof). Then Jasper is collared by that agile climber, +Tartar, and by Crisparkle, always in the pink of condition. There +is now something to hang Jasper for - the slaying of Landless (though, +as far as I can see, <i>that</i> was done in self-defence). Jasper +confesses all; Tartar marries Rosa; Helena marries Crisparkle. +Edwin is only twenty-one, and may easily find a consoler of the fair +sex: indeed he is “ower young to marry yet.”<br> +<br> +The capture of Jasper was fixed, of course, for Christmas Eve. +The phantom cry foreheard by Durdles, two years before, was that of +Neville as he fell; and the dog that howled was Neville’s dog, +a character not yet introduced into the romance.<br> +<br> +<br> +MR. CUMING WALTERS’S THEORY<br> +<br> +<br> +Such is Mr. Proctor’s theory of the story, in which I mainly agree. +Mr. Proctor relies on a piece of evidence overlooked by Forster, and +certainly misinterpreted, as I think I can prove to a certainty, by +Mr. Cuming Walters, whose theory of the real conduct of the plot runs +thus: After watching the storm at midnight with Edwin, Neville left +him, and went home: “his way lay in an opposite direction. +Near to the Cathedral Jasper intercepted his nephew. . . . Edwin may +have been already drugged.” How the murder was worked Mr. +Cuming Walters does not say, but he introduces at this point, the two +sounds foreheard by Durdles, without explaining “the howl of a +dog.” Durdles would hear the cries, and Deputy “had +seen what he could not understand,” whatever it was that he saw. +Jasper, not aware of Drood’s possession of the ring, takes only +his watch, chain, and pin, which he places on the timbers of the weir, +and in the river, to be picked up by that persistent winter-bather, +Crisparkle of the telescopic and microscopic eyesight.<br> +<br> +As to the ring, Mr. Cuming Walters erroneously declares that Mr. Proctor +“ignores” the power of the ring “to hold and drag,” +and says that potent passage is “without meaning and must be disregarded.” +Proctor, in fact, gives more than three pages to the meaning of the +ring, which “drags” Jasper into the vault, when he hears +of its existence. <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a> +Next, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes Datchery to learn from Durdles, whom +he is to visit, about the second hearing of the cry and the dog’s +howl. Deputy may have seen Jasper “carrying his burden” +(Edwin) “towards the Sapsea vault.” In fact, Jasper +probably saved trouble by making the drugged Edwin walk into that receptacle. +“Datchery would not think of the Sapsea vault unaided.” +No - unless Datchery was Drood ! “Now Durdles is useful +again. Tapping with his hammer he would find a change . . . inquiry +must be made.” Why should Durdles tap the Sapsea monument? +As Durdles had the key, he would simply walk into the vault, and find +the quicklime. Now, Jasper also, we presume, had a key, made from +a wax impression of the original. If he had any sense, he would +have removed the quicklime as easily as he inserted it, for Mr. Sapsea +was mortal: he might die any day, and be buried, and then the quicklime, +lying where it ought not, would give rise to awkward inquiries.<br> +<br> +Inquiry being made, in consequence of Durdles’s tappings, the +ring would be found, as Mr. Cuming Walters says. But even then, +unless Deputy actually saw Jasper carry a man into the vault, nobody +could prove Jasper’s connection with the presence of the ring +in the vault. Moreover, Deputy hated Jasper, and if he saw Jasper +carrying the body of a man, on the night when a man disappeared, he +was clever enough to lead Durdles to examine the vault, <i>at once</i>. +Deputy had a great dislike of the Law and its officers, but here was +a chance for him to distinguish himself, and conciliate them.<br> +<br> +However these things may be, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes that Jasper, +finding himself watched, re-enters the vault, perhaps, “to see +that every trace of the crime had been removed.” In the +vault he finds - Datchery, that is, Helena Landless! Jasper certainly +visited the vault and found somebody.<br> +<br> +<br> +EVIDENCE OF COLLINS’S DRAWINGS<br> +<br> +<br> +We now come to the evidence which Forster strangely overlooked, which +Mr. Proctor and Mr. Archer correctly deciphered, and which Mr. Cuming +Walters misinterprets. On December 22, 1869, Dickens wrote to +Forster that two numbers of his romance were “now in type. +Charles Collins has designed an excellent cover.” Mr. C. +A. Collins had married a daughter of Dickens. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> +He was an artist, a great friend of Dickens, and author of that charming +book, “A Cruise on Wheels.” His design of the paper +cover of the story (it appeared in monthly numbers) contained, as usual, +sketches which give an inkling of the events in the tale. Mr. +Collins was to have illustrated the book; but, finally, Mr. (now Sir) +Luke Fildes undertook the task. Mr. Collins died in 1873. +It appears that Forster never asked him the meaning of his designs - +a singular oversight.<br> +<br> +The cover lies before the reader. In the left-hand top corner +appears an allegorical female figure of joy, with flowers. The +central top space contains the front of Cloisterham Cathedral, or rather, +the nave. To the left walks Edwin, with hyacinthine locks, and +a thoroughly classical type of face, and Grecian nose. <i>Like +Datchery, he does not wear, but</i> <i>carries his hat</i>; this means +nothing, if they are in the nave. He seems bored. On his +arm is Rosa; <i>she</i> seems bored; she trails her parasol, and looks +away from Edwin, looks down, to her right. On the spectator’s +right march the surpliced men and boys of the Choir. Behind them +is Jasper, black whiskers and all; he stares after Edwin and Rosa; his +right hand hides his mouth. In the corner above him is an allegorical +female, clasping a stiletto.<br> +<br> +Beneath Edwin and Rosa is, first, an allegorical female figure, looking +at a placard, headed “LOST,” on a door. Under that, +again, is a girl in a garden-chair; a young man, whiskerless, with wavy +hair, kneels and kisses her hand. She looks rather unimpassioned. +I conceive the man to be Landless, taking leave of Rosa after urging +his hopeless suit, for which Helena, we learn, “seems to compassionate +him.” He has avowed his passion, early in the story, to +Crisparkle. Below, the opium hag is smoking. On the other +side, under the figures of Jasper and the Choir, the young man who kneels +to the girl is seen bounding up a spiral staircase. His left hand +is on the iron railing; he stoops over it, looking down at others who +follow him. His right hand, the index finger protruded, points +upward, and, by chance or design, points straight at Jasper in the vignette +above. Beneath this man (clearly Landless) follows a tall man +in a “bowler” hat, a “cut-away” coat, and trousers +which show an inch of white stocking above the low shoes. His +profile is hid by the wall of the spiral staircase: he might be Grewgious +of the shoes, white stockings, and short trousers, but he may be Tartar: +he takes two steps at a stride. Beneath him a youngish man, in +a low, soft, clerical hat and a black pea-coat, ascends, looking downwards +and backwards. This is clearly Crisparkle. A Chinaman is +smoking opium beneath.<br> +<br> +In the central lowest space, a dark and whiskered man enters a dark +chamber; his left hand is on the lock of the door; in his right he holds +up a lantern. The light of the lantern reveals a young man in +a soft hat of Tyrolese shape. His features are purely classical, +his nose is Grecian, his locks are long (at least, according to the +taste of to-day); he wears a light paletot, buttoned to the throat; +his right arm hangs by his side; his left hand is thrust into the breast +of his coat. He calmly regards the dark man with the lantern. +That man, of course, is Jasper. The young man is EDWIN DROOD, +of the Grecian nose, hyacinthine locks, and classic features, as in +Sir L. Fildes’s third illustration.<br> +<br> +Mr. Proctor correctly understood the unmistakable meaning of this last +design, Jasper entering the vault -<br> +<br> +<br> +“<i>To-day the dead are living,<br> +The lost is found to-day</i>.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Cuming Walters tells us that he did not examine these designs by +Mr. Collins till he had formed his theory, and finished his book. +“On the conclusion of the whole work the pictures were referred +to for the first time, and were then found to support in the most striking +manner the opinions arrived at,” namely, that Drood was killed, +and that Helena is Datchery. Thus does theory blind us to facts!<br> +<br> +Mr. Cuming Walters connects the figure of the whiskerless young man +kneeling to a girl in a garden seat, with the whiskered Jasper’s +proposal to Rosa in a garden seat. But Jasper does not kneel to +Rosa; he stands apart, leaning on a sundial; he only once vaguely “touches” +her, which she resents; he does not kneel; he does not kiss her hand +(Rosa “took the kiss sedately,” like Maud in the poem); +and - Jasper had lustrous thick black whiskers.<br> +<br> +Again, the same whiskerless young man, bounding up the spiral staircase +in daylight, and wildly pointing upwards, is taken by Mr. Cuming Walters +to represent Jasper climbing the staircase to reconnoitre, at night, +with a lantern, and, of course, with black whiskers. The two well-dressed +men on the stairs (Grewgious, or Tartar, and Crisparkle) also, according +to Mr. Cuming Walters, “relate to Jasper’s unaccountable +expedition with Durdles to the Cathedral.” Neither of them +is Jasper; neither of them is Durdles, “in a suit of coarse flannel” +- a disreputable jacket, as Sir L. Fildes depicts him - “with +horn buttons,” and a battered old tall hat. These interpretations +are quite demonstrably erroneous and even impossible. Mr. Archer +interprets the designs exactly as I do.<br> +<br> +As to the young man in the light of Jasper’s lamp, Mr. Cuming +Walters says, “the large hat and the tightly-buttoned surtout +must be observed; they are the articles of clothing on which most stress +is laid in the description of Datchery. But the face is young.” +The face of Datchery was elderly, and he had a huge shock of white hair, +a wig. Datchery wore “a tightish blue surtout, with a buff +waistcoat and grey trousers; he had something of a military air.” +The young man in the vault has anything but a military air; he shows +no waistcoat, and he does not wear “a tightish blue surtout,” +or any surtout at all.<br> +<br> +The surtout of the period is shown, worn by Jasper, in Sir L. Fildes’s +sixth and ninth illustrations. It is a frock-coat; the collar +descends far below the top of the waistcoat (buff or otherwise), displaying +that garment; the coat is tightly buttoned beneath, revealing the figure; +the tails of the coat do not reach the knees of the wearer. The +young man in the vault, on the other hand, wears a loose paletot, buttoned +to the throat (vaults are chilly places), and the coat falls so as to +cover the knees; at least, partially. The young man is not, like +Helena, “very dark, and fierce of look, . . . of almost the gipsy +type.” He is blonde, sedate, and of the classic type, as +Drood was. He is no more like Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles. +Mr. Cuming Walters says that Mr. Proctor was “unable to allude +to the prophetic picture by Collins.” As a fact, this picture +is fully described by Mr. Proctor, but Mr. Walters used the wrong edition +of his book, unwittingly.<br> +<br> +Mr. Proctor writes:- “Creeping down the crypt steps, oppressed +by growing horror and by terror of coming judgment, sickening under +fears engendered by the darkness of night and the charnel-house air +he breathed, Jasper opens the door of the tomb and holds up his lantern, +shuddering at the thought of what it may reveal to him.<br> +<br> +“And what sees he? Is it the spirit of his victim that stands +there, ‘in his habit as he lived,’ his hand clasped on his +breast, where the ring had been when he was murdered? What else +can Jasper deem it? There, clearly visible in the gloom at the +back of the tomb, stands Edwin Drood, with stern look fixed on him - +pale, silent, relentless!”<br> +<br> +Again, “On the title-page are given two of the small pictures +from the Love side of the cover, two from the Murder side, and the central +picture below, which presents the central horror of the story - the +end and aim of the ‘Datchery assumption’ and of Mr. Grewgious’s +plans - showing Jasper driven to seek for the proofs of his crime amid +the dust to which, as he thought, the flesh and bones, and the very +clothes of his victim, had been reduced.”<br> +<br> +There are only two possible choices; either Collins, under Dickens’s +oral instructions, depicted Jasper finding Drood alive in the vault, +an incident which was to occur in the story; or Dickens bade Collins +do this for the purpose of misleading his readers in an illegitimate +manner; while the young man in the vault was really to be some person +“made up” to look like Drood, and so to frighten Jasper +with a pseudo-ghost of that hero. The latter device, the misleading +picture, would be childish, and the pseudo-ghost, exactly like Drood, +could not be acted by the gipsy-like, fierce Helena, or by any other +person in the romance.<br> +<br> +<br> +MR. WALTERS’S THEORY CONTINUED<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Cuming Walters guesses that Jasper was to aim a deadly blow (with +his left hand, to judge from the picture) at Helena, and that Neville +“was to give his life for hers.” But, manifestly, +Neville was to lead the hunt of Jasper up the spiral stair, as in Collins’s +design, and was to be dashed from the roof: his body beneath was to +be “<i>that</i>, I never saw before. <i>That</i> must be +real. Look what a poor mean miserable thing it is!” as Jasper +says in his vision.<br> +<br> +Mr. Cuming Walters, pursuing his idea of Helena as both Datchery and +also as the owner of “the <i>young</i> face” of the youth +in the vault (and also of the young hands, a young girl’s hands +could never pass for those of “an elderly buffer”), exclaims: +“Imagine the intense power of the dramatic climax, when Datchery, +the elderly man, is re-transformed into Helena Landless, the young and +handsome woman; and when she reveals the seemingly impenetrable secret +which had been closed up in one guilty man’s mind.”<br> +<br> +The situations are startling, I admit, but how would Canon Crisparkle +like them? He is, we know, to marry Helena, “the young person, +my dear,” Miss Twinkleton would say, “who for months lived +alone, at inns, wearing a blue surtout, a buff waistcoat, and grey - +” Here horror chokes the utterance of Miss Twinkleton. +“Then she was in the vault in <i>another</i> disguise, not more +womanly, at that awful scene when poor Mr. Jasper was driven mad, so +that he confessed all sorts of nonsense, for, my dear, all the Close +believes that it <i>was</i> nonsense, and that Mr. Jasper was reduced +to insanity by persecution. And Mr. Crisparkle, with that elegant +dainty mother of his - it has broken her heart - is marrying this half-caste +gipsy <i>trollop</i>, with her blue surtout and grey - oh, it is a disgrace +to Cloisterham!”<br> +<br> +The climax, in fact, as devised by Mr. Cuming Walters, is rather too +dramatic for the comfort of a minor canon. A humorist like Dickens +ought to have seen the absurdity of the situation. Mr. Walters +<i>may</i> be right, Helena may be Datchery, but she ought not to be.<br> +<br> +<br> +WHO WAS THE PRINCESS PUFFER?<br> +<br> +<br> +Who was the opium hag, the Princess Puffer? Mr. Cuming Walters +writes: “We make a guess, for Dickens gives us no solid facts. +But when we remember that not a word is said throughout the volume of +Jasper’s antecedents, who he was, and where he came from; when +we remember that but for his nephew he was a lonely man; when we see +that he was both criminal and artist; when we observe his own wheedling +propensity, his false and fulsome protestations of affection, his slyness, +his subtlety, his heartlessness, his tenacity; and when, above all, +we know that the opium vice is <i>hereditary</i>, and that a <i>young</i> +man would not be addicted to it unless born with the craving; <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> +then, it is not too wild a conjecture that Jasper was the wayward progeny +of this same opium-eating woman, all of whose characteristics he possessed, +and, perchance, of a man of criminal instincts, but of a superior position. +Jasper is a morbid and diseased being while still in the twenties, a +mixture of genius and vice. He hates and he loves fiercely, as +if there were wild gipsy blood in his veins. Though seemingly +a model of decorum and devoted to his art, he complains of his “daily +drudging round” and “the cramped monotony of his existence.” +He commits his crime with the ruthlessness of a beast, his own nature +being wholly untamed. If we deduce that his father was an adventurer +and a vagabond, we shall not be far wrong. If we deduce that his +mother was the opium-eater, prematurely aged, who had transmitted her +vicious propensity to her child, we shall almost certainly be right.”<br> +<br> +<br> +WHO WAS JASPER?<br> +<br> +<br> +Who was Jasper? He was the brother-in-law of the late Mr. Drood, +a respected engineer, and University man. We do not know whence +came Mrs. Drood, Jasper’s sister, but is it likely that her mother +“drank heaven’s-hard” - so the hag says of herself +- then took to keeping an opium den, and there entertained her son Jasper, +already an accomplished vocalist, but in a lower station than that to +which his musical genius later raised him, as lay Precentor? If +the Princess Puffer be, as on Mr. Cuming Walters’s theory she +is, Edwin’s long-lost grandmother, her discovery would be unwelcome +to Edwin. Probably she did not live much longer; “my lungs +are like cabbage nets,” she says. Mr. Cuming Walters goes +on -<br> +<br> +“Her purpose is left obscure. How easily, however, we see +possibilities in a direction such as this. The father, perhaps +a proud, handsome man, deserts the woman, and removes the child. +The woman hates both for scorning her, but the father dies, or disappears, +and is beyond her vengeance. Then the child, victim to the ills +in his blood, creeps back to the opium den, not knowing his mother, +but immediately recognized by her. She will make the child suffer +for the sins of the father, who had destroyed her happiness. Such +a theme was one which appealed to Dickens. It must not, however, +be urged; and the crucial question after all is concerned with the opium +woman as one of the unconscious instruments of justice, aiding with +her trifle of circumstantial evidence the Nemesis awaiting Jasper.<br> +<br> +“Another hypothesis - following on the Carker theme in ‘Dombey +and Son’ - is that Jasper, a dissolute and degenerate man, lascivious, +and heartless, may have wronged a child of the woman’s; but it +is not likely that Dickens would repeat the Mrs. Brown story.”<br> +<br> +Jasper, <i>père</i>, father of John Jasper and of Mrs. Drood, +however handsome, ought not to have deserted Mrs. Jasper. Whether +John Jasper, prematurely devoted to opium, became Edwin’s guardian +at about the age of fifteen, or whether, on attaining his majority, +he succeeded to some other guardian, is not very obvious. In short, +we cannot guess why the Princess Puffer hated Jasper, a paying client +of long standing. We are only certain that Jasper was a bad fellow, +and that the Princess Puffer said, “I know him, better than all +the Reverend Parsons put together know him.” On the other +hand, Edwin “seems to know” the opium woman, when he meets +her on Christmas Eve, which may be a point in favour of her being his +long-lost grandmother.<br> +<br> +Jasper was certainly tried and condemned; for Dickens intended “to +take Mr. Fildes to a condemned cell in Maidstone, or some other gaol, +in order to make a drawing.” <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a> +Possibly Jasper managed to take his own life, in the cell; possibly +he was duly hanged.<br> +<br> +Jasper, after all, was a failure as a murderer, even if we suppose him +to have strangled his nephew successfully. “It is obvious +to the most excruciatingly feeble capacity” that, if he meant +to get rid of proofs of the identity of Drood’s body by means +of quicklime, it did not suffice to remove Drood’s pin, watch, +and chain. Drood would have coins of the realm in his pockets, +gold, silver, bronze. Quicklime would not destroy these metallic +objects, nor would it destroy keys, which would easily prove Drood’s +identity. If Jasper knew his business, he would, of course, rifle +<i>all</i> of Edwin’s pockets minutely, and would remove the metallic +buttons of his braces, which generally display the maker’s name, +or the tailor’s. On research I find “H. Poole & +Co., Savile Row” on my buttons. In this inquiry of his, +Jasper would have discovered the ring in Edwin’s breast pocket, +and would have taken it away. Perhaps Dickens never thought of +that little fact: if he did think of it, no doubt he found some mode +of accounting for Jasper’s unworkmanlike negligence. The +trouser-buttons would have led any inquirer straight to Edwin’s +tailor; I incline to suspect that neither Dickens nor Jasper noticed +that circumstance. The conscientious artist in crime cannot afford +to neglect the humblest and most obvious details.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CONCLUSION<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +According to my theory, which mainly rests on the unmistakable evidence +of the cover drawn by Collins under Dickens’s directions, all +“ends well.” Jasper comes to the grief he deserves: +Helena, after her period of mourning for Neville, marries Crisparkle: +Rosa weds her mariner. Edwin, at twenty-one, is not heart-broken, +but, a greatly improved character, takes, to quote his own words, “a +sensible interest in works of engineering skill, especially when they +are to change the whole condition of an undeveloped country” - +Egypt.<br> +<br> +These conclusions are inevitable unless we either suppose Dickens to +have arranged a disappointment for his readers in the <i>tableau</i> +of Jasper and Drood, in the vault, on the cover, or can persuade ourselves +that not Drood, but some other young man, is revealed by the light of +Jasper’s lantern. Now, the young man is very like Drood, +and very unlike the dark fierce Helena Landless: disguised as Drood, +this time, not as Datchery. All the difficulty as to why Drood, +if he escaped alive, did not at once openly denounce Jasper, is removed +when we remember, as Mr. Archer and I have independently pointed out, +that Drood, when attacked by Jasper, was (like Durdles in the “unaccountable +expedition”) stupefied by drugs, and so had no valid evidence +against his uncle. Whether science is acquainted with the drugs +necessary for such purposes is another question. They are always +kept in stock by starving and venal apothecaries in fiction and the +drama, and are a recognized convention of romance.<br> +<br> +So ends our unfolding of the Mystery of Edwin Drood.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Footnotes:<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> Landless +is not “Lackland,” but a form of de Laundeles, a Lothian +name of the twelfth century, merged later in that of Ormistoun.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> <i>Life of +Dickens</i>, vol. iii. pp. 425-439.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> J. Cuming +Walters, p. 102; Proctor, pp. 131-135. Mr. Cuming Walters used +an edition of 1896, apparently a reprint of a paper by Proctor, written +earlier than his final book of 1887. Hence the error as to Mr. +Proctor’s last theory.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> Mrs. Perugini, +the books say, but certainly a daughter.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> What would +Weissmann say to all this?<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> So Mr. Cuming +Walters quotes Mr. Hughes, who quotes Sir L. Fildes. <i>He</i> +believes that Jasper strangled Edwin with the black-silk scarf, and, +no doubt, Jasper was for long of that opinion himself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PUZZLE OF DICKENS'S LAST PLOT ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named pldlp10h.htm or pldlp10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, pldlp11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, pldlp10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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