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 _hereditary_, and that a _young_ man would not be addicted
to it unless born with the craving; {91} 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.”