* * * * *
CHAPTER III—THE ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE WRAPPER
Much attention has been given to the illustrations on the wrapper and
their significance. So far as I can find, the question was first raised
in the _Spectator_. On 1st October 1870, in a review of the first
edition of _Edwin Drood_, the _Spectator_ complained that the publishers
had not given a facsimile of the vignetted cover. The critic proceeds:
‘By whom was the lamplight discovery of a standing figure, apparently
meant for Edwin Drood, in the vignette at the bottom of the page,
intended to be made?’ He inquired also whether the man entering with the
lanthorn was John Jasper, and what were the directions given by Mr.
Dickens as to the ascent of the winding staircase represented on the
right hand of the cover. The _Spectator_ asked for any authentic
indications which might exist of the turn which Dickens intended to give
to the story. ‘Nor can we see how it can be possible that no such
indications exist, with this prefiguring cover to prove that he had not
only anticipated, but disclosed to some one or other, many of the
situations he intended to paint.’ Since then others, and in particular
Mr. Andrew Lang, have with much insistency declared that the bottom
picture represents a meeting of the risen Edwin Drood with his
horror-stricken uncle, John Jasper.
In reply to these questions certain considerations may be adduced:
1. We have already shown from the testimony of Charles Allston Collins,
as reported by his widow, and by Sir Luke Fildes, that he, at least, was
not aware of any such intention in the mind of Dickens. On the contrary,
Madame Perugini and Sir Luke Fildes are convinced that Edwin Drood was
murdered. More than this, Charles Dickens the younger, who was more or
less in his father’s confidence, agreed with them. As we have noted, he
affirmed that his father had told him that Edwin Drood was murdered, and
he constructed his play on that basis.
2. I attach much weight to Madame Perugini’s suggestion that whatever
her father meant or did not mean, he was certainly not the man to give
away on the cover the answer to the mystery. He may have meant—he very
probably did—before he began the story to mystify his readers a little.
This is shown, I think, by the various suggested titles printed on page
57. But as he rejected those titles, it is plain that he thought them
unsatisfactory, and that he refrained from raising in the title at least
the question whether the murder of Edwin Drood was accomplished.
3. I had prepared materials for a chapter on the wrappers of Dickens’s
novels as used in the monthly parts, but it is not necessary to go into
particulars. I am glad to find myself in full agreement with the eminent
Dickens scholar, Mr. B W. Matz, who attaches no importance to the covers.
I put no trust in the wrapper of _Edwin Drood_ any more than I should in
that of _Pickwick_, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Little Dorrit_, _Dombey and
Son_, and many others, for a suggestion of any intricate points in any of
their plots. The only covers which may be reliable in this respect are
_A Tale of Two Cities_, _Oliver Twist_, and _Sketches by Boz_. Each of
these works was issued in parts after their respective stories had
appeared complete in other forms. All the others must have been designed
before the first parts were published, and knowing the freedom which
Dickens allowed himself we can attach little importance to the evidence
of a particular cover as an index to the story.
When Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., completed his seventy-second year, on 4th
July 1912, he was interviewed by a representative of the _Morning Post_,
and said:
The cover of _Our Mutual Friend_, with the representation of
different incidents in the story, I drew after seeing an amount of
matter equivalent to no more than the first two one-shilling monthly
parts. Here it is: you will see that I depicted among other
characters, Mr. Silas Wegg. Well, I was aware that Wegg had a wooden
leg, but I wanted to know whether this was his right or his left leg,
as there was nothing in the material before me that threw light on
this point. To my surprise, Dickens said: ‘I do not know. I do not
think I had identified the leg.’ That was the only time I ever knew
him to be at fault on a point of this kind, for as a rule he was
ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal
characteristics, and, I might almost add, the life-history of the
creations of his fancy.
4. But the final proof of the impossibility of making trustworthy
deductions from the cover is to be found in the fact that no readers read
it in the same way. In proof of this I give the readings of Professor
Henry Jackson, Mr. Andrew Lang, Dr. M. R. James, and Mr. Cuming Walters.
Through the great kindness of Mr. Hugh Thomson the artist, who has made a
study of this subject and has given me his results, I am able to add
another interpretation certainly of no lower authority than those which
accompany it.
PROFESSOR JACKSON’S READING
We may fairly presume that the figures in the four corners represent
comedy, tragedy, the opium-woman, and the Chinaman. In the nave of
the Cathedral, Edwin and Rosa pair off against Jasper and Crisparkle.
Despite the discrepancy which Mr. Lang points out, I think that the
lower of the two pictures on our left shows Jasper and Rosa in the
garden of the Nuns’ House. In the upper side-piece, the girl is, I
am sure, Rosa flying from Jasper’s pursuit, in full view of a placard
announcing Edwin’s disappearance. It is true that the hatless girl
with her hair streaming down her back does not answer very well to
Dickens’s description of Rosa, and has no resemblance to Sir L.
Fildes’s pictures of her: but if Dickens, when he had not yet thought
out his conception of her personality, told Collins to draw a
frightened girl of seventeen running away from school, no more than
this could be expected. For the scheme of the sketch, compare the
picture in _Bleak House_, which shows Lady Dedlock, as she mounts the
staircase, turning to look at a bill announcing a reward for the
discovery of the murderer of Tulkinghorn. That placards and
advertisements, imploring Edwin to communicate with his uncle, had
been widely circulated, we have been told at p. 182. On the right,
the two men in the lower picture are, I suppose, Jasper and Durdles
ascending the tower on the night of ‘the unaccountable expedition’;
while the man above is Jasper on Christmas Eve looking down at
‘_that_,’ p. 276: ‘Look down, look down! You see what lies at the
bottom there?’ p. 274. I demur to Mr. Lang’s statements that the
young man whom I venture to identify with Jasper is represented as
‘whiskerless,’ and that the figure which I take to be Durdles is
well-dressed.
Professor Jackson then mentions the views of Mr. Proctor and Mr. Lang on
the important vignette at the bottom of the page:
For my own part, I suspect that the upright figure represents Drood,
but that the Drood which it represents is a phantom of Jasper’s
imagination. Let us suppose that an advertisement for a ring known
to have been in the possession of the late Edwin Drood appears in the
local newspaper, and that Jasper, now for the first time aware of the
ring’s existence, goes to the crypt to look for it. Dickens might
well suppose him at such a moment to see a vision of the murdered
man, and might instruct Collins to represent what Jasper imagined
himself to see. Indeed, I fancy that I recognise an intentional
contrast between the two figures: the one in the foreground, full of
movement, solidly drawn; the other, in the background, statuesque,
and a little shadowy. Doubtless Dickens was anxious that the reader
should not know too much; and if he made Collins give visible form to
a hallucination of Jasper’s brain, I for one do not think the
procedure illegitimate. It is sad that Dickens did not live to
explain the innocent deception which, as I imagine, he meant for a
few months to practise upon his readers.
MR. ANDREW LANG’S INTERPRETATION IN ‘THE PUZZLE OF DICKENS’S LAST PLOT’
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. _Like
Datchery_, _he does not wear_, _but carries his hat_; this means
nothing, if they are in the nave. He seems bored. On his arm is
Rosa; _she_ 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.
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.
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.
Mr. Proctor correctly understood the unmistakable meaning of this
last design, Jasper entering the vault:
‘To-day the dead are living,
The lost is found to-day.’
DR. JAMES’S VIEW
In the _Cambridge Review_ for 9th March 1911 Dr. James says:
Now, as to the figures at the angles and the scene at the top there
is general agreement. As to those on the left, H. J. is, I think,
right in calling the upper one Rosa’s flight; but the lower one
_cannot_ be Jasper and Rosa. The young man has a moustache. Jasper
had none, and has none in the two pictures of him on this same cover.
Also, the artist has carefully emphasised the fact that the girl is
indifferent to her suitor. The figures, I believe, represent Rosa
and Neville Landless.
On the right, H. J. assumes that there are two scenes. I am clear
that there is but one: for, whereas, on the left side the two scenes
are separated by a sprig of the rose-wreath which surrounds the
centre, and a similar sprig parts them from the top scene, there is
on the right only the division from the top scene, managed in the
same way as on the left. And yet, had the scene been two, there was
great necessity to separate them, inasmuch as they are taking place
in the same surroundings, namely, the winding staircase. As to the
identity of the three men, the lowest one is a cleric, Crisparkle,
the next above him I will not identify; the uppermost is either
Jasper or just possibly (since he is pointing pretty directly at the
figure of Jasper in the top scene, and seems to be acting as a guide
to those below him) Datchery.
Dr. James dissents from Dr. Jackson as to the central vignette at the
bottom. No phantom of the imagination is there. We have a real person,
as is shown by the fact that he casts a shadow on the wall behind him.
MR. HUGH THOMSON’S READING
Mr. Hugh Thomson wrote the following notes on 3rd April 1912, and they
are now printed for the first time:
But to get to the cover to which you particularly directed my
attention. It was designed, I take it, primarily as a decoration,
and not as a series of representations of the characters to appear in
the book. Consequently, there is but little definite
character-drawing in any of the groups with the exception of the one
at the bottom of the page, where Jasper is depicted exactly as I
should wish him depicted, dark and saturnine ‘with thick, lustrous
black hair and whiskers.’ If the other figure is merely a wraith
conjured up by Jasper’s evil opium-soaked conscience, it is as
substantial as one of the ghosts of Hamlet’s father given to us on
the stage time after time without protest. But in a black and white
design for a popular serial it is scarcely possible to be subtle, and
at the same time plainly intelligible. So it may be a ghost, or it
may be Edwin in the flesh, or Neville Landless got up to represent
Edwin. It is a very effective little cut. In the other groups,
Jasper is not so unmistakable, but, of course, in the upper drawings
the sleek, clerical-looking personage with his hand at his mouth is
meant to represent Jasper. The staircase groups, I can’t identify.
The young men in both may be meant to represent Jasper. They are not
in the least like that sombre personage, but just colourless young
men. In the garden scene one cannot think that the kneeling figure
pressing the girl’s fingers to his lips is meant for Jasper at all.
It has a mop of fair hair and boasts a moustache, and in the scene in
the garden of the Nuns’ House Rosa did not permit Jasper to approach
her so nearly. In the picture there is no suggestion of the
repugnance and fear with which she regarded Jasper. Don’t you think
it reasonable to suggest that this little picture illustrates a scene
to take place much later in the book, a scene Dickens did not live to
write? It might be Edwin Drood returned from abroad or from
disguise. Edwin Drood making love to Helena Landless. In chapter
viii. he was ‘already enough impressed by Helena to feel indignant
that Helena’s brother should dispose of him (Edwin) so coolly’ to
Rosebud.
Or could it be Tartar proposing to Rosebud? But Tartar had no
moustache either as himself or as Datchery, and the girl’s figure has
a suggestion of lithe dignity which I don’t associate with the
‘little beauty’ Rosebud.
I agree with the author of _About Edwin Drood_ that Edwin was not
worth while bringing back, but it is possible that he was to return,
and that this is he in the garden scene. In the space above this the
female figure scanning a placard ‘LOST’ is, I think, merely
allegorical, and not meant to represent Rosebud fleeing from Jasper.
In the book she leaves Cloisterham so neat and pretty that Joe, the
omnibus man, would have liked to keep for himself the love she sent
to Miss Twinkleton.
MR. CUMING WALTERS’S READING
There is another view to which I strongly incline, first stated by Mr.
Cuming Walters. I take the erect figure in the bottom vignette to be
Datchery. It is not Edwin. The large hat and the tightish surtout are
the articles of clothing on which Dickens lays stress in his description
of Datchery. Mr. Lang says that the figure is that of a young man in a
longish loose greatcoat, not a tightish surtout such as Datchery wore,
but I agree with Mr. Cuming Walters that the figure corresponds with the
description of Datchery. Edwin as seen above with Rosa in the cathedral
is not wearing a coat of this sort. His hat also is different. On
examining the figure Mr. H. B. Irving said to me: ‘That looks uncommonly
like a woman in disguise.’
None of us has a right to dogmatise, but the variety of opinions among
those who have studied the cover shows that no certain conclusion can be
drawn from the illustrations. The arguments advanced previously tend to
make this practically certain. In the discussion of the problem a wholly
disproportionate weight has been laid on the illustrated cover. It would
hardly bear that weight even if every one were agreed as to the reading
of the pictures, and there is no such agreement.
CHAPTER IV—THE METHODS OF DICKENS
HALF-WAY IN DICKENS
Dickens has left us one-half of his last story. It was to be completed
in twelve parts, and six parts were published. We can only infer and
guess at the way in which the author would have completed it. Would he
have brought many new characters on the stage, or are we to believe that
the main characters are already there, and that it is through the
revealing of their secrets that the end is to be reached? To give a
positive reply is impossible, and yet we may learn something of Dickens’s
methods by studying his complete books. Supposing we had only one-half
of each book in our possession, might we expect that the complete story
would introduce us to many fresh characters? I give the results of some
investigations from the later novels.
THE LENGTH OF DICKENS’S NOVELS
_Edwin Drood_, as we have it, runs in round numbers to about 100,000
words. When completed it would have been 200,000 words. This would have
made it slightly longer than _Great Expectations_, which may be estimated
at 160,000 words. _A Tale of Two Cities_ runs to 143,000 words. _Edwin
Drood_, while slightly longer than this, would have been very much
shorter than the larger works of Dickens. _David Copperfield_ has about
306,000 words; _Bleak House_, 308,000, and _Our Mutual Friend_, 297,000.
All these are practically the same length. _Barnaby Rudge_ has about
264,000 words.
‘BLEAK HOUSE’
I begin with _Bleak House_, which is one of the latest and most elaborate
of Dickens’s stories. In the first half the characters arrive in crowds.
I make out in the first chapter ten or eleven. The second chapter brings
My Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, and others. The
third brings Esther Summerson and John Jarndyce, besides half a dozen
more. The fourth brings us the Jellybys, with Mr. Guppy, and others.
Krook and Nemo are the fresh arrivals in chapter v.; Mr. Harold Skim-pole
arrives in chapter vi., with the Coavinses. In chapter vii. I make out
six arrivals at least. Chapter viii. gives us the Pardiggles, Mr.
Gusher, the brickmaker, and family, and Jenny, his wife. In chapter ix.
Mr. Lawrence Boythorn arrives alone; chapter x. gives us the Snagsbys,
their predecessor, Peffer, the two prentices, and Guster, the servant.
Miss Flite comes with chapter xi., and along with her appear the young
surgeon, the beadle, Mrs. Perkins, Mrs. Anastasia Piper, and a few more.
Chapter xii. brings Mlle. Hortense, maid to Lady Dedlock, Lord Boodle and
his retinue, the Right Hon. William Buffy, M.P., and his retinue. In
Chapter xiii. we have Mr. Bayham Badger, Mrs. Badger, and the former
husbands of Mrs. Badger are recalled. Chapter xiv. brings Mr. Turveydrop
and his son, also Allan Woodcourt, the young surgeon, and we have
mentioned the ‘old lady with a censorious countenance,’ and the late Mrs.
Turveydrop. In chapter xv. we have Mrs. Blinder and the Neckett family;
chapter xvii., Mrs. Woodcourt, mother of Allan; chapter xix., Mr. and
Mrs. Chadband; chapter xx., Young Smallweed and Jobling, _alias_ Weevle;
in chapter xxi., the Grandfather and Grandmother Smallweed, Judith
Smallweed, Mr. George, trooper (Uncle George, chapter vii.), and Phil
Squod of the Shooting Gallery. The great Mr. Bucket appears in chapter
xxii. Captain Hawdon is in chapter xxvi. In chapter xxvii. we have the
Bagnet family of five. In chapter xxviii. there comes Volumnia Dedlock;
Miss Wisk in chapter xxx., and Liz in chapter XXXI.
We have now reached the end of the first half, and the arrivals after
that are few and unimportant. In chapter xxxii. no new character is
brought on the stage, though there is talk about the noted siren, who
assists at the Harmonic Meetings, and is announced as Miss M.
Melvilleson, though she has been married a year and a half. In chapter
xxxiii. it is mentioned that the ‘Sols Arms,’ a well-conducted tavern, is
licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. J. G. Bogsby. After that
we have no new character till chapter xxxvii., where we are introduced to
Mr. W. Grubble, the landlord of that very clean little tavern, ‘The
Dedlock Arms.’ Vholes is introduced by Skimpole as the man who gives him
something and called it commission. Mr. Vholes has the privilege of
supporting an aged father in the Vale of Taunton, and has a red eruption
here and there upon his face. He has three daughters—Emma, Jane, and
Caroline—and cannot afford to be selfish. In chapter xxxviii. we meet
Mrs. Guppy, ‘an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose, and
rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over.’ Then in chapter xl. there
are the cousins of Sir Leicester Dedlock. In chapter xliii. Mrs.
Skimpole and the Skimpole family are introduced, and in chapter liii.
Mrs. Bucket. It will be observed that some of these can scarcely be
called new characters, and that not one is of any real importance, that
is, so far as _Bleak House_ is concerned. Dickens in the middle of his
story had practically put every actor upon the stage. The story was to
be developed by the characters to whom the reader had been introduced. I
have calculated that in the first half there are about one hundred and
six characters of greater or less importance. In the second half there
are, on the most generous computation, only sixteen, and not one of them
plays a vital part in the development of the tale.
‘OUR MUTUAL FRIEND’
I take next _Our Mutual Friend_, and with this I must deal more briefly.
_Our Mutual Friend_ is remarkable for the profusion of characters in the
first half. In the second chapter there are sixteen at least, including
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap, Mortimer Lightfoot, Eugene
Wrayburn, and John Harmon. The Wilfers come in chapter iv.; in chapter
v. Silas Wegg and the Boffins, and almost every chapter adds to the
company till we get to the middle. After that there is an abrupt
cessation. There are not more than half a dozen new characters named in
the second part, and all of them are wholly insignificant, the Deputy
Lock, Gruff and Glum, the Greenwich pensioner, the Archbishop of
Greenwich, a waiter, Mrs. Sprodgkin, the exacting member of the fold, and
the contractor of 500,000 power. In _Our Mutual Friend_ every character
of any significance has been introduced when the first half ends. The
few stragglers who come later have practically no effect on the story.
‘LITTLE DORRIT’
In _Little Dorrit_ we have the old profuseness of characters; in the
first half nearly one hundred, and in the second half there are
practically no new characters at all. Mr. Tinkler, the valet to Mr.
Dorrit, and Mr. Eustace, the classical tourist, can hardly be counted.
In chapter xxi., ‘The History of a Self-Tormentor,’ we have Charlotte
Dawes, the false friend, who vanishes instantly, and counts for nothing.
Thus, I think, we may say, taking the three long books of Dickens’s later
period, that in each it was his manner to introduce no new characters of
the least import in the second half of his books. But it may be worth
while to glance at his practice in the shorter tales, _A Tale of Two
Cities_ and _Great Expectations_.
‘A TALE OF TWO CITIES’
In the second half of this fine book there are practically no new
characters that I can trace. The epithet can hardly be applied to the
President of the trial at the Conciergerie.
‘GREAT EXPECTATIONS’
It is now agreed that one of Dickens’s most perfect books is _Great
Expectations_. It is known also that Dickens complied with a suggestion
of Lord Lytton’s, which modified the plot—not seriously nor disagreeably.
Here again in the second part we have very few fresh characters. We have
the Colonel in Newgate introduced to Mr. Wemmick, but he is ‘sure to be
assassinated on Monday.’ Let us not forget Miss Skiffins, a good sort of
fellow, with a high regard both for Wemmick and the Aged. There is the
retrospective Provis, but the characters introduced belong to the past.
Finally, in chapter xlvi., we have a pleasant glimpse of the Barley
family and of Mrs. Whymple, the best of housewives, and the motherly
friend of Clara and Herbert. It is she who fosters and regulates with
equal kindness and discretion their mutual love. ‘It was understood that
nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to Old Barley, by
reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject
more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser’s Stores.’
These are all the books of which I have made a close personal
examination. I believe that the general result will be the same in all
save two or three exceptional works, such as _Barnaby Rudge_. Whether he
consciously acted on the principle that no new characters should be
introduced after half the story was told, it is impossible to say. It
seems certain, however, that he acted upon it.
WILKIE COLLINS ‘AHEAD OF ALL THE FIELD’
Dickens was no great reader, and it is plain by what he did not say, as
well as by what he did say, that he did not on the whole admire ardently
the work of his contemporaries. But he made a special exception in the
case of Wilkie Collins, with whom he collaborated on more than one
occasion, as in the story _No Thoroughfare_. He published in his own
magazine some of Collins’s best detective stories, including _The Woman
in White_, _No Name_, and _The Moonstone_. Of these stories Dickens put
first _No Name_. _The Moonstone_ he criticised in one of his letters to
Wills. At first he thought it in many respects ‘much better than
anything he has done,’ but afterwards he wrote, 26th July 1868: ‘I quite
agree with you about _The Moonstone_. The construction is wearisome
beyond endurance, and there is a vein of obstinate conceit in it that
makes enemies of readers.’ {90}
In September 1862 he wrote in enthusiastic terms of admiration about _No
Name_. This I take to be a very weighty and significant letter, as will
appear in the sequel:
I have gone through the second volume [_No Name_] at a sitting, and I
find it _wonderfully fine_. It goes on with an ever-rising power and
force in it that fills me with admiration. It is as far before and
beyond _The Woman in White_ as that was beyond the wretched common
level of fiction-writing. There are some touches in the Captain
which no one but a born (and cultivated) writer could get near—could
draw within hail of. And the originality of Mrs. Wragge, without
compromise of her probability, involves a really great achievement.
But they are all admirable; Mr. Noel Vanstone and the housekeeper,
both in their way as meritorious as the rest; Magdalen wrought out
with truth, energy, sentiment, and passion, of the very first water.
I cannot tell you with what a strange dash of pride as well as
pleasure I read the great results of your hard work. Because, as you
know, I was certain from the Basil days that you were the Writer who
would come ahead of all the Field—being the only one who combined
invention and power, both humorous and pathetic, with that invincible
determination to work, and that profound conviction that nothing of
worth is to be done without work, of which triflers and feigners have
no conception. {91}
Mr. Swinburne in his study of Wilkie Collins writes:
It is apparently the general opinion—an opinion which seems to me
incontestable—that no third book of their author’s can be ranked as
equal with _The __Woman in White_ and _The Moonstone_: two works of
not more indisputable than incomparable ability. _No Name_ is an
only less excellent example of as curious and original a talent.
{92a}
This was not the opinion of Dickens.
‘A BACKWARD LIGHT’
On 6th October 1859 Dickens replied to a suggestion by Collins on the
working out of _A Tale of Two Cities_. The italics are mine:
I do not positively say that the point you put might not have been
done in your manner; but I have a very strong conviction that it
would have been overdone in that manner—too elaborately trapped,
baited, and prepared—in the main anticipated, and its interest
wasted. This is quite apart from the peculiarity of the Doctor’s
[Dr. Manette—_A Tale of Two Cities_] character, as affected by his
imprisonment; which of itself would, to my thinking, render it quite
out of the question to put the reader inside of him before the proper
time, in respect of matters that were dim to himself through being,
in a diseased way, morbidly shunned by him. _I think the business of
art is to lay all that ground carefully_, _not with the care that
conceals itself—to show_, _by a backward light_, _what everything has
been working to_,—_but only to suggest_, _until the fulfilment
comes_. _These are the ways of Providence_, _of which ways all art
is but a little imitation_. {92b}
EDGAR ALLAN POE AND DICKENS: A MYSTIFICATION
Could Dickens keep his secrets well? In other words, could he prevent
his readers from fathoming a mystery till the proper moment of the
_dénouement_? An important help to the answering of this question will
be found in the essay on Charles Dickens by Edgar Allan Poe, who was a
critic of extraordinary penetration. If any one could detect a secret it
was he. But he was also much given to mystification, and it is not wise
to accept anything he says without verifying it. The essay on Dickens
turns largely on _Barnaby Rudge_, and, to the best of my belief, it has
not been strictly examined.
POE’S CLAIM
Poe says:
We are not prepared to say, so positively as we could wish, whether
by the public at large, the whole _mystery_ of the murder committed
by Rudge, with the identity of the Maypole ruffian with Rudge
himself, was fathomed at any period previous to the period intended,
or, if so, whether at a period so early as materially to interfere
with the interest designed; but we are forced, through sheer modesty,
to suppose this the case; since, by ourselves individually, the
secret was distinctly understood immediately upon the perusal of the
story of Solomon Daisy, which occurs at the seventh page of this
volume of three hundred and twenty-three. In the number of the
Philadelphia _Saturday Evening Post_ for 1st May 1841 (the tale
having then only begun), will be found a prospective notice of some
length, in which we make use of the following words:
‘That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not appear evident to
our readers—but we will explain. The person murdered is Mr. Reuben
Haredale. He was found assassinated in his bed-chamber. His steward
(Mr. Rudge, senior) and his gardener (name not mentioned) are
missing. At first both are suspected. “Some months afterward”—here
we use the words of the story—“the steward’s body, scarcely to be
recognised but by his clothes and the watch and ring he wore, was
found at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep
gash in the breast, where he had been stabbed by a knife. He was
only partly dressed; and all the people agreed that he had been
sitting up reading in his own room, where there were many traces of
blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed, before his master.”
‘Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts that
the steward’s body was found; he has put the words in the mouth of
one of his characters. His design is to make it appear, in the
_dénouement_, that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener,
then went to his master’s chamber, murdered _him_, was interrupted by
his (Rudge’s) wife, whom he seized and held _by the wrist_, to
prevent her giving the alarm—that he then, after possessing himself
of the booty desired, returned to the gardener’s room, exchanged
clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and
secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period
that the features could not be identified.’
This is the prediction we have to examine. In the first place, was such
an article published in the Philadelphia _Saturday Evening Post_ for 1st
May 1841? Mr. J. H. Ingram, the chief authority on Poe in this country,
very kindly informs me that this review has never been reprinted in any
edition of Poe’s works. Should it not be searched out and reprinted in
full? I should like to see the context of Poe’s extract, and I should
like still more to be sure that the article appeared as he says it did.
Mr. Ingram has no doubt that the article appeared as stated by Poe. Mr.
J. H. Whitty of Richmond, Va., kindly informs me that all the early files
of the _Post_ are inaccessible.
In the second place, Poe affirms that the article appeared in the
Philadelphia paper for 1st May 1841, and that the tale was only then
begun. As for that, _Barnaby Rudge_ was first published as a volume in
1841, after having run as a serial in the pages of _Master Humphrey’s
Clock_ from 13th February 1841 to 27th November 1841. I have failed to
find the precise date of its first appearance in America. No doubt it
appeared in serial form, and the first instalments on which Poe bases his
assertions should have been printed in America considerably earlier than
1st May. But the assertion which chiefly demands scrutiny is very
definitely made by Poe. He says: The secret was _distinctly_ understood
_immediately_ upon the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy.’ The
italics are mine.
THE STORY OF SOLOMON DAISY
We turn to the story of Solomon Daisy ‘as told in the _Maypole_ at any
time for four and twenty years.’ It is very simple and matter-of-fact.
It tells how Mr. Reuben Haredale, of The Warren, a widower with one
child, left the place when his lady died. He went up to London, where he
stopped some months, but, finding that place as lonely as The Warren, he
suddenly came back with his little girl, bringing with him besides, that
day, only two women servants, and his steward and a gardener. The rest
stayed behind in London, and were to follow next day. That night, an old
gentleman who lived at Chigwell Row, and had long been poorly, died, and
an order came to Solomon at half after twelve o’clock at night to go and
toll the passing bell. Solomon relates to a thrilled audience how he
went out in a windy, rainy, very dark night; how he entered the church,
trimmed the candle, thought of old tales about dead people rising and
sitting at the head of their own graves, fancying that he saw the old
gentleman who was just dead, wrapping his shroud round him, and shivering
as if he felt it cold. At length he started up and took the bell rope in
his hands. At that minute there rang—not that bell, for he had scarcely
touched the rope—but another! It was only for an instant, and even then
the wind carried the sound away, but he heard it. He listened for a long
time, but it rang no more. He then tolled his own bell and ran home to
bed as fast as he could touch the ground. Next morning came the news
that Mr. Reuben Haredale was found murdered in his bed-chamber, and in
his hand was a piece of the cord attached to an alarm bell outside, which
hung in his room, and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer when
he seized it. ‘That was the bell I heard.’ He further relates how the
steward and the gardener were both missing, both suspected, but never
found. The body of Mr. Rudge, the steward—scarcely to be recognised by
his clothes and the watch and the ring he wore—was found months
afterwards at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds with a deep
gash in the breast where he had been stabbed by a knife. Every one knew
now that the gardener must be the murderer, and Solomon Daisy predicted
that he would be heard of. That is the whole story as told by Solomon
Daisy, and Poe affirms that he perceived from this story: (1) That the
steward Rudge first murdered the gardener; (2) that he then went to his
master’s chamber and murdered him; (3) that he was interrupted by Rudge’s
wife, whom he seized and held by the wrist to prevent her giving the
alarm; (4) that he possessed himself of the booty, returned to the
gardener’s room, exchanged clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own
watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so
late a period that the features could not be identified.
WHERE POE FAILED
Poe admits that his preconceived ideas were not entirely correct:
The gardener was murdered, not before, but after his master; and that
Rudge’s wife seized _him_ by the wrist, instead of his seizing _her_,
has so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens that we
can scarcely speak of our own version as erroneous. The grasp of a
murderer’s bloody hand on the wrist of a woman _enceinte_ would have
been more likely to produce the effect described (and this every one
will allow) than the grasp of the hand of the woman upon the wrist of
the assassin. We may, therefore, say of our supposition, as
Talleyrand said of some cockney’s bad French—_que s’il ne soit pas
Français assurément donc il le doit être_—that if we did not rightly
prophesy, yet, at least, our prophecy should have been right.
I have no hesitation in saying that this is largely a piece of pure
mystification, another _Tale of the Grotesque and Arabesque_. It is
conceivable that Poe guesses from Solomon Daisy’s story that the steward
Rudge murdered the gardener and his master. It follows that the steward
changed clothes with the murdered gardener, put upon the corpse his own
watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so
late a period that the features could not be identified. But that Poe
should have guessed immediately after reading Solomon Daisy’s story that
he seized and held by the wrist his wife to prevent her giving the alarm
is beyond belief. ‘By the wrist’ are the three significant words, and
they prove that Poe must have had before him when writing the parts of
the novel up to and including chapter V. For it is in the fifth chapter
that the first mention is made of the smear of blood on Barnaby’s wrist.
We read there:
They who knew the Maypole story, and could remember what the widow
was, before her husband’s and his master’s murder, understood it
well. They recollected how the change had come, and could call to
mind that when her son was born, upon the very day the deed was
known, he bore upon his wrist what seemed a smear of blood but half
washed out.
Near the beginning of chapter lxii., where Rudge is making his confession
in prison, he says of his wife:
Did I see her fall upon the ground; and, when I stooped to raise her,
did she thrust me back with a force that cast me off as if I had been
a child, staining the hand with which she clasped my wrist? Is
_that_ fancy?
To claim that the seizing of the wrist could have been deduced from
Solomon Daisy’s story by itself is to affirm an impossibility.
And so vanishes the main value of the prediction. If Poe wrote that
article in the _Saturday Evening Post_, he wrote it after having read the
fifth chapter of Dickens’s novel.
WHERE POE SUCCEEDED
It may be asked whether Poe discovered anything from his reading of the
first pages. The only thing which he may have guessed is the thing which
it was comparatively easy to guess. He may have conjectured that the
mysterious stranger at the Maypole was Rudge Redux. When this surmise
had been lodged in his mind the other deductions follow as a matter of
course from later chapters, as the tale unfolds itself. Even if Poe
identified the stranger at the Maypole with the murderer it was no great
feat, for the murderer is closely disguised, from which any intelligent
reader would infer that he has a motive for fearing detection in an old
haunt. He is shabbily dressed; he is very curious about the people and
events at The Warren; he is suspected as a criminal of some kind by the
cronies; he strikes Joe as he leaves. On the road he threatens Varden
with murder. This shows us that we have before us a fugitive criminal.
He is presented to us with all the marks of a villain in hiding. It may
be noted that from Solomon Daisy’s story the inference is that only one
of two men committed the murder of Reuben Haredale, the gardener or
Rudge. There has also been a difficulty in identifying the remains.
This leaves Poe no special credit. There is considerable keenness in his
conjecture that the treatment of the Gordon Riots was an afterthought of
Dickens. Poe says:
The title of the book, the elaborate and pointed manner of the
commencement, the impressive description of The Warren, and
especially of Mrs. Rudge, go far to show that Mr. Dickens has really
deceived himself—that the soul of the plot, as originally conceived,
was the murder of Haredale, with the subsequent discovery of the
murderer in Rudge—but that this idea was afterwards abandoned, or,
rather, suffered to be merged in that of the Popish riots. The
result has been most unfavourable. That which, of itself, would have
proved highly effective, has been rendered nearly null by its
situation. In the multitudinous outrage and horror of the Rebellion,
the _one_ atrocity is utterly whelmed and extinguished.
But facts, as Poe admits, are against this supposition. Dickens says in
his Preface:
If the object an author has had, in writing a book, cannot be
discovered from its perusal, the probability is that it is either
very deep or very shallow. Hoping that mine may lie somewhere
between these two extremes, I shall say very little about it, and
that only in reference to one point. No account of the Gordon Riots
having been to my knowledge introduced into any work of fiction, and
the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features, I
was led to project this tale.
This is final. It appears from Forster’s biography that Dickens desired
to expose the brutalising character of laws which led to the incessant
execution of men and women comparatively innocent. It is clear also that
Dickens made a special study of the contemporary newspapers and annual
registers. But Forster admits that the form ultimately taken by _Barnaby
Rudge_ had been comprised only partially within its first design, and he
admits also that the interest with which the tale begins has ceased to be
its interest before the close. ‘What has chiefly taken the reader’s
fancy at the outset almost wholly disappears in the power and passion
with which, in the later chapters, great riots are described. So
admirable is this description, however, that it would be hard to have to
surrender it even for a more perfect structure of fable.’ To this I may
add that the letters to the artist Cattermole on the illustrations to
_Barnaby Rudge_ are very valuable for the fullness and precision of their
detail.
DICKENS’S WAY
That it is legitimate to draw inferences from the hints given by Dickens
I should be the last to deny. His purpose was to provide hints which,
when contemplated with what he called a backward glance, should appear
luminous at the end of the story. Their meaning at the time might be
more or less obscure, but when from the end of the book one could look
back upon its course even to the beginning, he would see that the artist
had a purpose all through, and that he was steadily preparing his reader
for the _dénouement_. Of this I give a striking proof, on which, so far
as I am aware, little stress has been laid. {104} The _Edinburgh Review_
of July 1857 contains an article, ‘The License of Modern Novelists,’ in
which the critic deals with _Little Dorrit_, and denounces his charges
against the administrative system of England. Among other things, the
reviewer says: ‘Even the catastrophe in _Little Dorrit_ is evidently
borrowed from the recent fall of houses in Tottenham Court Road, which
happens to have appeared in the newspapers at a convenient period.’
Dickens, for the first and only time in his life, so far as I know,
publicly replied to a reviewer. He wrote an article in _Household Words_
of 1st August 1857, entitled ‘Curious Misprint in the _Edinburgh
Review_,’ in which he turned upon his critic fiercely and sharply. He
quotes the sentence about the catastrophe in _Little Dorrit_, and goes on
to say:
Thus, the Reviewer. The Novelist begs to ask him whether there is no
License in his writing those words, and stating that assumption as a
truth, when any man accustomed to the critical examination of a book
cannot fail, attentively turning over the pages of _Little Dorrit_,
to observe that that catastrophe is carefully prepared for from the
very first presentation of the old house in the story; that when
Rigaud, the man who is crushed by the fall of the house, first enters
it (hundreds of pages before the end) he is beset by a mysterious
fear and shuddering; that the rotten and crazy state of the house is
laboriously kept before the reader, whenever the house is shown; that
the way to the demolition of the man and the house together is paved
all through the book with a painful minuteness and reiterated care of
preparation, the necessity of which (in order that the thread may be
kept in the reader’s mind through nearly two years) is one of the
adverse incidents of the serial form of publication? It may be
nothing to the question that Mr. Dickens now publicly declares, on
his word of honour, that that catastrophe was written, was engraved
on steel, was printed, had passed through the hands of compositors,
readers for the press, and pressmen, and was in type and in proof in
the Printing House of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans before the accident
in Tottenham Court Road occurred. But, it is much to the question
that an honourable reviewer might have easily traced this out in the
internal evidence of the book itself, before he stated, for a fact,
what is utterly and entirely, in every particular and respect,
untrue.
The blows are dealt with a will, and it should be noted that Dickens is
more irritated at the stupidity of the reviewer in failing to see the way
in which he contrived the catastrophe than at his mistake in the fact.
It is to be noted also that Dickens considered that his serial form of
publication compelled him to be almost too minute, copious, and constant
in keeping the thread in the mind of a reader whose attention had to be
maintained for nearly two years.
PART II—ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION
CHAPTER V—WAS EDWIN DROOD MURDERED?
I reply in the affirmative, and for the following reasons:
I.
1. The external testimonies as given in a previous chapter are all
explicit as far as they go in their testimony that in the intention of
Dickens Edwin Drood was murdered. There is first the testimony of John
Forster. To him Dickens plainly declared that a nephew was to be
murdered by his uncle. The murderer was to discover that his crime was
useless for its purpose, but he was not to be convicted in the ordinary
way. It was by means of a gold ring, which had resisted the corrosive
effects of the lime into which the body had been cast, that the murderer
and the person murdered were to be identified.
2. Madame Perugini corroborates Forster’s testimony, and points out that
the only thing on which he is not positive is the ending of Neville
Landless. He guards himself by saying, ‘I think,’ and this makes his
testimony to the more important facts the more impressive. Madame
Perugini, who thoroughly understood the relations between Forster and
Dickens, finds it impossible to believe that Dickens should have altered
his plan without communicating with Forster. Forster’s strong character,
and the peculiar friendship that existed between him and Dickens, make it
impossible to believe that Dickens should suddenly become ‘underhand,’
and we might say treacherous, by inventing a plot which he did not intend
to carry into execution. Forster became a little jealous of Dickens’s
confidence, and more than a little exacting in his demands on it. This
Dickens knew, and smiled at occasionally. But he was very careful not to
wound his friend’s very sensitive nature, and he so trusted Forster’s
judgment as to be uneasy and unhappy if he did not obtain its sanction
for his decisions and his actions. If there had been any change of plan
Forster would certainly have been told. He never was told.
3. Again, we know that Charles Dickens the younger positively declared
that he heard from his father’s lips that Edwin Drood was dead. I have
been able to print part of a play written by Charles Dickens the younger
and Joseph Hatton. This shows beyond contradiction that the authors
believed Drood to be dead. Mr. Hatton says: ‘Consulting his son,
Charles, to whom I offered my sketch, I found that his father had
revealed to him sufficient of the plot to clearly indicate how the story
was to end.’ How far this may apply to details we cannot be sure, but
most certainly it certifies the death.
4. To this I may add that Madame Perugini’s own firm belief that Drood
was dead is of no small importance, considering that she was the wife of
Charles Allston Collins, who drew the much discussed wrapper. It did not
occur either to Madame Perugini or her husband that there was any doubt
as to the fate of Edwin Drood.
5. The weighty letter of Sir Luke Fildes printed on pages 54–5 confirms
unmistakably and strongly the witness already adduced. Fildes was the
sole illustrator of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, and he testifies that
Collins did not in the least know the significance of the various groups
on the wrapper. Further, when Sir Luke was puzzled by the statement that
John Jasper was described as wearing a neckerchief that would go twice
round his neck he drew Dickens’s attention to the circumstance that he
had previously dressed Jasper as wearing a little black tie once round
the neck, and asked why the alteration was made. Dickens, a little
disconcerted, suddenly asked, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ He then said: ‘I
must have the double necktie! It is necessary, for Jasper strangles
Edwin Drood with it.’ Fildes was impressed by Dickens’s earnestness, and
resented the suggestion often made that Dickens’s hints dropped to
members of his family or friends may have been intentionally misleading.
‘It is a little startling,’ says Sir Luke, ‘after more than thirty-five
years of profound belief in the nobility of character and sincerity of
Charles Dickens, to be told now that he probably was more or less of a
humbug on such occasions.’
I cannot but feel that the external testimony is too strong to be
explained away, and it ought to be read and pondered in its entirety.
II. DICKENS’S OWN NOTE
In the Memoranda made by Dickens for chapter xii., and printed on page
63, we read that Jasper ‘lays the ground for the manner of the murder, to
come out at last. Night picture of the Cathedral.’ Mr. Lang himself
admits, ‘It seems almost undeniable that, when Dickens wrote this note,
he meant Jasper to succeed in murdering Edwin.’ {113}
III. THE ADMITTED TESTIMONY OF THE BOOK
The proof that Edwin Drood was murdered is to my mind mainly to be found
in the pages of the story. One would have to print a large part of it in
order to convey the impressive and unmistakable force of the whole, but
perhaps it is better to read it as Dickens wrote it. For he himself
advances nothing to modify or mitigate the conclusion that, as the result
of a carefully designed plot, Edwin Drood was foully murdered by his
uncle. Happily it is not necessary to spend much space on this. I
believe that Dr. Jackson is fully justified in his statement that all who
have written on the subject acknowledge that Jasper tried to murder his
nephew, and believed himself to have succeeded. We all see that Jasper
had either strangled Edwin with a black scarf and committed his body to a
heap of quicklime that lay about convenient, or thought that he had done
so. ‘We all see that the crime is to be proved by a gold ring of rubies
and diamonds which Edwin has concealed about his person, though Jasper
does not know it.’ Mr. Proctor writes:
It is clear that Dickens has intended to convey the impression that
Edwin Drood is murdered, his body and clothes consumed, Jasper having
first taken his watch and chain and shirt-pin, which cannot have been
thrown into the river till the night of Christmas Day, since the
watch, wound up at twenty minutes past two on Christmas Eve, had run
down when found in the river.
Having arrived at this point we may proceed.
Is it conceivable that Jasper, believing himself to have succeeded in
murdering his nephew, could have failed? Jasper is meant by Dickens to
be a man wholly without conscience and heart. Such characters are not
numerous in Dickens’s books, but we have evidence that he knew them and
had pondered over them. I may quote his words in _Hunted Down_:
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a
calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt otherwise than
true to himself, and perfectly consistent with his whole character.
Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural culmination of
his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do it with
hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express
surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his
conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on
his conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would
ever have committed the crime? Perfectly consistent with himself, as
I believe all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself,
and showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was
white, he was haggard, he was changed; but only as a sharper who had
played for a great stake and had been outwitted and had lost the
game.
In _Household Words_ for 14th June 1856, Dickens has an article on ‘The
Demeanour of Murderers.’ He is referring to William Bousfield, ‘the
greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey dock.’ Bousfield’s
demeanour was considered exceedingly remarkable because of his composure
under trial. On this Dickens says:
Can any one, reflecting on the matter for five minutes, suppose it
possible—we do not say probable, but possible—that in the breast of
this poisoner there were surviving, in the days of his trial, any
lingering traces of sensibility, or any wrecked fragment of the
quality which we call sentiment. Can the profoundest or the simplest
man alive believe that in such a heart there could have been left, by
that time, any touch of pity?
The murder of Edwin Drood had been so long premeditated that Jasper had
done it hundreds and thousands of times in the opium den. The motive was
his fierce and wolfish passion for Rosa. He loathed his poor nephew as
the chief obstacle to his wishes, and planned out in every detail a
murder which would utterly remove him from the sight of men.
Jasper, then, was an unredeemed villain, but he was anything than a fool.
He drugged Drood; he strangled him; he put his body in quicklime; he had
time to rob the victim of his jewellery; he maintained a threatening and
defiant attitude. He was not afraid that Drood would return to convict
him of an attempt to murder. He had done his business. I think it worth
while to point out that in Dickens’s view Jasper’s malevolence must have
been raised to the highest point of fury on the night of the murder. For
the murder was committed on a night of the wildest tempest. Trees were
almost torn out of the earth, chimneys toppled into the streets, the
hands of the cathedral clock were torn off, the lead from the roof was
stripped away and blown into the close, and stones were displaced on the
summit of the great tower. In _Barnaby Rudge_ (chapter ii.) Dickens
says:
There are times when the elements being in unusual commotion, those
who are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts,
whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult
of nature, and are roused into corresponding violence. In the midst
of thunder, lightning, and storm, many tremendous deeds have been
committed; men, self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose to
passions they could no longer control. The demons of wrath and
despair have striven to emulate those who ride the whirlwind and
direct the storm; and man, lashed into madness with the roaring winds
and boiling waters, has become for the time as wild and merciless as
the elements themselves.
IV. THE RING
As we have seen, Dickens’s method is to make every hint significant, and,
as a rule, not too significant. The reader at the time may fail to
perceive why a particular point is mentioned, but it is not mentioned
carelessly or without design. The backward glance from the end is to
interpret all. Besides this there are hints in the novels to which he
calls special attention, and which he thereby binds himself to redeem.
Conspicuous among these in _Edwin Drood_ is the sentence about the
jewelled ring and betrothal over which Edwin Drood’s right hand closed as
it rested in its little case. He would not let Rosa’s heart be grieved
by those sorrowful jewels. He would restore them to the cabinet from
which he had unwillingly taken them, and keep silence. He would let them
be. He would let them lie unspoken of in his breast. But Dickens says:
‘Among the mighty store of wonderful chains that are for ever forging,
day and night, in the vast ironworks of time and circumstance, there was
one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion, riveted to the
foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted with invincible force to hold
and drag.’ No answer to our question, no solution of the problem can be
satisfactory which fails to assign its due weight to this sentence. In
Proctor’s first attempt at the solution of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_
contained in _Leisure Readings_, we find the following amazingly inept
words: ‘From the stress laid on this point, and the clear words in which
its association with the mystery is spoken of, we may safely infer, I
think, that it is intended partly to mislead the reader.’
Later on, Proctor, seeing the insufficiency of this, propounded another
theory. This was that the attempt on Drood and his rescue were known
almost immediately to Mr. Grewgious, who took possession of the ring;
that when the fact that such a ring had been in Drood’s pocket came to
Jasper’s knowledge he at once in a state of panic rushed to the vault to
recover it from among the quicklime; that Drood, divining this intention,
concealed himself in the vault and confronted Jasper the moment he opened
the door. This theory is partly approved of by Mr. William Archer. {119}
But Dickens’s point is plainly that the ring was the only jewellery
possessed by Drood about which Jasper knew nothing. It is the finding of
the ring in the tomb that is to bring the guilt of the murder home.
As for the numerous assumptions made by Proctor, it can only be said that
they have no foundation in the facts. There is no reason to believe that
the attempt on Drood and his rescue were known almost immediately to Mr.
Grewgious. There is no evidence that Grewgious took possession of the
ring. There is no evidence that Jasper came to know that such had been
in Drood’s pocket. All these theories are not only without foundation,
but, I think, also in plain contradiction to the whole tenor of the
story.
If Drood was half dead how did he get away? According to Mr. Proctor’s
ingenious theory he was rescued from the bed of quicklime by Durdles. He
was rescued with the skin burnt off his face, and his eyebrows gone, so
that he could afterwards disguise himself as Datchery. If this is so,
the quicklime must have behaved itself in a singularly obliging and
accommodating manner. But, as a matter of fact, there is no evidence
whatever for the theory, and the whole drift of the story makes against
it. The difficulties are admitted even by those who incline to support
Proctor’s view and to maintain that Edwin is not dead.
Mr. Lang admits that Proctor’s theory of the murder is thin, and that
‘all this set of conjectures is crude to the last degree.’ I am content
to leave it at that. Mr. Lang has conjectures of his own. He
conjectures that Mr. Grewgious visited the tomb of his lost love, Rosa’s
mother, and consecrated to her ‘a night of memories and sighs.’ He says:
‘Mrs. Bud, his lost love, we have been told, was buried hard by the
Sapsea monument.’ This is not told by Dickens. It is better to stick by
the narrative.
Supposing that Edwin was not dead, what was the meaning of the long
silence? Why did he allow Neville to rest under a cloud of suspicion,
and exposed to great peril? Why did he allow Jasper’s persecution of
Rosa? Why did he allow Helena Landless, whom he had begun more or less
to love, to suffer with the rest? Are we to suppose that he came back
disguised to fix the guilt on his uncle? Can we believe that he did not
know that his uncle had tried to murder him? If not, are we to believe
that he suspected his uncle and was not sure, and came down to try to
surprise his uncle’s secret and to punish him? He could only have
punished him at most for an attempt at murder. Even that might have been
hard to bring home, supposing he himself was not clear as to the facts.
‘Fancy can suggest no reason,’ writes Mr. Lang, ‘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.’
Dr. M. R. James, one of the few who still think that Edwin might not have
been murdered, says in his last writing on the subject: ‘I freely confess
that the view that Edwin is dead solves many difficulties. A wholly
satisfactory theory of the manner of his escape has never been devised;
his failure to clear Neville from suspicion is hard to explain.’ Mr.
Lang, in what has unhappily proved his last article on the subject, in
_Blackwood_ for May 1911, explains that while he believed in 1905 that
Jasper failed in his attempt to murder, ‘now I have no theory as to how
the novel would have been built up.’
V.
Those who more or less strongly still believe that Dickens meant to spare
Edwin rest their case mainly on a subjective impression. Says Dr. James:
‘On the other hand, whether the result would be a piece of “bad art” or
not, I do think it is more in Dickens’s manner to spare Edwin than to
kill him. The subjective impression that he is not doomed is too strong
for me to dismiss.’ {122} It is difficult to argue against a subjective
impression. The fact remains that Edwin Drood becomes superfluous. He
has effected no lodgment in any human heart. Mr. Walters says that Drood
is little more than a name-label attached to a body, a man who never
excites sympathy, and whose fate causes no emotion. Proctor, who
believes that Edwin Drood survived, admits that he lived unpaired. ‘Rosa
was to give her hand to Tartar, Helena Landless to Crisparkle, while
Edwin and Mr. Grewgious were to look on approvingly, though Edwin a
little sadly.’
Mr. Lang in the Gadshill edition of Dickens wrote: ‘Edwin and Neville are
quarrelsome cubs, not come to discretion, and the fatuity of Edwin,
though not exaggerated much, makes him extremely unsympathetic.’ But in
his book on the subject Mr. Lang changes his view and writes: ‘On
re-reading the novel I find that Dickens makes Drood as sympathetic as he
can.’ Thus impressions alter. Gillan Vase, in her continuation of the
story would make us believe that on Edwin’s reappearance Rosa transferred
her heart from Tartar to her old lover! But taking the story as it
stands, we see that the sorrow for his death is not deep, and that no
heart is broken by his disappearance. Rosa is consoled, and more than
consoled. Helena grieves for her brother, and flings a shield over Rosa.
Neville and Edwin have never been good friends. Grewgious has cheerfully
acquiesced in, if he has not instigated, the breaking of the engagement
between Rosa and Edwin. The appropriate explanation is: ‘Poor youth!
Poor youth!’ That is all.
It has been suggested that there is a parallel between _No Thoroughfare_
and _Edwin Drood_. According to Proctor it is suggested clearly in _No
Thoroughfare_ that Vendale has been murdered beyond all seeming hope.
Proctor’s real argument seems to be that Vendale is not marked for death,
and does not die, and that Edwin Drood belongs to the same class. He
says that Nell and Paul, Richard Carson and the other characters who die
in Dickens’s stories are marked for death from the beginning, but that
there is not one note of death in all that Edwin does or says. I believe
that this is entirely contrary to the facts. There are some who like
Edwin, but none who love him. He is hated by his uncle, and hated
perhaps by Neville.
In _No Thoroughfare_, a story written by Wilkie Collins and Dickens in
1867 as a Christmas Number, we have the story of a man supposed dead
coming to life again. It may be noted that the only portions of this
story furnished exclusively by Dickens were the overture and the third
act. Collins contributed to the first and fourth act, and wrote the
whole of the second. Vendale, a wine-merchant, is in love with a Swiss
girl, Marguerite. She returns his affection, but her guardian Obenreizer
is bitterly opposed. He consents, however, to the marriage if Vendale
can double his income and make it £3000 a year. Vendale discovers that a
forgery has been committed, through which £500 are missing. He is asked
by the Swiss firm with which he deals to send a trustworthy messenger to
investigate the fraud and discover its perpetrator. Vendale resolves to
go himself, and tells Obenreizer. Obenreizer is the culprit, though
Vendale does not suspect it, and the two go to Switzerland together.
Obenreizer keeps planning a murder, and contrives to give Vendale an
opium draught. He drugs him again, and in the course of a perilous
mountain journey Vendale is roused to the knowledge that Obenreizer had
set upon him, and that they were struggling desperately in the snow.
Vendale rolls himself over into a gulf. But help is near. Marguerite’s
fears have been excited, and she has followed her lover on the journey.
She engages a rescue expedition, and they find the lost man insensible.
He is delirious and quite unconscious where he is. Then he seems to sink
in the deadly cold, and his heart no longer beats. ‘She broke from them
all, and sank over him on his litter with both her living hands upon the
heart that stood still.’ But by and by, when the crisis of the exposure
comes, ‘supported on Marguerite’s arm—his sunburnt colour gone, his right
arm bandaged and slung over his breast—Vendale stood before the murderer
a man risen from the dead.’ I cannot see that this is a great surprise.
Vendale was not marked for death. I think the unsophisticated reader,
knowing how he is loved and how he is waited for, and how unconsciousness
may pass into consciousness, would fully expect him to live. When he
comes to life, he is supported on Marguerite’s arm. There was no arm on
which Edwin Drood could lean. Dickens can provide for his old bachelors
like Newman Noggs, but he had no provision for Edwin.
THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE DISAPPEARANCE THEORY
_From the Wrapper_.—I am convinced after a careful perusal of nearly all
that has been written on the subject that the real strength of the
disappearance theory is to be found in the bottom picture of the wrapper.
When Madame Perugini published the article from which I have quoted, Mr.
Lang in a letter to the _Times_ {127} rested his whole case on the cover
design. He said:
The chief difficulty in accepting the fact has always been that, in
designs on the covers, by Mr. C. A. Collins, first husband of Mrs.
Perugini, we see a young man, who is undeniably Edwin Drood,
confronting Jasper in a dark vault, in the full light of a lantern
held up by Jasper. Mrs. Perugini says that this figure may be
regarded as ‘the ghost of Edwin as seen by Jasper in his half-dazed
and drugged condition,’ or Helena Landless ‘dressed as Datchery.’
The figure is not dressed as Datchery, nor was Miss Landless fair
like Drood, but very dark. As for the ghost, he is as substantial as
Jasper, and it is most improbable that Dickens would have a mere
hallucination designed in such a substantial fashion, ‘massive and
concrete,’ as Pip said of Mr. Wopsle’s rendering of the part of
Hamlet.
Mr. Lang in his final _Blackwood_ paper repeats the assertion with
unhesitating confidence. He goes so far as to say:
Last, Dickens had instructed his son-in-law, Charles Collins (brother
of Wilkie Collins), to design a pictorial cover of the numbers, in
which Jasper, entering a dark vault with a lantern, finds a
substantial shadow-casting Drood ‘in his habit as he lived,’—soft
conical hat and all,—confronting him.
As to this we note:
1. That Collins received no such instructions.
2. That neither Collins nor Luke Fildes nor any of the Dickens family
read the illustration in that sense. They all supposed Edwin to be dead.
3. We also note that, in spite of Mr. Lang’s confident assertions, there
is no unanimity as to the meaning of the design. It may be Drood; it may
be, as I think it is, Datchery; it may be Neville Landless, as Mr. Hugh
Thomson has suggested. But no one is entitled to dogmatise on the
subject.
4. As I have already pointed out, in the great majority of the wrappers
the designs are vague and general, and cannot be verified in the
narrative.
5. But to my mind the most conclusive proof that the wrapper is not to
be rigidly and pedantically interpreted is that Dickens himself was the
very last man in the world to give away his secrets on the cover. On
this Madame Perugini has said all that needs to be said. I am glad to
find that in his last review of the controversy Dr. M. R. James makes no
mention of the wrapper evidence.
‘WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?’
It appears that certain readers have taken the heading of chapter xiv.,
‘When shall these three meet again?’ as an argument for the theory that
Drood reappears. If the use of the quotation has any special interest a
very good interpretation has been supplied by Mr. Edwin Charles. Mr.
Charles points out that the words are used in _Macbeth_ before the three
witches meet again to plant in Macbeth’s mind the tragical lust of
ambition. He slays Duncan, who is at once his guest, his kinsman, and
his king. And Duncan’s sons, also guests of Macbeth, fly respectively to
England and Ireland, and Macbeth uses the flight to spread suspicion
against them. ‘We hear our bloody cousins are bestow’d in England and in
Ireland: not confessing their cruel parricide.’ Jasper is Edwin Drood’s
kinsman and guardian and host. Jasper slays his nephew, and contrives
that the suspicion of his murder shall fall on his other guest, Neville
Landless, who has to leave Cloisterham. Is this a chance parallel? Does
the use of the words in the heading of the chapter prove that Dickens had
the tragedy of _Macbeth_ in his mind? Mr. Charles not only thinks so,
but he holds that the quotation positively destroys any shadow of doubt
as to what was intended to be the fate of Edwin. Mr. Charles also notes
that Dickens makes another reference to Macbeth in the story when he
records the dinner which Grewgious gave to Edwin and Bazzard at Staple
Inn. Speaking of the leg of the flying waiter Dickens says that ‘it
always preceded him and the tray by some seconds, and always lingered
after he disappeared,’ adding, ‘like Macbeth’s leg when accompanying him
off the stage with reluctance to the assassination of Duncan.’
There is not much to reply to in the argument, but the reply is, to say
the least, sufficient.
‘EDWIN DROOD IN HIDING’
Another argument has been drawn from the tentative titles written by
Dickens here first printed in full. Two of them are ‘The Flight of Edwin
Drood,’ and ‘Edwin Drood in Hiding.’ On this Mr. Lang writes in the
_Morning Post_ {130} that, though the titles do not go with the idea that
Edwin was to be slain early, Dickens may have intended the titles to
mislead his readers, and may have rejected them because he felt them to
be too misleading. This I believe to be the exact truth. Dickens was
willing to have as much mystery as possible, but he soon perceived that
it would not suit his purpose to raise the question whether Edwin was
dead or alive.
THE MANNER OF THE MURDER
In Dr. Jackson’s book on the subject there is a very able discussion on
the manner in which the murder was accomplished. Dr. Jackson inquires:
(1) Where and how did Jasper murder Drood, or attempt to murder him? (2)
Where and how did Jasper dispose of Drood’s body, or attempt to dispose
of it? For myself, I believe that the manner of the murder is part of
the mystery to be solved as the book proceeds. In this I am in general
agreement with Proctor. It would be vain to guess what happened on that
stormy night. To give the details definitely would have been to give
them prematurely, for much of the interest of the novel is to depend on
their unfolding. But certain suggestions may be offered. Dr. Jackson
holds that significance is to be attached to Jasper’s babblings in the
presence of the opium woman. He tells her that he has in his mind the
tower of the cathedral, a perilous journey over abysses with an
indispensable fellow-traveller. Also that when the journey was really
made there was ‘no struggle, no consciousness of peril, no entreaty,’ but
that ‘a poor, mean, miserable thing,’ which was nevertheless real, lay
‘down below at the bottom.’ Dr. Jackson thinks that we have here
Jasper’s confession of the place and the manner of the crime. ‘He had
ascended the tower with Edwin, and he had seen Edwin’s body lying down
below, presumably at the foot of the staircase by which they had
ascended.’
Mr. Walters thinks that Drood was to be encountered near the cathedral,
drugged and then strangled with the black silk scarf that Jasper wore
round his own neck. Mr. Proctor and Mr. Lang suppose that Jasper
partially strangled Drood near the cathedral, and then deposited his body
in the Sapsea monument. They do not explain ‘the perilous journey over
abysses.’ The babblings of the opium den become intelligible if Jasper
flung or pushed Drood down the staircase of the tower. But if Drood was
attacked outside the cathedral on level ground they are ‘unjustifiable
mystifications.’
Dr. Jackson further argues that in chapter xii., ‘A Night with Durdles,’
is a rehearsal of the coming tragedy. He thinks that when Durdles sleeps
Jasper makes a wax impression of a key with which Durdles had opened the
outside door of the crypt and the door between the crypt and the
cathedral. He finds quicklime in the crypt. Then he flings or pushes
Drood, who is drugged, down the staircase, and deposits his body in the
quicklime in the crypt. Else why did Jasper make a careful study of the
tower with Durdles?
My friend and colleague, Miss Jane T. Stoddart, kindly sends me the
following:
Some critics have failed to realise the extreme importance of the
Sapsea monument in connection with the murder. It has been suggested
by Professor Jackson that Jasper buried the body in a heap of lime in
the crypt of the cathedral. But crypts are semi-public places, and if
heaps of lime were about workmen would be coming and going. In no
case could a corpse lie unnoticed on the open floor of a crypt for
more than a few hours. All the evidence points rather to the Sapsea
monument in the graveyard as the murderer’s chosen hiding-place.
Observe how Dickens distinguishes between tombs and monuments, clearly
meaning by the latter those massive vault-like erections of stone
which are often seen in old churchyards, and which have the dimensions
of small chambers with a corridor. Durdles says in chapter V.: ‘“Say
that hammer of mine’s a wall—my work. Two; four; and two is six,”
measuring on the pavement. “Six foot inside that wall is Mrs.
Sapsea.”
‘“Not really Mrs. Sapsea?” asks Jasper.
‘“Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall’s thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles
taps that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after good
sounding: ‘Something betwixt us!’ Sure enough, some rubbish has been
left in that same six-foot space by Durdles’s men!”’
There is therefore a ‘six-foot’ vacant space at least in the Sapsea
monument, left, no doubt, for the reception at some far distant date
of the Mayor’s body. Within this place Jasper decides to deposit the
remains of his victim. I do not agree with the critics who fancy
there was a Sapsea vault in the crypt. The monument is in the full
light of day, for in chapter xii. the Mayor is walking near the
churchyard ‘on the look-out for a blushing and retiring stranger.’
And in chapter xviii. he calls Datchery’s attention to this ‘small
lion’ in the churchyard. Mrs. Sapsea, we are distinctly told, is
buried within the monument, not in any subterranean vault in the
crypt.
THE ‘NIGHT WITH DURDLES’
We come now to the night of the mysterious expedition of Jasper and
Durdles, when they climb the Cathedral Tower in the moonlight, and
when Durdles lies in a drugged sleep on the floor of the crypt.
Jasper has been very active during this interval. How has his time
been spent? His first business, after possessing himself of the key
of the crypt, must have been to search in the bundle carried by
Durdles for the key of the Sapsea monument. We have repeatedly been
told of his interest in the bundle, into which (see chapter iv.) he
had seen Durdles drop this particular key. The inscription had been
placed on the monument, but we are to understand that the key had not
yet been returned to the Mayor. Having secured this key, Jasper
leaves the building, and by some means which can only be conjectured
conveys quicklime to the monument, and places it in readiness in the
empty space. He may have gone back to the yard-gate where Durdles
had showed him the mound of lime, but this would have been a very
risky proceeding, as the ‘hole in the city wall’ occupied by Durdles
was beyond Minor Canon Corner, the Monks’ Vineyard, and the
Travellers’ Twopenny. Even in the dead of night, sharp eyes in the
lodging-house (Deputy’s, for instance) might have seen a man go by
wheeling lime in a barrow or carrying it in a sack. It is far more
probable that the lime was found nearer to the cathedral.
It has been suggested, further, that Jasper, while away from Durdles,
took a wax model of the key of the crypt, which also opens the door
at the top of the steps leading from the crypt to the cathedral. The
Dean (it is presumed by Professor Jackson) has already entrusted him
with another key, that of the iron gate which gives access to the
Tower. We are told that Durdles ‘bears the close scrutiny of his
companion in an insensible way, although it is prolonged while the
latter fumbles among his pockets for a key confided to him that will
open an iron gate, so to enable him to pass to the staircase of the
great Tower.’
Visitors to cathedrals to-day usually find that the key of the tower
staircase is in charge of the chief verger, and Jasper would have no
difficulty in obtaining a loan of it from this functionary for one
night, though hardly for a longer period, as visitors would be coming
and going.
Dr. Jackson supposes that the Dean lent his key to the choirmaster,
and assumes that, before the expedition with Durdles, Jasper has
already taken a wax model of it. If he did so, it must have been in
the interval between locking-up time, when we find him (see chapter
xii.) conversing with the Dean and the verger, and the time of his
changing his coat to go out on the expedition. But Dickens tells us
that Mr. Jasper withdrew to his piano, and sat chanting choir music
in a low and beautiful voice for two or three hours; ‘in short, until
it has been for some time dark, and the moon is about to rise.’ I
take it, then (1) that the iron key was lent to Jasper by the verger
for use in this nocturnal expedition; (2) that no wax model of it has
been made up to the time of starting; (3) that the verger will look
for the return of the key next day.
It seems to me most unlikely that Jasper took a wax model of the
crypt key or the key to the iron gate, either on the night of his
wandering with Durdles, or at any other time. If he took any wax
model, it was that of the key to the Sapsea monument. He used the
crypt key merely to let himself out of the building and in again.
May not the simplest explanation be that he unlocked the door of the
monument, leaving it merely closed, so that a turn of the iron handle
would admit him on the night of the murder? According to the picture
at the foot of the cover the door seems to have a handle.
I find it difficult to believe that Jasper would order duplicates of
two large and unusual-looking keys to be made from wax models by a
locksmith in Cloisterham. Such an order would have excited curiosity
and perhaps unfavourable surmises in a town where Jasper was so well
known. I should expect a curious stare if I carried wax models of
church keys even to a locksmith in a London suburb; and Jasper had no
time during the week before Christmas to make a journey to London.
He was not himself a worker in iron like Roland Graeme in _The
Abbot_, who at the cost of much time and labour forged a bunch of
keys almost exactly resembling those carried by the lady of
Lochleven.
On the night of the murder—that wild and stormy Christmas Eve—Jasper
brought Edwin into the churchyard on some pretext, after partially
stupefying him with the ‘good stuff’ which affects the brain so
speedily. He may have persuaded him to drink to the dawn of
Christmas, as Faust proposed to quaff the cup of poison to the rising
Easter dawn:
Der letzte Trunk sei nun, mit ganzer Seele,
Als festlich hoher Gruss, dem Morgen zugebracht.
It is after midnight when the murderer and his victim are abroad
together. At that hour the ‘streets are empty,’ and only the storm
goes thundering along them. The precincts ‘are unusually dark
to-night.’ No need, then, for Jasper to fear detection as he slips
the great silk scarf over Edwin’s head and pulls it tightly round his
throat. ‘No struggle, no consciousness of peril, no entreaty—and yet
I never saw that before.’
The maundering talk of Jasper in the opium woman’s den need not be
taken literally. The difficult and dangerous journey ‘over abysses
where a slip would be destruction’ may have no reference to the
actual tower, but to the perils of the scheme and the risk of
detection. Among other modes of killing, however, the idea of
flinging Edwin from the tower may have occurred to Jasper, and been
abandoned. Hence his outcry, ‘Look down! look down! You see what
lies at the bottom there!’
Dr. Jackson thinks Jasper departed so far from his original plan that
he chose the crypt instead of the Sapsea monument as a hiding-place.
I think it far more likely that, if ever he intended to hurl Edwin
from the tower, he set aside this plan when he found that it meant
the making of two duplicate keys. Suppose that in the days following
the crime, when the names of Edwin Drood and Jasper were in every
mouth in Cloisterham, a small tradesman in some obscure lane were to
ask his neighbours why the choirmaster needed these two large keys.
The conjecture might be sufficient to destroy him.
I venture to think that Miss Stoddart is right in assigning the place of
the body to the Sapsea monument, but I incline to agree with Dr. Jackson
that, in order to do justice to the ‘Night with Durdles,’ and the
confessions to the opium woman, we must give some place to the tower as
connected with the murder. But I do not understand how Jasper should
have seen Drood lying beneath him dead if he had merely pushed him down
the tower stairs. Would it not have been more likely that Jasper should
have pushed Drood from the galleries, and seen him fall into the space
beneath? We cannot lay great stress on the topography of Cloisterham.
The Sapsea monument is a pure invention, having no counterpart in
Rochester, and Dickens manifestly used the utmost freedom in dealing with
his materials. Mr. Lang, by the way, makes a strange mistake in saying,
‘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.’ {139}
The wall is not six feet thick. The words are: ‘six foot inside that
wall is Mrs. Sapsea.’
It was for Dickens to explain in the remaining part of the novel how the
murder was achieved, and no one has a right to say that he would have
failed in doing so. His object is to leave upon us the impression of a
murder which was in a singular degree premeditated, ferocious, and
complete. If Dr. Jackson is right in supposing that Drood was thrown
from the tower, in addition to his being drugged, strangled, and laid in
quicklime, Dickens gives us a fresh thrill of horror.
CHAPTER VI—WHO WAS DATCHERY?
In discussing this problem we have no aid from external evidence. It
seems that the question was not raised by the critics of the time. We
are thrown upon internal evidence, and not only the internal evidence of
the book, but the evidence given by a study of Dickens’s methods. We
have also, as I hope to show, some help given indirectly from Dickens’s
own biography, and in particular from a book by Wilkie Collins.
It will be convenient at this stage that we should discuss the exact
position of affairs after Edwin vanished from the scene.
To us who read the book, Jasper’s guilt is so plain and his character so
atrocious that we wonder why those who knew him did not at once suspect
his guilt. To us Jasper is a self-confessed criminal with his doom
already written, but to his neighbours at Cloisterham he presented
himself in a wholly different aspect. The Dean himself is not more
obviously a pattern of virtuous living. Jasper occupies a conspicuous
set of rooms. His fire burns, his red light glimmers, his curtains are
drawn, in sight of all the town. He is young, good-looking, socially
attractive, and occupied in an almost sacred profession. His duties as
choirmaster raise him far above the position of a provincial teacher of
music. On Sundays and weekdays the people hear his voice in Psalms and
Canticles and Anthems. Edwin expresses the truth about his uncle’s
standing when he says: ‘I should have put in the foreground your being so
much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay Clerk, or whatever you call it,
of this Cathedral; your enjoying the reputation of having done such
wonders with the choir; your choosing your society, and holding such an
independent position in this queer old place.’ Mrs. Crisparkle remarks
on his ‘well-bred consideration,’ and his pallor as of ‘gentlemanly
ashes.’ When the story opens there is not a soul in Cloisterham who
breathes a word of scandal against him, and his real nature is suspected
by only two living persons known to us. One is Rosa Bud, whom he has
terrified by his secret love-making; the other the opium woman in London,
who has heard strange mutterings in his drugged sleep which to her were
not wholly ‘unintelligible.’ The Dean’s fear is that ‘Mr. Jasper’s heart
may be too much set on his nephew.’ Nocturnal ramblings with the
disreputable Durdles suggest nothing more surprising to the Dean than
that Jasper means to write a book about the place. His visits to London
are so carefully timed that he is rarely absent from the daily services.
He is a favourite with his landlady, Mrs. Tope, and to mothers with
marriageable daughters he must appear a very eligible young bachelor.
Who could dream that a man of twenty-six, refined, highly educated, and
agreeable, should seek his private recreation in an opium den?
Eight or nine months pass away, and at the point where the story closes
Jasper is to all appearance still safe and prosperous. But already the
avengers are upon his track, and we shall find it possible from the
indications given in the book to show that there were at least six
persons designed to have a share in the final capture.
The first mind in which suspicion lodges is clearly that of Mr.
Grewgious, and he has taken his impressions of Jasper from Rosa and from
Helena Landless. From his interview with Rosa in chapter ix. he learned
that the young bride-elect wished to have nothing to do with Jasper. ‘I
don’t like Mr. Jasper to come between us,’ she said, ‘in any way.’ After
the murder, when Grewgious comes to Jasper’s rooms he has already seen
Rosa and Helena Landless, and the latter must have told him of the
persecution to which Rosa has been subjected. When Jasper utters a
terrible shriek and falls to the ground in a swoon, his companion stands
by the fire, warming his hands, and looking curiously at the prostrate
figure. He refuses to eat with Jasper, and treats him from that time
onwards as ‘a brigand and wild beast in combination.’ He keeps a
personal watch on his movements in Staple Inn, and it is doubtless with
his connivance and support that Datchery goes to Cloisterham. Are not
these significant words of Grewgious in chapter xxi. to Rosa and
Crisparkle: ‘When one is in a difficulty, or at a loss, one never knows
in what direction a way out may chance to open. It is a business
principle of mine, in such a case, not to close up any direction, but to
keep an eye on every direction that may present itself. I could relate
an anecdote in point, but that it would be premature.’ In that last
sentence may not Grewgious refer to the plan for sending Datchery to
Cloisterham?
When the novel breaks off, Grewgious is working against Jasper, but only
on strong suspicion. If Rosa had reported to him Jasper’s exact words in
her final interview with him, that suspicion may have been heightened to
certainty. The part allotted to him in the ultimate crisis is that of
identifying the remains of Edwin, now hardly distinguishable otherwise,
owing to the action of quicklime in the Sapsea tomb, by means of the ring
which was on the young man’s person at the time of his murder, and which
possessed invincible powers to hold and drag. After giving the ring to
Edwin Mr. Grewgious had said ‘Her ring. Will it come back to me? My
mind hangs about her ring very uneasily to-night. But this is
explainable. I have had it so long, and I have prized it so much. I
wonder—’
The ring will come back to him from the dust of death.
THE PRINCIPLES OF DISGUISE
It is universally admitted that Datchery was disguised.
Before seeking to identify him with a character already known to us I
shall give a short note on the principles and limitations of disguise.
Suppose one wishes to disguise himself, how far is it possible for him to
succeed? What are the limits within which success is possible?
The question was very carefully discussed in the _Berliner Tageblatt_ for
15th May 1912, under the title ‘On the Psychology of Dissimulation.’ The
author, Dr. Hugo Eick, uses the word _Verstellung_ entirely in the sense
of mental disguise or purposeful deception. In the closing paragraph he
limits the possibilities. His remarks on this question are not without
value for the students of certain literary problems.
According to Dr. Eick, the really fundamental things which can never be
imitated are all manifestations of positive life. For example, we cannot
simulate courage, enthusiasm, humility. It is true that we can reproduce
certain distinctive marks of courage and enthusiasm which may deceive the
inexperienced; but the essence of these qualities can be expressed only
by a person who has experienced them, and who possesses them. A brave
man may simulate timidity and cowardice, the man who is capable of
enthusiasm may wear the mask of apathetic indolence; all depressive and
negative conditions may be imitated. But fulness of life and the sap
which quickens it cannot be replaced by any dissimulation. The stupid
person may persuade another stupid person to believe in his cleverness.
But it is impossible to counterfeit cleverness before a clever person
unless we possess a minimum of cleverness, because a certain amount of
cleverness is needed for the deception itself. The real tone of truth’s
voice can no more be copied than the fiery gleam of enthusiasm. At this
point all the arts of deception fail; the voice contradicts the words.
The man who possesses something of these qualities of soul can indeed
simulate higher degrees of the same qualities, and can exploit them in
unlimited measure. But the elemental things of life are inimitable, and
lie beyond the reach of falsehood. He who imitates an elemental thing is
immediately discovered—supposing, of course, that the discoverer has
himself some share in the element.
THE NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS
The idea that Datchery is a new character may safely be dismissed. It is
in one of the characters already on the stage that we must find Datchery.
I might proceed by taking the characters one by one, and by a process of
exhaustion arrive at Datchery. But a simpler way may be to enumerate the
qualifications required in Datchery, and to show that one character of
the story possesses them all. The claims of the other characters may be
then discussed.
Datchery is assigned the task of collecting and co-ordinating all the
evidence of diverting suspicion from the innocent Neville Landless, and
fixing it on the true criminal. In order to do this satisfactorily he
required a combination of qualities.
1. We need mental alertness and ability. Stupidity would be fatal.
2. We need high courage and firm resolution.
3. We need an individual who is at once fearless and skilful, one who
knows the art of disguise, one who can assume a new character and carry
through the assumption to a triumphant end.
4. We need supremely a character whose whole heart goes with the effort
at detection. There must be behind all his actions a passionate,
personal, intimate concern. These requirements, I believe, are satisfied
in Helena Landless, and in Helena Landless alone. The identification is
naturally received at first with a certain measure of incredulity and
surprise, but a careful and patient study of the story will confirm it.
The theory was put forth by Mr. Cuming Walters in 1905 in his book _Clues
to Dickens’s_ ‘_Mystery of Edwin Drood_.’ It is one of the most
brilliant conjectures or identifications in literary history. In arguing
for its truth I must follow largely on the lines of Mr. Cuming Walters,
but I hope to supply some fresh and fortifying considerations.
HELENA LANDLESS
No one will ever understand this problem unless he studies the method of
Dickens as explained by Dickens himself in his letter to Wilkie Collins
(page 92), and in his reply to the _Edinburgh_, (page 105). Dickens is
supremely an artist, and he tries to insert nothing without a purpose.
Sometimes his hints are intended to help at the time, sometimes to
mislead temporarily. Sometimes they are intended to be plain when the
end is reached, and the reader peruses the story in the light of the
conclusion.