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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Problem of 'Edwin Drood', by W. Robertson
+Nicoll
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Problem of 'Edwin Drood'
+       A Study in the Methods of Dickens
+
+
+Author: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 3, 2011  [eBook #36311]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROBLEM OF 'EDWIN DROOD'***
+
+
+This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
+
+    [Picture: An Original Wrapper of “Edwin Drood” Designed by Charles
+       Allston Collins.  (By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall)]
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE PROBLEM OF
+                              ‘EDWIN DROOD’
+
+
+                    A STUDY IN THE METHODS OF DICKENS
+                                    BY
+                           W. ROBERTSON NICOLL
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+                       LONDON   NEW YORK   TORONTO
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                             PRINTED IN 1912
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+                           THE EARL OF ROSEBERY
+                                   K.G.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                          PAGE
+PREFACE                                     ix
+INTRODUCTION                         xvii
+     PART I.—THE MATERIALS FOR A SOLUTION
+             CHAPTER I
+THE TEXT OF ‘EDWIN DROOD’                    3
+                  CHAPTER II
+EXTERNAL TESTIMONIES                        20
+NOTES FOR THE NOVEL                         56
+                 CHAPTER III
+THE ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE WRAPPER            69
+                  CHAPTER IV
+THE METHODS OF DICKENS                      82
+        PART II.—ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION
+                  CHAPTER V
+WAS EDWIN DROOD MURDERED?                  109
+                  CHAPTER VI
+WHO WAS DATCHERY?                          141
+                 CHAPTER VII
+OTHER THEORIES                             177
+                 CHAPTER VIII
+HOW WAS ‘EDWIN DROOD’ TO END?              184
+BIBLIOGRAPHY                               203
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The first serious discussion of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ came from
+the pen of the astronomer, Mr. R. A. Proctor.  Mr. Proctor wrote various
+essays on the subject.  One appears in his _Leisure Readings_, included
+in Messrs. Longmans’ ‘Silver Library.’  A second was published in 1887,
+and entitled _Watched by the Dead_.  There were, I believe, in addition
+some periodical articles by Mr. Proctor; these I have not seen.  Mr.
+Proctor modified certain positions in his earlier essay included in
+_Leisure Readings_, so that the paper must not be taken as representative
+of his final views.  Whatever may be thought of Mr. Proctor’s theory, all
+will admit that he devoted much care and ingenuity to the study, and that
+he had an exceptional knowledge of Dickens’s books.
+
+In 1905 Mr. Cuming Walters published his _Clues to Dickens’s Mystery of
+Edwin Drood_.  The _Athenæum_ expressed its conviction ‘that in these
+hundred pages or so he has found the clue, the main secret which had
+baffled all previous investigators, and so has secured permanent
+association with one of the immortals.’  Mr. Cuming Walters’s book was
+immediately followed by Mr. Andrew Lang’s _The Puzzle of Dickens’s Last
+Plot_.  In this Mr. Lang adopted with modifications the theory of Mr.
+Proctor.  The subject continued to interest this lamented author to the
+end of his life.  He wrote many letters and articles on the theme, coming
+ultimately to the conclusion that Dickens did not know himself how his
+story was to be ended.
+
+In 1910 Professor Henry Jackson of Cambridge published a volume, _About
+Edwin Drood_.  It is a work of sterling merit, and particularly valuable
+for its study of the chronology of the story.  Dr. Jackson was the first
+to examine the manuscript in a scholarly way, and to give some of the
+chief results.  His conclusions are in the main those of Mr. Cuming
+Walters, but they are supported by fresh arguments and criticisms.
+
+There have been many articles on the subject, particularly in that
+excellent periodical, the _Dickensian_, edited by Mr. B. W. Matz.  Of
+this magazine it may be said that every number adds something to our
+knowledge of the great author.
+
+By far the most successful attempt to finish the book is that of Gillan
+Vase, which was published in 1878.  It is the only continuation worth
+looking at.
+
+Among the best of the periodical contributions are those by Dr. M. R.
+James of Cambridge, published in the _Academy_, and in the _Cambridge
+Review_.  The papers of Mr. G. F. Gadd in the _Dickensian_ deserve
+special praise.  In the _Bookman_ Mr. B. W. Matz, whose knowledge of
+Dickens is unsurpassed, has declared for the view that Edwin Drood was
+murdered, but has not committed himself to any theory of Datchery.
+
+I should not have been justified in publishing this volume if I had been
+able to add no new material.  But I venture to think it will be found
+that while I have freely used the arguments and the discoveries of
+previous investigators, I have made a considerable addition to the
+stores.  In particular, I have brought out the fact that Forster declined
+to accept Dickens’s erasures in the later proofs, and I have printed the
+passages which Dickens meant to have omitted.  The effect of the
+omissions is also traced to a certain extent, though not fully.  The more
+one studies them, the more significant they appear.
+
+I have printed completely for the first time the Notes and Plans for the
+novel.  I have also published some notes on the manuscript based on a
+careful examination.  These notes are not by any means complete, but they
+include perhaps the more important facts.  Through the kindness of Miss
+Bessie Hatton and Mr. B. W. Matz I have been able to give an account of
+the unacted play by Charles Dickens the younger and Joseph Hatton on
+_Edwin Drood_.
+
+I have also put together for the first time the external evidence on the
+subject.  It is particularly important that this evidence should be read
+in full, and much of it is now inaccessible to the general reader.  In
+the discussion of the main problems it will, I believe, be found that
+certain new arguments have been brought forward.  In particular I ask
+attention to the quotations from the Bancroft _Memoirs_ and from _No
+Name_.  I have also given certain studies of the methods of Dickens which
+may be useful.
+
+I have to acknowledge with warm thanks the kindness of Mr. Hugh Thomson
+in sending me his reading of the Wrapper.
+
+It will thus, I hope, be found that the study is a contribution to the
+subject, and not a mere repetition or paraphrase of what has been
+advanced.
+
+I have made no attempt at summarising the novel.  No one can possibly
+attack the problem with any hope of success who has not read the book
+over and over again.  A hasty perusal will serve no purpose.  The
+fragment deserves and repays the very closest study.
+
+There are questions that have been raised and arguments that have been
+stated which are not mentioned here.  This is not because of ignorance.
+I have read, I believe, practically all that has been published on the
+theme.  What I have omitted is matter that seems to me trivial or
+irrelevant.
+
+While fully believing in the accuracy of the conclusions I have reached,
+I desire to avoid dogmatism.  There is always the possibility that a
+writer may be diverted from his purpose.  He may come to difficulties he
+cannot surmount.  The fact that scholarly students of Dickens have come
+to different conclusions is a fact to be taken into account.
+
+My thanks are due to Lord Rosebery for kindly accepting the dedication of
+the volume.  Lord Rosebery is, however, in no way responsible for my
+arguments or my conclusions.
+
+In preparing this study I have had the constant assistance and counsel of
+my accomplished colleague, Miss Jane T. Stoddart.  Miss Stoddart’s
+accuracy and learning and acuteness have been of the greatest use to me,
+and there is scarcely a chapter in the volume which does not owe much to
+her.
+
+Mr. J. H. Ingram has most kindly furnished me with information about Poe.
+
+Mr. Clement Shorter has allowed me to use his very valuable collection of
+newspaper articles.
+
+Mr. B. W. Matz has very courteously answered some inquiries, and he has
+permitted me to use his valuable bibliography.
+
+Messrs. Chapman & Hall have kindly given me permission to use the
+Wrapper, etc.
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters has been so kind as to read the proofs.
+
+If there are those who think that the problem does not deserve
+consideration, I am not careful to answer them.  It is a problem which
+will be discussed as long as Dickens is read.  Those who believe that
+Dickens is the greatest humorist and one of the greatest novelists in
+English literature, are proud to make any contribution, however
+insignificant, to the understanding of his works.  Mr. Gladstone, in his
+‘Essay on the Place of Homer in Education,’ mentions the tradition of
+Dorotheus, who spent the whole of his life in endeavouring to elucidate
+the meaning of a single word in Homer.  Without fully justifying this use
+of time, we may agree in Mr. Gladstone’s general conclusion ‘that no
+exertion spent upon any of the classics of the world, and attended with
+any amount of real result, is thrown away.’
+
+BAY TREE LODGE, HAMPSTEAD,
+             _Sept._ 1912.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The three mysteries of _Edwin Drood_ are thus stated by Mr. Cuming
+Walters:
+
+‘The first mystery, partly solved by Dickens himself, is the fate of
+Edwin Drood.  Was he murdered?—if so, how and by whom, and where was his
+body hidden?  If not, how did he escape, and what became of him, and did
+he reappear?
+
+‘The second mystery is—Who was Mr. Datchery, the “stranger who appeared
+in Cloisterham” after Drood’s disappearance?
+
+‘The third mystery is—Who was the old opium woman, called the Princess
+Puffer, and why did she pursue John Jasper?’
+
+It is with the first two of these mysteries that this book is concerned.
+In the concluding chapter some hints are offered as to the third, but in
+my opinion there are no sufficient materials for any definite answer.
+
+The problem before us is to decide with one half of Dickens’s book in our
+possession what the course of the other half was likely to be.
+
+It is important to lay stress upon this.  An able reviewer in the
+_Athenæum_, 1st April 1911, says: ‘The book is still in its infancy.  Its
+predecessor, _Our Mutual Friend_, attained to some sixty-seven chapters,
+_Great Expectations_ to fifty-nine, _Bleak House_ to sixty-six.  There is
+no strain on probability in supposing that _Edwin Drood_ might, in
+happier circumstances, have reached something like these proportions.’
+The fact is that the book was to be completed in twelve numbers, and we
+have six.
+
+In the first part of this volume I have dealt with the materials for a
+solution.
+
+In the second part, I have used the materials and the internal evidence
+of the book, and attempted an answer to the questions.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.—THE MATERIALS FOR A SOLUTION
+
+
+CHAPTER I—THE TEXT OF EDWIN DROOD
+
+
+The materials for the solution of the ‘Edwin Drood’ problems must first
+of all be found in the text of the unfinished volume.  Hitherto it has
+not been observed that the book we have is not precisely what it was when
+Dickens left it.  Three parts had been issued by Dickens himself.  After
+his death the remaining three parts were issued by John Forster.  Dickens
+had corrected his proofs up to and including chapter xxi.  The succeeding
+chapters xxii. and xxiii. are untouched.  I discovered to my great
+surprise on examining the proofs in the Forster Collection that Forster
+had in every case ignored Dickens’s erasures, and had replaced all the
+omitted passages in the text.  Thus it happens that we do not read the
+book as Dickens intended us to read it.  We have passages which on
+consideration he decided not to print.  It is unnecessary to criticise
+the action of Forster, but it seems clear that he should at least have
+given warning to the reader.  I now print the passages erased by Dickens
+and restored by Forster.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+SENTENCES AND PARTS OF SENTENCES ERASED BY DICKENS
+
+
+In Chapter XVII.:—
+
+    _an eminent public character_, _once known to fame as Frosty faced
+    Fogo_,
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _by_, _always_, _as it seemed_, _on errands of antagonistically
+    snatching something from somebody_, _and never giving anything to
+    anybody_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Sir_,’ _said Mr. Honeythunder_, _in his tremendous voice_, _like a
+    schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion_,
+    ‘_sit down_.’
+
+    _Mr. Crisparkle seated himself_.
+
+    _Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remaining few score of a few
+    thousand circulars_, _calling upon a corresponding number of families
+    without means to come forward_, _stump up instantly_, _and be
+    Philanthropists_, _or go to the Devil_, _another shabby stipendiary
+    Philanthropist_ (_highly disinterested_, _if in earnest_) _gathered
+    these into a basket and walked off with them_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _when they were alone_,
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _Mr. Crisparkle rose_; _a little heated in the face_, _but with
+    perfect command of himself_.
+
+    ‘_Mr. Honeythunder_,’ _he said_, _taking up the papers referred to_:
+    ‘_my being better or worse employed than I am at present is a matter
+    of taste and opinion_.  _You might think me better employed in
+    enrolling myself a member of your Society_.’
+
+    ‘_Ay_, _indeed_, _sir_!’ _retorted Mr. Honeythunder_, _shaking his
+    head in a threatening manner_.  ‘_It would have been better for you
+    if you had done that long ago_!’
+
+    ‘_I think otherwise_.’
+
+    ‘_Or_,’ _said Mr. Honeythunder_, _shaking his head again_, ‘_I might
+    think one of your profession better employed in devoting himself to
+    the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be
+    undertaken by a layman_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Perhaps I expect to retain it still_?’ _Mr. Crisparkle returned_,
+    _enlightened_; ‘_do you mean that too_?’
+
+    ‘_Well_, _sir_,’ _returned the professional Philanthropist_, _getting
+    up and thrusting his hands down into his trousers pockets_, ‘_I don’t
+    go about measuring people for caps_.  _If people find I have __any
+    about me that fit ’em_, _they can put ’em on and wear ’em_, _if they
+    like_.  _That’s their look out_: _not mine_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake_, _and innocent_;
+    _but I don’t complain_.’
+
+    ‘_And you must expect no miracle to help you_, _Neville_,’ _said Mr.
+    Crisparkle_, _compassionately_.
+
+    ‘_No_, _sir_, _I know that_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice of such a
+    friend and helper_.  _Such a good friend and helper_!’
+
+    _He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder_, _and kissed it_.
+    _Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the books_, _but not so brightly as when he
+    had entered_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _But they were as serviceable as they were precious to Neville
+    Landless_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_I don’t think so_,’ _said the Minor Canon_.  ‘_There is duty to be
+    done here_; _and there are womanly feeling_, _sense_, _and courage
+    wanted here_.’
+
+    ‘_I meant_,’ _explained Neville_, ‘_that the surroundings are so dull
+    and unwomanly_, _and that Helena can have no suitable friend or
+    society here_.’
+
+    ‘_You have only to remember_,’ _said Mr. __Crisparkle_, ‘_that you
+    are here yourself_, _and that she has to draw you into the
+    sunlight_.’
+
+    _They were silent for a little while_, _and then Mr. Crisparkle began
+    anew_.
+
+    ‘_When we first spoke together_, _Neville_, _you told me that your
+    sister had risen out of the disadvantages of your past lives as
+    superior to you as the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is higher than
+    the chimneys of Minor Canon Corner_.  _Do you remember that_?’
+
+    ‘_Right well_!’
+
+    ‘_I was inclined to think it at the time an enthusiastic flight_.
+    _No matter what I think it now_.  _What I would emphasise is_, _that
+    under the head of Pride your sister is a great and opportune example
+    to you_.’
+
+    ‘_Under all heads that are included in the composition of a fine
+    character_, _she is_.’
+
+    ‘_Say so_; _but take this one_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _She can dominate it even when it is wounded through her sympathy
+    with you_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _Every day and hour of her life since Edwin Drood’s disappearance_,
+    _she has faced malignity and folly—for you—as only a brave nature
+    well directed can_.  _So it will be with her to the end_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _which knows no shrinking_, _and can get no mastery over her_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _as she is a truly brave woman_,’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _As Mr. Grewgious had to turn his eye up considerably before he could
+    see the chambers_, _the phrase was to be taken figuratively and not
+    literally_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_A watch_?’ _repeated Mr. Grewgious musingly_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_I entertain a sort of fancy for having him under my eye to-night_,
+    _do you know_?’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In Chapter XVIII.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_indeed_, _I have no doubt that we could suit you that far_,
+    _however particular you might be_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope’s was somewhere
+    very near it_, _and that_, _like the children in the game of hot
+    boiled beans and very good butter_, _he was warm in his search when
+    he saw the Tower_, _and cold when he didn’t see it_.
+
+    _He was getting very cold indeed when_.  ‘_Until_’ _is put in here_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Indeed_?’ _said Mr. Datchery_, _with a second look of some
+    interest_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _Mr. Datchery_, _taking off his hat to give that shock of white hair
+    of his another shake_, _seemed quite resigned_, _and betook himself
+    whither he had been directed_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _Perhaps Mr. Datchery had heard something of what had occurred there
+    last winter_?
+
+    _Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge of the event in question_,
+    _on trying to recall it_, _as he well could have_.  _He begged Mrs.
+    Tope’s pardon when she found it incumbent on her to correct him in
+    every detail of his summary of the facts_, _but pleaded that he was
+    merely a single buffer getting through life upon his means as idly as
+    he could_, _and that so many people were so constantly making away
+    with so many other people_, _as to render it difficult for a buffer
+    of an easy temper to preserve the circumstances of the several cases
+    unmixed in his mind_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Might I ask His Honour_,’ _said Mr. Datchery_, ‘_whether that
+    gentleman we have just left is the gentleman of whom I have heard in
+    the neighbourhood as being much afflicted by the loss of a nephew_,
+    _and concentrating his life on avenging the loss_?’
+
+    ‘_That is the gentleman_.  _John Jasper_, _sir_.’
+
+    ‘_Would His Honour allow me to inquire whether there are strong
+    suspicions of any one_?’
+
+    ‘_More than suspicions_, _sir_,’ _returned Mr. Sapsea_; ‘_all but
+    certainties_.’
+
+    ‘_Only think now_!’ _cried Mr. Datchery_.
+
+    ‘_But proof_, _sir_, _proof must be built up stone by stone_,’ _said
+    the Mayor_.  ‘_As I say_, _the end crowns the work_.  _It is not
+    enough that Justice should be morally certain_; _she must be
+    immorally certain—legally_, _that is_.’
+
+    ‘_His Honour_,’ _said Mr. Datchery_, ‘_reminds me of the nature of
+    the law_.  _Immoral_.  _How true_!’
+
+    ‘_As I say_, _sir_,’ _pompously went on the Mayor_, ‘_the arm of the
+    law is a strong arm_, _and a long arm_.  _That is the way I put it_.
+    _A strong arm and a long arm_.’
+
+    ‘_How forcible_!—_And yet_, _again_, _how true_!’ _murmured Mr.
+    Datchery_.
+
+    ‘_And without betraying what I call the secrets of the
+    prison-house_,’ _said Mr. Sapsea_; ‘_the secrets of the prison-house
+    is the term I used on the bench_.’
+
+    ‘_And what other term than His Honour’s would express it_?’ _said Mr.
+    Datchery_.
+
+    ‘_Without_, _I say_, _betraying them_, _I predict to you_, _knowing
+    the iron will of the gentleman we have just left_ (_I take the bold
+    step of calling it __iron_, _on account of its strength_), _that in
+    this case the long arm will reach_, _and the strong arm will strike_.
+    _This is our Cathedral_, _sir_.  _The best judges are pleased to
+    admire it_, _and the best among our townsmen own to being a little
+    vain of it_.’
+
+    _All this time Mr. Datchery had walked with his hat under his arm_,
+    _and his white hair streaming_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In the next sentence the word _now_ is struck out.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘He had an odd momentary appearance upon him of having forgotten his
+    hat, when Mr. Sapsea _now_ touched it.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_I shall come_.  _Master Deputy_, _what do you owe me_?’
+
+    ‘_A job_.’
+
+    ‘_Mind you pay me honestly with the job of showing me Mr. Durdles’s
+    house when I want to go there_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In Chapter XX.:—
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Yes_, _you may be sure that the stairs are fireproof_,’ _said Mr.
+    Grewgious_, ‘_and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be
+    perceived and suppressed by the watchmen_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In Chapter XXI.:—
+
+    _I wished at the time that you had come to me_; _but now I think it
+    best that you did as you did_, _and came to your guardian_.’
+
+    ‘_I did think of you_,’ _Rosa told him_; ‘_but Minor Canon Corner was
+    so near him_—’
+
+    ‘_I understand_.  _It was quite natural_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘_Have you settled_,’ _asked Rosa_, _appealing to them both_, ‘_what
+    is to be done for Helena and her brother_?’
+
+    ‘_Why really_,’ _said Mr. Crisparkle_, ‘_I am in great perplexity_.
+    _If even Mr. Grewgious_, _whose head is much longer than mine_, _and
+    who is a whole night’s cogitation in advance of me_, _is undecided_,
+    _what must I be_!’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _Am I agreed with generally in the views I take_?’
+
+    ‘_I entirely coincide with them_,’ _said Mr. Crisparkle_, _who had
+    been very attentive_.
+
+    ‘_As I have no doubt I should_,’ _added Mr. Tartar_, _smiling_, ‘_if
+    I understood them_.’
+
+    ‘_Fair and softly_, _sir_,’ _said Mr. Grewgious_; ‘_we shall fully
+    confide in you directly_, _if you will favour us with your
+    permission_.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    _I begin to understand to what you tend_,’ _said __Mr. Crisparkle_,
+    ‘_and highly approve of your caution_.’
+
+    ‘_I needn’t repeat that I know nothing yet of the why and
+    wherefore_,’ _said Mr. Tartar_; ‘_but I also understand to what you
+    tend_, _so let me say at once that my chambers are freely at your
+    disposal_.’
+
+
+
+THE MANUSCRIPT
+
+
+I make also a few notes based on a careful examination of the manuscript.
+Certain passages are rewritten, and the result pasted over the original
+page.  These passages have been noted.  Also certain sentences have been
+altered in form, sometimes by the substitution of one word for another,
+and sometimes by the addition of words.  It is not necessary to give
+every example, but a few may be noted.
+
+Towards the end of the second chapter the passage beginning ‘I have been
+taking opium for a pain,’ including the long paragraph which follows, has
+been entirely rewritten and pasted on.
+
+In the description of the Landlesses in chapter vi. Dickens made certain
+changes.  As the sentence stands now it reads as follows:  ‘An unusually
+handsome lithe young fellow, and an unusually handsome lithe girl; much
+alike; both very dark, and very rich in colour; she of almost the gipsy
+type; something untamed about them both; a certain air upon them of
+hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being the objects of the
+chase, rather than the followers.’
+
+As originally written it read thus: ‘A handsome young fellow, and a
+handsome girl; both dark and rich in colour; she quite gipsy like;
+something untamed about them both; a certain air upon them of hunter and
+huntress; yet a certain air of being the objects of the chase, rather
+than the followers.’
+
+In chapter vii., where Neville is speaking of his sister, as we have the
+passage it reads: ‘In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are
+twin children), you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our
+misery ever subdued her, though it often cowed me.  When we ran away from
+it (we ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and
+cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading.
+Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man.  I take
+it we were seven years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when I
+lost the pocket-knife with which she was to have cut her hair short, how
+desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite it off.’
+
+The original version ran thus: ‘In reference to my sister, sir (we are
+twin children), you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our
+misery ever cowed her, though it often cowed me.  When we ran away from
+it (we ran away four times in five years, to be very soon brought back
+and punished), the flight was always of her planning.  Each time she
+dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man.  I take it we were
+eight years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when I lost the
+pocket-knife with which she was to have cut her hair short, that she
+tried to tear it out, or bite it off.’
+
+At the beginning of chapter xviii. we read of the stranger in
+Cloisterham: ‘Being buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout.’  This was
+originally: ‘Being dressed in a tightish blue surtout.’  A little further
+on in the same paragraph we have: ‘He stood with his back to the empty
+fireplace.’  Dickens originally wrote: ‘He stood with his back to the
+fireplace.’  In the next paragraph ‘His shock of white hair’ was
+originally ‘His shock of long white hair.’
+
+In the same chapter, when Datchery and the boy are standing looking at
+Jasper’s rooms we have the following sentence: ‘“Indeed?” said Mr.
+Datchery, with a second look of some interest.’  This was originally
+written: ‘“Indeed?” said Mr. Datchery, with an appearance of interest.’
+In the final proofs this passage was entirely struck out.  On the next
+page we have this sentence: ‘Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give
+that shock of white hair of his another shake, seemed quite resigned, and
+betook himself whither he had been directed.’  The original version ran
+thus: ‘Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat and giving his shock of white
+hair another shake, was quite resigned, and betook himself whither he had
+been directed.’
+
+A little further on in the same chapter, when Datchery first goes into
+Jasper’s room we have: ‘“I beg pardon,” said Mr. Datchery, making a leg
+with his hat under his arm.’  This was originally written, “I beg
+pardon,” said Mr. Datchery, hat in hand.’
+
+In the last paragraph of this chapter we have: ‘Said Mr. Datchery to
+himself that night, as he looked at his white hair in the gas-lighted
+looking-glass over the coffee-room chimney-piece at the Crozier, and
+shook it out: “For a single buffer, of an easy temper, living idly on his
+means, I have had a rather busy afternoon!”’  This was originally
+written: ‘Said Mr. Datchery to himself that night as he looked at his
+white hair in the gas-lighted looking-glass over the coffee-room
+chimney-piece at the Crozier: “Well, for a single buffer of an easy
+temper, living idly on his means, I have had rather a busy afternoon!”’
+
+In chapter xx., when Grewgious is talking about Bazzard we have the
+following: ‘“No, he goes his way, after office hours.  In fact, he is off
+duty here, altogether, just at present; and a firm downstairs, with which
+I have business relations, lend me a substitute.  But it would be
+extremely difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard.”’  Originally Dickens wrote:
+‘“No, he goes his ways after office hours.  In fact, he is off duty at
+present; and a firm downstairs with which I have business relations, lend
+me a substitute.  But it would be difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard.”’
+
+Chapter xxii. is much corrected, and the whole of the second paragraph is
+rewritten and pasted on.  Chapter xxiii. is also a good deal corrected.
+Near the beginning we have the following: ‘The Cathedral doors have
+closed for the night; and the Choir-master, on a short leave of absence
+for two or three services, sets his face towards London.’  This was
+originally written: ‘The Cathedral doors have closed for the night; and
+the Choir-master, on leave of absence for a few days, sets his face
+towards London.’
+
+The passage beginning: ‘But she goes no further away from it than the
+chair upon the hearth,’ and the next two paragraphs are entirely
+rewritten and pasted on, and the following sentences are cancelled: ‘“So
+far I might a’most as well have never found out how to set you talking,”
+is her commentary.  “You are too sleepy to talk too plain.  You hold your
+secrets right you do!”’  A little further on we have: ‘“Halloa!” he cries
+in a low voice, seeing her brought to a standstill: “who are you looking
+for?”’  This was originally ‘“Halloa!” cries this gentleman, “who are you
+looking for?”’
+
+On the next page we have: ‘With his uncovered gray hair blowing about.’
+Dickens originally wrote: ‘With his gray hair blowing about.’
+
+On the same page, when Datchery and the opium woman are talking together
+Dickens puts in the following sentence about opium as an afterthought:
+‘“And it’s like a human creetur so far, that you always hear what can be
+said against it, but seldom what can be said in its praise.”’
+
+A little further on we have: ‘Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds
+he has counted wrong, shakes his money together, and begins again.’
+Originally we had: ‘Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has
+counted wrong, and begins again.’  Very near the end of this chapter we
+have: ‘At length he rises, throws open the door of a corner cupboard, and
+refers to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its inner side.’  Dickens
+first wrote: ‘At length he rises, throws open the door of a corner
+cupboard, and refers to a few chalked strokes on its inner side.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II—EXTERNAL TESTIMONIES
+
+
+We now proceed to give such external testimony as exists of the plans and
+intentions of Dickens.  The chief authority is, of course, the _Life_ by
+Forster.  We have in addition the testimony of Madame Perugini, whose
+first husband, Charles Allston Collins, designed the wrapper.  To this we
+add the testimony of Charles Dickens the younger as conveyed to his
+sister.  Through the kindness of Miss Bessie Hatton I have been able to
+read the text of the unacted play written by Joseph Hatton and Charles
+Dickens the younger on _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_.  We have also the
+important letter of Sir Luke Fildes, who was chosen by Dickens to
+illustrate the story.  It seems essential to any complete consideration
+of the subject that these testimonies should be given in full, and this
+is the more necessary because some of them are now not readily at hand.
+
+
+JOHN FORSTER’S TESTIMONY
+
+
+Dickens in 1868 had been alarming his friends and exhausting himself by
+his public Readings.  When he was in America on his last Reading tour he
+had made a profit of about £20,000.  He entered into an agreement with
+Messrs. Chappell to give a final course of Readings in this country, from
+which he expected to receive an additional £13,000.  The strain of his
+work in America had manifestly told upon him.  ‘There was manifest
+abatement of his natural force, the elasticity of bearing was impaired,
+and the wonderful brightness of eye was dimmed at times.’  Unfavourable
+and alarming symptoms of nerve mischief were also noted, but he drew
+lavishly on his reserve strength, and thinking that a new excitement was
+needed he chose the _Oliver Twist_ murder, one of the most trying of his
+public recitals.  He suffered ‘thirty thousand shocks to the nerves’
+going to Edinburgh.  His Readings and his journeyings exacted from him
+the most terrible physical exertion, but no warnings could arrest his
+course till his physicians peremptorily ordered him to desist.  Even
+then, however, he resumed his Readings at a later date.
+
+In this condition of mental and bodily fatigue Dickens began his last
+book.  I print almost in full the relative passages from Forster.
+
+    The last book undertaken by Dickens was to be published in
+    illustrated monthly numbers, of the old form, but to close with the
+    twelfth.  It closed, unfinished, with the sixth number, which was
+    itself underwritten by two pages.
+
+    His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle
+    of July.  ‘What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in
+    this way?—Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from
+    one another, pledged to be married after many years—at the end of the
+    book.  The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate
+    ways, and the impossibility of telling what will be done with that
+    impending fate.’  This was laid aside; but it left a marked trace on
+    the story as afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin Drood and
+    his betrothed.
+
+    I first heard of the later design in a letter dated ‘Friday, the 6th
+    of August 1869,’ in which, after speaking, with the usual unstinted
+    praise he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little
+    tale he had received for his journal, he spoke of the change that had
+    occurred to him for the new tale by himself.  ‘I laid aside the fancy
+    I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story.
+    Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone),
+    but a very strong one, though difficult to work.’  The story, I
+    learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a
+    nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the
+    review of the murderer’s career by himself at the close, when its
+    temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he, the culprit, but
+    some other man, were the tempted.  The last chapters were to be
+    written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all
+    elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him.
+    Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for
+    its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all
+    discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close,
+    when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive
+    effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the
+    person murdered was to be identified, but the locality of the crime
+    and the man who committed it.  So much was told to me before any of
+    the book was written; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken
+    by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went
+    on, was brought away with him from their last interview.  Rosa was to
+    marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself,
+    I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and
+    seize the murderer.
+
+    Nothing had been written, however, of the main parts of the design
+    excepting what is found in the published numbers; there was no hint
+    or preparation for the sequel in any notes of chapters in advance;
+    and there remained not even what he had himself so sadly written of
+    the book by Thackeray also interrupted by death.  The evidence of
+    matured designs never to be accomplished, intentions planned never to
+    be executed, roads of thought marked out never to be traversed, goals
+    shining in the distance never to be reached, was wanting here.  It
+    was all a blank.  Enough had been completed nevertheless to give
+    promise of a much greater book than its immediate predecessor.  ‘I
+    hope his book is finished,’ wrote Longfellow, when the news of his
+    death was flashed to America.  ‘It is certainly one of his most
+    beautiful works, if not the most beautiful of all.  It would be too
+    sad to think the pen had fallen from his hand, and left it
+    incomplete.’  Some of its characters are touched with subtlety, and
+    in its descriptions his imaginative power was at its best.  Not a
+    line was wanting to the reality, in the most minute local detail, of
+    places the most widely contrasted; and we saw with equal vividness
+    the lazy cathedral town and the lurid opium-eater’s den.  Something
+    like the old lightness and buoyancy of animal spirits gave a new
+    freshness to the humour; the scenes of the child-heroine and her
+    luckless betrothed had both novelty and nicety of character in them;
+    and Mr. Grewgious in chambers with his clerk and the two waiters, the
+    conceited fool Sapsea, and the blustering philanthropist
+    Honeythunder, were first-rate comedy.  Miss Twinkleton was of the
+    family of Miss La Creevy; and the lodging-house keeper, Miss
+    Billickin, though she gave Miss Twinkleton but a sorry account of her
+    blood, had that of Mrs. Todgers in her veins.  ‘I was put in early
+    life to a very genteel boarding-school, the mistress being no less a
+    lady than yourself, of about your own age, or it may be some years
+    younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run
+    through my life.’  Was ever anything better said of a school-fare of
+    starved gentility?
+
+    The last page of _Edwin Drood_ was written in the châlet in the
+    afternoon of his last day of consciousness; and I have thought there
+    might be some interest in a facsimile of the greater part of this
+    final page of manuscript that ever came from his hand, at which he
+    had worked unusually late in order to finish the chapter.  It has
+    very much the character, in its excessive care of correction and
+    interlineation, of all his later manuscripts; and in order that
+    comparison may be made with his earlier and easier method, I place
+    beside it a portion of a page of the original of _Oliver Twist_.  His
+    greater pains and elaboration of writing, it may be mentioned, become
+    first very obvious in the later parts of _Martin Chuzzlewit_; but not
+    the least remarkable feature in all his manuscripts is the accuracy
+    with which the portions of each representing the several numbers are
+    exactly adjusted to the space the printer has to fill.  Whether
+    without erasure or so interlined as to be illegible, nothing is
+    wanting, and there is nothing in excess.  So assured had the habit
+    become, that we have seen him remarking upon an instance the other
+    way, in _Our Mutual Friend_, as not having happened to him for thirty
+    years.  Certainly the exceptions had been few and unimportant; but
+    _Edwin Drood_ more startlingly showed him how unsettled the habit he
+    most prized had become, in the clashing of old and new pursuits.
+    ‘When I had written’ (22nd of December 1869), ‘and, as I thought,
+    disposed of the first two numbers of my story, Clowes informed me to
+    my horror that they were, together, _twelve printed __pages too
+    short_!  Consequently I had to transpose a chapter from number two to
+    number one, and remodel number two altogether.  This was the more
+    unlucky, that it came upon me at the time when I was obliged to leave
+    the book, in order to get up the Readings’ (the additional twelve for
+    which Sir Thomas Watson’s consent had been obtained); ‘quite gone out
+    of my mind since I left them off.  However, I turned to it and got it
+    done, and both numbers are now in type.  Charles Collins has designed
+    an excellent cover.’  It was his wish that his son-in-law should have
+    illustrated the story; but this not being practicable, upon an
+    opinion expressed by Mr. Millais which the result thoroughly
+    justified, choice was made of Mr. S. L. Fildes.
+
+Forster goes on to explain as follows the discovery of the manuscript
+containing the passage ‘How Mr. Sapsea Ceased to be a Member of the Eight
+Club.’  This is to be found in every edition of _Edwin Drood_, but
+Forster’s remarks are important and must be reproduced:
+
+    This reference to the last effort of Dickens’s genius had been
+    written as it thus stands, when a discovery of some interest was made
+    by the writer.  Within the leaves of one of Dickens’s other
+    manuscripts were found some detached slips of his writing, on paper
+    only half the size of that used for the tale, so cramped, interlined,
+    and blotted as to be nearly illegible, which on close inspection
+    proved to be a scene in which Sapsea the auctioneer is introduced as
+    the principal figure, among a group of characters new to the story.
+    The explanation of it perhaps is, that, having become a little
+    nervous about the course of the tale, from a fear that he might have
+    plunged too soon into the incidents leading on to the catastrophe,
+    such as the Datchery assumption in the fifth number (a misgiving he
+    had certainly expressed to his sister-in-law), it had occurred to him
+    to open some fresh veins of character incidental to the interest,
+    though not directly part of it, and so to handle them in connection
+    with Sapsea as a little to suspend the final development even while
+    assisting to strengthen it.  Before beginning any number of a serial,
+    he used, as we have seen in former instances, to plan briefly what he
+    intended to put into it chapter by chapter; and his first number-plan
+    of _Drood_ had the following: ‘Mr. Sapsea.  Old Tory jackass.
+    Connect Jasper with him.  (He will want a solemn donkey by and by)’;
+    which was effected by bringing together both Durdles and Jasper, for
+    connection with Sapsea, in the matter of the epitaph for Mrs.
+    Sapsea’s tomb.  The scene now discovered might in this view have been
+    designed to strengthen and carry forward that element in the tale;
+    and otherwise it very sufficiently expresses itself.  It would supply
+    an answer, if such were needed, to those who have asserted that the
+    hopeless decadence of Dickens as a writer had set in before his
+    death.  Among the lines last written by him, these are the very last
+    we can ever hope to receive; and they seem to me a delightful
+    specimen of the power possessed by him in his prime, and the rarest
+    which any novelist can have, of revealing a character by a touch.
+    Here are a couple of people, Kimber and Peartree, not known to us
+    before, whom we read off thoroughly in a dozen words; and as to
+    Sapsea himself, auctioneer and mayor of Cloisterham, we are face to
+    face with what before we only dimly realised, and we see the solemn
+    jackass, in his business pulpit, playing off the airs of Mr. Dean in
+    his Cathedral pulpit, with Cloisterham laughing at the impostor.’
+
+
+
+MADAME PERUGINI’S TESTIMONY
+
+
+Madame Perugini’s article appeared in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for June
+1906.  The title is ‘Edwin Drood and the Last Days of Charles Dickens, by
+his younger daughter Kate Perugini.’  Madame Perugini begins by
+summarising the evidence of Forster as already given.  She proceeds to
+make the following instructive comments.  It will be observed also that
+she makes no additions to the external evidence, particularly on the
+vexed question of the wrapper:
+
+    _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ is a story, or, to speak more correctly,
+    the half of a story, that has excited so much general interest and so
+    many speculations as to its ultimate disclosures, that it has given
+    rise to various imaginary theories on the part of several clever
+    writers; and to much discussion among those who are not writers, but
+    merely fervent admirers and thoughtful readers of my father’s
+    writings.  All these attach different meanings to the extraordinary
+    number of clues my father has offered them to follow, and they are
+    even more keen at the present day than they were when the book made
+    its first appearance to find their way through the tangled maze and
+    arrive at the very heart of the mystery.  Among the numerous books,
+    pamphlets, and articles that have been written upon _Edwin Drood_,
+    there are some that are extremely interesting and well worth
+    attention, for they contain many clever and possible suggestions, and
+    although they do not entirely convince us, yet they add still more to
+    the almost painful anxiety we all feel in wandering through the
+    lonely precincts of Cloisterham Cathedral, or along the banks of the
+    river that runs through Cloisterham town and leads to the Weir of
+    which we are told in the story.
+
+    In following these writers to the end of their subtle imaginings as
+    to how the mystery might be solved, we may sometimes be inclined to
+    pause for an instant and ask ourselves whether my father did not
+    perhaps intend his story to have an ending less complicated, although
+    quite as interesting, as any that are suggested.  We find ourselves
+    turning to John Forster’s _Life of Charles Dickens_ to help us in our
+    perplexity, and this is what we read in his chapter headed ‘Last
+    Book.’  Mr. Forster begins by telling us that _Edwin Drood_ was to be
+    published in twelve illustrated monthly parts, and that it closed
+    prematurely with the sixth number, which was itself underwritten by
+    two pages; therefore my father had exactly six numbers and two pages
+    to write when he left his little châlet in the shrubbery of Gad’s
+    Hill Place on 8th June 1870, to which he never returned.  Mr. Forster
+    goes on to say: ‘His first fancy for the tale was expressed in July
+    (meaning the July of 1869), in a letter which runs thus:
+
+    ‘“What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this
+    way?—Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one
+    another, pledged to be married after many years—at the end of the
+    book.  The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate
+    ways and the impossibility of telling what will be done with that
+    impending fate.”’
+
+    This idea my father relinquished, although he left distinct traces of
+    it in his tale; and in a letter to Mr. Forster, dated 6th August
+    1869, tells him:
+
+    ‘I laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and
+    new idea for my new story.  Not a communicable idea (or the interest
+    of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult
+    to work.’
+
+    Mr. Forster then says that he immediately afterwards learnt that the
+    story was to be ‘the murder of a nephew by his uncle’; the
+    originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer’s
+    career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt
+    upon as if not he, the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted.
+    The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which
+    his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of
+    another, had brought him.  Discovery by the murderer of the utter
+    needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon
+    commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be
+    baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which
+    had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had
+    thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified,
+    but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it.’
+
+    Mr. Forster adds a little information as to the marriages at the
+    close of the book, and makes use of the expression ‘I think’ in
+    speaking of Neville Landless, as though he were not quite certain of
+    what he remembered concerning him.  This ‘I think’ has been seized
+    upon by some of Mr. Forster’s critics, who appear to argue that
+    because he did not clearly recollect one detail of the story he may
+    therefore have been mistaken in the whole.  But we see for ourselves
+    that Mr. Forster is perfectly well informed as to the nature of the
+    plot, and the fate of the two principal characters concerned, the
+    murdered and the murderer; and the only thing upon which he is not
+    positive is the ending of Neville Landless, to which he confesses in
+    the words ‘I think,’ thus making his testimony to the more important
+    facts the more impressive.  If we have any doubts as to whether Mr.
+    Forster correctly stated what he was told, we have only to turn to
+    the story of _Edwin Drood_, and we find, as far as it goes, that his
+    statement is entirely corroborated by what we read in the book.
+
+    If those who are interested in the subject will carefully read what I
+    have quoted, they will not be able to detect any word or hint from my
+    father that it was upon the Mystery alone that he relied for the
+    interest and originality of his idea.  The originality was to be
+    shown, as he tells us, in what we may call the psychological
+    description the murderer gives us of his temptations, temperament,
+    and character, as if told by another; and my father speaks openly of
+    the ring to Mr. Forster.  Moreover, he refers to it often in his
+    story, and we all recognise it, whatever our other convictions may
+    be, as the instrument by which Jasper’s wickedness and guilt are to
+    be established in the end.  I do not mean to imply that the mystery
+    itself had no strong hold on my father’s imagination; but, greatly as
+    he was interested in the intricacies of that tangled skein, the
+    information he voluntarily gave to Mr. Forster, from whom he had
+    withheld nothing for thirty-three years, certainly points to the fact
+    that he was quite as deeply fascinated and absorbed in the study of
+    the criminal Jasper, as in the dark and sinister crime that has given
+    the book its title.  And he also speaks to Mr. Forster of the murder
+    of a nephew by an uncle.  He does not say that he is uncertain
+    whether he shall save the nephew, but has evidently made up his mind
+    that the crime is to be committed.  And so he told his plot to Mr.
+    Forster, as he had been accustomed to tell his plots for years past;
+    and those who knew him must feel it impossible to believe that in
+    this, the last year of his life, he should suddenly become underhand,
+    and we might say treacherous, to his old friend, by inventing for his
+    private edification a plot that he had no intention of carrying into
+    execution.  This is incredible, and the nature of the friendship that
+    existed between Mr. Forster and himself makes the idea unworthy of
+    consideration.
+
+    Mr. Forster was devotedly attached to my father, but as years passed
+    by this engrossing friendship made him a little jealous of his
+    confidence, and more than a little exacting in his demands upon it.
+    My father was perfectly aware of this weakness in his friend, and
+    although the knowledge of it made him smile at times, and even joke
+    about it when we were at home and alone, he was always singularly
+    tenderhearted where Mr. Forster was concerned, and was particularly
+    careful never to wound the very sensitive nature of one who, from the
+    first moment of their acquaintance, had devoted his time and energy
+    to making my father’s path in life as smooth as so intricate a path
+    could be made.  In all business transactions Mr. Forster acted for
+    him, and generally brought him through these troubles triumphantly,
+    whereas, if left to himself, his impetuosity and impatience might
+    have spoilt all chances of success; while in all his private troubles
+    my father instinctively turned to his friend, and even when not
+    invariably following his advice, had yet so much confidence in his
+    judgment as to be rendered not only uneasy but unhappy if Mr. Forster
+    did not approve of the decision at which he ultimately arrived.  From
+    the beginning of their friendship to the end of my father’s life the
+    relations between the two friends remained unchanged; and the notion
+    that has been spread abroad that my father wilfully misled Mr.
+    Forster in what he told him of the plot of _Edwin Drood_ should be
+    abandoned, as it does not correspond with the knowledge of those who
+    understood the dignity of my father’s character, and were also aware
+    of the perfectly frank terms upon which he lived with Mr. Forster.
+
+    If my father again changed his plan for the story of _Edwin Drood_
+    the first thing he would naturally do would be to write to Mr.
+    Forster and inform him of the alteration.  We might imagine for an
+    instant that he would perhaps desire to keep the change as a surprise
+    for his friend, but what I have just stated with regard to Mr.
+    Forster’s character renders this supposition out of the question, as
+    my father knew for a certainty that his jealousy would debar him from
+    appreciating such a surprise, and that he would in all probability
+    strongly resent what he might with justice be allowed to consider as
+    a piece of unnecessary caution on my father’s part.  That he did not
+    write to Mr. Forster to tell him of any divergence from his second
+    plan for the book we all know, and we know also that my eldest
+    brother, Charles, positively declared that he had heard from his
+    father’s lips that Edwin Drood was dead.  Here, therefore, are two
+    very important witnesses to a fact that is still doubted by those who
+    never met my father, and were never impressed by the grave sincerity
+    with which he would have given this assurance.
+
+    It is very often those who most doubt Mr. Forster’s accuracy on this
+    point who are in the habit of turning to his book when they are in
+    the search of facts to establish some theory of their own; and they
+    do not hesitate to do this, because they know that whatever views
+    they may hold upon the work itself, or the manner in which it is
+    written, absolute truth is to be found in its pages.  Why should they
+    refuse, therefore, to believe a statement made upon one page of his
+    three volumes, when they willingly and gratefully accept the rest if
+    it is to their interest to do so?  This is a difficult question to
+    answer, but it is not without importance when we are discussing the
+    subject of _Edwin Drood_.  On pages 425 and 426 of the third volume
+    of Mr. Forster’s _Life_ is to be found the simple explanation of my
+    father’s plot for his story, as given to him by my father himself.
+    It is true that Mr. Forster speaks from remembrance, but how often
+    does he not speak from remembrance, and yet how seldom are we
+    inclined to doubt his word?  Only here, because what he tells us does
+    not exactly fit in with our preconceived views as to how the tale
+    shall be finished, are we disposed to quarrel with him, for the
+    simple reason that we flatter ourselves we have discovered a better
+    ending to the book than the one originally intended for it by the
+    author.  And so we put his statement aside and ignore it, while we
+    grope in the dark for a thing we shall never find; and we obstinately
+    refuse to allow even the little glimmer of light my father has
+    himself thrown upon the obscurity to help us in our search.  It was
+    not, I imagine, for the intricate working out of his plot alone that
+    my father cared to write this story; but it was through his wonderful
+    observation of character, and his strange insight into the tragic
+    secrets of the human heart, that he desired his greatest triumph to
+    be achieved.
+
+    I do not write upon these things because I have any fresh or
+    startling theories to offer upon the subject of _Edwin Drood_.  I
+    cannot say that I am without my own opinions, but I am fully
+    conscious that after what has been already so ably said, they would
+    have but little interest for the general public; so I shrink from
+    venturing upon any suggestions respecting the solution of my father’s
+    last book.  My chief object in writing is to remind the readers of
+    this paper that there are certain facts connected with this story
+    that cannot lightly be put aside, and these facts are to be found in
+    John Forster’s _Life of Charles Dickens_, and in the declaration made
+    by my brother Charles.  Having known both Mr. Forster and my brother
+    intimately, I cannot for a moment believe that either of them would
+    speak or write that which he did not know to be strictly true; and it
+    is on these grounds alone that I think I have a right to be heard
+    when I insist upon the assertion that Edwin Drood was undoubtedly
+    murdered by his uncle Jasper.  As to the unravelling of the mystery,
+    and the way in which the murder was perpetrated, we are all at
+    liberty to have our own views, seeing that no explanations were as
+    yet arrived at in the story; but we should remember that only vague
+    speculations can be indulged in when we try to imagine them for
+    ourselves.
+
+    It has been pointed out, and very justly, that although Jasper
+    removed the watch, chain, and scarf-pin from Edwin’s body, there
+    would possibly remain on it money of some kind, keys, and the metal
+    buttons on his clothes, which the action of the quicklime could not
+    destroy, and by which his identity would be made known.  This has
+    been looked upon as an oversight, a mere piece of forgetfulness on my
+    father’s part.  But remembering, as I do very well, what he often
+    said, that the most clever criminals were constantly detected through
+    some small defect in their calculations, I cannot but think it most
+    probable that this was not an oversight, but was intended to lead up
+    to the pet theory that he so frequently mentioned whenever a murder
+    case was brought to trial.  After reading _Edwin Drood_ many times,
+    as most of us have read it, we must, I think, come to the conclusion
+    that not a word of this tale was written without full consideration;
+    that in this story at least my father left nothing to chance, and
+    that therefore the money, and the buttons, were destined to take
+    their proper place in the book, and might turn out to be a weak spot
+    in Jasper’s well-arranged and complicated plot, _the_ weak spot my
+    father insisted upon, as being inseparable from the commission of a
+    great crime, however skilfully planned.  The keys spoken of need not
+    be taken seriously into account, for Edwin was a careless young
+    fellow, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he did not always
+    carry them upon his person; he was staying with his uncle, and he may
+    have left them in the portmanteau, which was most likely at the time
+    of the murder lying unfastened in his room, with the key belonging to
+    it in the lock.  It would be unfair to suggest that my father wrote
+    unadvisedly of this or that, for he had still the half of his story
+    to finish, and plenty of time, as he thought, in which to gather up
+    the broken threads and weave them into a symmetrical and harmonious
+    whole, which he was so eminently capable of completing.
+
+    That my father’s brain was more than usually clear and bright during
+    the writing of _Edwin Drood_, no one who lived with him could
+    possibly doubt; and the extraordinary interest he took in the
+    development of this story was apparent in all that he said or did,
+    and was often the subject of conversation between those who anxiously
+    watched him as he wrote, and feared that he was trying his strength
+    too far.  For although my father’s death was sudden and unexpected,
+    the knowledge that his bodily health was failing had been for some
+    time too forcibly brought to the notice of those who loved him, for
+    them to be blind to the fact that the book he was now engaged in, and
+    the concentration of his devotion and energy upon it, were a tax too
+    great for his fast-ebbing strength.  Any attempt to stay him,
+    however, in work that he had undertaken was as idle as stretching
+    one’s hands to a river and bidding it cease to flow; and beyond a few
+    remonstrances now and again urged, no such attempt was made, knowing
+    as we did that it would be entirely useless.  And so the work sped
+    on, carrying with it my father’s few remaining days of life, and the
+    end came all too soon, as it was bound to come, to one who never
+    ceased to labour for those who were dear to him, in the hope of
+    gaining for them that which he was destined never to enjoy.  And in
+    my father’s grave lies buried the secret of his story.
+
+    The scene of the Eight Club, which Mr. Forster discovered after his
+    death, in which there figure two new characters, Mr. Peartree and Mr.
+    Kimber, bears no relation as we read it to the unfolding of the plot;
+    and although the young man Poker, who is also introduced in this
+    fragment for the first time, seems to be of more significance, we see
+    too little of him to be certain that we may not already have made his
+    acquaintance.  In Mr. Sapsea my father evidently took much pleasure,
+    and we are here reminded of the note made for him in the first
+    number-plan of _Edwin Drood_: ‘Mr. Sapsea.  Old Tory jackass.
+    Connect Jasper with him.  (He will want a solemn donkey by and by.)’
+    My father also wanted the solemn donkey, and not only brought him in
+    for the purposes of his story, but because, as in the case of ‘the
+    Billickin,’ he took delight in dwelling upon the absurdities of the
+    character.
+
+    As to the cover of _Edwin Drood_, that has been the subject of so
+    much discussion there is very little to tell.  It was designed and
+    drawn by Mr. Charles A. Collins, my first husband.  The same reasons
+    that prevented me from teasing my father with questions respecting
+    his story made me refrain from asking any of Mr. Collins; but from
+    what he said I certainly gathered that he was not in possession of my
+    father’s secret, although he had made his designs from my father’s
+    directions.  There are a few things in this cover that I fancy have
+    been a little misunderstood.  In the book only Jasper and Neville
+    Landless are described as dark young men.  Edwin Drood is fair, and
+    so is Crisparkle.  Tartar is burnt by the sun; but when Rosa asks
+    ‘the Unlimited head chambermaid’ at the hotel in Furnival’s Inn if
+    the gentleman who has just called is dark, she replies:
+
+    ‘No, Miss, more of a brown gentleman.’
+
+    ‘You are sure not with black hair?’ asked Rosa, taking courage.
+
+    ‘Quite sure of that, Miss.  Brown hair and blue eyes.’
+
+    Now in a drawing it would be difficult to make a distinction between
+    the fair hair of Edwin and the slightly darker hair of Tartar; and in
+    the picture, where we see a girl—Rosa we imagine her to be—seated in
+    a garden, the young man at her feet is, I feel pretty sure, intended
+    for Tartar.  Edwin it cannot be, nor Neville, as has been supposed,
+    for he was decidedly dark.  Besides this, Neville would not have told
+    his affection to Rosa, for Helena was far too quick-witted not to
+    understand from Rosa’s first mention of Tartar that she is already in
+    love with him, and she would have warned and saved the brother to
+    whom she was so ardently attached from making any such confession.
+    The figure is not intended for Jasper, because we know that Jasper
+    did not move from the sun-dial in the scene where he declares his mad
+    passion for Rosa, and Jasper had black hair and whiskers.  And,
+    again, the drawing cannot be meant to represent Helena and
+    Crisparkle, for the young man is not in clerical dress.  The figures
+    going up the stairs are still more difficult to make out; but there
+    can be little doubt that the active higher one is the same young man
+    we see at Rosa’s feet, and must therefore be Tartar.  Of the
+    remaining two, one may be Crisparkle, although there is still no
+    clerical attire, and the other either Grewgious or Neville, though
+    the drawing certainly bears but little resemblance to either of those
+    characters.
+
+    The lower and middle picture is, of course, the great scene of the
+    book; but whether the young man standing calm, and inexorable as
+    Fate, is intended to be the ghost of Edwin as seen by Jasper in his
+    half-dazed and drugged condition, or whether it is Helena dressed as
+    Datchery, as one writer has ingeniously suggested (although there are
+    reasons in the story against the supposition that Helena is Datchery,
+    and many to support the theory that the ‘old buffer’ is
+    Bazzard),—these are puzzles that will never be cleared up, except to
+    the minds of those who have positively determined that they hold the
+    clue to the mystery, and can only see its interpretation from one
+    point of view.  The girl’s figure with streaming hair, in the picture
+    where the word ‘Lost’ is written, has been supposed to represent Rosa
+    after her parting from Edwin; but it may more likely, I think,
+    indicate some scene in the book which has yet to be described in the
+    story.  This is another enigma; but my father, it may be presumed,
+    intended to puzzle his readers by the cover, and he had every
+    legitimate right to do so, for had his meaning been made perfectly
+    clear ‘the interest of the book would be gone.’  Some surprise has
+    been expressed because Mr. Forster did not ask Mr. Collins for the
+    meaning of his designs; but if he already knew the plot, why should
+    he seek information from Mr. Collins? particularly as my father may
+    have told him that he had not disclosed the secret of his story to
+    his illustrators, for I believe I am right in affirming that Mr. Luke
+    Fildes was no better informed as to the plan of the book than was Mr.
+    Collins.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    I am unfortunately not acquainted with much that has been written
+    about _Edwin Drood_, for the story was so painfully associated with
+    my father’s death and the sorrow of that time that after first
+    reading it I could never bear to look into the book again till about
+    two months ago, when I found myself obliged to do so; and then my
+    thoughts flew back to the last occasion when my father mentioned it
+    in my hearing.
+
+                          .     .     .     .     .
+
+    There is one other fact connected with my father and _Edwin Drood_
+    that I think my readers would like to know, and I must be forgiven if
+    I again speak from my own experience in order to relate it.  Upon
+    reading the book once more, as I have already told, after an interval
+    of a great number of years, the story took such entire possession of
+    me that for a long time I could think of nothing else; and one day,
+    my aunt, Miss Hogarth, being with me, I asked her if she knew
+    anything more definite than I did as to how the ending was to be
+    brought about.  For I should explain that when my father was
+    unusually reticent we seldom, if ever, attempted to break his silence
+    by remarks or hints that might lead him to suppose that we were
+    anxious to learn what he had no doubt good reasons for desiring to
+    keep from us.  And we made it a point of honour among ourselves
+    never, in talking to him on the subject of _Edwin Drood_, to show the
+    impatience we naturally felt to arrive at the end of so engrossing a
+    tale.
+
+    My aunt said that she knew absolutely nothing, but she told me that
+    shortly before my father’s death, and after he had been speaking of
+    some difficulty he was in with his work, without explaining what it
+    was, she found it impossible to refrain from asking him, ‘I hope you
+    haven’t really killed poor Edwin Drood?’  To which he gravely
+    replied, ‘I call my book the Mystery, not the History, of Edwin
+    Drood.’  And that was all he would answer.  My aunt could not make
+    out from the reply, or from his manner of giving it, whether he
+    wished to convey that the Mystery was to remain a mystery for ever,
+    or if he desired gently to remind her that he would not disclose his
+    secret until the proper time arrived for telling it.  But I think his
+    words are so suggestive, and may carry with them so much meaning,
+    that I offer them now, with my aunt’s permission, to those who take a
+    delight in trying to unravel the impenetrable secrets of a story that
+    has within its sadly shortened pages a most curious fascination, and
+    is ‘gifted with invincible force to hold and drag.’
+
+
+
+THE TESTIMONY OF CHARLES DICKENS THE YOUNGER
+
+
+I have quoted from Madame Perugini’s statement the words: ‘We know also
+that my elder brother Charles positively declared that he had heard from
+his father’s lips that Edwin Drood was dead.’  I proceed to corroborate
+the statement by giving here a brief account of the play by Joseph Hatton
+and Charles Dickens.
+
+The importance of this play as a witness to Dickens’s intentions is shown
+in an article by Joseph Hatton which appeared in the _People_ on 19th
+November 1905.  Mr. Hatton explains that about the year 1880, in a
+conversation, he sketched out his idea of the play up to the crucial
+point.  Dickens had a play in his mind when he wrote the story, and it
+was said that he had thought of Dion Boucicault as his collaborator in
+his work for the stage.  After the death of Dickens, Boucicault had a
+mind to write the play and invent his own conclusion to the story, but
+afterwards gave it up.  Mr. Hatton, in a conversation with Mr. Luke
+Fildes, saw Dickens’s possible conclusion, but did not attempt to gather
+up the broken threads.  ‘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.  We agreed to write
+the play.  Much of the son’s version of the finale was proved by the
+instructions which the author had given to the illustrator in regard to
+certain of the unpublished and unwritten chapters.  And so Dickens the
+younger and I fell to work and wrote the play of _Edwin Drood_ for the
+Princess’s Theatre.’  He goes on to explain that the piece was cast, and
+a great point made of the authoritative conclusion of the story, thus
+clearing up something of the mystery which was part of its title.  But
+Mr. Harry Jackson, the stage manager, did not like the play, and it was
+left unacted.  Years after, Dickens had a hope that Mr. Willard would
+undertake the play, but this expectation was not fulfilled.  Dickens
+consoled himself by saying that next to the pleasure of having a good
+play acted was the pleasure of writing it, and for the rest he took the
+incident as one of the ‘little ironies’ of his life.
+
+The play as it lies before me is in four Acts.  The first is made up of
+conversations between the Landlesses, Mrs. Crisparkle, Septimus
+Crisparkle, Rosa and Edwin.  These are practically repeated from the
+book.  Grewgious and Jasper then come on the scene, the novel being
+closely followed in their conversation.  The second Act is made up of
+conversations also mainly reproduced from the book between Helena and
+Rosa, Jasper and Crisparkle.  Grewgious comes on in the second Scene
+where Edwin and Rosa decide to be brother and sister.  There follow in
+the third Scene the talks between Jasper and Durdles.  Edwin talks to the
+opium woman, and Jasper appears with the scarf on his arm.  So far there
+is practically nothing that is not taken directly from Dickens.  The
+third Act opens with a conversation between Septimus and Mrs. Crisparkle
+as to the guilt of Landless.  Helena and Neville appear protesting
+innocence.  Grewgious tells Jasper about the breaking of the engagement
+between Edwin and Rosa.  Jasper makes love to Rosa.  In the concluding
+Act the scene is laid in the opium den in London: ‘Dark,
+poverty-stricken.  Fourpost bedstead, chair, table, candlestick, set well
+down so as to allow good space for vision later on, light up a little,
+when Opium Sal lights candle shortly after Jasper’s entrance.  For
+details see Fildes’s picture in book.  Opium Sal discovered moving about
+in a witch-like kind of way.’  Jasper enters and tells Sal that a man
+followed him to the door.  She lights the opium pipe for him, and then
+questions him.
+
+He says at last: ‘Hush! the journey’s made!  It’s over!’
+
+    SAL.  Is it over so soon?
+
+    JASPER.  I must sleep that vision off.  It is the poorest of all.  No
+    struggle, no consciousness of peril, no entreaty, and yet I never saw
+    _that_ before!
+
+    SAL.  See what, deary?
+
+    JASPER.  Look at it!  Look what a poor miserable thing it is!  _That_
+    must be real.  It’s over.
+
+    (_He has accompanied this incoherence with some wild unmeaning
+    gestures_; _but they trail off into the progressive inaction of
+    stupor_, _and he lies like a log upon the bed_.  _The_ WOMAN
+    _attempts to rouse him as before_, _but finding him past rousing
+    __for the time_, _she slowly gets upon her feet with an air of
+    disappointment_, _flicks his face with her hand savagely_, _and then
+    flings a rug over_ JASPER.)
+
+    (_Both_ SAL _and_ JASPER _now being perfectly quiet_, _the back of
+    scene is illuminated_, _showing the scene exactly as at end of Act
+    II_.  _The candle is out in the Opium Den_, _leaving front part of
+    stage dark_.  _The brightest light in vision is from_ JASPER’S
+    _window_, _leaving other parts of scene slightly in shadow but
+    sufficiently light for action to be seen_.  _It is to be carefully
+    noted that all the persons on in the Vision Scene should wear list
+    shoes_, _so that they make no noise in moving about_, _and that the
+    Stage Manager should insist upon perfect quiet behind the stage and
+    at the wings_.  _The actors_, _too_, _speak in rather a measured_,
+    _monotonous tone_.  _Crowd later on in Vision to be grouped and
+    drilled from this point of view_.)
+
+    (_The Scene being well open_, _there is a flash of lightning_, _and a
+    peal of thunder_, _followed after a short pause by a burst of merry
+    laughter from_ JASPER’S _room_, _the voices of_ DROOD _and_ NEVILLE
+    _being audible_.  _They come down to door_, JASPER _with them_,
+    _without his hat_.)
+
+Edwin, Jasper, and Neville are talking.  Edwin says he will walk with
+Neville as far as the river and have a look at the storm.  Neville and
+Jasper exchange good-nights, and Edwin says: ‘Don’t go to bed, Jack, I
+won’t be long.’
+
+    (JASPER _in response waves hand_.  _Pause_.  _Then re-enters house_,
+    _closes door_.  _Goes upstairs_.  _Puts light out_, _and is seen for
+    a moment at window_.  _Flash of lightning_, _peal of thunder_.
+    _Pause_.  JASPER _comes out with hat on head_, _the black silk scarf
+    on arm_.  _Comes out cautiously_, _closing door after him and looks
+    round_, _and warily goes to crypt_; _finds door locked and takes key
+    from his pocket with which he opens it_, _and pushes door wide open_.
+    _Creeps off in the direction_ NEVILLE _and_ EDWIN _have gone_.
+    _Pause_.  _Weak flash of lightning and peal of thunder_.  JASPER
+    _returns crouching_, _and hides within shadow of wall_.  _Re-enter_
+    EDWIN DROOD _from where exit was made_.  _He looks up at_ JASPER’S
+    _window_.)
+
+    Ah, too bad; he has gone to bed and has put his light out.
+
+    (JASPER _rushes upon_ EDWIN _from behind_, _seizes him_, _whips
+    scarf_, _which he has previously been twisting into rope-like shape_,
+    _round his head and neck_, _and proceeds to strangle him_.  _There is
+    a fierce struggle for a few seconds_.  _Nearly on the point of
+    death_, EDWIN _gets free of_ JASPER, _sees his assailant_, _and
+    thinks_ JASPER _is there to help him_.)
+
+    EDWIN.  Jack!  Jack!  Save me!  They are killing me!  (Flings himself
+    into JASPER’S arms.)
+
+    JASPER.  Save you, yes!
+
+    (_Deliberately tightens scarf_, _strikes_ EDWIN, _and kills him_.
+    _Flash of lightning and peal of thunder_, _as_ EDWIN _falls lifeless
+    at_ JASPER’S _feet_.  _Pause_.)
+
+    JASPER (_a little overcome physically_, _and jerking out his
+    sentences gasping_, _but with intense ferocity_).  You poor fool.
+    You’ll boast no more.  (_Spurning body with his foot_.)  Ah! ah! ah!
+    (_Laughs wildly_.)  He’s gone.  The fellow-traveller has gone for
+    ever, gone down, into the everlasting abyss!  Hush!  (_Listens_.)
+    Durdles?  No, opium mixed with his liquor keeps that other fool
+    quiet.  (_Listens again_, _and looks cautiously round—distant
+    low-moaning peal of thunder_.)  Only the storm wearing itself out!
+    Ah! ah! ah!  (_Looking at body_.)  You’ve seen the last of the storm,
+    weak, self-satisfied fool!  Come (wildly seizing the body, and
+    dragging it towards crypt), come—to your marriage bed (_drags body_).
+    Come—to sleep with Death!
+
+                                            (_Exit with body into crypt_.)
+
+    (_Slow music_.  _Short pause_.  _Re-enter_ JASPER _from crypt_, _and
+    as he does so gauze clouds begin to darken scene_.  JASPER _locks
+    crypt_, _puts key in his pocket_, _crosses_, _crouching and
+    creeping_, _looking behind him fearfully_, _and enters his own
+    house_, _with flash of lightning_, _peal of thunder_, _the very last
+    of the storm_.  _By this time gauze clouds nearly darken the scene_.
+    _Double on bed moves_.  OPIUM SAL _rises restlessly_, _once more
+    leans over bed_, _and begins to talk while the actor representing_
+    JASPER_ returns to his place on bed_.)
+
+    SAL.  Troubled dreams, deary!  Troubled dreams.  Have you been taking
+    the journey again?  Was it pleasant, and what did you do to
+    fellow-traveller, eh?
+
+    JASPER (_speaking in a dreamy way_).  That’s how the journey was
+    made—that’s how I like to make it.  But there’s something more.  I
+    never saw that before; what is it?  (_Fearfully_, _falls asleep
+    again_.)
+
+    (SAL _wearily resumes her attitude of rest with her arms on bed_,
+    _and the Vision Scene goes on_.  DURDLES _appears beckoning off_,
+    _unlocks crypt and enters_.  _As he does so_ GREWGIOUS _and_ ROSA
+    _come on from direction indicated by_ DURDLES’S _beckoning_, _all the
+    others in scene coming from the same place_.  ROSA _clings to her
+    guardian’s arm_.  _They stop in centre of stage opposite crypt_,
+    _looking towards door_.  NEVILLE _and_ HELENA _follow_.  _They join_
+    GREWGIOUS _and_ ROSA.  CRISPARKLE _and_ OPIUM SAL’S _Double come on_.
+    OPIUM SAL’S _Double is pointing towards_ ROSA _and others_, _and_
+    CRISPARKLE _joins the group_.  _The Double now stands near wing and
+    beckons off_.  _Townspeople come on and make group_, _Double at their
+    head_, _she pointing towards crypt_; _they all look in that
+    direction_.  DURDLES _comes to door_, _beckons_ GREWGIOUS, _who goes
+    in after_ DURDLES _to crypt_.  _Groups now move a step or two nearer
+    to entrance of crypt_.  _Slight pause_.  ROSA _clings to_ HELENA;
+    NEVILLE _in dumb show whispers anxiously to_ HELENA _and_ ROSA, _as
+    if to reassure and comfort them_.  HELENA _stands proudly but
+    anxious_; ROSA _droopingly_.)
+
+    GREW. (_standing just outside crypt door_, _and addressing himself
+    to_ CRISPARKLE).  Keep the women back; this is no place for them.
+    Edwin Drood has been foully murdered!
+
+    (_Sensation in crowd_, _not indicated by noise_, _but dumb show_.
+    ROSA _staggers_.  NEVILLE _catches her in his arms_.  JASPER _moves
+    and groans in his sleep_.  DURDLES _comes out of crypt_, _plucks_
+    GREWGIOUS _by the sleeve_, _and holds up_ JASPER’S _long black
+    scarf_.)
+
+    CRIS.  Jasper’s scarf!
+
+                        (JASPER again groans on bed.)
+
+       Where is Jasper?
+
+    (_Goes to door of_ JASPER’S _house and knocks_.  _This knocking must
+    be made right at back of stage_.)
+
+    GREW.  It is no good knocking there.  The murderer of Edwin Drood
+    will be found in London!
+
+    (_Sensation as before in crowd_.  CRISPARKLE _still knocks_, _and
+    between knocks faint rapping is heard at door of opium den_, _and_
+    JASPER _tosses about on bed_, _then starts up with a cry_, _the
+    Vision disappearing the moment he stands on the floor_.)
+
+    JASPER (_starting as if at what he has seen_).  No, no.  It’s a lie!
+
+                (_Knocking at opium den door becomes louder_.)
+
+    (_Turning to_ SAL, _who is now at other end of room_.)  What’s that?
+
+    SAL.  They wants to come in.
+
+    JASPER.  Who wants to come in?
+
+                      (_Knocking is louder and louder_.)
+
+    SAL.  Why, the perlice.
+
+    JASPER.  The police!  Damnation!  The man who followed me here
+    to-night!  Then it’s all true.  Durdles has found the body in spite
+    of all my precautions, and I am lost.  (Rushes wildly about room.)
+    Is there no escape?  Where’s the window?
+
+    SAL.  There ain’t no winder, deary.
+
+    JASPER.  Then I’m trapped like a wolf in a cage.  You filthy hag,
+    this is your doing.
+
+    (_Seizes candlestick on stool to strike her_; _she crouches down_.
+    _Knocking at door now so fierce as to arrest his attention_, _and he
+    turns towards it_, _weapon in his hand_.)
+
+    (_Voice at door_.  Open in the Queen’s name!)
+
+    (JASPER _drops stool or whatever he has seized upon to attack_ SAL
+    _with_, _staggers back_, _tears open his shirt-sleeve_, _where a
+    small phial is seen fastened to left wrist_, _drags it from his wrist
+    and holds it convulsively in right hand_, _as door is violently burst
+    open_.)
+
+    (_Enter_ Inspector of Police, _handcuffs in hand_, DURDLES, NEVILLE,
+    CRISPARKLE, and GREWGIOUS.)
+
+    GREW. (_to_ Officer, _pointing to_ JASPER).  There is your prisoner.
+
+    JASPER.  Never!  Do you think I was not prepared for this always!
+    (_Takes poison_, _and flings phial down_.)  Now I defy you!  Hush!  I
+    did kill him!  Ha! ha!  The fellow-traveller!  Yes.  For love.  For a
+    mad wild passion.  Killed him as I would have killed you and you—as I
+    would have swept you all from the path that led to her.  Ha! ha! what
+    fools you were not to see it, not to see my love, how it burned, how
+    it consumed me.  She knew it!  Rosa knew it.  (_Then speaking as
+    though none but he and_ ROSA _were present_.)  Rosa!  Rosa!  My Rosa!
+    Come!  You must!  You shall!  (_Wildly_.)  Back!  Back!  She’s mine I
+    tell you!  (_Passes hand over eyes_, _and staggers_, _then once more
+    half realises the situation_.)  What’s that?  (_Looks round_, _and
+    sees_ NEVILLE.)  You here!  You who think to reap the harvest for
+    which I have sold my soul to hell!  Vile wretch!  I’ll kill you!
+
+    (_Rushes to_ NEVILLE, _who stands forward_.  _In act of raising arm
+    to strike him_, JASPER _is seized with death spasm_, _trembles_,
+    _shudders_, _and_, _flinging up arms_, _falls dead_.  _Picture_:
+    OPIUM SAL _crouching still in fear_, _Officer_, GREWGIOUS, DURDLES,
+    NEVILLE, _and_ CRISPARKLE _near the body_.)
+
+                                 END OF DRAMA
+
+
+
+THE TESTIMONY OF SIR LUKE FILDES
+
+
+A reviewer in the _Times_ Literary Supplement, 27th October 1905, wrote:
+‘Nor do we attach much importance to any of the hints Dickens dropped,
+whether to John Forster, to any member of his family, or to either of his
+illustrators.  He was very anxious that his secret should not be guessed,
+and the hints which he dropped may very well have been intentionally
+misleading.’  This called forth the following letter from Sir Luke
+Fildes:
+
+                          TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES
+
+    Sir,—In an article entitled ‘The Mysteries of Edwin Drood’ in your
+    issue of to-day, the writer, speculating on the various theories
+    advanced as solutions of the mystery, ventures to say:—
+
+    ‘Nor do we attach much importance to any of the hints Dickens
+    dropped, whether to John Forster, to any member of his family, or to
+    either of his illustrators.  He was very anxious that his secret
+    should not be guessed, and the hints which he dropped may very well
+    have been intentionally misleading.’
+
+    I know that Charles Dickens was very anxious that his secret should
+    not be guessed, but it surprises me to read that he could be thought
+    capable of the deceit so lightly attributed to him.
+
+    The ‘hints he dropped’ to me, his sole illustrator—for Charles
+    Collins, his son-in-law, only designed the green cover for the
+    monthly parts, and Collins told me he did not in the least know the
+    significance of the various groups in the design; that they were
+    drawn from instructions personally given by Charles Dickens, and not
+    from any text—these ‘hints’ to me were the outcome of a request of
+    mine that he would explain some matters, the meaning of which I could
+    not comprehend, and which were for me, his illustrator,
+    embarrassingly hidden.
+
+    I instanced in the printers’ rough proof of the monthly part sent to
+    me to illustrate where he particularly described John Jasper as
+    wearing a neckerchief of such dimensions as to go twice round his
+    neck; I called his attention to the circumstance that I had
+    previously dressed Jasper as wearing a little black tie once round
+    the neck, and I asked him if he had any special reasons for the
+    alteration of Jasper’s attire, and, if so, I submitted I ought to
+    know.  He, Dickens, appeared for the moment to be disconcerted by my
+    remark, and said something meaning he was afraid he was ‘getting on
+    too fast’ and revealing more than he meant at that early stage, and
+    after a short silence, cogitating, he suddenly said, ‘Can you keep a
+    secret?’  I assured him he could rely on me.  He then said, ‘I must
+    have the double necktie!  It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin
+    Drood with it.’
+
+    I was impressed by his earnestness, as indeed, I was at all my
+    interviews with him—also by the confidence which he said he reposed
+    in me, trusting that I would not in any way refer to it, as he feared
+    even a chance remark might find its way into the papers ‘and thus
+    anticipate his “mystery”’; and it is a little startling, 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 am, Sir,
+    yours obediently,
+
+                                                              LUKE FILDES.
+
+    HARROGATE, _October_ 27.
+
+
+
+NOTES FOR THE NOVEL
+
+
+    I give here the notes which Dickens made for his novel.  These are
+    partly quoted by Professor Jackson in his book, _About Edwin Drood_,
+    but are now for the first time printed complete.
+
+_Friday_, _Twentieth August_ 1869
+
+                                   Gilbert Alfred.
+
+                                   Edwin.
+
+                                   Jasper Edwyn.
+
+                                   Michael Oswald.
+The Loss of James Wakefield.       Arthur.
+             Edwyn.                Selwyn.
+                                   Edgar.
+                                   Mr. Honeythunder.
+                                   Mr. Honeyblast.
+James’s Disappearance.             The Dean.
+                                   Mrs. Dean.
+FLIGHT AND PURSUIT.                Miss Dean.
+
+   SWORN TO AVENGE IT.
+
+      ONE OBJECT IN LIFE.
+
+A KINSMAN’S DEVOTION.
+
+                             THE TWO KINSMEN.
+
+The Loss of Edwyn Brood.
+
+   The Loss of Edwin Brude.
+
+   The Mystery in the Drood Family.
+
+The Loss of Edwyn Drood.
+
+   The Flight of Edwyn Drood.  Edwin Drood in hiding.
+
+   The Loss of Edwin Drude.
+
+The Disappearance of Edwin Drood.
+
+   The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
+
+                             Dead? or Alive?
+
+Opium-Smoking.
+
+   Touch the key-note.
+
+      ‘When the wicked man—’
+
+The Uncle & Nephew.
+
+      ‘Pussy’s’ Portrait.
+
+   _You won’t take warning then_?
+
+Dean.                               Mr. Jasper.
+   Minor Canon, Mr. Crisparkle.
+   Uncle & Nephew.                  Verger.
+Gloves for the Nuns’ House.         Peptune.
+      Churchyard.                   _Change to Tope_.
+
+CATHEDRAL TOWN RUNNING THROUGHOUT.
+
+Inside the Nuns’ House.
+
+   Miss Twinkleton and her double existence.
+
+                               Mrs. Tisher.
+
+                                 Rosebud.
+
+The affianced young people.  _Every love scene after is a quarrel more or
+less_.
+
+Mr. Sapsea.        Old Tory Jackass.
+
+                        His Wife’s Epitaph.
+
+Jasper and the Keys.
+
+   Durdles down in the crypt and among the graves.  His dinner bundle.
+
+                   (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.—_NO. I_.)
+
+                                CHAPTER I
+
+                                 THE DAWN
+
+                                 change title to THE DAWN.
+
+                                    opium smoking and Jasper.
+
+                                       Lead up to Cathedral.
+
+                                CHAPTER II
+
+                        A DEAN AND A CHAPTER ALSO
+
+Cathedral & Cathedral Town       Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+   and the Dean.
+
+         Uncle & Nephew.
+
+         Murder very far off.
+
+Edwin’s Story & Pussy.
+
+                               CHAPTER III
+
+                             THE NUNS’ HOUSE
+
+Still picturesque suggestions of Cathedral Town.
+
+The Nuns’ House and the young couple’s first love scene.
+
+                                CHAPTER IV
+
+                                MR. SAPSEA
+
+Connect Jasper with him.  (He will want a solemn donkey by & by.)
+
+      Epitaph brings them together, and brings Durdles with them.
+
+   The Keys.       Story Durdles.
+
+Bring in the other young couple.  YES
+
+      Neville and Olympia Heyridge or Heyfort?
+
+Neville & Helena Landless.
+
+   Mixture of Oriental blood—or imperfectly acquired mixture in them.
+YES.
+
+                                                                      _No_
+
+                  (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.—_NO. II_.)
+
+                                CHAPTER V
+
+                    PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
+
+     The Blustrous Philanthropist.  Old Mrs. Crisparkle.
+
+                 Mr. Honeythunder.  China Shepherdess.
+
+                                    Minor Canon Corner.
+
+                                CHAPTER VI
+
+                        MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
+
+Neville’s to Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+Rosa’s to Helena.       Piano scene with Jasper.  She singing; he
+                        following her lips.
+
+                               CHAPTER VII
+
+                              DAGGERS DRAWN
+
+QUARREL.
+
+      (Fomented by Jasper).  Goblet.  And then confession to Mr.
+Crisparkle.
+
+                                                 _Jasper lays his ground_.
+
+                               CHAPTER VIII
+
+                          MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
+
+Deputy engaged to stone Durdles nightly.
+
+   Carry through the woman of the 1st chapter.
+
+   Carry through Durdles calling—and the bundle & the keys.
+
+      John Jasper looks at Edwin asleep.
+
+Pursue Edwin Drood and Rosa?
+
+   Lead on to final scene then in No. V?  IV?
+
+                                                                    _Yes_.
+
+   How many more scenes between them?
+
+   Way to be paved for their marriage and parting instead.  _Yes_.
+
+Miss Twinkleton’s?      No.      Next No.
+
+Rosa’s Guardian?        DONE IN No. II.
+
+   Mr. Sapsea?         In last chapter.
+
+   Neville Landless at Mr. Crisparkle’s
+
+         and Helena?  YES.
+
+      Neville admires Rosa.  That comes out from himself.
+
+                 (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.  _NO. III_.)
+
+                              CHAPTER X {63}
+
+                            SMOOTHING THE WAY
+
+That is, for Jasper’s plan, through Mr. Crisparkle who takes new ground
+on Nevill’s new confidence.
+
+         Minor Canon Corner.  The closet?
+
+remember there is a child.
+
+         Edwin’s appointment for Xmas Eve.
+
+                                CHAPTER XI
+
+                           A PICTURE AND A RING
+
+                                    P.
+
+                                 J.   T.
+
+                                   1747
+
+Drood in chambers.       [The two waiters]
+
+      Bazzard the clerk.
+
+   Mr. Grewgious’s past story:
+
+‘A ring of diamonds and rubies delicately set in gold.’
+
+                                                           Edwin takes it.
+
+                               CHAPTER XII
+
+                           A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
+
+Lay the ground for the manner of the murder to come out at last.
+
+               Keep the boy suspended.
+
+            Night picture of the Cathedral.
+
+Once more carry through Edwin and Rosa?
+
+         or Last time?  LAST TIME.
+
+   Then
+
+Last meeting of Rosa & Edwin outside the Cathedral?  YES.
+
+               Kiss at parting.
+
+               ‘Jack.’
+
+Edwin goes to the dinner.
+
+   The Windy night.
+
+      The Surprise and Alarm.
+
+         Jasper’s failure in the one great
+
+   object made known by Mr. Grewgious.
+
+         Jasper’s Diary?  YES.
+
+                  (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.—_NO. IV_.)
+
+                               CHAPTER XIII
+
+                            BOTH AT THEIR BEST
+
+The Last Interview
+
+            And Parting.
+
+                               CHAPTER XIV
+
+                    WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
+
+How each passes the day.
+
+[Watch & shirt pin]            Neville.                  [Watch to the
+                                                           Jewellers.]
+[all Edwin’s                    Edwin.
+Jewellery.]
+                               Jasper.
+
+‘And so _he_ goes up the Postern Stair.’
+
+                                                           Storms of wind.
+
+                                CHAPTER XV
+
+                                IMPEACHED
+
+Neville away cart.  Pursued & brought back.
+
+Mr. Grewgious’s communication:
+
+                                              _And his scene with Jasper_.
+
+                               CHAPTER XVI
+
+                                 DEVOTED
+
+Jasper’s artful use of the communication on his recovery.
+
+Cloisterham Weir, Mr. Crisparkle, and the watch and pin.
+
+Jasper’s artful turn.
+
+   The DEAN.  Neville cast out.
+
+      Jasper’s Diary ‘I devote myself to his destruction.’
+
+Edwin and Rosa for the last time?  DONE ALREADY.
+
+Kinfederel.
+
+Edwin Disappears.
+
+THE MYSTERY.          DONE ALREADY.
+
+                   (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.—_NO. V_.)
+
+                               CHAPTER XVII
+
+               PHILANTHROPY PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
+
+                              CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                       SHADOW ON THE SUN DIAL {67a}
+
+                         A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
+
+                               CHAPTER XIX
+
+                      A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM {67b}
+
+                          SHADOW ON THE SUN DIAL
+
+                                CHAPTER XX
+
+                             LET’S TALK {67c}
+
+                   VARIOUS FLIGHTS {67d} DIVERS FLIGHTS
+
+                  (_MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD_.—_NO. VI_.)
+
+                               CHAPTER XXI
+
+                    A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
+
+                               CHAPTER XXII
+
+                              THE DAWN AGAIN
+
+                              CHAPTER XXIII
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+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.
+
+1.  Helena has the mental alertness and ability which qualified her for
+the task.  It is interesting to see from the original manuscript and the
+proofs how Dickens kept raising and lowering the lights which fell upon
+the Landlesses.  We have seen from the original manuscript in chapter vi.
+how Dickens heightened his description of the pair.  He changed ‘A
+handsome young fellow, and a handsome girl; both dark and rich in
+colour,’ into ‘An unusually handsome, lithe young fellow, and an
+unusually handsome, lithe girl; much alike; both very dark, and very rich
+in colour.’  He emphasises Helena’s personal characteristics: ‘Slender,
+supple, quick of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an
+indefinable kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression,
+both of face and form, which might be equally likened to the pause before
+a crouch or a bound.’  She fought her way through her tragical childhood,
+was beaten by a cruel stepfather, and would have allowed him to ‘tear her
+to pieces before she would have let him believe that he could make her
+shed a tear.’  ‘She had a masterful look.’  Rosa said to her: ‘You seem
+to have resolution and power enough to crush me.  I shrink into nothing
+by the side of your presence.’  But it is soon manifest that Helena has a
+tender heart.  She and her brother came to the Crisparkles ‘to quarrel
+with you, and affront you, and break away again.’  But they are touched
+by Mr. Crisparkle’s kindness, and Helena is more than touched.  Neville
+tells Crisparkle that in describing his own imperfections he is not
+describing his sister’s.  ‘She has come out of the disadvantages of our
+miserable life, as much better than I am as that cathedral tower is
+higher than these chimneys.’  Describing the misery of their childhood to
+Crisparkle, Neville says: ‘You ought to know, to her honour, that nothing
+in our misery ever subdued her, though it often cowed me.  When we ran
+away from it (we ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought
+back and cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and
+leading.  Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man.
+I take it we were seven years old when we first decamped.’  He says again
+to Crisparkle: ‘You don’t know, sir, what a complete understanding can
+exist between my sister and me, though no spoken word—perhaps hardly as
+much as a look—may have passed between us.’
+
+2.  She has been from the beginning a born planner and leader.  She has
+shown the daring of a man.  When her brother lost the pocket-knife with
+which she was to have cut her hair short, she tried desperately to tear
+it out or to bite it off.  Yet this strong and fiercely passionate girl
+had herself under the strictest control.
+
+She had no fear of Jasper.  Rosa, Helena, Neville, Jasper, and Edwin meet
+in Crisparkle’s drawing-room.  Rosa is singing under the control of
+Jasper.  She bursts into tears and shrieks out: ‘I can’t bear this!  I am
+frightened!  Take me away!’  Helena immediately comes to the rescue, and
+with one swift turn of her lithe figure lays the little beauty on a sofa.
+Edwin says to Jasper:
+
+    ‘You are such a conscientious master, and require so much, that I
+    believe you make her afraid of you.  No wonder.’
+
+    ‘No wonder,’ repeated Helena.
+
+    ‘There, Jack, you hear!  You would be afraid of him, under similar
+    circumstances, wouldn’t you, Miss Landless?’
+
+‘Not under any circumstances,’ returned Helena.
+
+This to my mind is the first unmistakable suggestion of what was to be
+developed.  Here we have Jasper and Helena falling into enmity almost at
+the first moment of their meeting, challenging one another to battle.
+Helena accepts the challenge.  Not under any circumstances would she be
+afraid of Jasper.  She lives to redeem that word.
+
+3.  Dickens expressly tells us that Helena from her childhood was
+accustomed to disguise herself as a boy.  ‘When we ran away from it (we
+ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly
+punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading.  Each time
+she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man.’  This is the
+strongest reason for the identification of Helena with Datchery.  I find
+it difficult to suppose that any careful student of Dickens will believe
+that these facts about Helena’s disguise were put in without intent.  It
+was one of those facts which Dickens intended his readers to interpret by
+the backward look.  Those who were amazed when Datchery appeared as
+Helena would be referred back to the significant words which they had
+missed.
+
+Helena protects her unhappy brother in London, and plans against his
+enemies.  She surmises that ‘Neville’s movements are watched, and that
+the purpose of his foes is to isolate him from all friends and
+acquaintances, and wear out his daily life grain by grain.’  She secures
+the help of Mr. Tartar.
+
+In her conference with Grewgious, Helena plans for checkmating Jasper,
+and inquires whether ‘it would be best to wait until any more maligning
+and pursuing of Neville on the part of this wretch shall disclose itself,
+or to try to anticipate it.’
+
+4.  Helena’s whole heart went with the effort at detection.  We have seen
+her hatred of Jasper.  In the conversation between Helena and Rosa about
+Drood and Jasper, Rosa betrays her horror of Jasper and his mesmeric
+power over her, which makes her ashamed and passionately hurt.  They
+resume on the same strain.
+
+    Says Rosa:
+
+    ‘But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him, under any
+    circumstances, and that gives me—who am so much afraid of him—courage
+    to tell only you.  Hold me!  Stay with me!  I am too frightened to be
+    left by myself.’
+
+    The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the clinging arms and bosom, and
+    the wild black hair fell down protectingly over the childish form.
+    There was a slumbering gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though
+    they were then softened with compassion and admiration.  Let
+    whomsoever it most concerned look well to it!
+
+This last sentence is another of the unmistakably prophetic sentences in
+Dickens.  Helena was the sworn champion thenceforth of Rosa against
+Jasper.  Helena submits herself to the fairy bride and learns from her
+what she knows.  When Jasper is mentioned and Rosa says, ‘I could not
+hold any terms with him, could I?’ Helena answers with indignation, ‘You
+know how I love you, darling.  But I would sooner see you dead at his
+wicked feet.’
+
+As to the close and tender affection between Helena and Neville, and her
+vehement sympathy with his trial, there is no question.  I quote one
+passage because it seems to me a most striking fact that in the proofs of
+Dickens the whole of it is struck out:
+
+    ‘I don’t think so,’ said the Minor Canon.  ‘There is duty to be done
+    here; and there are womanly feeling, sense, and courage wanted here.’
+
+    ‘I meant,’ explained Neville, ‘that the surroundings are so dull and
+    unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable friend or society
+    here.’
+
+    ‘You have only to remember,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that you are here
+    yourself, and that she has to draw you into the sunlight.’
+
+    They were silent for a little while, and then Mr. Crisparkle began
+    anew.
+
+    ‘When we first spoke together, Neville, you told me that your sister
+    had risen out of the disadvantages of your past lives as superior to
+    you as the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is higher than the chimneys
+    of Minor Canon Corner.  Do you remember that?’
+
+    ‘Right well!’
+
+    ‘I was inclined to think it at the time an enthusiastic flight.  No
+    matter what I think it now.  What I would emphasise is, that under
+    the head of Pride your sister is a great and opportune example to
+    you.’
+
+    ‘Under _all_ heads that are included in the composition of a fine
+    character, she is.’
+
+    ‘Say so; but take this one. . . .  She can dominate it even when it
+    is wounded through her sympathy with you. . . .  Every day and hour
+    of her life since Edwin Drood’s disappearance she has faced malignity
+    and folly for you as only a brave nature well directed can.  So it
+    will be with her to the end . . . [pride] which knows no shrinking,
+    and can get no mastery over her.’
+
+Immediately after, Neville says: ‘I will do all I can to imitate her.’
+
+‘Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she is a truly brave woman,’
+answered Mr. Crisparkle stoutly.  In his proof Dickens struck out the
+words, ‘as she is a truly brave woman.’
+
+It is impossible, I think, to read this and not to see that Dickens is
+afraid that we may too soon suspect Helena Landless of being Datchery.
+
+Neville’s sufferings under the suspicion are unmistakable and cruel.
+When Crisparkle saw him he wished that his eyes were not quite so large
+and quite so bright.  ‘I want more sun to shine upon you.’  Neville tells
+him that he feels marked and tainted even when he goes out at night, and
+he never goes out in the day.  He says, though Dickens did not mean us to
+read the sentence: ‘It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and
+innocent; but I don’t complain.’
+
+Such are the main reasons that induce me to believe that Helena is
+Datchery.  It is admitted on all hands that she was meant to play an
+important part in the story.  What part does she play if she is not
+Datchery?
+
+
+DATCHERY’S WISTFUL GAZE
+
+
+But the proof that impresses me as much as any other is to be found in
+the passage: ‘John Jasper’s lamp is kindled and his lighthouse is shining
+when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it.  As mariners on a dangerous
+voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the
+warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, so
+Mr. Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to this beacon and beyond.’  The
+detective of whom this is written cannot possibly be a mere detective.
+His heart is engaged in the search.  This fits Helena, and Helena only,
+of all the characters that have been brought forward.  A professional
+detective paid by Grewgious could never have behaved in that way.
+Helena’s whole heart was in the business.  She had to relieve her
+fondly-loved brother from a cruel weight of anxiety and suspicion.  She
+had to bring a villain whose baseness she thoroughly knew to justice.
+She had to liberate the girl friend she loved from persecution, and she
+looked to a beyond, to the haven—the haven of Crisparkle’s love.
+
+
+DATCHERY’S WIG
+
+
+Datchery wears a wig, and it is unusually large, as though a woman’s hair
+were concealed under it.  As Mr. Cuming Walters also points out, Helena
+undoubtedly had a strong motive for not sacrificing her hair to the
+disguise, for she was unmistakably in love with Crisparkle.
+
+
+DATCHERY’S HANDS
+
+
+There is no doubt that if Datchery was Helena, one of her chief
+difficulties must have been with her hands.
+
+Miss Stirling Graeme, the author of _Mystifications_, had a marvellous
+power of disguising herself.  ‘There was nothing extraordinary about
+her,’ says Dr. John Brown, ‘but let her put on the old lady; it was as if
+a warlock spell had passed over her; not merely her look, but her nature
+was changed: her spirit had passed into the character she represented;
+and jest, quick retort, whimsical fancy, the wildest nonsense flowed from
+her lips, with a freedom and truth to nature which appeared to be
+impossible in her own personality.’
+
+Sir Walter Scott in his _Journal_ for 7th March 1828 tells us that when
+she returned to her party in the character of an old Scottish lady she
+deceived every one.  ‘The prosing account she gave of her son, the
+antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate quarry, was extremely
+ludicrous, and she puzzled the Professor of Agriculture with a merciless
+account of the succession of crops in the parks around her old
+mansion-house.  No person to whom the secret was not entrusted had the
+least guess of an impostor, _except one shrewd young lady present_, _who
+observed the hand narrowly_, _and saw it was plumper than the age of the
+lady seemed to warrant_.’
+
+In the _Daily Mail_ of 4th April 1912 there is an account of two girls
+who lived together, passing as husband and wife.  The man with whom they
+lodged said: ‘The husband’s hands were so small and soft that both my
+wife and myself were suspicious.’
+
+I ask the attention of readers to the manner in which Dickens refers to
+Datchery’s hands.  I do not lay too much stress on these indications, but
+they deserve consideration.
+
+1.  We read in chapter xviii. about Datchery in the coffee-room of the
+Crozier, ‘as he stood with his back to the empty fireplace waiting for
+his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry.’  (‘Empty’ was an
+afterthought on Dickens’s part.)  Here we have Datchery keeping his hands
+out of view.
+
+2.  A little after, Datchery asks the waiter to take his hat down for a
+moment from the peg.  If he had stretched out his own hand it might have
+been noticed.
+
+3.  Later in the same chapter, when Datchery meets Jasper and the Mayor,
+he does not shake hands with them.  ‘“I beg pardon,” said Mr. Datchery,
+making a leg with his hat under his arm.’  Originally this was written
+‘hat in hand.’  If he carried his hat under his arm, one hand would be
+buried in the hat.
+
+4.  Afterwards we read of Datchery following Jasper and the Mayor, ‘with
+his hat under his arm, and his shock of white hair streaming in the
+evening breeze.’
+
+5.  When Datchery is talking to the opium woman, ‘he lounges along, like
+the chartered bore of the city, with his uncovered grey hair blowing
+about, and his purposeless hands rattling the loose money in the pockets
+of his trousers.’  His hands are thus out of sight.  Immediately after we
+find him ‘still rattling his loose money,’ and again, ‘still rattling.’
+
+6.  At last he begins to count out the sum demanded of him by the opium
+woman.  ‘Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the
+great example set him.’  Of course, she may merely be watching for the
+money in his hands, but there may be something more in it than this.  Let
+it be noted that Dickens originally wrote, ‘Greedily watching him,’ and
+inserted ‘his hands’ later.
+
+7.  Immediately after ‘Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it
+up.’  In all the scene with the opium woman he keeps his hands out of
+sight as much as possible, and when he does show them they strike the old
+woman.
+
+I may add, though much has been said about the possibility of detecting
+by means of the voice, this does not appear by any means to be
+impossible, or even very difficult.  Only one meeting between Jasper and
+Helena is recorded.  Her voice is described as low and rich.  Even if he
+had talked with Datchery, it is more than doubtful whether he would have
+known the voice again, music-master though he was.  Datchery, if our
+supposition is right, was an expert in disguise, and could have carried
+it off.  I find in the pleasant _Recollections and Impressions_ of Mrs.
+Sellar that she had no difficulty in deceiving her nearest friends.  She
+tells us how one day, when Sir David and Lady Brewster were dining with
+the Sellars at St. Andrews, after dinner Lady Brewster begged her to
+dress up and take in Sir David:
+
+‘“But what will account for my absence?”
+
+‘“Oh, you have been obliged to go to bed with one of your headaches; and
+I’ll introduce the stranger.”
+
+‘So I went upstairs, put on a false front, and was announced as Miss
+Craig.  On the gentlemen coming in I was specially introduced to Sir
+David, but not being at all attractive-looking, he soon left me for
+younger and fairer friends!  Determined he should take some notice of me,
+I said I would not play the piano unless Sir David asked me; and on this
+being told him he muttered: “God bless the woman! what does she mean!  I
+don’t know her.”’ {163}
+
+Mr. Lang says: ‘A young lady of my acquaintance successfully passed
+herself off on her betrothed as her own cousin—also a young lady—and
+Dickens had not to imagine anything so unlikely as that.’
+
+To this I may add that Scott tells a story of Garrick and his wife.  Mrs.
+Garrick was an accomplished actress, but once she witnessed an
+entertainment in which was introduced a farmer giving his neighbours an
+account of the wonders seen on a visit to London.  The character was
+received with such peals of applause that Mrs. Garrick began to think it
+rivalled those which had been so lately lavished on Richard the Third.
+At last she observed her little spaniel dog was making efforts to get
+towards the balcony which separated him from the facetious farmer.  Then
+she became aware of the truth.  ‘How strange,’ she said, ‘that a dog
+should know his master, and a woman, in the same circumstances, should
+not recognise her husband!’ {164a}
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF DICKENS’S IDEA
+
+
+So strong is the evidence for Helena Landless being Datchery that even
+the chief advocates of the Proctor theory have fully admitted its force.
+Dr. M. R. James says: ‘I will go as far as this: if Edwin is dead, then
+Datchery is Helena.’ {164b}  Mr. Andrew Lang over and over again admitted
+that Datchery might be Helena.  But he contended that, if so, the idea of
+Dickens is improbable with the worst sort of improbability, is terribly
+far-fetched, and fails to interest.  ‘It is the idea of a bad sixpenny
+novel.  We are asked to credit Dickens with the highest scientific skill,
+and this egregious invention is the result of his science.  The idea
+would have been rejected by Mr. Guy Boothby.  But it does not follow that
+Mr. Walters has not hit on Dickens’s idea.  If he has, _Edwin Drood_ is
+far below _Count Robert of Paris_ in its first uncorrected state, as the
+public will never know it.’
+
+There is something in this argument, and it has never yet been fairly
+met, but I believe that I can show that the idea was probably suggested
+to Dickens by one figure in real life, and another figure in fiction.  So
+far as I am aware these suggestions are made for the first time.
+
+In the _Bancroft Recollections_, Lady Bancroft writes on page 31:
+
+    My first part at the Strand Theatre was Pippo, in his burlesque _The
+    Maid and the Magpie_, which proved an immense success, and I
+    established myself as a leading favourite.  It was not until the
+    _Life of Charles Dickens_ was published that I knew his opinion of
+    this performance.  Dickens had written years before, in a letter to
+    John Forster, these words:
+
+    ‘I went to the Strand Theatre, having taken a stall beforehand, for
+    it is always crammed.  I really wish you would go to see _The Maid
+    and the Magpie_ burlesque there.  There is the strangest thing in it
+    that ever I have seen on the stage—the boy Pippo, by Miss Wilton.
+    While it is astonishingly impudent (must be, or it couldn’t be done
+    at all), it is so stupendously like a boy, and unlike a woman, that
+    it is perfectly free from offence.  I never have seen such a thing.
+    She does an imitation of the dancing of the Christy
+    Minstrels—wonderfully clever—which, in the audacity of its
+    thorough-going, is surprising.  A thing that you _cannot_ imagine a
+    woman’s doing at all; and yet the manner, the appearance, the levity,
+    impulse, and spirits of it are so exactly like a boy, that you cannot
+    think of anything like her sex in association with it.  I never have
+    seen such a curious thing, and the girl’s talent is unchallengeable.
+    I call her the cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my
+    time, and the most singularly original.’
+
+Lady Bancroft adds: ‘Charles Dickens’s being impressed with my likeness
+to a boy reminds me that on the first night I acted in _The Middy
+Ashore_, one of the staff came up to me at the wings and said: “Beg
+pardon, young sir, you must go back to your seat; no strangers are
+allowed behind the scenes.”’  From this it must be inferred that Dickens
+had there that evening a new idea as to the possibilities of disguise.
+Dickens’s letter was written in 1859.
+
+I believe that Dickens in this Datchery assumption was mainly influenced
+by Wilkie Collins.  Most writers on Dickens have observed his admiration
+for Collins, the way in which he co-operated with him, and the high value
+he placed on his work.  _The Moonstone_ has been referred to in this
+connection, but I venture to think that the novel which led Dickens to
+his idea was _No Name_.  I have already printed (page 91) Dickens’s
+wildly enthusiastic testimony to its merits.  He placed it far above _The
+Woman in White_, and far above _The Moonstone_.  In particular, he
+admired the character of Magdalen Vanstone.
+
+In _No Name_ we are introduced to a charming family—husband, wife, and
+two daughters—the Vanstones.  Then it turns out that the parents are
+unmarried.  The husband made a great mistake in marrying a bad woman in
+his early youth, and is nearly ruined in consequence.  He induces a good
+woman to live with him as his wife, and he has a fortune of £80,000.  By
+a singular mischance both he and the mother die suddenly about the same
+time.  Vanstone had made a will leaving his property to the daughters,
+but just before the death of his wife he discovers that his real wife is
+dead, and so they go out and get married.  The law is that marriage
+abolishes all past wills.  The consequence is that the will is not
+effective, and the two daughters are left without a penny, and without a
+name.  What are the girls to do?  The younger, Magdalen, has great force
+of character, and shows a talent for the stage.  She resolves to revenge
+herself on her father’s brother who has taken all the money.  Instead of
+going to work as an ordinary actress, she gives performances of her own.
+She is very clever at acting different parts.  She disguises herself as
+an old woman, and in all sorts of disguises.  She is nineteen, almost the
+age of Helena Landless.  Here is a description of the way in which she
+disguises herself:
+
+    I found all the dresses in the box complete—with one remarkable
+    exception.  That exception was the dress of the old north-country
+    lady; the character which I have already mentioned as the best of all
+    my pupil’s disguises, and as modelled in voice and manner on her old
+    governess, Miss Garth.  The wig; the eyebrows; the bonnet and veil;
+    the cloak, padded inside to disfigure her back and shoulders; the
+    paints and cosmetics used to age her face and alter her
+    complexion—were all gone.  Nothing but the gown remained; a gaudily
+    flowered silk, useful enough for dramatic purposes, but too
+    extravagant in colour and pattern to bear inspection by daylight.
+    The other parts of the dress are sufficiently quiet to pass muster;
+    the bonnet and veil are only old-fashioned, and the cloak is of a
+    sober grey colour.  But one plain inference can be drawn from such a
+    discovery as this.  As certainly as I sit here, she is going to open
+    the campaign against Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount, in a character
+    which neither of those two persons can have any possible reason for
+    suspecting at the outset—the character of Miss Garth.
+
+    What course am I to take under these circumstances?  Having got her
+    secret, what am I to do with it?  These are awkward considerations; I
+    am rather puzzled how to deal with them.
+
+    It is something more than the mere fact of her choosing to disguise
+    herself to forward her own private ends that causes my present
+    perplexity.  Hundreds of girls take fancies for disguising
+    themselves; and hundreds of instances of it are related year after
+    year, in the public journals.  But my ex-pupil is not to be
+    confounded, for one moment, with the average adventuress of the
+    newspapers.  She is capable of going a long way beyond the limit of
+    _dressing herself like a man_, _and imitating a man’s voice and
+    manner_.  She has a natural gift for assuming characters, which I
+    have never seen equalled by a woman; and she has performed in public
+    until she has felt her own power, and trained her talent for
+    disguising herself to the highest pitch.  A girl who takes the
+    sharpest people unawares by using such a capacity as this to help her
+    own objects in private life; and who sharpens that capacity by a
+    determination to fight her way to her own purpose which has beaten
+    down everything before it, up to this time—is a girl who tries an
+    experiment in deception, new enough and dangerous enough to lead one
+    way or the other, to very serious results.  This is my conviction
+    founded on a large experience in the art of imposing on my
+    fellow-creatures.  I say of my fair relative’s enterprise what I
+    never said or thought of it till I introduced myself to the inside of
+    her box.  The chances for and against her winning the fight for her
+    lost fortune are now so evenly balanced that I cannot for the life of
+    me see on which side the scale inclines.  All I can discern is, that
+    it will, to a dead certainty, turn one way or the other on the day
+    when she passes Noel Vanstone’s doors in disguise.
+
+I am not prepared to criticise Dickens’s plot as Mr. Lang has done.  If
+Wilkie Collins made an admirable heroine of Magdalen Vanstone disguising
+herself variously, why should not Dickens succeed in making a character
+as wonderful and more attractive of Helena Landless?  There is nothing to
+be condemned in the idea itself.  It has been used by masters, and used
+successfully.  There would have been nothing to condemn, I believe, in
+Dickens’s way of working it out if he had lived to complete his book.
+The comparison with Guy Boothby is singularly inept.
+
+
+OBJECTIONS
+
+
+The objections that have been made to the Datchery-Helena theory turn
+mainly on the supposed disgracefulness of Dickens deceiving his readers
+as he did, and working out a melodramatic idea.  These objections might
+have been, and, I believe, would have been, scattered to the winds by the
+complete story.
+
+The most serious objection to the identification of Datchery as Helena is
+the confusion in the chronology.  This is admirably stated by Dr.
+Jackson, who examines in a masterly way the arrangement of the chapters.
+He comes to the conclusion that chapter xviii. has been introduced
+prematurely.  It ought to have followed chapter xxii. If Dickens had
+lived to issue the fifth and sixth monthly instalments, he would have
+placed our chapter xviii. without the alteration of a single word after
+chapter xxii., next before chapter xxiii.  We know that Dickens told his
+sister-in-law that he was afraid the Datchery assumption in the fifth
+number was premature.  Dr. Jackson gives us a full and valuable
+examination of the manuscript so far as its arrangement is concerned.  I
+have tested his statements in every point, and can only confirm them.  To
+Dr. Jackson’s chapter ix., ‘The Manuscript,’ I refer the reader.
+
+There are other objections.  In particular, some are troubled by
+Datchery’s masculine ways.  They ask how Helena, fresh from Ceylon,
+should have known the old tavern way of keeping scores.  There is not
+much in this.  In fact, these scores, which could have served no purpose,
+seem to me the natural expression of a buoyant girl rejoicing in her
+achievements.  A cool-headed, middle-aged detective would never have
+expressed himself in such a way.  Why should not Helena have known about
+tavern scoring?  She was accustomed to walk with her brother Neville, and
+in the course of their walks they may very likely have visited a tavern
+now and then.  We read of Neville finding his way to a tavern when he
+walked away that dark night.  In _Phineas Finn_, at the end of chapter
+lxxi., Trollope, reporting the conversation of two high-born ladies, Lady
+Laura Kennedy and Miss Violet Effingham, has this:
+
+    ‘Was I not to forgive him—I who had turned myself away from him with
+    a fixed purpose the moment that I found that he had made a mark upon
+    my heart?  I could not wipe off that mark, and yet I married.  Was he
+    not to try to wipe off his mark?’
+
+    ‘It seems that he wiped it off very quickly; and since that he has
+    wiped off another mark.  One doesn’t know how many marks he has wiped
+    off.  They are like the innkeeper’s score which he makes in chalk.  A
+    damp cloth brings them all away, and leaves nothing behind.’
+
+This shows, at least, that chalk-marking is not a matter of esoteric
+knowledge in England, but is known to high and low.  I may note that
+Dickens inserted the adjective ‘uncouth’—‘a few uncouth, chalked
+strokes’—over his original manuscript, to make it clear no doubt that the
+scorer was an amateur at the business.
+
+Then there are objections to Datchery’s masculine fare—fried sole, veal
+cutlet, and pint of sherry; bread and cheese, and salad and ale.  It must
+be remembered that Helena was in disguise.  This was not a mere disguise
+of dress, but it was a disguise of everything.  She was assuming a
+character and carrying it out.  She had all the ability and all the will
+for accomplishing this.  In doing masculine things she was simply
+carrying out her disguise.  A woman passing for a man must do what a man
+would do or she will fail, and be found out.
+
+It has been suggested that if Datchery is Helena, and therefore knows the
+Gatehouse, why does she give it ‘a second look of some interest’?  Dr.
+Jackson replies very well that the house for her has now a new
+importance, and is the object upon which her thoughts are to be
+concentrated for weeks, and perhaps for months.  But Dickens did not mean
+this passage to be printed, for good reasons of his own.
+
+
+WHAT DICKENS DID NOT MEAN US TO READ
+
+
+This leads us to note that certain passages which have been much
+discussed were not meant for publication by Dickens.  That is, he struck
+them out in proof.  Dr. Jackson points out that in chapter xviii., when
+Datchery consults the waiter at the Crozier about ‘a fair lodging for a
+single buffer,’ he is obviously asking to be recommended to Tope’s.  The
+waiter is puzzled at first.  When Mr. Datchery asks for ‘something
+venerable, architectural, and inconvenient,’ the waiter shakes his head.
+‘Anything cathedraly, now?’ Mr. Datchery suggested.  Then comes the
+mention of Tope.  Datchery boggles about the cathedral tower seeking for
+lodgings, but Dickens did not mean us to read the words: ‘With a general
+impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope’s was somewhere very near it, and
+that, like the children in the game of hot boiled beans and very good
+butter, he was warm in his search when he saw the tower, and cold when he
+didn’t see it.’
+
+When the Deputy pointed out Jasper’s, first Dickens wrote ‘“Indeed?” said
+Mr. Datchery, with an appearance of interest.’  Then he wrote:
+‘“Indeed?” said Mr. Datchery, with a second look of some interest.’  Then
+he struck out the sentence entirely.
+
+Dickens also struck out the sentence which describes Datchery after the
+Deputy left him: ‘Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give that shock of
+white hair of his another shake, seemed quite resigned, and betook
+himself whither he had been directed.’  He also struck out the passage in
+which Mrs. Tope and Datchery talk of what occurred last winter:
+
+    Perhaps Mr. Datchery had heard something of what had occurred there
+    last winter?
+
+    Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge of the event in question, on
+    trying to recall it, as he well could have.  He begged Mrs. Tope’s
+    pardon when she found it incumbent on her to correct him in every
+    detail of his summary of the facts, but pleaded that he was merely a
+    single buffer getting through life upon his means as idly as he
+    could, and that so many people were so constantly making away with so
+    many other people as to render it difficult for a buffer of an easy
+    temper to preserve the circumstances of the several cases unmixed in
+    his mind.
+
+Nearly all the conversation between the Mayor and Datchery is deleted.
+See page 9.
+
+Also Dickens erases the little talk between the Deputy and Datchery
+beginning: ‘Master Deputy, what do you owe me?’  See page 11.
+
+It may not be possible to deduce any assured inference from these
+omissions, but they are worth pondering, and may be referred to again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII—OTHER THEORIES
+
+
+THE DROOD-DATCHERY THEORY
+
+
+One opposing theory is that Datchery was Drood.  With all respect for the
+scholars who have propounded it, this appears to me a purely comic
+notion.  It is the most fantastical of all fancies as to who was
+Datchery.  As Dr. Blake Odgers points out, every one at Cloisterham knew
+the murdered man: a mere white wig would be no disguise at all.  I may
+add that if Jasper had discovered him he would almost be justified in
+finishing the murder this time.  For what would be Drood’s object?  The
+theory is that, in spite of his being drugged, throttled, perhaps thrown
+from a tower, at all events buried in quicklime, and in all probability
+locked up in the tomb, Drood got away when his uncle was triumphantly
+flinging his watch and scarf-pin into the river.  Supposing it were so,
+what was Drood doing while he watched his uncle?  Is it said that he was
+so bemused by the opium that he did not know who had handled him in such
+a murderous fashion?  This is very hard to believe.  Mr. Andrew Lang
+himself says: ‘Fancy can suggest no reason why Edwin Drood, if he escaped
+from his wicked uncle, should go spying about instead of coming openly
+forward.’  Mr. Archer says the flaw is that the theory provides no motive
+whatever for Drood’s disguising himself as Datchery.  Why should Drood
+devote himself to an elaborate scheme of revenge upon his near kinsman
+and friend?  He would want to hush the matter up, and save Jasper from
+himself.  Why did Drood let Neville lie under the suspicion of murder,
+and why was not Rosa let into the secret?  It is hardly worth while to
+point out that there is nothing in Drood’s character as given us which
+could have enabled him to show the ability, the composure, and the
+self-control of Datchery.  Who could have supplied him with money to live
+idly at Cloisterham?  His money was all locked up till he came of age,
+and Jasper was his guardian and trustee.  If Grewgious supplied the
+money, why did not Grewgious make an end of Neville’s misery?
+
+
+THE BAZZARD-DATCHERY THEORY
+
+
+A far more plausible theory is that Datchery was Bazzard.  Dickens almost
+invites readers to connect Bazzard with Datchery when he makes Grewgious
+say to Rosa when she came up to London that Bazzard ‘was off duty here
+altogether just at present, and a firm downstairs with whom I have
+business relations lend me a substitute.’  (The words ‘here altogether’
+were added by Dickens.)
+
+I have no doubt that Dickens in some way meant to explain Bazzard’s
+business.  But that Bazzard should have been Datchery will appear a sheer
+impossibility to careful students of Dickens.  Proctor, whose side
+remarks are often excellent, puts the point briefly as follows: ‘No one
+at all familiar with Dickens’s method would for a moment imagine that
+Datchery is Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious’s clerk.  Bazzard was as certainly
+intended to come to grief, and be exposed in the sequel as was Silas Wegg
+in _Our Mutual Friend_.’
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters says: ‘Literary art rebels against the idea.  Bazzard
+was one of Dickens’s favourite low comedy characters.’
+
+Dr. James dismisses the Bazzard theory ‘because Buzzard in his first and
+principal appearance has too much both of the fool and of the knave about
+him to develop into the Datchery whom we are intended to admire.’
+
+Dr. Jackson says: ‘Capacity can ape incapacity, but incapacity cannot ape
+capacity.  This being so, I am sure that Bazzard, who is not only
+“particularly angular, but also somnolent, dull, incompetent,
+egotistical, is wholly incapable of playing the part of the supple,
+quick-witted, resolute, dignified Datchery.”’  In these judgments I
+agree.  Bazzard has no ethical quality.  He has not the smallest personal
+interest in the discovery.  How could it be said of Bazzard that his
+‘wistful gaze is directed to this beacon, and beyond?’
+
+As the theory is obvious and popular, it may be worth while to say
+something more, and Dr. Hugo Eick’s words, as previously quoted, may help
+us.  Helena Landless had the elemental qualities needed for the Datchery
+role.  Note that among Shakespeare’s heroines who masquerade as men,
+Rosalind, in _As you Like It_, and Julia, in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_,
+have not these elemental qualities and are suspected.  Portia has them,
+and even her own husband does not know her in her doctor’s robes.  She is
+recognised by all as a young doctor, but not one person in court thinks
+‘There is a woman!’  Bazzard might have imitated depressive and negative
+conditions, but he could not have imitated the qualities of positive
+life.  ‘Fulness of life and the sap which quickens it cannot be replaced
+by any dissimulation.’
+
+It should also be noted that if Bazzard was Datchery, he had no occasion
+to disguise himself in a huge white wig, for he was not known in
+Cloisterham.
+
+
+THE GREWGIOUS-DATCHERY THEORY
+
+
+The theory that Datchery was Grewgious may be dismissed in a sentence.
+Grewgious with his ‘awkward and hesitating manner,’ his ‘shambling walk,’
+his ‘scanty flat crop of hair,’ his ‘smooth head,’ his ‘short sight,’ his
+general angularity fits in no way the watchful, courtly, adroit, fluent,
+and versatile Datchery.
+
+
+THE DATCHERY-NEVILLE THEORY
+
+
+Mr. Lang has a wild conjecture somewhere that Neville was Datchery, and
+that Helena was disguised as Neville.  It is difficult to treat this
+seriously.  Neville would inevitably have been found out.  His cause was
+undertaken by his friends, and his business was to study and wait.  Why
+on earth should Helena disguise herself as Neville?
+
+
+THE TARTAR-DATCHERY THEORY
+
+
+There is something more attractive about this theory, and it has been
+very well argued by Mr. G. F. Gadd in the _Dickensian_, vol. ii. p. 13.
+Mr. Gadd uses the argument ‘with a second look of some interest,’ as
+showing Datchery’s ignorance of Cloisterham.  He quotes Tartar’s phrase
+‘being an idle man,’ as corresponding with the ‘idle buffer living on his
+means.’  He suggests that Dickens at this point of his story avails
+himself of the licence not unfrequent in fiction of temporarily
+abandoning the strictly chronological order.  He suggests that Tartar as
+a seafaring man might know something of opium smoking, and compares the
+wistful gaze directed to this beacon and beyond, to what is said about
+Tartar as he and Rosa entered his chambers at Staple Inn.  ‘Rosa thought
+. . . that his far-seeing eyes looked as if they had been used to watch
+danger afar off, and to watch it without flinching, drawing nearer and
+nearer.’
+
+But, as Dr. Jackson points out, Tartar has his duties assigned to him.
+He has to watch over Neville and see him almost daily.  Again, Tartar
+does not know about Cloisterham and the Drood mystery what Datchery knows
+and needs to know.  ‘Thirdly, I doubt whether the cheery,
+straightforward, simple-minded Tartar is capable of Datchery’s
+versatility, subtlety, and address.’  To this I add that Tartar’s heart
+is not engaged in the business as Helena’s is.  Also what need is there
+for his disguise?  He has never been in Cloisterham, and nobody there
+knows him.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+For these reasons we conclude that Helena and no other is Datchery.  I
+have taken no account of the theory that Datchery is an unknown person.
+An unknown person could not possess the necessary qualities of heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII—HOW WAS ‘EDWIN DROOD’ TO END?
+
+
+How _Edwin Drood_ was to end is a problem which can only be solved to a
+certain extent.  We find we are left in the middle, and as much mystery
+remains as fully justifies the title.  We do not know the precise manner
+in which the murder was accomplished.  In particular, we are left
+ignorant as to the way in which the crime is to be brought home to the
+victim.  We cannot define the relations of the opium woman to Drood and
+Jasper and the Landlesses.  We do not know the history of Jasper’s early
+years.  We can do no more than speculate, and the speculations must be
+confined within strict limits.  The first question is, whether Dickens
+himself knew how he was going to extricate and complete his narrative.
+
+Scott has left us the astonishing statement {184} that ‘I have generally
+written to the middle of one of these novels without having the least
+idea how it was to end.’  Mr. Skene, a true friend of Sir Walter Scott,
+tells us {185} that when Scott described to him the scheme which he had
+formed for _Anne of Geierstein_, he suggested to him that he might with
+advantage connect the history of René, king of Provence, in which subject
+Skene had special means of helping him.  Scott accepted the suggestion,
+‘and the whole _dénouement_ of the story of _Anne of Geierstein_ was
+changed, and the Provence part woven into it, in the form in which it
+ultimately came forth.’
+
+Was Dickens in the same case when death interrupted him in his work?
+
+Was this an ‘apoplectic’ novel?
+
+Scott speaks frankly of _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_
+being his ‘apoplectic books.’  Does _Edwin Drood_ bear the same relation
+to the body of Dickens’s work as _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle
+Dangerous_ bear to the Waverley Novels?  Mr. Lang, whose views on this
+subject varied much, in one of his later writings takes the view that
+Dickens was deeply embarrassed.  He says: ‘It is melancholy to think of
+this great and terribly overtasked genius tormented by fears that were
+only too real.’  He finds the story wandering on, living from hand to
+mouth, full of absurdities.  He thinks that Dickens was very capable of
+changing his original purpose, and saving the life of Edwin.
+
+There is no doubt that Dickens was puzzled about the order of his
+chapters.  Forster tells us that Dickens ‘became a little nervous about
+the course of the tale from a fear that he might have plunged too soon
+into the incidents leading on to the catastrophe such as the Datchery
+assumption (a misgiving he had certainly expressed to his
+sister-in-law).’  I have already expressed agreement with Dr. Jackson in
+his plan for renumbering the chapters.  Unless this plan is adopted there
+is chronological confusion.  Also there is no doubt that Dickens had been
+working under terrific strain.  But the testimony of those who knew him
+best is that his faculties were never brighter and stronger than they
+were in his last months.
+
+The same impression is left upon me by his unfinished novel.  Those who
+dislike Dickens’s later manner may easily find faults.  They may say that
+Honeythunder is grotesque rather than amusing.  They may say that
+Jasper’s courtship of Rosa is melodramatic and wolfish.  I confess to
+being perpetually puzzled by the account of Neville’s capture on the
+morning after the murder.  Why was he pursued in that manner?  All that
+was known against him was that he had been with Edwin on the previous
+night.  He is only eight miles away from Cloisterham, and stopping at a
+roadside tavern to refresh.  He starts again on his journey, and becomes
+aware of other pedestrians behind him coming up at a faster pace than
+his.  He stands aside to let them pass, but only four pass.  Other four
+slackened speed, and loitered as if intending to follow him when he
+should go on.  The remainder of the party (half a dozen, perhaps) turn
+and go back at a great rate.  Among those who go back is Mr. Crisparkle.
+Nobody speaks, but they all look at him.  Four walk in advance and four
+in the rear.  Thus he is beset, and stops as a last test, and they all
+stop.  He asks:
+
+    ‘Why do you attend upon me in this way? . . .  Are you a pack of
+    thieves?’
+
+    ‘Don’t answer him,’ said one of the number. . . .  ‘Better be quiet.
+    . . .’
+
+    ‘I will not submit to be penned in,’ says Neville; ‘I mean to pass
+    those four in front.’
+
+They all stand still, and he shoulders his heavy stick and quickens his
+pace.  The largest and strongest man of the number dexterously closes
+with him and goes down with him, but not before the heavy stick has
+descended smartly.  Naturally Neville is utterly bewildered.  Two of them
+hold his arms and lead him back into a group whose central figures are
+Jasper and Crisparkle.  Why on earth did not Crisparkle speak to him at
+the beginning, and tell him what had happened?  All this is
+somnambulistic.
+
+There seems to be a slight slip in chapter ii.
+
+Jasper’s room at the Gatehouse is described.  It has an unfinished
+picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece.  At the
+upper end of the room Mr. Jasper opens a door and discloses a small inner
+room pleasantly lighted and prepared for supper.
+
+‘Fixed as the look the young fellow meets is, there is yet in it some
+strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the chimneypiece.’
+They dine in the inner room.  The cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts
+and a decanter of rich coloured sherry are placed upon the table.
+
+‘How’s she looking, Jack?’
+
+Mr. Jasper’s concentrated face again includes the portrait as he returns:
+‘Very like your sketch indeed.’
+
+‘I am a little proud of it,’ says the young fellow, glancing up at the
+sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a
+corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the air.
+
+Dickens seems to have forgotten that the sketch is in the other room.
+
+It seems to me that these are slips, but I do not find any other readers
+have taken the same view.  With these exceptions, the story seems to be
+one of Dickens’s best books.  Its grasp of local colour and detail is as
+strong as ever it was.  There is much of his old humour in the Mayor, in
+Miss Twinkleton’s Girls’ School, in Billickin, in Durdles and his
+attendant imp.  Also the story is constructed with the greatest care and
+ingenuity.  Any one who carefully goes over the manuscript and the proofs
+will see that Dickens had a plan in his mind that he half revealed and
+half concealed, that his phrases and details are chosen with the nicest
+care, and that he meant to reward those who at the end could take a
+‘backward look’ by the delight they would experience in seeing how
+everything had been scrupulously planned and artistically conducted to a
+climax.  We cannot do justice to the book in its present state.  But
+Dickens’s royal genius was at its full, and would have vindicated itself.
+He had set himself deliberately to carrying out a plot far more exact
+than he had ever attempted, and the end was in view from the beginning.
+
+This is not to say that the reason of every incident and every
+description was disclosed from the first.  I have previously discussed
+Edgar Allan Poe’s reading of _Barnaby Rudge_, and shown that his
+perception, keen as it was, yielded him less than he thought.  I have
+shown how Dickens prepared the plan for _Little Dorrit_ from the start of
+his book.  It may be traced now, but without the ‘backward glance’ it
+would not have been easy to trace it.
+
+We may also say with some confidence that no new characters of importance
+would have been introduced to us in the second half.  In the chapter
+‘Half Way with Dickens’ I have shown that this is the case with five of
+his principal books.  The conclusion is not stringent, for Dickens was
+free to change his method.  But it may be said to be highly probable; if
+it is true we are left to conjecture the part that the various characters
+would have played in the winding up of the tale.
+
+The book was to end with the capture and conviction of Jasper.  I have
+already written of the part played and to be played by Grewgious.
+Another hunter of Jasper was Durdles.  The task assigned to Durdles among
+the hunters is fairly clear.  Sooner or later, by tapping round the
+Sapsea monument he is to discover the presence of ‘a wheen banes,’ or at
+least of some unsuspected ‘rubbish.’  He had put the inscription on the
+monument before Christmas, and had no doubt satisfied himself then that
+all was safe.  ‘When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no
+matter where, inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all
+round, and see that his work is a-doing him credit.’
+
+Having made his inspection when the epitaph was put on, Durdles would
+have no further curiosity about the tomb until, in the following summer,
+he took Mr. Datchery on a rambling expedition as he had taken Jasper.
+His peculiar gift, like that of the bloodhound, is to aid in tracking
+down the quarry.
+
+Deputy has also his part to play.  From the first Jasper hates and fears
+Deputy, and there are signs near the close of _Edwin Drood_ that this
+strange boy, who has some characteristics in common with Dickie Sludge,
+of _Kenilworth_, is to form a close alliance with Datchery.  The ugliest
+side of Jasper’s character displays itself in his treatment of the ‘young
+imp employed by Durdles.’  The chanting of the line, ‘Widdy Widdy
+Wake-cock warning,’ has for him a note of menace.  With the fury of a
+devil he leaps upon the boy when he emerges from the crypt with Durdles,
+and hears a sharp whistle rending the silence.  ‘I will shed the blood of
+that impish wretch!’ he cries; ‘I know I shall do it.’  Durdles has to
+appeal to him not to hurt the boy.  ‘He followed us to-night, when we
+first came here,’ says Jasper.  ‘He has been prowling near us ever
+since.’
+
+Deputy denies both accusations.  ‘I’d only just come out for my ’elth
+when I see you two a-coming out of the Kinfreederal.’
+
+What has Deputy actually seen?  He may have testimony to give of the most
+vital consequence, but even if he has seen nothing of Jasper’s movements
+while Durdles lies asleep, or of his approach to the Sapsea monument, he
+will tell Mr. Datchery of that furious onslaught when Jasper clutched his
+throat and threatened to kill him.  He will prove a very useful ally of
+the hunters.
+
+It seems quite inconceivable that either Durdles or Deputy could have
+known the whole secret and kept it.  Neither of them was capable of
+keeping a secret long.  But they might have suspicions, and they might
+and would know circumstances which when rightly interpreted led to the
+inevitable conclusion.
+
+I cannot but think that the chief part in the coming narrative was to be
+played by the opium woman.  The novel from the very first page has a
+touch of the East.  In Wilkie Collins’s _The Moonstone_ the Indians did
+their part, and then vanished from the scene.  But in _Edwin Drood_ we
+have the Landlesses from Ceylon with a touch of dark blood, or at least
+of the Eastern spirit.  Mr. Lang is in excess of the facts when he calls
+them Eurasians, and Dickens hesitates in ascribing black blood to them.
+They are more probably gypsies.  We have also the connection of Edwin
+Drood with the East.  There is more than a suggestion of dark blood in
+John Jasper.  Above all, we have the opium woman.  What was the
+connection between John Jasper and the opium woman?  What was John
+Jasper’s history before he came to Cloisterham?
+
+We do not know, but conjectures have been hazarded.  Mr. Cuming Walters
+thinks that the opium woman’s hatred of Jasper may be due to the fact
+that Jasper has wronged a child of the woman’s.  He also conjectures that
+Jasper may be the son of the opium woman.  Dr. Jackson conjectures that
+Jasper seduces a young girl who had treated the old woman kindly, that he
+neglected this girl for Rosa, that the girl committed suicide, and that
+the old woman devoted herself to the pursuit of the betrayer.  All this
+is mere speculation.  We have really no means of judging whether the
+speculation is true or not.  It does seem that the woman’s peculiar
+hatred of Jasper must have an origin and a grave cause.  Miss Stoddart
+suggests that the opium woman was not wholly degraded, and that she is
+horrified by Jasper’s continually repeated threatenings while under the
+influence of opium; that her sympathies have been wakened for that
+hapless Ned who bears a threatened name, and she resolves to do her best
+to serve him.  With an honest purpose she makes her way before Christmas
+to Cloisterham.  She loses sight of Jasper, but actually meets Edwin
+Drood.  The kind act of that young stranger causes her to unload her
+conscience, and she bids him be thankful that his name is not Ned.  At
+her second visit in the summer she knows from Jasper’s confessions under
+her own roof that the long premeditated crime has actually taken place,
+and her object in visiting Cloisterham is to gather evidence that may
+serve the ends of justice.  This sunken creature has a task assigned to
+her, and she fulfils it.
+
+I am not sure that Dickens means to throw any redeeming light on the
+character of the opium woman.  She has been wronged; she is seeking
+vengeance, and at last, she finds it.  How this comes to pass Dickens
+meant to tell us, but he meant, no doubt, to surprise us in the telling.
+
+My own belief is that Dickens intended to surprise his readers by telling
+them of some unsuspected blood relationship between his characters.
+Surprises of this kind are given in his novels.  No reader of _Oliver
+Twist_ could have guessed from the first part Oliver’s relationship to
+Monks and the Maylies.  Who would have supposed from the first half of
+_Nicholas Nickleby_ that Smike was the son of Ralph?
+
+    ‘That, boy,’ repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him.
+
+    ‘Whom I saw stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in
+    his grave—’
+
+    ‘Who is now in his grave,’ echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his
+    sleep.
+
+    The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together:
+
+    ‘—Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!’
+
+    In the midst of a dead silence Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands
+    upon his temples.  He removed them after a minute, and never was
+    there seen, part of a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a
+    ghastly face as he then disclosed.
+
+Again, who would have supposed from the early part of _Great
+Expectations_ that Estella was the daughter of Abel Magwitch? {196}
+
+In _Barnaby Rudge_, Maypole Hugh turns out to be an illegitimate son of
+Sir John Chester.  In _The Old Curiosity Shop_, ‘The Stranger’ is found
+to be the brother of the Grandfather.  In _Bleak House_, Esther Summerson
+is revealed as a daughter of Lady Dedlock.  In _Our Mutual Friend_, John
+Rokesmith turns out to be John Harmon.
+
+That the action of opium had a part to play in the revelation can hardly
+be doubted.  The whole book is drenched in opium.  In _The Moonstone_ the
+problem is who stole the jewels.  It is solved by opium.  The jewels are
+stolen by a man under the influence of opium surreptitiously
+administered.  He is quite unconscious of what he has done, and remains
+unconscious.  Afterwards he is discovered by a fresh administration of
+opium.  When the opium has completely done its work the man repeats his
+deed, and the experiment is conclusive.
+
+I do not think that any one reading right on would name the perpetrator
+of the theft, and yet when we take a backward glance we find an account
+of a dinner-party about the seventieth page which gives the clue.  I
+doubt whether any one on first reading it would see in it anything that
+mattered, and yet it contains everything that matters.  The height of art
+in work like this is to conceal art.  You may be able at an early stage
+to introduce facts which contain the ultimate solution of your problem,
+and yet appear important enough to be stated for their own sake.  The
+solution of the problem, or rather the materials of the solution, should
+be given, and yet the reader should be unable to detect the full
+significance of the preliminary statement till the complete clearing
+arrives.  At the same time the book will not be satisfactory if details
+are superfluous, if they do nothing to carry one on to the dissipation of
+the mystery.
+
+It is not to be denied that this fitting of everything into its place is
+at times a little wearisome.  ‘The construction is most minute and most
+wonderful,’ wrote Anthony Trollope of Wilkie Collins.  ‘I can never lose
+the taste of the construction.  The author seems always warning me to
+remember that something happened at exactly half-past two on Tuesday
+morning, or that a woman disappeared from the road just fifteen yards
+beyond the fourth milestone.’  There is truth in this, but if Anthony
+Trollope had written a novel of mystery, which perhaps he could never
+have done, he would have had to take the same path.
+
+Another doctor in _The Moonstone_ tells us that the ignorant distrust of
+opium in England spreads through all classes, so much so, that every
+doctor in large practice finds himself every now and then obliged to
+deceive his patients by giving them opium under a disguise.  He himself
+claims that opium saved his life.  He suffered from an incurable internal
+complaint, but he was determined to live in order to provide for a person
+very dear to him.  ‘To that all-potent and all-merciful drug I am
+indebted for a respite of many years from my sentence of death.’
+
+Like Collins, Dickens was keenly interested in the possibilities of
+opium.  Collins himself was a lavish consumer of the drug, but I do not
+think it has been suggested that Dickens himself ever touched it.  Nor is
+it likely, for Dickens with all his tenseness of nerve was an eminently
+self-controlled and temperate man.  But in _Edwin Drood_ he has inserted
+a sentence in praise of opium.  The opium woman says to Datchery: ‘It’s
+opium, deary.  Neither more nor less.  And it’s like a human creetur so
+far, that you always hear what can be said against it, but seldom what
+can be said in its praise.’  The last sentence was an afterthought on the
+part of Dickens.  It has been written in.
+
+As to whether Jasper was made ultimately to repeat his crime in any
+fashion under the influence of opium, it is impossible to say.  He was
+unquestionably more or less under the influence of the drug when he
+committed it.
+
+The literary men of Dickens’s period were much interested in the action
+of drugs, in mesmerism, and the like.  Elliotson, to whom _Pendennis_ is
+dedicated, was on intimate terms with Dickens.  Dickens plainly implies
+that Crisparkle went to the weir because Jasper willed him to do so.
+Collins and Dickens were both addicted to calling witnesses to their
+accuracy.  At the close of _Armadale_, Collins says: ‘Wherever the story
+touches on questions connected with law, medicine, or chemistry, it has
+been submitted before publication to the experience of professional men.
+The kindness of a friend supplied me with a plan of the doctor’s
+apparatus—I saw the chemical ingredients at work before I ventured on
+describing the action of them in the closing scenes of this book.’  Every
+one remembers the ‘spontaneous combustion’ preface to Bleak House.  I do
+not know whether any medical man can be found to confirm the science of
+_Armadale_, or of _Bleak House_, or of _The Moonstone_.  But that is not
+the question before us.  We have only to do with what the novelist
+himself believed to be a scientific possibility.  In _Kenilworth_ {200}
+Wayland compounds ‘the true Orvietan, that noble medicine which is so
+seldom found genuine and effective within these realms of Europe.’  Scott
+adds a note: ‘Orvietan, or Venice treacle, as it is sometimes called, was
+understood to be a sovereign remedy against poison; and the reader must
+be contented, for the time he peruses these pages, to hold the same
+opinion, which was once universally received by the learned as well as
+the vulgar.’  Dickens’s science must be received in the same manner.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle has one piece of evidence in his memory.  ‘Long afterwards
+he had cause to remember’ how, when he entered Jasper’s rooms and found
+him asleep by the fire, the choirmaster ‘sprang from the couch in a
+delirious state between sleeping and waking, and crying out, “What is the
+matter?  Who did it?”’
+
+As we have already seen, the gathering of the threads is in the strong
+hands of Datchery.
+
+As we know, Forster adds that Neville Landless was to have perished in
+assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer.  It will be
+seen that this part of his testimony is more doubtful than the rest, and
+cannot, therefore, be so implicitly accepted, but it may well be true.
+Melancholy seems to mark Neville Landless for its own, and his passion
+for Rosa is hopeless.  If he dies, it is a heavy blow for his devoted
+sister, who finds her triumph marred by the death of her brother.
+Singularly enough, some writers who have hesitated to accept Forster’s
+more expressed testimony make much of the death of Neville Landless and
+its circumstances.  It need only be pointed out that all this is pure
+conjecture, however ingenious it may be.
+
+I find no difficulty in believing that Dickens carried out his plan of
+making Jasper give in prison a review of his own career.  This has been
+called a poor and conventional idea, but as worked out by Dickens it
+would neither have been poor nor conventional.  What remains to be told
+is, I repeat, largely the story of John Jasper’s earlier life.
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
+A BIBLIOGRAPHY COMPILED BY B. W. MATZ
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By Charles Dickens.  Parts 1–6.  With 12
+illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R.A.  1870.
+
+HOW MR. SAPSEA CEASED TO BE A MEMBER OF THE EIGHT CLUB.  Fragment found
+by John Forster.  See his _Life_ of the Novelist.  Added to the
+‘Biographical,’ ‘National,’ and ‘Centenary’ editions of the novel.
+
+THE CLOVEN FOOT: An Adaptation of the English Novel to American Scenes,
+Characters, Customs and Nomenclature.  By Orpheus C. Kerr (R. H. Newell).
+New York: Carleton.  1870.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.  By Orpheus C. Kerr.  An English edition of
+foregoing, with several minor alterations.  London: _The Piccadilly
+Annual_.  1870.
+
+JOHN JASPER’S SECRET: A Sequel to Charles Dickens’s Unfinished Novel,
+_The Mystery of Edwin Drood_.  By Henry Morford, of New York, and his
+wife.  Issued in parts in America by T. B. Peterson and Bros.,
+Philadelphia, from October 1871 to March 1872; and in England
+anonymously.  An edition of the same work was published in 1901 with the
+astoundingly false announcement on the title-page that the book is by
+Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens the Younger.  New York: R. F. Fenno
+and Co.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  A Play by Walter Stephens.  Performed at the
+Surrey Theatre, 4th November 1871.  Chapman and Hall.  1871.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  A drama by G. H. Macdermott.  Performed at
+the Britannia Theatre, 22nd July 1872.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD COMPLETE.  Part the Second.  ‘By the Spirit
+Pen of Charles Dickens, through a Medium.’  Published at Brattleborough,
+Vermont, U.S.A.  1873.
+
+THE GREAT MYSTERY SOLVED: Being a Sequel to _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_.
+By Gillan Vase.  3 vols.  London: Remington and Co. 1878.
+
+LE CRIME DE JASPER.  Traduit de l’Anglais.  Dentu.  Paris: 1879.
+
+ALIVE OR DEAD: A Drama.  By Robert Hall.  Performed at the Park Theatre,
+Camden Town, 3rd May 1880.
+
+WATCHED BY THE DEAD: A Loving Study of Dickens’s Half-Told Tale.  By
+Richard A. Proctor.  London: W. H. Allen and Co. 1887.  (The genesis of
+this ‘loving study’ appeared as articles in the _Belgravia Magazine_,
+June 1878; _Leisure Readings_, 1882; and _Knowledge_, 1884; over the
+pseudonym of ‘Thomas Foster.’)
+
+HOW ‘EDWIN DROOD’ WAS ILLUSTRATED.  By Alice Meynell.  _Century
+Magazine_, February 1884.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: Suggestions for a Conclusion.  _Cornhill
+Magazine_, March 1884.
+
+THE WELFLEET MYSTERY (An Outgrowth of Dickens’s Last Work).  By Mrs. C.
+A. Read.  _The Weekly Budget_, 1885.
+
+A NOVELIST’S FAVOURITE THEME.  _Cornhill Magazine_, January 1886.
+
+MYSTERY ON MYSTERY.  By Edward Salmon.  _Belgravia_, September 1887.
+
+THE DROOD MYSTERY AGAIN.  By Robert Allbut.  _Daily Union_, U.S.A.
+(letter dated 21st August 1893).
+
+CLUES TO THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By J. Cuming Walters.  London:
+Chapman and Hall, Ltd.  2s. 6d.  1905.
+
+SOLVING ‘THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.’  By B. W. Matz.  _Dickensian_, July
+1905.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF DATCHERY.  By William Archer.  _Morning Leader_, 15th,
+22nd and 29th July.  Replies by J. Cuming Walters, 17th and 26th July
+1905.
+
+THE DROOD CASE.  By Andrew Lang.  _Morning Post_, 28th July 1905.
+
+THE PLOT OF EDWIN DROOD.  By Andrew Lang.  _Academy_, 29th July 1905.
+Reply by J. Cuming Walters, 12th August 1905.
+
+THE CLEARING OF A MYSTERY.  By Harry Beswick.  _Clarion_, 28th July 1905.
+
+THE DROOD CASE.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Morning Post_, 8th August 1905.
+
+THE HISTORY OF A MYSTERY: A Review of the Solutions to ‘Edwin Drood.’  By
+George F. Gadd.  _Dickensian_, September to December 1905.
+
+INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. WATSON AND SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE DROOD MYSTERY.
+By Andrew Lang.  _Longman’s Magazine_ (At the Sign of the Ship),
+September 1905.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By Hammond Hall.  _Dickensian_, September
+1905.
+
+MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By H. H. F.  _Academy_, 26th August.  By J.
+Cuming Walters and Andrew Lang, 9th September 1905.
+
+BAZZARD AND HELENA.  By H. H. F.  _Academy_, 9th September 1905.
+
+DICKENS MEMORIES, WITH SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE EDWIN DROOD MYSTERY.  By
+Percy Fitzgerald.  _Daily Chronicle_, 20th September 1905.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: More Opinions Regarding the Identity of
+Datchery.  By Dr. Blake Odgers, J. Cuming Walters, Willoughby Matchett
+and A. Bawtree.  _Daily Chronicle_, 23rd September 1905.
+
+EDWIN DROOD MYSTERY.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Daily Chronicle_, 27th
+September 1905.
+
+THE PUZZLE OF DICKENS’S LAST PLOT.  By Andrew Lang.  London: Chapman and
+Hall, Ltd.  2s. 6d. net.  1905.
+
+A DICKENS MYSTERY: Mr. Andrew Lang’s Adventures with Edwin Drood.  By J.
+Cuming Walters.  _Daily Chronicle_, 14th October 1905.
+
+THE MYSTERIES OF EDWIN DROOD.  _Times_, 27th October.  Letters on the
+same by Sir Luke Fildes, R.A., 3rd November (reprinted in _Dickensian_,
+December 1905); Andrew Lang, 10th November 1905; and J. W. T. Ley, 21st
+November 1905.
+
+EDWIN DROOD AGAIN.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Academy_, 28th October 1905.
+
+MR. LANG THE DISENTANGLER.  By Walter Herries Pollock.  _Evening
+Standard_, 30th October 1905.
+
+MR. LANG DETECTING AGAIN.  By G. K. Chesterton.  _Daily News_, 2nd
+November 1905.
+
+EDWIN DROOD: Solutions to the Mystery.  By Henry Smetham.  _Rochester and
+Chatham Journal_, 18th November 1905.  (Reprinted in pamphlet form for
+private circulation.)
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By E. J. S.  _The Star_, 25th November 1905.
+
+THE LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE OF EDWARD HONEY CONCERNING THE FATE OF EDWIN
+DROOD.  _The Scottish Review_, 30th November 1905.
+
+MR. LUKE FILDES, THE ‘DROOD’ MYSTERY, AND MR. LANG.  By J. Cuming
+Walters.  _Dickensian_, December 1905.
+
+EDWIN DROOD, DEAD OR ALIVE.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Westminster
+Gazette_, 23rd December 1905.
+
+DATCHERY THE ENIGMA: The Case for Tartar.  By George F. Gadd.
+_Dickensian_, January 1906.
+
+EDWIN DROOD.  By Andrew Lang.  _Westminster Gazette_, 15th January 1906.
+
+THE EDWIN DROOD SYNDICATE.  _The Cambridge Review_, Nos. 668–673, 1906.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By the Rev. Wilfrid Lescher, O.P.  _Catholic
+Times_, 9th February 1906.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By A. M. P.  _The L.C.C. Staff Gazette_,
+April 1906.
+
+LYTTON’S ‘JOHN ACLAND.’  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Athenæum_, 14th April
+1906.
+
+EDWIN DROOD AND DICKENS’S LAST DAYS. By Kate Perugini (Dickens’s
+daughter).  (Illus.)  _Pall Mall Magazine_, June 1906.
+
+MRS. PERUGINI AND EDWIN DROOD.  By Andrew Lang.  _Times_, 1st June 1906.
+
+THE DISSECTION OF DROOD.  By J. Meredith Bird.  _Pall Mall Gazette_, 11th
+June 1906.
+
+MR. DATCHERY.  By Willoughby Matchett.  _Dickensian_, January 1907.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  Interview with Mr. H. Beerbohm Tree and Mr.
+J. Comyns Carr.  By Raymond Blathwayt.  _Cardiff_, _South Wales Daily
+News_, 14th November 1907.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: A Drama in Four Acts.  By J. Comyns Carr.
+Performed at His Majesty’s Theatre, 4th January 1908.  (First played at
+Cardiff, November 1907.)
+
+EDWIN DROOD.  Criticism of Mr. Comyn Carr’s play by J. Cuming Walters.
+_Daily Chronicle_, 1st January 1908.
+
+KEYS TO THE DROOD MYSTERY.  By Edwin Charles.  (Illus.)  London: Collier
+and Co.  1s. net.  1908.
+
+A CHAT WITH MR. TREE.  _Daily Telegraph_, 2nd January 1908.
+
+THE REAL EDWIN DROOD.  By Haldane Macfall.  _Daily Chronicle_, 8th
+January 1908.
+
+THE SECRET OF EDWIN DROOD.  Interview with Mr. Comyns Carr.  _Daily
+Chronicle_, 9th January 1908.
+
+THE DROOD MYSTERY.  Mr. Hall Caine’s reply to Mr. Tree.  _Daily
+Chronicle_, 14th January 1908.
+
+THE GREAT DROOD CASE.  By Andrew Lang.  _Morning Post_, 24th January
+1908.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By T. P.  _P.T.O._, 25th January 1908.
+
+EDWIN DROOD AT HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.  By J. W. T. Ley. _Dickensian_,
+February 1908.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: Its ‘Completions’ and ‘Solutions.’  By B. W.
+Matz.  _The Bookshelf_, February 1908.
+
+EDWIN DROOD: A Theory.  By Albert F. Fessenden.  Boston (U.S.A.)
+_Evening Transcript_, 7th and 29th February, 7th, 14th, and 21st March
+1908.
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON DROOD.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Dickensian_, March
+1908.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By B. W. Matz.  (Illus.)  _Bookman_, March
+1908.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: A Drama.  By C. A. Clarke and S. B. Rogerson.
+Osborne Theatre, Manchester, March 1908.  See _Stage_, 5th March 1908.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  With Illustrations.  By W.  _Manchester City
+News_, 10th March 1908.
+
+LAST WORDS ON THE DROOD MYSTERY.  By various writers.  _Dickensian_,
+April 1908.
+
+ARE THE DROODISTS ALL AT SEA?  By W. Teignmouth Shore.  _T. P.’s Weekly_,
+21st August 1908.
+
+THOUGHTS ON THE DROOD MYSTERY.  By Henry Leffmann, A.M., M.D.  _About
+Dickens_ (a privately printed volume).  Philadelphia.  1908.
+
+DICKENS AND THE DRAMA (chapter devoted to Plays on Edwin Drood).  By S.
+J. Adair FitzGerald.  London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd.  5s. net.  1910.
+
+ABOUT ‘EDWIN DROOD.’  By H. J.  Cambridge University Press.  4s. net.
+1911.
+
+DROOD AND DATCHERY.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Dickensian_, March 1911.
+
+ABOUT ‘EDWIN DROOD.’  Reviews by Andrew Lang, _Morning Post_, 24th
+February, and _Illustrated London News_, 4th March; by B. W. Matz in
+_Daily Chronicle_, 24th February; by ‘M. R. J.’ in _Cambridge Review_,
+9th March; by C. K. S. in _The Sphere_, 11th March; _Athenæum_, 1st April
+1911; _The Author_, April 1911.
+
+THE DROOD MYSTERY SOLVED.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _T. P.’s Weekly_, 3rd
+and 24th March 1911.
+
+MR. CUMING WALTERS ON ‘EDWIN DROOD.’  By Andrew Lang.  _T. P.’s Weekly_,
+17th and 31st March 1911.
+
+THE CLAIMS OF BAZZARD.  _Birmingham Daily Post_, 11th March 1911.
+
+MYSTERY À LA AMERICO-PARISIENNE.  By Andrew Lang.  _Morning Post_, 10th
+March 1911.
+
+CRITICISMS AND APPRECIATIONS OF CHARLES DICKENS’S WORKS. By G. K.
+Chesterton.  London: J. M. Dent and Co. 7s. 6d. net.  1911.
+
+ABOUT EDWIN DROOD.  By Andrew Lang.  _Dickensian_, April 1911.
+
+DROOD AND DATCHERY.  By Wilkins Micawber, Junr.  _Dickensian_, April
+1911.
+
+DROP IT.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Dickensian_, May 1911.
+
+EDWIN DROOD AND SOME QUERIES. By A. B. Stedman.  _Dickensian_, May 1911.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By Andrew Lang.  _Blackwood’s Magazine_, May
+1911.
+
+PHASES OF DICKENS (chapter on His Last Mystery).  By J. Cuming Walters.
+London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd.  5s. net.  1911.
+
+DICKENS AND HIS LAST BOOK: A New Theory.  By S. Y. E.  _Nottingham
+Guardian_, 9th January 1912.
+
+EDWIN DROOD RE-EXAMINED.  By ‘K.’  _The Eye-Witness_, 18th and 25th
+January, 1st and 8th February 1912.
+
+THE DROOD MYSTERY.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _The Eye-Witness_, 22nd
+February, 7th and 14th March 1912.
+
+DROOD AND DATCHERY.  By ‘K.’  _The Eye-Witness_, 29th February 1912.
+
+IN DICKENS STREET (chapter entitled A Dickens Mystery).  By W. R.
+Thomson.  London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd.  3s. 6d. net.  1912.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.  By Dr. J. B. Hellier.  _British Weekly_, 4th
+April 1912.
+
+THE DROOD DEBATE IN BIRMINGHAM.  By J. Cuming Walters and Willoughby
+Matchett.  _Dickensian_, June 1912.
+
+ANDREW LANG AND DICKENS’S PUZZLE.  By J. Cuming Walters.  _Dickensian_,
+September 1912.
+
+THE DROOD MYSTERY: Extracts from an Unpublished Article by Andrew Lang.
+By Arthur Eckersley.  _Book Monthly_, September 1912.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_A Tale of Two Cities_, 71, 83, 88, 92.
+
+_Abbot_, _The_, 137.
+
+_About Edwin Drood_, x, 56, 80.
+
+_Academy_, _The_, xi.
+
+_Anne of Geierstein_, 185.
+
+Archer, William, 119, 178.
+
+_Armadale_, 200.
+
+_As You like It_, 180.
+
+_Athenæum_, ix, xviii.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+BANCROFT, LADY, 165–6.
+
+Bancroft Recollections, xii, 165.
+
+_Barnaby Rudge_, 83, 89, 93, 95, 103, 117, 190, 196.
+
+_Berliner Tageblatt_, 146.
+
+_Blackwood_, 113, 122, 127.
+
+_Bleak House_, xviii, 73, 83, 196, 200.
+
+_Bookman_, xi.
+
+Boothby, Guy, 165, 170.
+
+Boucicault, Dion, 44.
+
+Brewster, Sir David, 162.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Cambridge Review_, xi, 77, 122, 164.
+
+_Castle Dangerous_, 185.
+
+Cattermole, Mr., 103.
+
+Chapman and Hall, xiv.
+
+Chappell, Messrs., 21.
+
+Charles, Edwin, 129–30.
+
+_Clues to Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood_, ix, 149.
+
+Collins, Charles Allston, 20, 27, 39, 41, 54, 70, 73, 75, 90, 111, 127–8.
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 141, 149, 170, 193; collaboration with Dickens, 90;
+Dickens praises _No Name_, 91; letter from Dickens, 92; collaborates in
+_No Thoroughfare_, 124; influence on Dickens, 166; _The Moonstone_, 193;
+criticised by Anthony Trollope, 198; interested in effects of opium,
+199–200.
+
+_Count Robert of Paris_, 165, 185.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Daily Mail_, 160.
+
+_David Copperfield_, 83.
+
+_Dickens_, _Life of Charles_, 20, 36, 165.
+
+Dickens, the younger, Charles, xii, 20, 35, 43, 70, 110–11.
+
+_Dombey and Son_, 71.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 104–5, 151.
+
+_Edwin Drood_, ix, xii, xvii-xviii, 3, 20, 83, 117, 165; Forster on how
+it was written, 22–8; Madame Perugini’s testimony, 28–41; the cover, 40,
+54, 69, 71–81, 111; the play, 44; plans for novel, 57–68; compared with
+_No Thoroughfare_, 124.
+
+Eick, Dr. Hugo, 146, 180.
+
+Elliotson, 199.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+FILDES, SIR LUKE, 20, 26, 41, 44, 46, 53–4, 70, 73, 77, 111–12, 128.
+
+Forster, John, 3, 4, 20, 28–42, 53, 103, 202; on _Edwin __Drood_, 22–8;
+on Drood being murdered, 109–10.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+GADD, MR. G. F. xi, 182.
+
+Garrick, David, 163.
+
+Garrick, Mrs., 164.
+
+Gladstone, xv.
+
+Graeme, Miss Stirling, 159.
+
+_Great Expectations_, xviii, 83, 88, 196.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+HATTON, MISS BESSIE, xii, 20.
+
+Hatton, Joseph, xii, 20, 43–4, 111.
+
+Hogarth, Miss, 42.
+
+Homer, xv.
+
+_Household Words_, 105, 115.
+
+_Hunted Down_, 114.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+INGRAM, MR. J. H., xiv, 95.
+
+Irving, Mr. H. B., 80.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+JACKSON, MR. HARRY, 44.
+
+Jackson, Professor Henry, x, 56, 78, 113, 173–4, 186, 194; his reading of
+the cover of _Edwin Drood_, 72–5; how Edwin was murdered, 131–40;
+chronology of the chapters, 171; on Bazzard, 180; the Tartar-Datchery
+theory, 182.
+
+James, Dr. M. R., xi, 73, 129; his interpretation of the cover of _Edwin
+Drood_, 77–8; was Edwin murdered?, 121–2; on Datchery, 164; the
+Bazzard-Datchery theory, 179.
+
+Journal of Sir Walter Scott, The, 164, 184–5.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Kenilworth_, 191, 200.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+LANG, MR. ANDREW, x, 73, 113, 130, 139, 163–4, 170, 178, 185, 193; on the
+cover of _Edwin Drood_, 70, 75–7, 80, 127–8; his theory of the murder of
+Edwin, 120–3, 132; the Datchery-Neville theory, 181.
+
+_Leisure Readings_, ix, 118.
+
+_Little Dorrit_, 71, 87, 104–5, 190.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Macbeth_, 129–30.
+
+_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 25, 71.
+
+_Master Humphrey’s Clock_, 95.
+
+Matz, Mr. B. W., xii, xiv, 71.
+
+Millais, Sir John, 26.
+
+_Moonstone_, _The_, 90, 92, 167, 193, 197–8, 200.
+
+_Morning Leader_, 119.
+
+_Morning Post_, 72, 130.
+
+_Mystifications_, 159.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Nickleby_, _Nicholas_, 195.
+
+_No Name_, xii, 90, 92, 167.
+
+_No Thoroughfare_, 90, 124.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ODGERS, DR. BLAKE, 177.
+
+_Old Curiosity Shop_, _The_, 196.
+
+_Oliver Twist_, 21, 25, 71, 195.
+
+_Our Mutual Friend_, xviii, 25, 72, 83, 86, 179, 196.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Pall Mall Magazine_, 28.
+
+_Pendennis_, 199.
+
+_People_, _The_, 43.
+
+Perugini, Madame, 20, 28, 43, 70, 109–11, 127–8.
+
+Philadelphia _Saturday Evening Post_, 94, 100.
+
+_Phineas Finn_, 172.
+
+_Pickwick_, 71.
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, xiv, 93–103, 190.
+
+Proctor, Mr. R. A., ix, x, 118, 164; on the cover of Edwin Drood, 74, 77;
+was Drood murdered?, 114, 120, 131–2; the Bazzard-Datchery theory, 179.
+
+_Puzzle of Dickens’s Last Plot_, _The_, x, 75, 139.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Recollections and Impressions_, 162.
+
+Rosebery, Lord, xiii.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 159, 163, 184, 200.
+
+Sellar, Mrs., 162.
+
+Shakespeare, 180.
+
+Shorter, Mr. Clement, xiv.
+
+Skene, Mr., 185.
+
+_Sketches by Boz_, 71.
+
+_Spectator_, _The_, 69.
+
+Stoddart, Miss J. T., xiv, 133, 139, 194.
+
+Stone, R.A., Mr. Marcus, 72.
+
+_Studies in Prose and Poetry_, 92, 104.
+
+Swinburne, Mr., 91, 104.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+THACKERAY, 23.
+
+Thomson, Mr. Hugh, xii, 73, 78, 128.
+
+_Times_, _The_, 53, 127.
+
+Trollope, Anthony, 198.
+
+_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The_, 180.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+VASE, GILLAN, xi, 123.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+WALTERS, MR. CUMING, ix, x, xvii, 73, 123, 193; on the cover of _Edwin
+Drood_, 80; how Edwin was murdered, 132; Helena as Datchery, 149, 158;
+the Bazzard-Datchery theory, 179.
+
+_Watched by the Dead_, ix.
+
+Whitty, Mr. J. H., 95.
+
+Willard, Mr., 45.
+
+_Woman in White_, _The_, 90, 92, 167.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+{63}  This was originally marked IX.
+
+{67a}  Scored out in Dickens’s MS.
+
+{67b}  Scored out in Dickens’s MS.
+
+{67c}  Scored out in Dickens’s MS.
+
+{67d}  Scored out in Dickens’s MS.
+
+{90}  Charles Dickens as Editor, p. 386.
+
+{91}  Letters of Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins, p. 123.
+
+{92a}  _Studies in Prose and Poetry_.
+
+{92b}  _Letters of Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins_, p. 103.
+
+{104}  It was known to that thorough scholar, Mr. Swinburne.  See
+_Studies in Prose and Poetry_, p. 114.
+
+{113}  _Blackwood_, May 1911, p. 672.
+
+{119}  _Morning Leader_, 15th July 1905.
+
+{122}  _Cambridge Review_, 9th March 1911.
+
+{127}  1st June 1906.
+
+{130}  24th February 1911.
+
+{139}  _The Puzzle of Dickens’s Last Plot_, p. 10.
+
+{163}  _Recollections and Impressions_, by E. M. Sellar, p. 64.
+
+{164a}  _Journal of Sir Walter Scott_, vol. ii. p. 422.
+
+{164b}  _Cambridge Review_, 9th March 1911.
+
+{184}  _Sir Walter Scott’s Journal_, vol. ii. p. 131.
+
+{185}  _Sir Walter Scott’s Journal_, vol. ii. p. 236.
+
+{196}  The following may be quoted from _Pickwick_:
+
+    ‘“Dismal Jenny?” inquired Jingle.
+
+    ‘“Yes.”
+
+    ‘Jingle shook his head.
+
+    ‘“Clever rascal—queer fellow, hoaxing genius—Job’s brother.”
+
+    ‘“Job’s brother!” exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.  “Well, now I look at him
+    closely, there is a likeness.”’
+
+{200}  Chapter xiii.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROBLEM OF 'EDWIN DROOD'***
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