Wendy S. Jacobson: The Companion to the Mystery of Edwin Drood
INTRODUCTION
Influences
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is as resonant with the experiences, reading and writing of Dickens's lifetime as Cloisterham Cathedral Is with its past. Annotation of the novel has revealed the extent to which its richness, complexity and humour arise from three important kinds of influence.
One of the influences reflected in the wide range of allusions in the novel originates in Dickens's lively interest in contemporary and near-contemporary events, issues and personalities. For example, Charles Kingsley's philosophy of Muscular Christianity animates the portrait of the Reverend Crisparkle (chapter 2), just as John Bright and his involvement with philanthropy and the Governor Eyre controversy animate the portrait of Honeythunder (chapters 6, 17). The depiction of Bazzard as a frustrated playwright is a wickedly witty personal attack on R. H. Home, with whom Dickens broke off relations in 1869 (chapter 20). The public inquiry which began in the 1840s into interment in churchyards and cemeteries is partly responsible for the recurrent concern of the novel with modes of burial. Allusions to this topical subject occur in the description of Cloisterham's 'earthy flavor', its cathedral crypt and monastic graves (chapter 3); in the character of the chronically drunk sexton, Durdles (chapter 4); and in Jasper's interest in the use of quicklime to decompose corpses (chapter 12). A related subject, the aesthetic debate among reformers of ecclesiastical art to improve the standards of sepulchral monuments, underlies the meditation of Durdles on tombstones (chapter 5) and the pride of Mr Sapsea in his epitaph for ETHELINDA (chapter 4).
Edwin Drood's decision to go out to Egypt as an engineer arises from such events as the introduction to Egypt of European influence and commerce which began in the 1830s. the opening of the Overland Route to India, and the completion of the Suez Canal In 1869 (chapter 2). The British fascination with Egypt is manifested in other ways in the novel. For example, the quantity of travel guides and history books published on Egypt, and the variety of exhibitions in London displaying Egyptian artefacts are, we can presume, the source of Miss Twinkleton's extensive knowledge of the country. More whimsically, Rosa Bud, although bored by Egypt, sucks on 'Lumps-of-Delight' — the sweetmeat as common in Egypt as in Turkey — in the midst of her complaint about Miss Twinkleton's lessons:' "Tiresome old burying-grounds! Isises, and Ibises, and Cheopses, and Pharaohses; who cares about them?" ' (chapter 3).
It is well known that Dickens's personal experiences of opium-eating (the drinking of laudanum) and his visit to an opium den in the East End of London combine to Inform the characterization of John Jasper. But an equally important influence on the depiction of the Princess Puffer's den and on her esoteric knowledge of opium-smoking are articles published in London Society and the Ragged School Union Magazine in 1868: 'East London Opium Smokers' and 'In an Opium Den'(chapter 1). Many more examples of the ways in which aspects of the novel derive from biographical experience and contemporary occurrences and topics are Identified in the annotation itself.
A second kind of influence on The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Dickens's earlier writing — his novels, stories and journalism. The most important sources in his own works of the concerns and ideas which can be seen to be reworked in his last novel arc examined below in the context of how he might have intended the novel to end.
Two examples of such influence might be mentioned here, however: his Christmas stories,'The Haunted Man' and 'Tom Tiddler's Ground'. 'The Haunted Man" deals with memory berth as the cause of pain and as a source of compassion and generosity of spirit. Memory and the loss of memory are important issues in The Mystery of Edwin Drood on account of Jasper's opium addiction and the extent to which his addiction might influence his recollection of events on the night of Edwin's disappearance, a recollection which affects the time-scheme of the novel. One of the tales in "Tom Tiddler's Ground' portrays a girl's school, a schoolmistress and a pupil, all precursors of the Nuns' House, Miss Twinkleton and Rosa Bud. The use of a cathedral town is itself a return to an earlier setting. Many commentators have noticed how Dickens in a sense ends where he began in choosing as the original of Cloisterham the town of his boyhood, Rochester, the setting for much of The Pickwick Papers.
The third major kind of influence on the novel is the works of other writers. Of these, The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is the most prominent. It could he said that in The Mystery of Edwin Drood Dickens is offering a kind of answer to the novel by his young friend, a novel which he admired but, perhaps, tried to better. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo features a haunting Cathedral setting much closer in atmosphere to Dickens's novel than are the Barsetshire novels of Trollope, sometimes considered to be comparable to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Hugo's portrait of an intense and brilliant priest enduring a repressed and embittered passion for a young girl is also closer to Dickens than is Trollope. The third important work of influence is Macbeth. The novel contains many echoes of phrasing from the play, and both works have an ambiguous character at their centre. They also share a similarity of design. The opium woman, who is overtly presented as a witch, opens the novel just as the witches open the play. Moreover, Jasper's return to the den halfway through the novel to recapture the relief he derives from the spectres induced by opium parallel Macbeth's return to the coven in the central scene of the play in order to seek reassurance of his power.
Less prominent an influence, but nevertheless interesting, is Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821; 1822) and other of De Quincey's works. Southes's ballad, 'Jaspar' (1798, 1799), about a murderer of that name and his innocent associate called Jonathan, gave Dickens the name for his choirmaster and perhaps influenced the characterization. Likewise, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), with its ballad about the lovers called Edwin and Angelina, provided Dickens with the name for Jasper's nephew and may also have had a hearing on aspects of theme and plot. The legend of Eugene Aram, made famous by the poem of Thomas Hood (1829; 1831) and the novel by Bulwer-Lytton (1832), is echoed in the motif of the learned and talented murderer who suffers paroxysms of remorse. Finally, echoes of the Old and New Testaments and of the Book of Common Prayer reverberate in The Mystery of Edwin Drood as frequently as in any of Dickens's other novels.
The Mysteries
No study of The Mystery of Edwin Drood would be complete without a consideration of the fragmentary stale of the novel and the possible hints of what was intended to follow: the danger of missing possible signals is at least as great as that of seeing significance where none exists. The title itself alerts the reader to the need to respond to the sometimes confusing and even baffling details of the narrative. The search for a solution to the mystery has often concentrated on what is not there, while ignoring the artistic integrity of the fragment. Authors, scholars and armchair detectives have been tempted to complete the work in a remarkable variety of styles. Even ghosts have been summoned by spiritualists claiming to be in contact with the dead novelist. Dickens was familiar with the productions of his novels put on the stage before he had completed them himself, and he delivered his judgement on the perpetrators of such counterfeit versions in 1838, in Nicolas Nickleby.
You cake the uncompleted books of living authors, fresh from their hands, wet from the press, cut, hack, and carve them to the powers and capacities of your actors, and the capability of your theatres, finish unfinished works, hastily and crudely vamp up ideas not yet worked out by their original projector, but which have doubtless cost him many thoughtful days and sleepless nights, by a comparison of incidents and dialogue, down to the very last word he may have written a fortnight before, do your utmost to anticipate his plot — all this without his permission, and against his will; and then, to crown the whole proceeding, publish in some mean pamphlet, an unmeaning farrago of garbled extracts from his work, to which you put your name as author, with the honourable distinction annexed, of having perpetrated a hundred other outrages of the same description. Now, show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man's pocket in the street. (48).
Most attempts to complete The Mystery of Edwin Drood are characterized by a stubborn insistence that the proffered theory is unassailable: Droodians seem to be divided between those who believe Edwin to have died at the hand of his uncle, and chose who believe that he escapes. The majority seem to believe that Edwin is murdered. But Dickens wrote the perfect mystery: it cannot and will not be finally solved for the reason that the novel is half-finished and he left almost no clues outside the text except for those reported by Forster, Luke Fildes and Charles Dickens Junior (the details if not the validity of which are not particularly helpful). If the integrity of the fragment is to be respected, the fairest method of inquiry is to ask the questions suggested by the text itself, and then make conjectures based on the possibilities implied in the text.
There are, of course, several unsolved mysteries in the novel. Perhaps the simplest of them is the identity of Datchery. To account for the new settler in Cloisterham, commentators have proposed candidates from the entire cast of characters in the novel, including Grewgious but at least excluding Rosa. Sometimes new characters have been invented, and W. W. Robson has ingeniously argued that Datchery is Dickens (' "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" the solution?". The Times Literary Supplement, 11 November 1983, 1246. 1259). It seems likely, however, that Dick Datchery is simply himself — but, if not, then he may be Bazzard, off-duty from Grewglous's office at about the time Datchery arrives in Cloisterham.
A more interesting question than 'Who is Datchery?' is 'Who is the Princess Puffer?' Why does she hate Jasper? What has she heard him say in the opium reverie that precedes the opening of the novel? How can she know Jasper' "better far, that all the Reverend Parsons put together know him" ' (chapter 23)? What is her connection with Jasper that she should twice follow him with malicious compulsion to Cloisterham? What does she know about 'Ned' that she should warn him, and what does she know about his sweetheart?
Helena Landless also tempts curiosity. Her 'intense dark eyes' are 'softened with compassion and admiration' for Rosa, but what does their slumbering gleam of fire' signify for 'whomsoever it most concerned' and who should 'look well to it' (chapter 7)? What Interpretation, moreover, can be put upon the strange mode of communication she shares with her brother? Who are the Landlesses? Neville speaks only of his mother, who died when they were children, but who was their father? What is the significance of the phrase in the work plans that refers to the 'Mixture of Oriental blood — or imperceptibly acquired nature — in them'? Will Helena marry the Minor Canon, or will Edwin's nascent admiration of her come to fruition?
Durdles and Deputy also present puzzles: Durdles's ability to find out 'with remarkable accuracy' where bodies are buried seems clearly to hint at some later revelation, possibly in connection with the unexplained "ghost of one terrific shriek" he heard at Christmas a year ago (chapter 12), The tapping and the dream interest and agitate Jasper, but why? As for Deputy, what could he have witnessed that could be held in evidence against Jasper, who so unreasonably loathes him? Durdles points out that the grave of Edwin's father is in Cloisterham, but where does Edwin's mother lie? Where is Tartar at the end of chapter 22 so that Rosa seems to be losing her spirits as she looks 'so wistfully and so much out of the gritty windows'? What role is he designated to play? One can assume that he is given agility and strength, as Crisparkle, his old friend, is given physical prowess, for a purpose. Is his being a sailor a due? Why should the attitude of Grewgious towards Jasper change from geniality to implacable dislike? What has Grewgious learnt that causes him to view Jasper's fit so coldly, and how has he learnt what he knows?
The Endings
Two questions more important than these puzzles are those which concern Jasper's ambiguous personality and whether or not he kills Edwin Drood. The plot of the novel depends for its outcome not on devices, but, rather, on the character of John Jasper, and in particular upon his opium addiction and his double personality. The motif of the doppelgänger is ubiquitous in Dickens's fiction (see below), but is notably presented in The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the respectable public persona of the choirmaster who is undermined by his murderous instinct and his desire for Rosa. The motif is reflected in Miss Twinkleton's 'two states of existence' and, less comically, in the pair of twins and in the two locations, Cloisterham and London. The doubling seems to move towards integration when the Princess Puffer hobbles into the Cathedral, the antithesis of her opium den. A spectre like Banquo's ghost, she brings together the disparate parts of Jasper's life. Can this be a parody of a possible integration of jasper's personality? Certainly, his two worlds conjoin at Morning Service in the last chapter when 'glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields... penetrate into the Cathedral... and preach the Resurrection and the Life'.
One aspect of Jasper's personality is his addiction to opium. His habit is the most obvious of the novel's many similarities to The Moonstone, a novel in which opium-eating is the crux of the mystery. The diamond is stolen by Franklin Blake after he unwittingly drinks laudanum. Dr Jennings suspects this and, in order to persuade Blake to participate in his experiment, quotes the same passage from John Elliotson's Human Physiology that Dickens quotes in chapter 3. On the basis of Elliotson's principle, 'if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk again before 1 can remember where', Jennings reconstructs the circumstances of the theft, administers the opium to Blake, and solves the mystery Dickens would have known of the irony that Collins actually dictated the last chapters of The Moonstone under the influence of laudanum and was not able to recognize them when he read through them later.
If, like Blake, Jasper suffers from a delusion caused by opium and has not in fact killed Edwin, then Edwin's disappearance needs to be explained. He could be suffering from amnesia. An article in the Spectator (9 January 1869),'The Man with Two Memories', reported the curious case of George Nicken of New Orleans: after a fall he was deprived of his senses, but on recovery he lost his memory. The prognosis is that some other trauma may return his memory to him, although he would then lose any recollection of the intervening period. In a novel by Bulwer-Lytton published in A11 the Year Round, A Strange Story (1862), the doctor who narrates the tale explains that '"oblivion after bodily illness or mental shock are familiar enough to the practice of all medical men"'
The works of Collins and Bulwer-Lytton may well have inspired Dickens to give Edwin amnesia, but a likelier possibility is that after the dinner at the Gate House he in fact has sought out Grewglous's aid and guardianship, as does Rosa later on. We suspect that Grewgious knows something about Jaspet that motivates antipathy. Grewgious may wish to keep Edwin away from his friends in order to entrap Jasper. By the same token, he keeps an eye on Neville, as he says, in order to protect him from being victimized any further.
The supposition that Edwin is not dead but merely in hiding is based on four pieces of evidence: a deletion in the manuscript regarding Edwin's possible return to Cloisterham; the cover design for the wrapper of the monthly parts; the list of projected titles for the novel (p. 15); and a consideration of earlier themes in Dickens's works.
In chapter 14, Edwin wanders about Cloisterham before the dinner at the Gate House and wistfully looks at 'all the old landmarks. He will soon be far away, and may never see them again, he thinks. Poor youth! Poor youth!' Dickens revised this from:' Poor youth! Poor youth!' For Margaret Cardwell, this deletion means an "impending successful murder". She thinks that as Eugene Wrayburn escaped in Our Mutual Friend, so might Edwin, but that the 'argument in favour of Dickens's not using the same outcome twice is probably the stronger' (1969, 275). On the contrary: Dickens used the theme of a man returning from the dead more than once, and it therefore seems likely that he intended to do so again.
As a second piece of evidence, the cover design for the wrapper of the monthly parts suggests that Jasper would be compelled to revisit the vault in which he supposes Edwin's body to lie, and there, in the light of the lantern, find the living Edwin. The face and figure of the young man are recognizably those of the young man at the top left of the illustration: Edwin with Rosa on his arm. And he stands with one hand in his breast pocket, much as Edwin would have stood as his hand crept to the ring given to him by Grewgious for Rosa. Although it has been argued that the young man in the vault is Helena, Datchery, Bazzard or Neville disguised as Edwin, the use of disguise would weaken the impact of revelation and, anyway, Dickens denigrated disguise in a novel as mere device.
A third piece of evidence lies in the manuscript list of projected names and titles for the novel. Not all the titles are relevant: 'Sworn to avenge it' refers to Jasper's reaction to the loss of his nephew, as do 'One Object in Life' and 'A Kinsman's Devotion'. 'The loss of James Wakefield', however, suggests something else. (Is Dickens thinking of The Vicar of Wakefield, from which Edwin's name probably derives, and of the combination of the words 'wake' and 'field'?) There are five titles beginning with the word 'loss', the only variants being Edwin's name, which alters several times. 'Loss' changes to 'disappearance' and 'James's Disappearance' and 'The Disappearance of Edwin Drood'. 'The Mystery in the Drood Family' (alluding, perhaps, to the skeleton in the cupboard referred to in chapter 2) is only slightly less ambiguous than the title finally chosen, which is also listed towards the end. The remaining four titles point to Drood's having survived: 'Flight And Pursuit' and 'The flight of Edwyn Drood' are strong enough hints, but 'Dead? Or alive?' and in particular 'Edwin Drood in hiding' seem to be even stronger evidence that Edwin is not dead, is in hiding, and that he will return.
It must be acknowledged that the manuscript and cover design alone reveal few clues to the resolution of the novel. Further evidence can be found in Dickens's earlier works, evidence that can promote an understanding of the impetus psychology of the novel, indeed, a study of Dickens's reworkings of certain preoccupations manifest in his earlier writings may throw light upon the mystery. That he reworked the preoccupations so frequently and for so long suggests some inner compulsion never resolved which informed his art to the end.
His association and collaboration with Wilkie Collins curiously produced a remarkable number of stories about the return from the dead. His tale of The Two Robins' in A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, an account of a holiday he shared with Collins, tells of a dead man who has come to life again. In "A Message from the Sea' (Christmas Stories), which he wrote with Collins, a man believed to have drowned is found by a captain who prepares his wife for his return.
'I make up stories of brothers brought together by GOD, -of sons brought back to mothers, husbands brought back to wives, fathers raised from the deep, for little children like herself.'
The theme occurs in two of Collins's own stories for Household Words. 'Gabriel's Marriage' tells of a fisherman who believes he has murdered a traveller. The victim survives the assault and comes back to the fisherman's cottage;
The door was opened. On a lovely moonlight night François Sarzeau had stood on that threshold years since, with a bleeding body in his arms; on a lovely moonlight night, he now stood there again, confronting the very man whose life he had attempted, and knowing him not. (1853,7.188)
'Sister Rose' (1855, 11.293-303) tells of a man who betrays his wife and her brother to the Reign of Terror in France; they survive for the brother to confront Danville among friends who have come to witness his remarriage. Danville's hand goes cold in the clasp of the girl he intends to marry; he is transfixed at the sight of the man whose death he believes he arranged.
Finally, a story in All the Year Round on which Dickens and Collins collaborated is strikingly similar to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In "No Thoroughfare' (18, Christmas Number, 1-48), Obenreizer believes that he has murdered George Vendale, although in fact Vendale is only wounded. Bintrey discovers this and finds an opportunity to have Vendale stand "before the murderer, a man risen from the dead'. Obenreizer had used opium 'to try' his victim, in much the same way that Jasper drugs Durdles. There are other similarities. A 'certain nameless film' would come over Obenreizer's eyes just as 'a strange film' comes over the eyes of Jasper. Joey Ladle, the cellarman who complains of the unnaturalness of working underground, is a character in the same tradition as Durdles. And Obenreizer's motive for murder is jealousy of Vendale's winning the heart of his niece, Marguerite. Like Rosa, Marguerite flees to the protection of a trusted family lawyer, Bintrey.
In Dickens's novels, the theme of the return from the dead is sometimes intertwined with another of his preoccupations, the doppelgänger motif. Our Mutual Friend in particular contains notable anticipations of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Bradley Headstone's tormented, guilt-ridden mind, and his struggle to keep up the appearance and the routine of a well-regulated life prefigure John Jasper. Eugene Wrayburn is attacked, thrown into the river and rescued. After his recovery from a long illness, he feels himself to be a different person and a better man, and he becomes worthy of Lizzie. Edwin Drood, as feckless as Eugene, also seems to have something to learn before he can deserve the hand of either Rosa Bud or Helena Landless, Likewise, integration and redemption may also have been intended for Jasper.
Is Edwin Drood dead? Certainly, we are left with the impression that Eugene Wrayburn is:
Eugene was light, active, and expert; but his arms were broken, or he was paralysed, and could do no more than hang on to the man, with his head swung back, so that he could see nothing but the heaving sky. After dragging at the assailant, he fell on the bank with him, and then there was another great crash and then a splash, and all was done. (4.6)
And we are also left with the impression that John Harmon is dead. As to why he should have assumed the identity of another man after he has been attacked and presumed drowned, Harmon explains that because he is believed to be dead he feels he has lost his own identity:
Next day while I hesitated, and next day while I hesitated, it seemed as if the whole country were determined to have me dead. The Inquest declared me dead, the Government proclaimed me dead; I could not listen at my fireside for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead. (2.13)
The moment when he 'rises from the dead' in front of the two men who believe that he was drowned at their instigation creates the same kind of encounter as that illustrated in the cover design of the monthly wrapper of The Mystery of Edam Drood. The instigators of John Harmon's 'murder' are as shocked by his reappearance as John Jasper seems shocked by Edwin's. They respond as if they were seeing a ghost:
Bella's husband stepped softly to the half-door of the bar, and stood there ... Mr Kibble had staggered up, with his lower jaw dropped, catching Potterson by the shoulder, and pointing to the half-door. He now cried out: 'Potterson! Look! Look there!' Potterson starred up, started back, and exclaimed: 'Heaven defend us, what's that!'(4.12)
Several other of Dickens's novels feature, with varying degrees of prominence, the idea of the dead returned to life. In The Cricket on the Hearth, Edward Plummer, thought of as lost and dead (' "If my boy in the Golden South Americas was alive" ') returns in time to save his childhood sweetheart from an undesirable marriage. In Dombey and Son, the scene describing Walter Gay's last night at home contains hints of his reported loss at sea very similar to (he hints given of Edwin Drood's disappearance in the scene of his farewell to Cloisterham:
Walter's heart felt heavy as he looked round his old bedroom, up among the parapets and chimney-pots, and thought that one more night already darkening would close his acquaintance with it, perhaps for ever. Dismantled of his little stock of books and pictures, it looked coldly and reproachfully on him for his desertion, and had already a foreshadowing upon it of its coming strangeness. (19)
Yet Walter does come home. So, too, does Waller's uncle, Solomon Gills, who has also been given up for dead. In the light of the fate possibly intended for John Jasper, it is significant, moreover, that Dombey and Son ultimately turns upon the redemption of Mr Dombey.
In Bleak House, Mr George sends a letter to Esther explaining that her father, his senior officer, 'was (officially) reported drowned', or he would assuredly have sought him out to save him from the lonely pauper's death he suffers (63). Mr George himself, incidentally, turns out to be the long-lost son of Mrs Rouncewell.
Surely the foremost example of Dickens's interweaving of the two themes is found in A Tale of Two Cities. What is most germane to the issues in The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Sydney Carton's memory of the Burial Service, presaging his vision of a redemptive sacrifice (3.9). The same words that form the burden of Canon's thoughts as he walks along the banks of the Seine on the night before his death are woven into the last chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The promise of redemption given in the last chapter is first made in the opening chapter when Jasper returns from his debauch in London and moves towards the intoning of Evensong. The phrase from Ezekiel, 'WHEN THE WICKED MAN...', seems to point to Jasper, but the words not quoted that follow these are an assurance of forgiveness after repentance. This promise is taken up in the last chapter when a note of pathos is struck in the suggestions of the Resurrection and the Life which reach symbolically into the Cathedral in the light of the 'brilliant morning' that 'shines on the old city', so that there seems to be a blessing on the world. This passage is by no means the only reference in the novel to the Bible. One important example is that Neville, after Edwin's disappearance, is repeatedly identified with Cain (chapters 16.17). Although it is not possible to be certain of the manner in which Dickens intended to develop these associations. The Mystery of Edwin Drood may very well be patterned on that cycle of sin and redemption which the lesson of the Burial Service Implies. The stress on the theme of integration and resurrection restores The Mystery of Edwin Drood to lovers of literature. The neglected artistry of the novel, a profoundly suggestive romance of great charm and beauty, rests its claim as a work of art upon its exploration of the mystery of life, not upon its being a source for literary detectives.
It is on Christmas Eve that the supposed murder of Edwin Drood takes place. That night Edwin, Neville and Jasper dine together, after which Neville and Edwin go down to the river to watch the storm. There the mystery remains. What was the state of mind, the degree of addiction, the dosage consumed of John Jasper on that night.' We know that Dickens knew that the euphoric sense of power that opium can give is delusory. So instead of asking the question, 'Did Jasper attempt to murder his nephew', should we not ask: 'Did Jasper murder his nephew at all"? Indeed, did Jasper remember what had actually taken place, and when? What is the force of the power Jasper seems to wield? It may be that this power is ultimately impotent, is mere delusion. Alas, the promise of redemption, the gift of resurrection remain — as ever — the mystery of Edwin Drood.