Burton E. Stevenson: The Fate of Erwin Drood
Published in The Bookman, May 1913
It was G. K. Chesterton who remarked that Charles Dickens failed to finish the only one of his novels which really needed finishing. The others might have stopped anywhere, and any thorough Dickensian could have supplied an outline of the missing part; but The Mystery of Edwin Drood has defied the most acute. This is due principally to the fact that there are no precedents to go by. Dickens was entering a new field. It was "not his tenth novel but his first detective story" that he was writing when he died, and it is impossible to say just how his mind would have worked in the unaccustomed harness of rigid plot construction. There are evidences that the harness was chafing him and that he was ill at ease. No doubt his genius would have mastered the difficulties which he saw ahead, but death took him at the critical moment when he was preparing to cast the net of evidence about his villain. Just as it was mounting to its climax, the tale stopped forever.
A number of obscure persons immediately tried to hitch their wagons to a star by furnishing continuations of their own. Orpheus C. Kerr called his solution The Cloven Foot; Henry Morford called his John Jasper's Secret, and attempted to foist it on the public as the work of Charles Dickens, Jr., and Wilkie Collins. A medium at Brattleborough, Vermont, went both of them one better by giving to the world The Mystery of Edwin Drood Complete, by the Spirit Pen of Charles Dickens. It has always been a matter of remark that, however gifted a writer may have been on earth, he invariably makes a fool of himself when he takes up a Spirit Pen. It was so in this case, and the Brattleborough revelation would be diverting if it were not so painful. In 1878, Gillan Vase published an elaborate sequel in three volumes, and a year later an unknown Frenchman shied his hat into the ring with Le Crime de Jasper. There were plays, too — lurid melodramas for the most part. One of them was by Dickens's son Charles. It was so bad that no manager could be found to produce it.
All of these are negligible as literature or as serious attempts to solve the mystery of Dickens's first and last plot. But in 1887, Mr. Richard A. Proctor, whose fame as an astronomer assured him a respectful hearing, published his Watched by the Dead, in which he tried to show that Edwin Drood was not dead at all; and this was the first of a long series of interesting and ingenious guesses at the riddle, to which such eminent men as William Archer, J. Cuming Walters, Andrew Lang, G. K. Chesterton, Haldane Macfall, B. W. Matz and Henry Jackson contributed. Of recent years, interest in the subject has increased rather than diminished. A bibliography of the books and magazine articles about "Edwin Drood" published since 1905 runs to ninety-three entries.
The latest and in many ways the most valuable addition to this series is Sir William Robertson Nicoll's The Problem of Edwin Drood. His contribution to the data available to students of the controversy is a list of the alterations made by Dickens in the proofs, but not carried out by Forster, who, after Dickens's death, saw the last three numbers through the press. It may as well be said at once that, though Sir William Nicoll lays considerable stress upon them, these alterations are of very little importance. A few passages of some length were indicated by Dickens for omission, but when they are read carefully in connection with their context, it is evident that they were cut out because Dickens realised they were inept and superfluous. Only in the eighteenth chapter, "A Settler in Cloisterham," do the changes have any discoverable bearing on the probable development of the story. To these changes reference will be made later on.
Sir William Nicoll has also examined the entire manuscript, as well as the proofs, with the idea that the rewritten passages and proof changes made by Dickens might yield some clue to his intentions. These changes naturally consist almost entirely of the deletion of redundant sentences, the remodelling of phrases, the insertion of qualifying words, and such general furbishing up as every author gives his work in the final revision. Sir William Nicoll does not attempt to draw any inferences from them, but there is one sentence so significantly strengthened, that it is very important, as will presently be shown.
It is in its concluding chapters that Sir William Nicoll's book is most valuable, for his analysis of the story is one of the best and most closely reasoned that has appeared anywhere. It is far superior to Mr. Lang's, and fully equal to the remarkable monograph by Dr. Henry Jackson, of Cambridge, published a year or two ago. It is true that, in one important particular, both Dr. Jackson and Sir William Nicoll wander far astray, but their presentation of the problem is a real delight.
the problems presented
The problems presented by The Mystery of Edwin Drood are three: (1) was Drood murdered; (2) who was Datchery; and (3) how was the story to end?
To the first of these, Sir William Nicoll returns what is unquestionably the correct answer: Yes. To suppose that Jasper, a thoroughly competent villain, after planning the murder with great care and after seeing his plans work out in every detail, should at the last moment have bungled it, and should have yet believed that he had killed his nephew, is a wild absurdity. Almost equally absurd is Mr. Lang's remark that, if Drood is really dead, there is not much of a mystery. There is, in fact, a considerable mystery, for, while the reader is aware of the crime, he does not know how it was committed; and, while the criminal is suspected, it is not at all clear how his crime is to be brought home to him. Surely it is apparent that in this book Dickens conceived himself to be writing a tragedy. To produce Drood alive at the last moment by some sleight-of-hand, as a conjuror produces a rabbit from a hat, would have been to turn it into a farce.
But, aside from the question of literary propriety, there are many evidences, as Sir William Nicoll points out, that Dickens meant Jasper to murder Drood. To John Forster, his confidant and closest friend, he stated explicitly that the story was to be based upon the murder of a nephew by his uncle; none of his children, to whom he read the manuscript as fast as he completed it, doubted for an instant that Drood was really dead, and one of them, Charles Dickens the younger, afterward declared that his father had told him in so many words that such was the case; to Sir Luke Fildes, who was illustrating the story, Dickens pointed out that Jasper must be shown with a long, double necktie, because it was with that necktie he was to strangle his nephew, and one of the final illustrations was to show Jasper in the condemned cell at Cloisterham jail; in his memoranda for the story, Dickens refers more than once to the murder as to an accomplished fact. These proofs would in themselves be conclusive, were any proof needed outside the pages of the story. For the pages abound in proofs, to which it is not necessary to refer here, except to say that there is absolutely no reason to bring Drood to life again. He is painted as an egotistical young ass, whom nobody really misses, and whose sweetheart promptly falls in love with somebody else. If he had come back, he would have found himself very much out of it! But he never did come back.
The theory that Drood was not really murdered arose, no doubt, from the mistaken idea that, in a detective story, the more unexpected and startling the denoument is the more effective it is. But this is not at all the case. A plot must be logical; its end must be inevitable from the beginning; and the reader's pleasure in the tale arises largely from his perception of this. As he finishes the last page, the mental glance he casts backward over the story must show him that it was toward this conclusion, and no other, that every preceding page pointed. To attempt to fool him at the end by a trick or subterfuge justly irritates him, and is a device unworthy of the literary artist.
Now, to bring Drood to life after having so evidently murdered him could have been accomplished only by a trick; for Dickens would have been compelled to explain not only how Jasper, with everything in his favour and believing himself to have succeeded, should yet have failed, but also why Drood, if he were alive, did not at once denounce his uncle and so save innocent people from suspicion and suffering. A great many intelligent men and women have racked their brains to find such an explanation, but not one has succeeded. By an explanation is meant, of course, a plausible and convincing one.
Mr. Proctor was by no means the originator of the theory that Drood was not really killed. Both, Orpheus Kerr and Henry Morford, in their solutions, bring him to life again. Kerr, whose Cloven Foot is really only a burlesque, bases his explanation upon this sentence in the third chapter of the story, which he considers the key to the whole mystery:
As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism, there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I ani drunk, I must be drunk again before I can remember where), so Miss Twinkleton had two distinct and separate phases of being.
In pursuance of this theory, which is not without a kind of merit, Kerr has Jasper partially strangle Drood and hide him in the Sapsea monument while under the influence of opium, and then forget all about it until, while in another opium trance, he makes his way back to the scene of the crime and is arrested. Morford supposes that Jasper lured his nephew up the cathedral tower, drugged and partially strangled him, and then dropped him down' a hole between the inner and outer walls of the cathedral. Durdles, who is conveniently mooning about in the crypt, hears the cries and groans of the imprisoned man and digs him out. Mr. Proctor supposes that, after Drood has been drugged and partially strangled by Jasper and dragged into the crypt and placed in a bed of quicklime in the Sapsea monument, Durdles, who has been lying drunk in the neighbourhood, opens the monument and finds Drood, "his face fortunately protected by the strong silk shawl with which Jasper had intended to throttle him." This would have been fortunate indeed!
"We may suppose," Mr. Proctor continues, "that Durdles dragged the body out of the tomb and out of the crypt," and he proceeds to weave an explanation of the subsequent events out of a tissue of absurdities which need not be set down here, for the whole theory is completely invalidated by Mr. Proctor's curious mistake in assuming that the Sapsea monument is in the crypt of the cathedral, whereas Dickens distinctly states that it is in the graveyard outside, and visible from the street. Mr. Proctor's whole solution, indeed, is based not so much upon any kind of proof as upon a nuance of feeling. "All the characters who die in Dickens's stories," he says, "are marked for death from the beginning. But there is not one note of death in aught that Edwin Drood says or does." It is, of course, impossible to argue with a man who attributes his beliefs to intuition.
Mr. Lang, who seemed for a time inclined to believe that Drood was not really dead, was forced to confess, after long consideration of the problem, that "fancy can suggest no reason why Edwin Drood, if he escaped from his wicked uncle, should go spying about instead of coming openly forward. No plausible, unfantastic explanation could be invented." This is undoubtedly true.
It has seemed to some persons that to have Edwin Drood return and watch the man who believed himself to be his murderer, to gather evidence - against him, and finally to denounce him, would be a thrillingly dramatic situation. In reality, it would be ridiculous, because, since Drood already knew his uncle had tried to murder him, there was no further evidence for him to look for. Mr. Proctor tries to explain it by the theory that what Drood really wished to find out was whether the crime was impulsive or premeditated, but that is simply silly. Finally, if the murder hadn't come off, Jasper's crime was trivial to what he believed it to be, and his punishment would be trivial, too. The whole point of the story is his tragic realisation that he had committed a needless murder. Take this punishment from him, and he might well laugh at any other. To punish him for attempted murder would be inane, indeed! In a word, if Jasper is not a murderer, the whole story is an empty hoax.
The only faintest scintilla of evidence that Dickens ever thought of bringing Drood to life is the fact that he was in trouble with his story. This is not remarkable, since it was being published in monthly parts as fast as it was being written. Indeed, Dickens had to exert himself to keep ahead of the presses. There was no chance for revision — no chance to turn back and change anything. How tremendous a handicap this was no one but a writer of mystery' stories can realise. For mystery stories, to be perfectly coherent, must, in a sense, be written backwards. The beginning must be made to fit the end. By the time the end is reached, the beginning invariably stands in need of revision and readjustment. This is not a question of lack of genius — it is a question of human limitation. No man, however gifted, can foresee from the start all the minute ramifications of a two-hundred-thousand word story, any more than he can foresee all the ramifications of a game of chess at the moment he advances his first pawn.
But It was not possible for Dickens to strengthen or re-plan his foundation — that had been laid for all the world to see. He had to make the best of it, and go on building; and it is evident from the story itself, from the interlined and rewritten manuscript, and from the butchered proofs, as well as from his remarks to Forster, Fildes and Mrs. Collins, that before he was half done, he found the structure, if not actually tottering, at least alarmingly weak. With the loose construction of his other novels serial publication did not greatly interfere; but to a novel depending wholly upon a closely knit plot it was most embarrassing. So, when he found his story developing unexpected weaknesses, he must have cast about in his mind for some way of strengthening it, and It is possible that the idea of bringing Drood to life may have occurred to him. If it did, he never mentioned it to any one nor made a note of it; and certainly, after he had examined it and perceived Its essential absurdity, he must have rejected it.
who was datchery?
The second question In regard to the story is, "Who was Datchery?"
Some six months after Drood's disappearance, it will be remembered, a stranger appears at Cloisterham — a white-haired personage, with black eyebrows, buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout, with buff waistcoat and grey trousers; a personage with something of a military air, who describes himself as an "idle dog living upon his means," "a single buffer" who has come to Cloisterham to look for lodgings, with a view of settling down and spending his "remaining span of life" there. He is eccentric in behaviour, loquacious in conversation, and theatrical in deportment, and it is made clear to the reader that his object in coming to Cloisterham Is to watch Jasper. He gets lodgings in the same house with him, and begins almost at once to collect, bit by bit, evidence against him — and then the story ends.
Datchery's age is not mentioned, but from his white hair, which Dickens also refers to more than once as grey, from the fact that his appearance suggests to Sapsea and others that he has retired from the army or navy, and from his own reference to his "remaining span of life," it is evident that he impresses those he meets as well past middle age.
All the commentators upon the story are agreed that the long white hair so frequently referred to is a disguise, and that Datchery is not used to wearing a wig, since he habitually carries his hat in his hand, and when he puts it on does so "as if with some vague expectation of finding another hat there." Most go a step farther and agree, very properly, that Dickens would not introduce a new character of such importance so late in the story, and that Datchery is some one who has already been introduced in his proper person. Dickens as much as said so to his daughter when he referred to the "Datchery assumption."
But as to the Identity of this person there is the widest disagreement. Those who believe that Drood was not really murdered, also believe that Datchery is Drood. But, even admitting for the moment that Drood is not dead, it is absurd to suppose that the adoption of a wig and an artificial manner could disguise him from people who were well acquainted with him, even if there was a plausible reason why he should wish to assume such a disguise. There are a dozen indications that Datchery is not Drood, but the whole theory is too foolish to waste time upon.
The theory adopted by Sir William Nicoll, by Dr. Jackson, and by many other eminent but misguided commentators upon the story, is that Datchery is Helena Landless, the twin sister of Neville Landless — the young man upon whom Jasper tries so desperately to fasten the crime, but who, after being arrested, is finally released for lack of evidence. In support of this theory, they argue very adroitly that Helena possesses in perfection the mental qualities necessary to the impersonation — the courage, the resourcefulness, the aplomb; that Dickens takes pains to tell us that, when running away from school years before, she had put on boy's clothes and displayed all the daring of a man; and that she gives many dark hints that she is not afraid of Jasper and has something up her sleeve.
The theory is a picturesque one, but it is not necessary to discuss these arguments in favour of it, for there is to it one insuperable objection, and that is this: However fitted mentally Helena may have been to assume the disguise, she was utterly unfitted for it physically. To suppose that a "lithe, unusually handsome" girl of twenty, dark, rich in colour, with an emphatic and unmistakable personality, could, by putting on trousers and a wig, disguise herself as an elderly gentleman — and, more especially, that she could, for an instant, deceive people who had known her, the suspicious Jasper among them — is preposterous.
It is true that in real life women have sometimes successfully disguised themselves as men; but a young woman never successfully disguised herself as an old man. How, in the full light of day, could a fresh and healthy young face put on the hue of age? How could the bright dark eyes put on the glaze of years? How could the soft and rounded cheeks put on the lines that the years are sure to bring? How could that downy skin put on the look of having been shaved for forty years? Or are we to suppose that a man with a great shock of hair and heavy eyebrows was beardless? How could a girl, be she never so slender, button herself up in a "tightish surtout" without betraying her sex? Besides, while the fact is not expressly stated, the whole impression of Datchery — his habit of chaffing, his exuberance, his good humour, his hearty appetite, his pride in his leg — is that of a portly man. Remember, too, that the impersonation was kept up, not for an hour, but for days and weeks, and that it took place, not on an artificially lighted stage with' the spectators at a distance, but in the full light of the sun with the spectators all about and close at hand. In view of all these difficulties; the conclusion is un- escapable that, however engaging the theory may be, it is, in fact, untenable.
Who, then, is Datchery? It Is the opinion of the present writer that Datchery is Bazzard. This is not a very exciting theory, but there are many things to indicate that it is the right one. Briefly stated, they are as follows:
Bazzard, it will be remembered, is clerk to Hiram Grewgious, that admirable and sound-hearted old lawyer who is guardian to Rosa Bud, and who is the first to suspect Jasper of Edwin Drood's murder. It is Grewgious who determines to unmask the villain, who takes charge of the affair, and who decides that Jasper must be watched. What more natural than that he should choose for this task his clerk, in whom he expresses the greatest confidence and whom no one at Cloisterham knows?
Bazzard is described as a "pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion," "a gloomy person, with tangled locks," and a very mysterious manner. It turns out that he has theatrical aspirations, that he has written a tragedy which has never been produced, that he consorts with other disappointed playwrights, and presumably frequents the theatre. Now, it has been contended that Bazzard does not possess the mental qualifications necessary to a Datchery; but this is, at least, disputable. The most that can be said is that we know too little of him to pass any certain judgment. The fact that he has written a play, however bad, would indicate that he had some brains, Grewgious evidently considers him a man of parts, and his association with the theatre would explain the theatricality of Datchery's behaviour. Bazzard's dark hair and eyes certainly correspond with Datchery's black eyebrows and show the necessity for a grey wig, if he is to pose as an elderly man. His physique also corresponds with what we must suppose Datchery's to have been, and he has in conversation a stilted and artificial style very like Datchery's. Finally, at the precise time Datchery appears at Cloister- ham, Grewgious remarks casually to a visitor that Bazzard "is off duty here, altogether, just at present."
The adherents of the Helena Landless theory assert that this remark was inserted by Dickens merely as a blind; but it is not a blind. On the contrary, it is one of those clues which every writer of a mystery story must strew along his path, but whose importance the average reader does not realise until he looks back from the end of the story. It is a very significant fact that this sentence was carefully strengthened by Dickens in the proofs. Originally, Grewgious's reference to Bazzard was in these words: "No, he goes his way after office hours. In fact, he is off duty at present. ... But it would be difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard." In the final text, Grewgious says: "No, he goes his way, after office hours. In fact, he is off duty here, altogether, just at present. ... But it would be extremely difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard." This, as has been said before, is by far the most important of the proof changes discovered by Sir William Nicoll. Surely, when Dickens made this alteration he had clearly in his mind the fact that Bazzard was already on duty at Cloisterham.
The theory that Datchery is Bazzard is by no means a new one. Both Kerr and Morford advance it. More significant is a letter to the Pall Mall Magazine for June, 1906, from Dickens's daughter, Mrs. Kate Perugini, in which she discusses the story and remarks incidentally that "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." Other critics have arrived at the same conclusion; but all of them have been berated by the adherents of the Drood and Helena Landless theories as commonplace and unimaginative. Mr. Proctor says, "No one at all familiar with Dickens's method would for a moment imagine that Datchery is Bazzard." Mr. Cuming Walters says, "Literary art rebels against the idea. Bazzard was one of Dickens's favourite low comedy characters." Dr. Jackson says, "I am sure that Bazzard is incapable of playing the part of Datchery." Sir William Nicoll adds, "In these judgments I agree."
It might be pointed out that these are not so much judgments as expressions of opinion. As to Bazzard's alleged incapacity, there is absolutely no proof of it in the story. And the part of Datchery, with his melodrama and air of tragedy and mystery, is one which Bazzard would have loved to play. He would have played it just as Datchery does, in fact, play it. As to the theory being obvious and commonplace, it should be pointed out that the writer of mystery stories who relies for his solutions upon theories which are strange and farfetched is riding for a fall. The highest art in the detective story is to impress the reader with the entire reasonableness of every detail; not to startle him at the end by exploding an unexpected bomb, but to hold his interest by the logical development of the plot, whose- end he may, to some extent, foresee. Perhaps Dickens was incapable of this peculiar art; he was never first-rate at plot, and he was writing this story under the tremendous disadvantage of immediate publication in parts; but surely he was incapable of attempting to fool his readers by a grotesque trick.
And yet, at this point, the manuscript gives eloquent testimony to the fact that Dickens was in trouble. The eighteenth chapter, in which Datchery is introduced, shows an unusual number of additions and erasures. It has been gone over with great care, for Dickens was evidently afraid that he might, inadvertently, give a hint as to Datchery's identity. If we add to the manuscript changes the changes made in proof, we have a still further evidence of his anxiety on this point. Which brings us to the two omissions marked by Dickens and not carried out by Forster which are of real importance.
Datchery, having been informed that Mrs. Tope, living near the Cathedral, has lodgings to let, sets out to look for them. "But the Crozier being an hotel of a most retiring disposition, and the waiter's directions being fatally precise, he soon became bewildered, and went boggling about and about the Cathedral Tower, whenever he could catch a glimpse of it, 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."
A little farther on he finds a boy, whom he asks to guide him to the spot.
"Lookie yonder," says the boy. "You see that there winder and door?"
"That's Tope's?"
"Yer lie; it ain't. That's Jasper's."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Datchery with a look of some interest.
It seems a rather remarkable coincidence that in the present writer's copy of Edwin Drood both these passages should have been marked as giving the strongest evidence that Datchery is Bazzard, and that, after careful consideration, Dickens should have cut them both out of the final proofs. The parts he marked for omission are precisely the significant parts: in the first quotation, from "with a general impression on his mind" to the end of the paragraph; and in the second, the phrase "with a look of some interest."
The point is this: If Datchery was Edwin Drood or Helena Landless or any one else familiar with Cloisterham, he might, indeed, intentionally seem to lose his. way in order to deceive any one who might be watching him, and go "boggling about and about the Cathedral Tower," but it could not possibly have been "with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope's was somewhere very near it." If that clause indicates his mental state, then Datchery was unquestionably a stranger to Cloisterham, since it indicates that he was really lost; and If it had stood unaltered in the text it would prove conclusively that he was neither Drood nor Helena. But Dickens, in his final revision of the chapter, cut it out, although Forster allowed it to remain in the printed book.
Now Dickens cut it out for one of two reasons: either he feared that it pointed too clearly to Datchery's identity, or he perceived that it was not in keeping with that identity. The first of these reasons Is undoubtedly the right one. Dickens was very anxious to throw every possible cloud about Datchery, for this was one of the few secrets remaining in the story, but here, in a single sentence, was the proof that he was a stranger to Cloisterham. It was a finger pointing straight at Bazzard, the only stranger to Cloisterham who had thus far appeared in the ory. On the other hand, if Datchery had been Drood or Helena, or any one else familiar with the town, Dickens would never have written the words. He would have seen at once that no such thought could have been in Datchery's mind.
The excision of the clause "with a look of some interest," is of less importance. But, unless Datchery was a stranger to the town, there was no reason why he should look at Jasper's window with interest; and this thought, perhaps, occurred to Dickens, and decided him to cut the words out.
One point more. When Datchery is asking the waiter at the Crozier to refer him to possible lodgings, he is very particular to explain that what he wants is "something old, something odd and out of the way; something venerable, architectural and inconvenient." As the waiter hesitates and scratches his head, Mr. Datchery adds, "Anything cathedrally, now." It is evident that the whole object of these inquiries is to guide the waiter's thoughts to Mrs. Tope, who, with her husband, occupies the old gatehouse of the cathedral, and who lets lodgings to John Jasper, and it has been argued that they prove that Datchery was familiar with Cloisterham. But they prove no such thing. They prove merely that his employer, Mr. Grewgious, had told him that it was at Tope's he must get lodgings, and had carefully coached him in the questions to be asked.
There is one other point which the advocates of the Helena-Datchery theory have strangely overlooked. In the story as printed, it is obviously impossible for Helena to be Datchery, because Datchery appears In Cloisterham in Chapter XVIII, which is entirely devoted to his doings, while it is not until the following chapter that Helena's school at Cloisterham closes for the summer vacation and leaves her free to join her brother in London. Dr. Jackson, however, discovered by an examination of the manuscript that what is now Chapter XVIII was intended originally by Dickens to be Chapter XIX, and that the two chapters were transposed after what is now
Chapter XIX was completely written, and when what is now Chapter XVIII was about half done. As originally placed, the chapter would not bring Datchery to Cloisterham until at least a week after Helena had gone to London, where, it is supposed — entirely without any corroborative evidence — the plan of disguising herself and returning to Cloisterham to watch Jasper is carried out with the knowledge and assistance of her brother and Grewgious.
In setting the chapter forward, Dr. Jackson and Sir William Nicoll argue, Dickens overlooked this very serious clash in the chronology of the story; and this in spite of the fact that the opening paragraph of the very next chapter, which was already written and which Dickens must have had clearly in his mind, is concerned with the closing of Helena's school. They further argue that, even in the proofs, Dickens did not detect this blunder. But the true inference is, not that Dickens thus carelessly and blindly wrecked his whole plot, but that there was no connection in his mind between Helena and Datchery, and so no necessity to delay Datchery's appearance at Cloisterham until after Helena's departure from it. In fact, the transposition of these chapters is a very strong proof that Helena is not Datchery.
how was it to end?
To the third question, "How was the story to end?" it is possible to give a partial answer, in spite of the fact that Dickens left absolutely no notes nor memoranda for the unwritten chapters. Jasper, of course, was to be caught and punished; the instrument of detection was to be the ring which Drood carried next his heart unknown to Jasper, and which would serve to identify the body, which Jasper had partially destroyed by quicklime. It seems probable that an advertisement written by Grewgious and either inserted in a newspaper or printed as a broadside, stating that the ring was on Drood's person when he disappeared and offering a reward for its return, was to be used to lure Jasper to the place where he had hid the body, and so into the arms of the law — a device already used by C. Auguste Dupin, and afterward to be used many times by Sherlock Holmes. Rosa is to marry Tartar, and Helena is to marry Crisparkle; Neville is to be killed in the capture of Jasper, which will be only after a chase up the tower and over the roof of the cathedral a chase for which Tartar, with his extraordinary agility, is carefully prepared beforehand.
So much is fairly certain from the internal evidence of the story, as well as from the hints which Dickens Inadvertently let drop. But he found himself confronted by this difficulty: he had wound up his plot and must now begin to unwind it — but his book was only half done. It was to run to twelve numbers and he had written only six. The unwinding could not possibly be prolonged for more than a number or two. Therefore it was necessary to introduce some seconding story to occupy at least four numbers.
That this seconding story was to be concerned with the old opium-woman and with the reasons for her hatred of Jasper seems very probable, but there is absolutely no clue to its details. Andrew Lang goes so far as to assert that Dickens himself did not know how the story was to end. But before he commenced it, he had outlined its plot roughly to Forster, and had stated that its originality "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."
There is nothing to show that Dickens had given up this plan, but it does not seem to be very original or very promising. It is doubtful if the average reader would care to know in detail about Jasper's life previous to the opening of the story; certainly no one would care to hear from Jasper's lips what the action of the story had already disclosed. It is impossible to Imagine this as a satisfactory climax, but there is no telling what Dickens's genius would have made of it. Probably he would have found himself compelled to modify it very greatly.
It Is rather the fashion to speak of Edzvin Drood as a masterpiece; but as a detective story, which is the only way in which it should be judged, it has many faults. Although his main occupation should have been with plot, Dickens could not resist the temptation to amble aside into caricature. Sapsea, with his unbelievable inscription for his wife's monument, is caricature; Mrs. Billickin is caricature, and rather poor and tiresome caricature, too — certainly not good enough to delay the flow of the story, with which it has absolutely no concern. One great requisite of the detective story is that it should flow without serious interruption from the first page to the last. It must be regretfully added that Dickens drops occasionally into the dark and mysterious manner of Wilkie Collins, whose work in this field he greatly admired, and that some of his clues leave the reader incredulous.
It will be sufficient to analyse only one of these. Two or three days after Drood's disappearance, Crisparkle, the athletic Minor Canon of the cathedral, is moved by some mysterious and unexplained influence to walk to Cloisterham weir, two miles above the town. As he stands gazing at it, he descries, far out from the bank, a bright object sparkling on the weir, and, swimming otit to it, finds that it is a gold watch firmly caught between the timbers by its chain — so firmly that the sweep of the water over the weir has not dislodged it. After repeated diving, he also finds "a shirt-pin sticking in some mud and ooze." Both watch and pin are identified as having belonged to Drood, and everybody at once jumps to the conclusion that the murderer, having removed these articles from the body to prevent its identification, sought to get rid of them by casting them into the river.
A moment's thought will show how preposterous all this is. In the first place, the chances against the watch-chain being caught in that way by accident would be about a million to one. In the second place, if watch and pin had been thrown into the river together, the pin, being much the lighter, would have fallen far short of the watch. If they had been thrown separately, they would very probably have been thrown in different directions. In neither case could the pin have been "sticking" in the mud, since, as the head was the heavier, it must have gone to the bottom head-first. Of course it might have stuck in the mud headfirst, but this is evidently not what Dickens meant, for in that case Crisparkle would have had to perform the incredible feat of discovering a pin-point protruding from the mud at the bottom of a river. The feat, as Dickens indicated that he did perform it, is surely remarkable enough!
The plain inference to be drawn from these circumstances is that the watch reached the spot where it was found not by accident but by design, that it could have been placed there only by the murderer, who then proceeded to drop the pin into the water as he sat on top of the weir (we must overlook the "sticking," which is evidently a slip); and that his purpose in doing all this must have been to throw suspicion upon some one else, or at least to divert it from himself. This is so very obvious that, outside of a book, it would be at once apparent to any thinking person — so obvious, indeed, that the very fact that Jasper sought to avail himself of a device so clumsy and transparent is convincing proof that he was only an ordinary villain, after all!