First published in The Constitution, Atlanta, November 17, 1907

When Charles Dickens died in 1870, leaving his las novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” only half-finished, the English-speaking world—and a good many of the foil who speak other languages, too—spend much time trying to guess how the great author had intended that his perplexing story should end. And that guess work has been going on with more or less spasmodic vigor ever since.

Many literary Sherlock Holmes, including Andrew Lang, have filled many magazine page trying to prove from the clues left by Dickens what the conclusion was to have been. Several authors, more ambitious than discreet have audaciously assumed the mantle of the dead prophet und finished the book. Mediums have invoked the spirit of Dickens himself to solve the mystery with results equally unconvincing.

For thirty-seven years, the “Mystery” has remained the great puzzle of the literary world. None of those who have tried to unravel it have supposed that it ever could be proved whether or not he or she had found the correct solution, as planned by the master hand.

It can be, though, for something has been found by a granddaughter of the great novelist, Miss Ethel Dickens which contains the proof that has so long been sought. It is a play written by the eldest son of Charles Dickens—Charles Dickens the younger. And that play which is a dramatization of the unfinished “Mystery” ends as Dickens had intended to end his baffling and fascinating story.

What Miss Dickens Says.

I have been extremely fortunate in obtaining from Miss Dickens herself this account of it:

“The play of ‘Edwin Drood’ was written some years after my grandfather's death, and my father’s chief object in writing it was to give the ending of the story as he had received it from my grandfather's lips.

“My father had long had the idea of this, play in his mind, but I think it was during his visit to America and by reason of the extreme appreciation and love of my grandfather and his works that he found existing so strongly all over that country, that the play was finally written—and written for America.

“There can be little doubt that as my grandfather progressed with the story of ‘Edwin Drood’ many modification: were made of the original plot, and this is clearly proved by the conversation that I will speak of presently which took place between himself and my father some little time before his death.

“He was, I believe, keenly interested in this, his last work. The development of the story and the study of Jasper, whom he evidently Intended to present to us as an unmitigated villain from first to last, filled his remaining days with a restless excitement, which, however ruinous to his own health, gave to the world a most interesting and baffling enigma, the clues to the mystery, one is invited to follow being 90 numerous and so apparently impossible to fit neatly together in order to arrive at any definite and satisfactory conclusion.

How Edwin’s Drood Was Written.

“My grandfather pursued his usual method of work during the writing of ‘Edwin Drood,' that is to say, after an early breakfast he would go to his study or in fine, warm weather to the chalet in his garden, and there work or grind away, as he sometimes called it, until the luncheon hour. It was never difficult, I have heard my father say, to judge from the expression on his face, whether he had been successful in the arduous task of pleasing himself. Very often he looked sad and worn and spoke little and retired to his work again after taking a mere pretense of food; but there were another days when his eyes shone, when face and manner were alert and cheerful, and when he looked forward with pleasure to the walk he would take in the afternoon. Then those about him knew ‘Edwin Drood’ was making happy progress. My grandfather was a reticent man, seldom speaking much of his own work at any time and not caring to be questioned, particularly about a story the solution of which he was desirous of keeping to himself until the end.

“My grandfather was exceedingly orderly and methodical in his manner of working (as he was in everything he did) forcing himself to go to his desk each morning at the same hour, ant he was generally very accurate in sending the exact amount of material required to the printer; but I have been told that a few days before he died he suddenly discovered that he had brought forward his story of ‘Edwin Drood’ too quickly for the six numbers he had still to write: this gave him a great deal of anxiety, and was the cause of much thought and trouble. But on the very day he was taken it, the day before his death, he announced at the luncheon table that he hoped he had overcome this difficulty, and he returned to his work In gay spirits.

Curious Proviso.

“In the curious proviso made in his agreement with Messrs. Chapman and Hall, relating to ‘Edwin Drood’—the first time any such proviso had been made in agreements between himself and his publishers—we certainly see that some vague premonition of impending death was in his mind, and later on signs were not wanting to show that this presentiment was constantly with him, and one cannot help feeling how painfully he must have desired to finish the story, which, had he but known it, was gradually but surely undermining the strength and devotion which he ungrudgingly bestowed upon it every day, of his closing life.

“Of course, all I can tell you must be from hearsay, for I scarcely remember my grandfather: but my father spoke constantly of him, and he always said that although of so reticent a nature he was never surly on his manner, and if pressed for an explanation of what he was writing by one he loved, he would at once gravely refuse to give it, or if he was in one of his rare communicative moods he might suddenly and to his companion’s surprise throw away his shy reserve and become perfectly frank and confidential. I imagine that it was owing to some such quick change of feeling that my father was enabled to give the closing scene to his Play of ‘Edwin Drood,’ and this brings me to conversation which I mentioned at the beginning of our interview.

“It came about in this way: One afternoon some tires weeks before my grandfather died my father was at Gad's Hill, and, as so often happened, he and my grandfather started off on one of those long rambling walks which were the chief recreations my grandfather allowed himself when he was, as then hard at work, if indeed recreation they could be called—for it was, I believe, during these walks that the creative brain was most active—and although he walked to have some congenial companion with him. I frequently heard my father say that often the whole walk would be taken in complete silence, nor one syllable on any subject passing my grandfather's lips. However this special occasion was not one of silence! It was then that my father heard in detail the definite scheme for the end of the book, my grandfather also telling him that when he first began this work he had a slightly different end in view, but that as the book developed certain definite alterations became necessary with regard to the final tragedy. He also added that my father was absolutely the only person to whom these facts were known.

The Ring.

“The ring, which plays so important part in the book, was not mentioned by my grandfather on this occasion, but my father was under the impression that it was to hold the original place in the story, and was to be the means of identifying the murdered body as that of Edwin Drood. As, however, my grandfather did not touch upon this point, my father has not emphasized it in his play.”

Some prominent members of the organization of Dickens lovers, called The Dickens Fellowship, with whom I have conversed about the matter, are disposed to be skeptical concerning the statement that Dickens confided to his son Charles how he intended to end the story. They say it is almost incredible that the younger Dickens should have had authoritative knowledge on a subject that the whole literary world was speculating about, and have refrained from making public—especially in view of the fact that he could have made much money out of it. But such reticence on his part, extraordinary as it may appear, really proves nothing in face of the evidence that he did possess that knowledge. Miss Dickens told me that he made no secret of it in his own family. Her brother, Charles, and her sister, Mary, heard him talk about it on several occasions. From each of them I have obtained statements confirming that given me by Miss Ethel Dickens.

Premonitions of Death.

Miss Dickens’ reference to the indications that her grandfather had had some premonitions of impending death afforded by his agreement for the publication of his last work should perhaps be explained. At his own request, he had a clause inserted in his agreement with his publishers, Chapman & Hall, providing for a satisfactory pecuniary settlement between thein and his executors in case he should “die during the composition of the said work of the ‘Mystery of Edwin Drood.’"

Needless though this clause seemed at the time, its sad pertinency was proved by his death at Gad’s Hill on the 9th of June, 1870, when he had written the manuscript of only six of the twelve numbers that were to complete the book. The greater part of the previous day he had spent working upon it in the Chalet, a gift from his friend Charles Fechter, the actor, which had been erected on the grounds. In the study there he penned the last words that he ever wrote on the “Mystery.”

“He was late leaving the Chalet,” says his biographer, John Foster, “but before dinner, which was ordered at 6 o'clock with the intention of walking afterwards in the lanes, he wrote some letters . . . and dinner was begun before Miss Hogarth saw, with alarm, a singular expression of trouble and pain in his face. ‘For an hour,’ he then told her, ‘he had been very ill,’ but he wished dinner to go on. These were the only coherent words uttered by him.” He died at ten minutes past 6 o'clock on the succeeding day, but during the twenty-four hours that elapsed between his seizure and his death there had never been a gleam of hope.

When Dickens Began Story.

When Dickens started writing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” his position as the greatest of English novelists was everywhere acknowledged. He had no rival; he could add nothing to his literary fame. But many of the reviewers who lavished the warmest praise on his works said that his plots ‘are weak—that he could not write a book the ending of which would not be foreshadowed long before he reached it.

It is believed he felt this criticism keenly. Its refutation was the task he assigned himself in “The Mystery.” He wanted to write a book that would keep people guessing to the end as to now it would turn out—a work that should be full of baffling clues, misleading suggestions and trails that were crossed by red herrings. How well he succeeded, as far as he went, is proven by the wide divergence in the conclusions reached by those who have essayed to solve the “Mystery.” On the question whether or no Dickens intended that Edwin Drood should really meet his death al the hands of the villain Jasper, they are hopelessly at odds. In his reconstruction of the plot, Andrew Lang, of all of them the man who perhaps hat the greatest reputation for literary astuteness, defeats the villain and brings Drood back to life.

America Tried to Solve Mystery.

From America came the earliest attempt to finish the unfinished half of “The Mystery." Dickens had been dead hardly a year when “John Jasper’ Secret” wat published in Philadelphia. It was the joint production of a New York journalist Henry Morford and his wife. It was first published anonymously, but in subsequent editions it authorship was impudently attribute to Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens the younger. Despite their repudiations of the forgery, their named are still attached to reprints of the book. In this Morford solution Jasper tried to murder Drood, and thinks he had succeeded. In the end he is confronted by his supposed victim, and succumbs to poison. For the rest of the characters things end in the conventionally happy style.

From spookdom emanated the next attempt. It was a bulky volume of 600 pages, entitled “The Mystery of Edwin Drood Complete.” It was send forth to a skeptical world as the work of Charles Dickens’ spirit aided and abetted by a medium of Brattleboro, Vt. It abounded in inexplicable blunders and grammatical vagaries. It brought Edwin Drood back to life, and dealt out retributive justice to Jasper by depriving him of his reason and consigning him to a madhouse.

In the assurance that no one could possibly “go one better” than a solution of the “Mystery” by the ghost of its author, America gave up constructing sequels to Dickens’ work after this, and his own countryfolk took up the game. A woman of some literary reputation in the north of England writing under the queer pen name of Gillan Vase, issued a three-volume conclusion of the unfinished work under the title “A Great Mystery Solved.” There again Drood escaped from the tomb to which Jasper consigned him and the villain makes a dramatic exit by committing suicide in jail.

Astronomer Proctor’ Solution.

Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, wearying of his studies of the mysteries of heavens, solaced himself by studying Dickens’ mundane mystery. His speculations were published under the title “Watched by the Dead: A Loving Study of Dickens’ Half-told Tale.” The watcher is Edwin Drood who, escaping from the death which Jasper had planned for him, devotes himself to bringing Jasper to Justice.

There is no space to mention the numerous magazine articles on the subject that have been published from time to time. But the reader will want to know what Dickens intended should be the fate of Edwin Drood. The answer to that question, as revealed by the play, is that Jasper did murder Drood. Which shows that all—or nearly all—of those who have tried to reconstruct the conclusion of the “Mystery” from the clues left by Dickens have been baffled by him and that he was equal to the task he had set himself.

The play, which I have been permitted to read, is a good, sound, old-fashioned melodrama, ending in a weird form of death for Jasper. It was written subsequent to Charles Dickens, Jr.’s tour in the United States in a series of readings from his father’s works and was done in collaboration with the late Joseph Hatton, with the idea of meeting the requirements of E. S. Willard. It was sent over to the United States, and was, I believe, actually put in rehearsal there, but for some reason or other was never produced, and was pigeon-holed, and never came to light again until a few weeks ago, just before Joseph Hatton’s death.

The queer thing about it was that the late Charles Dickens, Jr., never made the slightest capital out of the fact that the play contained the ending of the story as his father had planned it—the one great fact that would have made the play instantly marketable. He was a peculiarly reserved and uncommercial-minded man, to whom the financial importance of the information given to him by his father would have made no appeal. It was generally understood at the time that the great novelist had passed on to his oldest son his plans for the completion of “Edwin Drood,” and in consequence, Charles Dickens, Jr., was, after his father’s death, beset with offers to finish the novel. These he refused, as it was the feeling of the family at that time that it would be a kind of desecration for any one else to assume the mantle of Elijah. It might seem strange that Forster, Dickens’ biographer, knew nothing about the circumstances, but his is to be explained by the fact that Charles Dickens, Jr. and John Forster were not on good terms. Although the facts were well known to all the members of the family of Charles Dickens, Jr., apparently they were never communicated to the other members of the family.