First published in "Living Age", 1917, Vol. VII, No. 319

1. "Watched by the Dead". By R. A. Proctor. (London W. H. Allen and Co. 1887)
2. "The Puzzle of Dickens' Last Plot". By Andrew Lang. (London: Chapman and Hall. 1905.)
3. "Clues to the Mystery of Edwin Drood". By J. Cuming Walters. (London: Chapman and Hall. 1905).
4. "Keys to the Drood Mystery". By Edwin Charles. (London: Collier and Co. 1908.)
5. "About Edwin Drood". By H[enry] J[ackson]. (Cambridge University Press. 1910.)
6. "The Problem of Edwin Drood". By Sir William Robertson Nicoll. (London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1912.)
7. "The Mystery in the Drood Family". By Montagu Saunders. (Cambridge University Press. 1914.)
8. "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". With Introduction by G. K. Chesterton. "Everyman's Library". (London: .I. M. Dent and Co. Ltd. 1915.)

The strange coincidences in the deaths of the two greatest Victorian novelists have naturally excited frequent notice. Both Thackeray and Dickens died suddenly; both left an unfinished story in course of or partly ready for publication (as also did R. L. Stevenson). Thackeray left of Denis Duval enough to make about three and a half numbers of his usual installment of a novel in the Cornhill Magazine. Dickens had issued three of his monthly "green leaves" — as he calls them — out of the twelve agreed for of Edwin Drood, and left just enough for three more prepared in proof or manuscript.

But here the strange parallel changes into a stranger contrast. About the intended story of Denis Duval there is no room for any great doubt, nor can anyone ever have felt excited about it. About Weir of Hermiston there is more doubt, but little scope for dispute. But as to The Mystery of Edwin Drood a keen dispute began on the very day that it was made known that the story could never be finished.

And now, forty-six years afterwards, when the book is out of copyright, we have a succession of books, many of them by very distinguished men, as well as many very ably conducted debates in magazines, most of the disputants positively asserting that their own solution of the Mystery is the only one conceivable. Sir W. R. Nicoll has no less than six pages of bibliography of the subject up to 1912, now much increased. There is no parallel to it in the case of any other work of fiction in the world.

It is not my object in the present article to put forward any new theory as to the intended ending, or as to who Mr. Datchery really is. Indeed it would be difficult to find any character in the book, except those in whose company he has actually appeared, with whom that gentleman has not been identified — unless it be Miss Twinkleton or Mr. Honeythunder. I simply propose to state the different solutions that have been proposed, and to show how far each of these is possible. I rely most of all on the existent indications in the book itself; secondly, on such external evidence as remains; and, thirdly, on the parallels with other works of Dickens as showing a probable inclination or reluctance presumably to be found in his mind.

This last is obviously of a much more subjective character than the other two, and, as will be seen, sometimes leads people to directly opposite convictions. It must therefore only be used as at best fortifying conclusions already suggested by the direct evidence. Now the "mystery," it is agreed, resolves itself mainly into two points.

First, had Jasper really murdered Edwin, as he, admittedly, believed he had done? Secondly, who was Datchery? There are several important subordinate questions; especially what was to be the function of the betrothal-ring, and what connection "Princess Puffer" had with Jasper's previous life. But these are concerned more with the discovery of the mystery than with its existence.

It is better to keep the main questions distinct.

I. Was Edwin Really Murdered or Not?

Here we come to a most remarkable conflict of opinion among those who have both studied the question thoroughly and know their Dickens well. Forster, Mr. J. C. Walters, and Sir W. R. Nicoll say positively that he was; Proctor and Mr. Lang, equally decidedly, that he was not. Dr. Jackson and Mr. Saunders, with wiser caution, believe that he was murdered, but allow that both theories are admissible.

The possibility of this curious divergence about the very heart of the "mystery" itself is caused by the fact that the book gives no certain indication whatever. Every word in it has been pondered by commentators eager to find props to their own theories, but nothing can be quoted in evidence. Edwin in Chapter xiv simply disappears. There is not a single word in all the subsequent part which is not just as applicable to the murder if Jasper only supposed that he had accomplished it, as if he really had done so. Edwin's watch and pin, which were caught in the weir, had been taken, but that would equally have been done if Edwin had merely been stunned. Hence our commentators have to fall back on their inner consciousness as to what Dickens would have been sure to do — whether Edwin, as they say, was "marked" for life or death. It is amusing to see how exactly the judgment on this question of taste corresponds with what each writer takes to be the plot.

To Mr. Proctor "there are touches in the chapters of Edwin Drood preceding Edwin's disappearance which show anyone who understands Dickens' manner and has an ear for the music of his words, that Edwin Drood is not actually to be killed." To Mr. Walters, on the contrary, Edwin "is entirely uninteresting. . . . He is certainly not of the class that either Dickens or his readers would care to survive."

Here we are in the thick of the Higher Criticism.

We turn therefore next to the external evidence. That, in the present case, is limited practically to two heads — the consideration of the picture-cover must for the present be postponed — namely, first, the statements made, or understood to be made (an important qualification) by Dickens to Forster and others; and, secondly, the various titles for the book, which were always very carefully weighed beforehand by Dickens himself.

First, let us take the statements.

The chief of these is the one reported by Forster, which, if accepted as entirely accurate, and as intended by Dickens to be a summary, would leave us with no mystery at all worth five minutes' discussion. It is clear that it has not generally been so accepted, or the numerous books on Edwin Drood would never have been written.

Forster's statement (Life, xl, 2.) needs the closest attention. It is that in a letter of August 6, 1869, Dickens wrote: "I 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." Forster, however, must have instantly asked for the secret which was both incommunicable and would if disclosed destroy the interest of the book, for he goes on: "the story, I learned immediately afterwards, 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. . . . 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."

Now is it possible that anyone can think after reading the book, as Forster before it was written appears patiently to have accepted, that the very strong but incommunicable idea was simply Jasper's review of his career at the close? It is just about the same as if we were to say that the story of Oliver Twist rested on the very powerful scene of Fagin in the condemned cell. The conclusion which, I submit, is pointed to, is the very different one suggested by the words italicized above, that Dickens meant to keep his secret from Forster, as he did from everybody else. Possibly Forster had rubbed in too emphatically the overearly revelation of the main plot in Our Mutual Friend. In any case to have asked for the plot, after so strong an intimation that he must not do so, was indiscreet at best, and Forster seems not to have been a model of discreetness. The reply seems to show a skeleton of facts, entirely borne out by the story as we have it, but to give no solution whatever of the "mystery." The latter part of the words above, it must be carefully noted, gives not ipsissima verba of Dickens, but what Forster "learned afterwards," and might have only indicated the attempted murder.

That Jasper was in a condemned cell proves nothing, because according to Forster's own sketch, "Neville Landless was, I think, to have perished" (this is borne out by several points in the story) "in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer." Indeed it is only possible by a murder of someone thrown down from the tower of the Cathedral — which in the case of Edwin himself is excluded — to explain Jasper's ejaculations in the opium den. "Look down, look down, you see what lies at the bottom there!" "Look at it. Look what a poor, mean, miserable thing it is. That must be real . . . and yet I never saw that before." So the argument about the condemned cell crumbles altogether away.

We may take it as one of the few quite certain points about the ending, that Jasper was to be found guilty of murder, and condemned to death.

For not only have we the Forster sketch of the plot, which, as we shall see, needs some discounting, but Sir Luke Fildes (who, apparently, strongly believes that the murder was intended to have been really effected) was to have been taken by Dickens "to a condemned cell in Maidstone or some other gaol, in order that he might make a drawing." But the murder of Neville Landless, who by the agreement of nearly all commentators is to be got rid of — it is the only point in which they almost all agree — equally serves this purpose for the story. The proof therefore that Jasper was to die on the scaffold (or, more probably, in the condemned cell) is only, at best, corroborative evidence that the murder was that of Edwin Drood.

The latest interpreter, Mr. Saunders, contends with much plausibility that the "incommunicable idea" was that of Jasper unwittingly helping to convict himself by every step that he took to procure the destruction of Neville. His diary ends "I swear that I will fasten the crime of the murder of my dear dead boy upon the murderer; and, that I devote myself to his destruction."

This is really a valuable contribution, because for the first time it explains the point of the seemingly useless diary, and helps in explanation of the strange emphasis laid on Edwin's non-delivery of the ring.

Mr. Andrew Lang, who is supported by Mr. C. K. Shorter in The Sphere, then introduces a further complication. They both believe, and with some evidence, that Dickens changed his plot in the course of writing. This is a possibility which has seriously to be reckoned with. In the case of Great Expectations it, admittedly, was actually what was done. Bulwer Lytton and — of all people in the world — Thomas Carlyle objected to the natural and intended close which left Pip a solitary man, and Dickens substituted the hasty and banal reunion of Pip and Estella. "I have no doubt," Dickens wrote to Forster, "that the story will be more acceptable through the alteration." The almost universal desire of the British reading public for a happy ending was too strong for the artistic instincts of the author. So again, it has always been a moot point whether the monstrously impossible part of a miser played by Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, solely to teach Bella that the love of money is the root of all evil, could have been part of the deliberate scheme of the book. Forster's account of Our Mutual Friend is much shorter than that of any of the other great books, whereas it might have been expected to be fuller, because it is nearer in date to his own writing of the biography. There are traces, too, that Forster had here overstepped the line of acceptable criticism; and this may have suggested the important sentenceabout the "not communicable" nature of the idea of Edwin Drood.

But Mr. Shorter clearly goes far beyond the evidence when he says that "undoubtedly Dickens started with the intention of killing Drood, and told Forster so." For, in the first place, this is not only doubted but flatly denied by half of the critics who have written upon the point.

In the second place, Forster does not say that Dickens told him so, but only that he "learned immediately afterwards" — he does not say from whom or in what exact words — that the plot "was to be that of a murder of a nephew by his uncle" — thus leaving a double loophole of escape from the statement. But Mr. Lang is within the evidence when he says that "if Dickens had seen hopes of getting more material and more interest out of a living than out of a dead Edwin Drood he had not burned his boats; he could produce Edwin alive." Here again we come full tilt against one of the numerous impasses of the story.

It seems almost impossible to believe that if the completed murder of Edwin was intended from the first, Dickens could by any chance have avoided accidentally "burning his boats" in even a single sentence that could be brought forward.

Beyond Forster's evidence, which, as we have seen, falls far short of proving his conclusions, there is very little to be discovered in the way of direct statement to anybody. But it is passing strange that Sir Luke Fildes (The Times. November 4, 1905.) should think that Dickens is accused of moral obliquity because he gave evasive answers or dropped misleading hints about his secret.

Has Sir Luke never read about Sir Walter Scott — most upright of men — and the authorship of the Waverley Novels? The Times reviewer had remarked, perfectly fairly: 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.

Mr. Fildes had asked about the thick silk neckerchief going twice round Jasper's neck, which no doubt was rather troublesome to the artist; and Dickens, after saying "he was afraid he was getting on too fast," exclaimed "It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it." There is evasion here, but of a perfectly justifiable kind, and no "deceit is lightly attributed to him." It proves that Jasper was to "strangle" Edwin, a point which naturally was to be kept secret before the event; but, as before, strangling is not identical with murdering. Here again the supposed direct statement proves to be a blind alley.

The only other piece of direct evidence that I can find is that Dickens appears to have said to one of his family when too much seemed to be taken for granted, that he had called it "The Mystery," not "The History," of Edwin Drood.

It is worthwhile at this point to glance at the alternative titles taken into consideration, seeing how much importance Dickens always assigned to his titles. There are no fewer than sixteen experimental ones in the MS volume at South Kensington. Some of these, such as "Flight and Pursuit," "The Two Kinsmen," are meant to convey nothing of the plot. Most of them are only varieties of the title adopted, and one of these, "Dead or Alive?" plainly indicates, though without solution, in what the mystery lay.

But two of them, "The Flight of Edwin Drood," and — still more — "Edwin Drood in Hiding," create a very strong presumption in favor of the theory that Edwin was not really murdered.

The only remaining evidence, apart from each man's subjective impressions as to what Dickens would be sure to do, consists in the celebrated cover of the original monthly parts

It is not celebrated for its artistic merits; indeed it contrasts rather painfully with the delicate and finished work of Sir Luke Fildes. But it is the work of Charles Collins, Dickens' son-in-law, a younger brother of Wilkie Collins, who abandoned the profession of arts for that of letters, in which he had somewhat greater success, and it was drawn under Dickens' own direction. Sir Luke Fildes himself has explicitly made the important statement, (The Times, November 4. 1905) 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 given by Charles Dickens, and not from any text.

We have come back, therefore, to the fountain-head, and the cover ought to have contained a decisive, if hidden key to the mystery. But alas! the sketchy drawings, "not from any text," only lead us up another blind alley, since several of them, including the most important final seene, are interpreted in wholly different ways! They need, therefore, the closest examination.

The cover may be taken as divided into seven scenes. The two upper corners — allegorical figures of Comedy and Tragedy — and the two lower corners — the old hag and a Chinaman smoking opium pipes — may be passed as undisputed. So also may the scene over the title — Jasper behind the procession of choristers going down one side of the Cathedral nave, and looking at Edwin and Rosa (both of whom have a bored expression) on the other side. Even here, however, Mr. Lang, with all the solemnity of italics, notes that Edwin "like Datchery, does not wear, but carries his hat." Alas for the clue! The rest of us men, also, like Datchery, do not wear our hats in church. But Jasper, it should be noted, has black whiskers, as in the text.

The other three little vignettes are disputed on more reasonable grounds.

The first of these represents a woman — the features are too vague to entitle one to say a girl — with streaming hair and a lamentable deficiency of clothing above the waist, who is staring at a placard headed "Lost." This might just possibly be, as Mr. Lang calls it, "an allegorical figure," though why an allegorical figure should be obtruded among the actual scenes from the book is hard to imagine.

But it does almost make one gasp to learn that any human being could — except in defense of a thesis, for which case Aristotle wisely allows much latitude — take this to be a representation (of this Dr. Jackson is "sure") of Rosa's "flight" from Miss Twinkleton's school to see her guardian, Mr. Grewgious. That "flight" consisted in packing a small handbag, walking to the railway omnibus "at the corner," and proceeding in it to the station! One can hardly be ''sure" about anything in this cover. But at least an interpretation within reasonable bounds is that it refers to the past life of Jasper which was to have been disclosed; and suggests that the reason of the Princess Puffer in hunting Jasper down was to have been something like that of Good Mrs. Brown with Carker in Dombey and Son.

The vignette underneath this seems fairly obvious, but again we come to the most perverse interpretation. It consists of a girl — nobody apparently has questioned that this is Rosa — who, without much enthusiasm perhaps, but certainly without struggling, is allowing a kneeling young man to kiss her hand. The most natural interpretation is that this is Neville taking his farewell of Rosa, in a scene which had not yet occurred in the published part. It might just possibly have been meant for the farewell of Edwin, though Edwin did not kneel, and his kissing was not on the hand, if it were not that the same face appears again in the opposite picture.

But one becomes almost hopeless of securing an agreed interpretation of any of the pictures on finding that Dr. Jackson actually takes this to represent the scene of Jasper and Rosa — perhaps the most powerful scene of the book — in the garden of the Nuns' House! In that, it will be remembered, Jasper only once touches Rosa, and that is with his offered hand, from which she shrinks into the seat, when he says "I will come no nearer to you than I am." Dr. Jackson may perhaps get over this scene on the ground of very imperfect instructions to Collins. He might, possibly, put down Rosa's acquiescence to very feeble drawing — much worse than Collins was guilty of. But there is no possible way by which the black-whiskered Jasper of the Cathedral could become the whiskerless, mustached young man at Rosa's feet.

Really he should get a magnifying glass, and look at the pictures again, when he could not but admit his interpretation to be hopeless.

The scene on the right-hand side consists of two run into one. It is of a spiral staircase, no doubt that of the Cathedral tower so often mentioned, on which are three figures. The lowest one, wearing a clerical hat and collar, cannot be anyone but Crisparkle. The uppermost one, with finger pointing to the Cathedral scene of Jasper and Edwin, has exactly the same face and curly hair, parted in the middle, as the lover in the opposite scene — which at least proves that Collins kept to his characters, and does not make Jasper put his black whiskers on and off at pleasure — and is thus apparently fixed for Neville Landless. The intermediate one has his face half hidden behind a pillar, but it seems to be a man in a bowler hat, taller than either Crisparkle or Landless. This is naturally taken by most interpreters to be Tartar, whose sailor-like qualities of climbing in perilous places are obviously intended to be utilized. Mr. Lang makes the quite impossible suggestion that it might be old Mr. Grewgious.

But Dr. Jackson again achieves an interpretation which might well have been thought inconceivable. He takes both the clergyman and the curly-haired young man to be Jasper, on two different occasions, and the tall, active man to be Durdles, the drunken old stone-mason! After this one has almost to abandon the cover as giving any clue that will satisfy everybody. We must be content to pass over a minority of one.

Last comes the important picture at the foot, in which Jasper (again very black and whiskered) revisits the vault, and there, undisputedly, is gazing aghast at the figure of Edwin Drood awaiting him. This on the face of it would seem to be a clinching argument for those who maintain that Edwin was not killed, and Mr. Proctor and Mr. Lang are justified in making a very strong point of it.

But the other interpreters must all be regarded as counsel retained for their own particular theory, and bound to combat every other as best they may. Thus Mr. Charles, since he maintains that Edwin was murdered, thinks it was "one of the spectres of the night." Mr. Walters and Sir W. R. Nicoll dauntlessly throw all resemblances overboard and maintain that this is the dark-skinned Helena "in the character of Datchery." Dr. Jackson, though he accepts the Helena "assumption," for once admits the obvious drawing, and falls back on the theory of it being a ghostly imagination, even seeing something "a little shadowy" in the figure, as might well be expected of one seen in a vault at night. So again we are brought up against another blind wall, and even the famous cover, which looks as if it must be so decisive, helps us little towards a general agreement.

The only remaining evidence is circumstantial, and that centers chiefly in the betrothal-ring which Edwin had in his breast-pocket on the fatal night. Undoubtedly the ring was to be a decisive clue. Forster's statement is as follows: All discovery of the murder 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.

How the ring could prove these two latter points passes all imagination.

But again we must remember that there is no evidence that this comes from Dickens himself; Forster, as was shown above, merely, "learned immediately afterwards," and when Dickens was away from home.

The book itself, however, in a forced and crudely melodramatic passage, insists upon the part of the ring and its jewels.

Why should I tell her [Rosa] of it? . . . Let them be. Let them be unspoken of in his breast. However distinctly or indistinctly he entertained these thoughts, he arrived at the conclusion, Let them be. Among the mighty store of wonderful chains that are foiever forging, day and night, in the vast ironworks of time and circumstance, there was one small 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 to drag.

The importance of all this for the dénouement is beyond question. But it must be noticed that it is not the retention of the ring which in that moment was resolved on, but to let it remain unspoken of. Again, this emphasized passage makes Jasper's attempt certain, but gives no clue as to its success, only as to its eventual detection.

Thus in whatever direction of evidence we turn — Dickens' own proved statements, his supposed indications given at second-hand, the indications in the book itself after the minutest search of opposing critics, the analogy of the great author's earlier works, the "feeling" impressed upon his closest students, and even the title-drawing done under his own direction — all alike lead us to some place where the tracks are absolutely lost, and opinions remain just as divided as on the first impression. A slight majority perhaps of the critics who have made a study of the book think decidedly that Edwin was not murdered. But a considerable minority are equally certain that he was, and neither side can find any decisive proof. Now in the case of an author so careless as Dickens generally was of scientific detail, while so keen to reserve any melodramatic points, so liable also by his method of monthly numbers to fall into small contradictions never intended, the one rational conclusion is that he deliberately left the denouement open, and with the greatest possible care avoided blocking h's own way towards either solution, as he might hereafter see best. The mystery of Edwin Drood, therefore, Dickens carried to the grave, because even he had not himself solved it finally.

II. Who Was Datchery?

The second question raised by the book — the identity of Datchery — is a problem of the most curious interest, and of a perplexity of opposing circumstantial evidence, reminding us of insoluble cases like that of Eliza Fenning or the Sydenham murders.

It differs from the central problem about Edwin in allowing, not one, but several conceivable solutions. It is connected with it, not only as being obviously the prime detecting agency, but because if Datchery is Edwin himself, the main point of the mystery is settled.

Datchery has been explained by critics in at least eight different ways.

(1) As a character that has not yet been introduced (Athenaum, April 1 and 8, 1911); (2) a detective or a awyer employed by Grewgious (Cornhill Magazine, March, 1884, and Mr. Saunders); (3) Neville Landless (F. C. B., in Cambridge Review, 19061; (4) Grewgious (Mr. Percy Fitzgerald); (5) Tartar (Mr. G. F. Gadd, Dickensian, vol. ii); (6) Bazzard (Mr. Edwin Charles, and many others); (7) Helena Landless (Mr. J. C. Walters, Dr. Jackson, and Sir W. Robertson Nicoll); (8) Edwin Drood himself (Mr. Proctor and Mr. Andrew Lang).

The first four of these may be ruled out of court without much ceremony.

When the Athenaum reviewer assumes that the book might be as long as Dornbey and Son he was evidently not aware that exactly half of Edwin Drood — six out of the twelve parts of so many pages each mentioned in the contract with Chapman and Hall — had already appeared. There is room enough for new characters to appear, but Datchery, in Dickens' own phrase to Miss Hogarth, is an "assumption." This also disposes of the suggestion that he is merely a detective, sent by Grewgious. Real detectives do not go out of their way to attract attention, and Datchery was clearly a gentleman of education and position.

Mr. Saunders greatly improved this, by making him one of the firm of Mr. Grewgious' solicitors, below his rooms in Staple Inn, who have twice been mentioned. In this case, the shock of white hair would probably not be a wig, and would thus avoid the difficulty of his perpetually shaking it.

But then what is the "assumption"? That he was Neville Landless can hardly have been seriously argued, though the initials given above suggest a distinguished Theological Professor. Anything more unlike the easy, bantering Datchery than the gloomy, uninteresting Neville cannot be imagined. Moreover, while Datchery is hunting for evidence against Jasper at Cloisterham, Jasper himself is shadowing Neville in Staple Inn, and is being shadowed in turn by Grewgious and Tartar. The identification with the "angular" old Mr. Grewgious is, if possible, even more ridiculous.

A better case is made out by Mr. Gadd in the Dickensian for Datchery being Tartar. Tartar had retired from the navy to inherit his uncle's fortune, and really was, like Datchery, "a single buffer, of easy temper, living idly on his means," while his breezy style of address has a good deal that recalls Datchery. His assuming a disguise at all at Cloisterham, where he was a stranger, is quite unnecessary, but may perhaps be only due to Dickens' melodramatic instincts. Dr. Jackson dismisses the theory as wholly impossible, but the apparently fatal bar — that Datchery appears at Cloisterham in Chapter xviii and only meets Rosa and hears of the story in Chapter xxi — is equally fatal to the Helena theory, which Dr. Jackson supports. Mr. Cadd, however, does not seem to have created a school.

The commonest theory is — or rather used to be, for it has grown somewhat musty — that Datchery is Bazzard.

The evidence for it resolves itself at the last almost entirely into the remark of Grewgious to Rosa after Datchery has appeared at Cloisterham, "In fact he is off duty here altogether just at present." But there are two satisfactory explanations of this statement. One is that it might well be a blind, intended by Dickens to make the careless reader adopt this very theory. The other is that Bazzard really was in all probability employed in watching Jasper at this time, not, however, at Cloisterham but about the opium den. Mr. Proctor's ingenious conjecture, too, is worth notice, that the "place near Aldersgate Street" where Jasper puts up would have turned out to be Bazzard's house.

Dickens had an absolutely unlimited belief in the long arm of coincidence.

But even such identifications pour rire as those with Neville or Grewgious are hardly more hopeless than the one with Bazzard. Besides all the objections to the other cases, most of which Bazzard seems to combine in himself, imagine the "pale, puffy-faced, doughy-complexioned," selfish, discontented, ungrateful, unlikable clerk, who writes tragedies that nobody will read, assuming at will the character of the easy, delightful Datchery! He, too, must unhesitatingly be brushed aside. Mr. Saunders' conjecture is far better, that he was to prove to be a traitor to Grewgious, and assist in some way against his will in entrapping Jasper. It is probably for some such reason that Mrs. Billickin, with whom Rosa lodges, is made to be Bazzard's cousin.

The only remaining identifications of Datchery are the two that are by far the most startling, most melodramatic, most in keeping with Dickens' own description of the story as "a very curious and new idea" — those with Edwin Drood himself, and with Helena Landless. It is true that the idea of Watched by the Dead — Mr. Proctor's sensational title — would not be altogether new. In two short stories Hunted Down and (the Dickens part of) No Thoroughfare, the idea is to some extent anticipated, but the difference of treatment might be considered to make the story new. In fact this is just the melodramatic plot which would have strongly appealed to Dickens, and in his later days seemed to be growing almost into an obsession. So far then as the general idea of the plot, the evidence of the titles, the illustration on the cover, and the resemblance of Edwin's talk to Datchery's talk with the opium hag, Mr. Proctor and Mr. Lang have a very strong case indeed. We know that it could not have occurred in life, because though a disguise (something much better than Datchery's wig and eyebrows) might perhaps have been carried through, the voice cannot be disguised, and Edwin could not possibly have met Jasper; but we must allow a considerable margin of convention for melodramatic plots.

But there are two culs-de-sac to this theory, both absolutely fatal, if Dickens played anything like fair with his readers. The first is that Datchery was really ignorant of Jasper's lodgings, and showed it when pretense could not be known to anybody, or of any service whatever to the plot.

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.

Then he meets Deputy, and bargains to be shown the way to Tope's. The boy points to an arched passage.

"Yoo see," he says, "that there winder and door." "That's Tope's?" "Yer lie; it ain't. That's Jarsper's." "Indeed?" said Mr. Datchery with a second look of some interest. Special pleading has to go far indeed to make this second look given for Deputy's future benefit! The second fatal bar is to be found in Datchery's conversation with the opium hag. "I'll lay it out honest," she says, "on a medicine as does me good." "What's the medicine?" he asks. "I'll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after. It's opium." "Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden look." But the woman had asked Edwin also for three and sixpence, and had told him that she wanted it for opium. There is no getting over this, if Dickens played fair.

We turn to the last identification, with Helena Landless. There is something decidedly taking about this, regarded purely as melodrama. It would undoubtedly be "a new idea" and "not communicable" (at least to Forster) "or its interest would begone." It would, of course, be even more impossible in actual life than Edwin's assumption, and the special pleading of Dr. Jackson, Mr. Walters, and Sir W. R. Nicoll on behalf of its many "absurdities serves only to heighten them. Of course no girl could really stay at an hotel for weeks as an elderly gentleman, and be unsuspected. But when we are told that Helena after ordering a pint of sherry for dinner "perhaps did not consume it all," or that when she "fell to on the bread and cheese and ale with an appetite," Mrs. Tope "would have thought her strangely fastidious otherwise" — a new way of creating appetite — still more when her liking the old tavern way of keeping scores is explained as "seen by her in country walks with Neville" (!) — it is plain that the argument is wearing very thin. The physical impossibilities seem hardly to be noticed by these interpreters.

Helena was "slender, supple, fierce," and "very dark, almost of the gipsy type." Datchery "wears a tightish surtout" — the very last thing a girl could wear — and, apart from his hair and eyebrows, the only bodily detail mentioned is that his head was unusually large — a likely thing for a girl! But the case is almost exactly parallel to Bazzard's. As that rested in the last resort mainly on Grewgious' remark, "In fact he is off duty here altogether just at present," so the case for Helena falls back continually on the remark of Neville to Mr. Crisparkle that in their childish runnings-away, she "dressed each time as a boy, and showed the daring of a man." It might have been thought that anyone would suspect that where Dickens was so anxious to hide his traces, so obvious a lead as this must be intentional. But here again, just as in Bazzard's case, it is not necessary to take it as a mere blind. There are plain enough indications given that Helena is really to face and help to crush Jasper. And the most probable solution of this is that she does again assume male clothing, and keep Jasper occupied in Staple Inn by personating her twin brother Neville whom she so nearly resembles, while Neville escapes.

But, as the book stands, she — like Grewgious and Tartar — is excluded from being Datchery by the sequence of events. Datchery appears at Cloisterham in Chapter xviii, while Grewgious, Tartar, Helena, and Neville — everybody but the stupid and disagreeable Bazzard — are all still at Staple Inn in Chapter xxi. Dr. Jackson points out that this is just as fatal to the Helena theory as to the Tartar or the Grewgious theory. So with singular and interesting boldness he deals with his text as Dr. Cheyne might do with a Psalm retaining any Pre-exilic traces He rearranges his chapters.

Now it is obvious that a theory which requires alteration of the text to begin with, starts with a very heavy handicap against it, especially since we know that Dickens revised the proofs to the end of Chapter xxi. Dr. Jackson shows too from the MS. (the Higher Criticism again) that the first half of Chapter xviii (the Datchery chapter) was written after Chapter xix ("Shadow on the Sundial"), and then transposed by Dickens. This makes an accidental transposition of the chapters after Dickens' death almost an impossibility.

But furthermore — if Dickens, as we ought to assume, played fair with his readers — Helena is barred from being Datchery for the same reason as Edwin. Helena knew where Jasper's rooms were perfectly well, but Datchery did not; for to explain Datchery's " 'Indeed,' with a second look of some interest," when Deputy points out the room over the archway, as only meaning that he "regards them now in a new light" (to which Deputy has contributed nothing whatever) is obviously special pleading of the kind of which the critics of Edwin Drood have furnished such an astonishing variety.

In short, most people will agree with Mr. Chesterton that the objection is not so much to the impossibility as that this assumption would not be melodrama but farce. "One might," he says, "as easily imagine Edith Dombey dressing up as Major Bagstock!" Thus no satisfactory solution of the mystery has ever been propounded, and I submit that it never can be; because every theory not only involves improbabilities, but is impossible to reconcile with the existing text. If the MS. of the remaining chapters were suddenly discovered to be in existence, we should know what Dickens intended, but we should still not have a satisfactory solution, because he himself — perhaps owing to some uncertainty in his original idea, perhaps to a variation of it in the course of writing — has in some way or other barred every conceivable outlet. It must always remain "The Mystery" of Edwin Drood. And it is not an unreasonable surmise that the hopeless task of finding a satisfactory solution may have precipitated the final attack of apoplexy while he was at work on it which brought the curtain so sorrowfully down.

Perhaps I may add here a few of the astonishing "Cathedralia" in the book, which would have made the late Mr. Mackenzie Walcott's hair stand on end. They scarcely affect the evidence, however, except as proving Dickens' amazing inaccuracy in matters not lending themselves to his particular gifts.

Jasper, a lay choral-clerk, is also called "a lay Precentor," and even "the Precentor." Mr. Crisparkle's Minor Canonry must have been in private patronage, since he was "promoted by a patron grateful for a well-taught son." At service in the Cathedral, "the sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel," the sanctuary at Cloisterham thus being the nave.

Jasper "leads" the choir-boys in the procession to service. (This, by the way, is silently corrected by Charles Collins in the picture on the cover.) Jasper's "pathetic supplication to have his heart inclined to keep this law" is offered up, strange to say, at Vespers." But the best of all is that when the Princess Puffer wants to see and hear Jasper in the Anthem, she has to go to the Cathedral at seven o'clock. That would have been waking sleepy Cloisterham up with a vengeance! Still as the celebrated match of Dingley Dell v. All Muggleton clearly proves that Dickens had never played cricket in his life, and yet remains the most famous report of a match on record, so the impossible doings at Cloisterham have an interest never to be found in the lifelike and accurate Barchester.