Introduction

It is well known that Dickens was scrupulously reticent about the plot of his last story, and that he left behind him no notes for the chapters which he did not live to write. Nevertheless there is one all- important tradition which must not be neglected. Mr John Forster, in his Life of Charles Dickens, has a very precise account of the plot which Dickens had proposed to himself in Edwin Drood. "The story, I learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him. Discovery by the murderer of the utter uselessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which has resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it. So much was told to me before any of the book was written ; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last inter- view. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer."

The extant fragment, so far as it goes, is perfectly consistent with the scheme here described. Directly or indirectly we hear that Jasper leads a double life; that, despite his real or pretended affection for his nephew, under the influence of opium he "threatens" him; that, not under the influence of opium, he provokes a quarrel between Drood and Landless, and subsequently makes the most of it; that he undertakes an "unaccountable expedition" with Durdles; and that, at a later visit to the opium den, he babbles about the accomplishment of a long contemplated design. The discovery that the engagement of Edwin and Rosa is at an end follows soon after the disappearance. That the old betrothal ring, which, though Jasper did not know it, Edwin had in his possession, and, when he parted from Rosa, still retained, was hereafter to play an important part in the denoument, we are warned in an emphatic aside: "there was one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion" [i.e. Edwin's determination to say nothing to Rosa about the ring], "riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag." Thus far, the story left half-told is in exact accord with the forecast. But, whereas, according to Forster, (1) Drood's disappearance was to remain un-explained until the betrothal ring should discover the murderer, the victim, and the locality of the crime, and (2) the murderer was to write his confessions in the condemned cell, the extant fragment stops short of these things. It is indeed possible, and even probable, that Grewgious has anxiously asked himself what had become of the ring: but there is nothing to guide him in the search for it; and accordingly, within the limits of the fragment the disappearance of Edwin Drood is still a "mystery." It is a "mystery" for us who know, not only what is common knowledge to the inhabitants of Cloisterham, but also the observations of the opium-woman, and the suspicions of Grewgious and Rosa: and it is all the more a "mystery" for those who have not our advantages; for the inhabitants of Cloisterham, for the opium-woman, and for Grewgious and Rosa and their allies.

To some critics however, and notably to Mr Proctor and Mr Lang, the plot described by Forster seems too simple and obvious: and accordingly they suppose that, though Jasper had planned the murder and believed himself to have committed it, Drood escaped, and within the limits of the fragment is already occupied in tracking his assailant.

Now it is certain that Dickens intended to keep his readers in doubt about Drood's fate. For in a tentative list of possible titles for the book the last three are "The disappearance of Edwin Drood," "The mystery of Edwin Drood," "Dead? or Alive?" This being so, both theories, the theory countenanced by Forster, that Jasper accomplished the murder of Drood, and the theory of Mr Proctor and Mr Lang, that Drood escaped, are admissible: and I propose in due course to take both into consideration.

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