First published: The Spectator, 28 July 1888 - Page 13

Mr. Proctor has done himself injustice by the title he has given to his little essay on "Edwin Drood." He has given us nothing sensational, but a convincing demonstration of what the real plot of "Edwin Drood" was intended by Dickens to be. Mr. Proctor is right in saying that a perception of the real idea underlying this plot is what is chiefly needed for raising the book from a commonplace and unimpressive story of murder, out of which all the Dickens was, as Mrs. Curdel in "Nicholas Nickleby" said of the drama, positively gone, into an exceedingly striking and entirely novel form of Dickens's favourite theme, thus forming the powerful conclusion of an ascending climax. This was the reason for Dickens's extreme anxiety, noticeable in Forster's Life, not to reveal the plot to any one prematurely. He writes to Forster that he has "a very curious and new idea — not a communicable idea, or the interest of the book will be gone." Dickens, in fact, meant to keep the secret even from Forster, for fear of ruining the interest of his book:

"From what we know of Forster's restless inquisitiveness in regard to Dickens' plans," Mr. Proctor remarks, "we learn without surprise that immediately after he had been told that the idea was not communicable, he asked to have it communicated to him. Nor does it seem to have been regarded by Forster, as at all strange that 'immediately afterwards' Dickens communicated to him the idea which had been described as incommunicable,' or that the new and curious idea should be both stale and common-place — nothing, in fact, but the oft-told tale of a murder detected by the presence of indestructible jewellery in lime into which the body of the murdered man had been flung. Forster's vanity blinded him in such sort that the patent artifice was not detected. Yet even he asked where the originality of the idea came in. Dickens explains, he naively adds, that it 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 to be tempted.'"

A new and curious idea, truly! Little did Dickens think that in thus keeping at bay for the time his garrulous and irrepressible biographer, he was making all but his more observant readers believe that the Dickens they knew was already gone before he died.

But the real plot of the story was exactly what Dickens himself described it: "a very curious and new idea, and a very strong one, though difficult to work." It was also, as Mr. Proctor successfully shows, though this was probably not perceived by Dickens himself, only the fullest development of an idea which runs through every one of his novels after Pickwick. That theme, in its simplest form, is nothing more than that of a person — generally, but not always, a criminal — watched at every turn by some one for whom he feels nothing but contempt. In "Oliver Twist," "The Old Curiosity Shop," "Dombey and Son," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Great Expectations," only the simpler form of this theme appears, and then only as a subordinate part of the plot. But even a careful reader of Dickens may be somewhat surprised to find on examination that in all the other books, including the more important of his shorter tales, the same idea reappears as a central part of the plot, with a regularity which in other hands could scarcely have failed to seem monotonous but for the extraordinary variety of forms in which it is presented, together with the complexity of plot which is at once a merit and a fault in Dickens's method of construction. And it is very curious to notice how many of the characteristic points in the plot of "Edwin Drood" are "blocked in" in the earlier stories. Thus, in "Little Dorrit," Monsieur Blandois (though here it is the villain who does it) disguises himself, just like Datchery, as an old man with white hair, watched 'patientissamentally' by Cavaletto. In "Hunted Down," a powerful short story, Meltham, or Beckwith, supposed to be dying by slow murder, turns suddenly upon the villain Slinkton, whom he tracks to death. And in the part of "No Thoroughfare" written by Dickens (the rest was by Wilkie Collins, who seems to have worked in admirable sympathy with him), where the circumstances of the murder have a striking resemblance in more than one point to that of "Edwin Drood," the dead man suddenly comes to life in order to confront the murderer.

Mr. Proctor thus, with great literary skill, and with an amplitude of illustration which we, of course, can only indicate, shows at least an antecedent probability that the plot of "Edwin Drood" would be some variety of Dickens's favourite plot, — that Edwin, in short, was not dead when Jasper believed that he had murdered him, and that he was continually watching Jasper under a disguise until the moment arrived for a dramatic denouement. The disguise, of course, is that of Mr. Datchery, the "white-haired personage with black eyebrows," who appeared suddenly in Cloisterham. That this is undoubtedly the truth had already been conjectured by many, perhaps by most, of the careful readers. But the most striking and novel feature in Mr. Proctor's argument is that the actual denouement was to have been one of the most dramatic in all Dickens — perhaps the most sensational in all fiction. It is that Jasper was not merely to be confronted with Edwin Drood alive again, but that he is to be gradually forced to Mrs. Sapsea's monument into which, in quicklime, he believes he has cast Edwin's dead body, there to grope in horror for the diamond ring which he fancies now to be the sole evidence of his terrible crime, when —

"As he holds up the lantern, shuddering at the thought of what it may reveal to him, he sees his victim with stern look fixed on him — pale, silent, relentless! With a shriek of horror (the 'ghost' of that awful cry had been heard before by Durdles) Jasper casts down the lantern, and flies from the tomb. But even as he rushes forth he is faced by two men, from whom he turns, utterly unnerved by the horror of the tomb, to seek the only path of escape — the winding staircase of the tower. They follow him closely, Neville first, Tartar close by him, Drood himself a few steps behind Tartar, and Crisparkle following. Seized by Neville at the top of the staircase, Jasper turns and struggles fiercely with the man he hates. Neville receives his death-wound, but lives long enough to know that his name has been cleared; Tartar, Drood, and Crisparkle capture Jasper, and the villain is cast into prison, but not until he has been confronted by his supposed victim and by Grewgious, and made to feel how, while he supposed himself safe, every movement of his had been known to them and watched by them. In the knowledge that Tartar loves Rosa, and is loved by her, Jasper's punishment is complete."

Now, slight as the materials may seem to an ordinary reader for a close to the story to be suggested with such precision of detail, Mr. Proctor is perfectly justified in saying that little of it needs to be invented at all. It was nearly all told by Dickens himself; first, in what the existing torso of the story discloses generally, underneath its purposely misleading suggestions, such as that of the quicklime; secondly, in the very few hints, dropped jealously even to Forster and Miss Hogarth, of which the most important is his own phrase, "the Datchery assumption;" lastly, and perhaps most incontrovertibly, in the small pictures on the original green covers, which have unfortunately become somewhat rare. These pictures, which are rather coarsely drawn, and scarcely worthy of Mr. Fildes's delicate illustrations to the book itself, were done by Mr. Fildes under Dickens's direct instructions, but without explanation of their meaning, and hence are of unique interest. And the concluding scene of these, where Jasper is seen entering a cell or vault with a lantern, and confronting the pale, resolute figure of Edwin Drood, who is waiting for him, entirely fits in with the conclusion above sketched, and at once destroys any possibility of a conclusion based on the idea that Edwin has really been murdered.

It is unnecessary to apologise for this detailed analysis of so slight an essay, — hardly more than a pamphlet in form, but full of interesting and valuable material for every student of Dickens, and, indeed, of English literature. Even as a mere careful study of the unfinished work of the great novelist by an eminent literary and scientific man, this little work would deserve notice. But it does much more than that. The right understanding of the plot of "Edwin Drood" justifies the remarkable opinion expressed by so good a judge as Longfellow, dissenting at the time from the great majority of critics, that it was "certainly one of Dickens's most beautiful works, if not the most beautiful of all." It demonstrates, in our opinion, conclusively that Dickens, so far from falling back from decay of power upon a threadbare plot-of-murder, was really working out with his most matured skill by far the boldest and most original variation of the favourite theme which underlies every one of his plots.