His gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet — or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence — and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered.

⯎ ⯎ ⯎

These closing lines of chapter xvii in The Mystery of Edwin Drood are particularly fitting as an introduction to a study intended to deal largely with the unwritten half of Charles Dickens's last, unfinished work. Without too manifest a striving for effect, we may consider the twenty-three chapters of the fragment we have today as so many windows opening upon a perspective of nocturnal sky. That sky is speckled with stars, and those stars are the foreshadowings and incidents of the plot developed by Dickens through the first six monthly parts of his novel. Like old Hiram Grewgious, we fix our critical gaze upon those heavenly bodies; we seek to read in them much that was hidden from us when Dickens put down his pen for the last time on Wednesday, June 8, 1870. Only a few hours later he suffered the stroke that proved fatal and ended forever the activity of his vast creative genius. Ever since that day, men and women have sought to penetrate the mystery left by his death, to read the stars according to their varied abilities. I should like now to add another reading to the long and impressive list, but whether I have mastered the alphabet of the language of the stars that shine in the fragmentary firmament called The Mystery of Edwin Drood will be for the reader to judge.

What sort of novel have we to consider when we turn to the fragment that occupied the mind of the novelist during a good portion of the last two years of his life? Gilbert Chesterton, widely accepted as an authority on the works of Dickens, speaks about it thus in his critical study of the man: "His last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, depends entirely upon construction, even upon a centralized strategy. He staked everything upon a plot; he who had been the weakest of plotters, weaker than Sim Tappertit. He essayed a detective story, he who could never keep a secret; and he has kept it to this day. A new Dickens was really being born when Dickens died." George Santayana, who devoted one of his Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies to Dickens, states: "In his last book he was going to describe a love that was passionate and criminal." While the master of paradox and the eminent philosopher are both correct in their appraisals, they might have gone a step farther. Edwin Drood is indeed a detective story with a complicated plot, and it does involve a love that is not only passionate but criminal. But in addition, as I have endeavored to make clear in previous studies, it paints the psychological portrait of a murderer with whom Charles Dickens identified himself. Here, as in all his previous writings, Dickens had something personal to say. What that was is to me one of the most interesting aspects of the mystery.

Some of those who have tried their hands at reading the stars have presented their findings in the form of sequels to the existing fragment. Without any comment on the merits or faults of such individual conclusions as have come to my attention, I list them in chronological order, for the benefit of those readers who may be interested in them:

1. Orpheus C. Kerr [R. H. Newell], The Cloven Foot, 1870.

2. Henry Morford, John Jasper's Secret, 1871-1872.

3. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Complete. Part Second of the Mystery of Edwin Drood, by the spirit-pen of Charles Dickens through a medium, 1873.

4. Gillan Vase [Mrs. Richard Newton], A Great Mystery Solved, 1878.

5. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Completed in 1914 by W. E. C.

6. Dickens's Mystery of Edwin Drood. Completed by a Loyal Dickensian, 1927.

7. Edward Harris, John Jasper's Gatehouse, 1931.

8. Bruce Graeme, Epilogue, 1934.

My own feeling about such continuations of Edwin Drood is that writers make a great mistake in attempting them. With all due respect for human ingenuity, I hold that no one can adequately carry on from where Dickens left off. Even though we consider our conclusions logical and inevitable, we still lack certainty; nor can we ever achieve more than a feeble imitation of that style so peculiarly his own. A far more successful attempt to solve the mystery in fictional form was that employed by Dr. Austin Freeman, who wrote The Mystery of Angelina Frood. Here we find Dickens's basic plot transferred to entirely new surroundings, and developed with a fresh set of characters.

But we may speculate upon the forward movement of the novel in its unwritten portion, studying the foreshadowings and incidents already given us or considering certain landmarks that have been used time and time again in attempts to arrive at some satisfactory solution of the mystery. Having written at some length concerning the Datchery assumption; the nature and activities of John Jasper; the genesis of the novel; and the problem of whether or not Edwin Drood was murdered, I intend to review in this final study what I shall call the lesser landmarks. These are four, as I see them, and comprise the Sapsea fragment, the controversial green cover of the monthly parts, certain minor characters of the novel, and the use of hypnotism throughout the story.

A few years after the death of Dickens, his friend John Forster found among the sheets of one of the novelist's other manuscripts "some detached slips of his writing, on paper only half the size of that used for the tale, so cramped, interlined, and blotted as to be nearly illegible, which on close inspection proved to be a scene in which Sapsea the auctioneer is introduced as the principal figure, among a group of characters new to the story." This brief manuscript, entitled "How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a member of the Eight Club. Told by himself," is generally known as the "Sapsea fragment." I do not believe that it helps us greatly to arrive at any sound conclusion concerning the plot development in the unwritten part of the novel.

I cannot accept Forster's explanation of the fragment: that Dickens, "having become a little nervous about the course of the tale, from a fear that he might have plunged too soon into the incidents leading on to the catastrophe, such as the Datchery assumption in the fifth number (a misgiving he had certainly expressed to his sister-in-law)," had decided to "open some fresh veins of character incidental to the interest, though not directly part of it, and so to handle them in connection with Sapsea as a little to suspend the final development even while assisting to strengthen it." To my mind, this fragment represents no more than a step taken by Dickens in the building up of Sapsea's character. Told in the first person, it could hardly have been introduced into the narrative of Edwin Drood, since the novel is written from the author's omnipresent point of view. But as a revealing study of the pompous Mayor of Cloisterham, it is a little gem. Here is the solemn ass in all his glory, with his delusion that he knew the world, his passion for emulating the Dean, and his conceited belief that he was capable of handling men. I have no doubt that Dickens used this study when he came to the actual writing of Edwin Drood, but I look upon it as merely preliminary material for the novel.

Nor do I believe that Poker, the young man who professed to find in Sapsea a personage high in the Church, was an early model for Dick Datchery. This Poker flatters the auctioneer to the top of his bent, as does Datchery, and even asserts that he came to the town (unnamed in the fragment) for the sole purpose of seeing and hearing him. But Datchery flatters him in a more subtle manner, and for a definite purpose: the gleaning of information. The idea that Poker served as a model for Datchery may have arisen from the fact that the young man is represented as speaking to Sapsea by the churchyard, where Datchery converses with His Honor in one of the novel's choicest scenes. Beyond that coincidence, however, there is no similarity between the two men. No; I can see in this brief fragment nothing more than a trial sketch for what was later to become a more finished portrait.

The bluish green cover for the monthly instalments of Edwin Drood presents perhaps the most controversial of all the subjects relating to the novel; mentioned sooner or later by practically everyone who has written about Edwin Drood, it has become something of a mystery in its own right. Presumably it was designed by Charles Allston Collins, Dickens's son-in-law, for on September 24, 1869, the novelist wrote to Frederic Chapman, his publisher, as follows: "Charles Collins wishes to try his hand at illustrating my new book. I want him to try the cover first. Please send down to him at Gad's Hill, any of our old green covers that you may have by you." And Dickens later wrote, at the end of a letter quoted by Forster: "Charles Collins has designed an excellent cover."

In spite of this evidence, The Sphere, in the issue of February 9, 1929, published an article by Walter Dexter, editor of The Dickensian, entitled "New Light on Edwin Drood " wherein Dexter stated that new discoveries concerning the cover "were made in the autumn of 1926, when Professor C. F. Lehmann-Haupt was on a visit to Sir Henry and Lady Dickens. It was then that Lady Dickens (to whom the professor is distantly related) told him that the final drawing was done by Luke Fildes." The original design by Collins — in an unfinished state — was reproduced as an illustration for this article; it is interesting to note that Collins sketched in place of the three men on the winding staircase — men with whose appearance every student of the novel is probably familiar — three helmeted gentlemen equipped with truncheons and handcuffs; in other words, the police. And in "New Facts Concerning Edwin Drood" (The Dickensian, 1929) Professor Lehmann-Haupt writes: "Before I made this important fact public, I wrote to Lady Dickens asking her kindly to confirm it, which she did, saying: 'I did tell you that Charles Collins made the first drawing for the cover of Edwin Drood, but he fell ill and did not finish it. Luke Fildes continued and finished the drawing with several alterations.'" That is all I have been able to discover in connection with the origin of the green cover; and since Sir Luke Fildes died in 1927, it is unlikely that he expressed any opinion on the statements made by Professor Lehmann-Haupt.

When we contemplate the cover itself and ask the question, What clue or clues does it afford to the story as it might logically have been developed? We fall into the realm of mere conjecture. On its dexter side, attached to the meager wreath encircling the title: "The Mystery of Edwin Drood. / by Charles Dickens. / with illustrations," we find a few roses, some in the bud and some in full bloom. Here, I take it, is the symbolic presentation of the feminine influence in the story; the love interest. In the upper right-hand corner, a female figure suggestive of happiness holds a flower above her head. The sinister side of the encircling wreath bears nothing but thorns, suggestive of the male element, and perhaps a motif of murder. An avenging fury with snake-like hair — or possibly a figure emblematical of tragedy, — dagger in hand, matches the happy creature on the right, and dominates the upper left-hand corner. Extending between these two figures and occupying almost the entire upper third of the cover is a scene depicting Rosa and Edwin leaving the cathedral. Rosa's face is turned away from young Drood, who looks straight ahead; neither of them has a happy expression. They are on the dexter side of the vignette, and typify the "boy and girl going apart from one another." On the sinister side stands Jasper, right hand to mouth, gazing at the young couple. Two ecclesiastical gentlemen, preceded by an equal number of choir boys, are on Jasper's left. The scene is certainly not in the novel, although in his "Number Plans" for the fourth monthly part Dickens wrote: "Last meeting of Rosa & Edwin in ["in" crossed out, caret inserted, and "outside" written above] the Cathedral? Yes!'

Below this scene, on the dexter side, are three vignettes descending perpendicularly to the bottom of the cover. The uppermost of the three reveals a girl or young woman, with long hair down her back, looking intently at a placard or bill whereon is visible the word "lost." The features of this unknown person are not discernible, but she appears to be youthful. It has been argued that the figure represents Rosa, fleeing from Jasper to her guardian in London and stopping to look at one of the posters that Jasper caused to be circulated shortly after Edwin's disappearance. That the poster has been up for some time is inferable from its downward-curling corner. I have said that this woman appears to be youthful, but sometimes I am not so certain of her age; sometimes I am inclined to believe that she may be the Opium Woman, for reasons to be given later in more detail. Certainly I am convinced that the Opium Woman saw such placards in London and made use of the knowledge gained therefrom.

The next vignette, immediately below the woman facing the poster, depicts a young lady seated on a rustic bench. A man, kneeling at her right, is kissing her hand. This man bears no resemblance to the Jasper of the Cathedral scene, but despite that fact I feel sure that this picture refers to the melodramatic interview between Rosa and Jasper by the sundial in the garden of the Nuns' House. Certainly Sir Luke Fildes used a similar type of bench in his text illustration of that moving encounter. Some interpreters of the cover have read into this picture a proposal on the part of Tartar. Mr. Percy Carden avers that the kneeling man is Neville Landless avowing his love to Rosa, because he has a mustache, and because Miss Ferdinand, a pupil at Miss Twinkleton's, "got into new trouble by surreptitiously clapping on a paper moustache at dinner-time, and going through the motions of aiming a water-bottle at Miss Giggles, who drew a table-spoon in defense." This episode took place on the day following the quarrel between Neville Landless and Edwin Drood in Jasper's rooms. Inasmuch as Miss Ferdinand was playing the part of young Landless, Mr. Carden infers that he must have worn a mustache, and so the man in the picture is Neville. I have never been able to read into Miss Ferdinand's action more than a schoolgirl's natural way of playing the part of a male, especially of a male whom she supposes to be a villain. Nor am I perturbed by the fact that the man and woman in the garden scene are not dressed in mourning, as were Rosa and Jasper in the novel. When the cover was designed, Charles Dickens could not have had in mind every last minute detail of the story. And so I have no hesitation in accepting this sketch as the scene by the sundial.

The drawing at the very bottom of the dexter side shows the Opium Woman sitting on her bedstead, pipe in hand, and holding the container from which she takes her "mixter" — although this container is far too large to be a "thimble."

The sinister side of the cover has what appears at first glance to be three sketches to match the ones I have just discussed, and these I shall consider in ascending order. Right at the bottom is John Chinaman, a logical counterpart of the Princess Puffer. Above him two men are climbing a winding staircase, presumably in the cathedral tower. Above them again is a third man, mounting two steps at a time, bending over the railing and pointing upward with his right hand. Much has been made of the fact that he points straight at Jasper in the cathedral scene. Since these three climbers replace the policemen in the original sketch made by Charles Collins, I infer that they are all going up the staircase at the same time; that we should consider them part of a single drawing; and that we are not dealing with separate ascents at odd intervals. I have always considered this scene to represent the pursuit of Jasper, destined to reach its climax on the summit of the cathedral tower. The topmost climber I take to be Tartar. The next individual, who is likewise going up two steps at a time, I take to be Datchery. His face is so obscured by the stone pivot of the stairs that it is little more than a blur, but he is tall and angular. The man lowest down on the stairs looks back with a mournful expression; he, too, points upward, but with far less vehemence in his gesture than that displayed by the topmost climber. I believe him to be Neville Landless. Since no one of the three wears ecclesiastical dress, my presumption is that Minor Canon Crisparkle is not visible, although on his way up the staircase.

Within the circle of roses and thorns just below the caption "with illustrations" are a crossed key and spade, forming an arch above what is clearly Durdles's dinner bundle. The bundle, by association, leads me to identify the key as that of the Sapsea tomb. The spade immediately suggests the digging of graves, or the removal of quicklime from the mound in Durdles's yard.

I have saved for final consideration the sketch at the bottom of the cover, a pendant to the cathedral scene above. This is the most controversial picture of all. A man holding a lantern in his right hand is entering some sort of room; he has pushed open a door, which has swung back to his left, and he seems to have his left hand on the knob. Before him stands a youth dressed in a long paletot and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. This young man's left hand is holding the flap of his coat; he is not thrusting his hand inside the coat, as some have assumed.

The man with the lantern has invariably been taken to be John Jasper. I do not demur. I am equally certain that the young man facing Jasper is neither Neville Landless nor his sister Helena in the guise of Dick Datchery. Since he closely resembles the youth in the cathedral scene, I assume him to be Edwin Drood.

But I do not for one moment believe, as did Richard Proctor and others, that this sketch represents a tomb, or that Edwin Drood is confronting his wicked uncle who has come into the burial place of his nephew to seek the ring of diamonds and rubies, as I am convinced he ultimately did. The room or chamber — whatever it may be called — is too large for a tomb, and there is no trace of either coffin or sarcophagus. Furthermore the door has a rim lock, of a type not usually found in the entrances to tombs, and I can detect evidence to indicate that it is paneled. It swings inward and to the left, as would a door opening out of a hallway. Besides, if I were John Jasper, and were entering the tomb wherein I had concealed the body of the nephew I had murdered, I certainly would not do so with a lighted lantern in my hand. I should wait until the door were tightly closed; then and only then would I light the lantern. No; this "place" is not a tomb. I have always felt it to be a room in the gatehouse, and the vignette itself to be indicative of an event that took place on the night of Edwin Drood's murder. Let me reconstruct the scene. The dinner given by Jasper to young Landless and his nephew on that momentous Christmas Eve has been over for some hours; the youths have shaken hands and patched up their quarrel, and the time has passed pleasantly enough. But the "storms of wind" mentioned by Dickens in his "plans" have arisen; the two young men go down to the river to watch the action of this tempest. We learn from the story that they did not spend more than ten minutes at the water's edge. But how long did it take them to get there? And how much time did Edwin Drood take in returning to the gatehouse after he had left Neville at Mr. Crisparkle's door?

Is it not conceivable that Jasper, in the overwrought state of mind that must have been his on the very night when he had planned to murder Edwin, could not await calmly his nephew's return, but set forth to meet him, lantern in hand? And is it not equally possible that Edwin came back to the gatehouse without having encountered his uncle, and arrived there before him? Such, at least, is my contention.

In The Dickensian for 1929 there is an article by H. W. Jamieson and F. M. B. Rosenthal, entitled, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood — Some New Keys that Fit." These writers likewise refuse to accept the theory that the Jasper of the much-disputed vignette is entering a tomb, and offer an explanation not only highly original in nature but based upon their own personal investigation as well.

"In Rochester Cathedral itself [they write] . . . there is a door which exactly tallies with the door in the picture — a high, massive door with a rim lock, that opens outwards from right to left as one comes from the side on which the lock is fixed. This door is in the South Choir aisle and opens on a short flight of steps, at the foot of which lies the passage at the side of the chancel into which Jasper and Durdles emerged from the crypt on the night of the unaccountable expedition." And further on they state: "The lamp is another very important point in favour of this being the spot indicated in the picture. It is not the type of lamp a man would carry about with him, but it is exactly the type that would be found in the Cathedral."

I should like to add in passing that it pleased me to find that these writers consider Grewgious to be Datchery, and that they venture the opinion that quicklime may have preserved Drood's body. Since I had arrived at the same conclusion with regard to the old lawyer long before I read their article, my pleasure will be readily understood. And their suggestion that quicklime might preserve a body led me to obtain the scientific confirmation of that fact introduced in my study, "Was Edwin Drood Murdered?"

But to return to the cover. The reader must have gathered by this time that very little can be deduced from it to elucidate the future plot development of the novel. Such is indeed the case. All that I have said — and I could have gone on at far greater length-shows that the collection of sketches served its purpose well: the cover did undoubtedly attract attention and arouse interest in the minds of Dickens's readers even before they realized that the story they were following from month to month would never reach completion. But I honestly doubt that it did much more. And so it is logical to conclude that Charles Dickens was purposely vague in his instructions to Collins and to Sir Luke Fildes, and that he would hardly have given away the heart of his mystery in what was actually of no more significance than our dust jackets today.

When we take up the minor characters of the novel, we find a far more fertile field for our conjectures concerning the probable development of plot. The Opium Woman, Deputy, Bazzard, and Luke Honeythunder all had more or less important parts to play; but of these four the Opium Woman looms largest.

Despite her infrequent appearances — she is to be found only in chapters i, xiv, and xxiii of the novel's printed version — the Opium Woman is a most consistently drawn character, and one who was destined to exert a definite influence on the course of the story. To be sure, Dickens originally intended to have her make a brief entrance into the chapter entitled "Mr. Durdles and Friend." That purpose is evidenced by his "plans" for this particular section of the novel, for we read: "Carry through the woman of the ist Chapter." The injunction is underlined, but beyond it, on the left-hand side of the sheet, we discover an emphatic: "No." Now "Mr. Durdles and Friend" was to have been chapter viii of Part II; but when Dickens learned in December, 1869, that his first two numbers were, together, twelve printed pages too short, he transposed this chapter from Number II to Number I, where it became chapter v, and was obliged to remodel Number II. His original manuscript contains a scene near the end of "Mr. Durdles and Friend" wherein Jasper and the stonemason overhear the Opium Woman talking to Deputy just outside the door of the Travellers' Twopenny.

The keynote of the Opium Woman's character is her desire for money, so clearly shown in her encounters with John Jasper, Edwin Drood, and Dick Datchery. In the marvelous opening chapter of the story, she says to John Jasper: "Ye'll remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the market price [of opium] is dreffle high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! — Ye'll pay me accordingly, deary, won't ye?" Of Edwin Drood, on the eve of the fateful dinner at the gatehouse, with his uncle and young Landless, she makes a forthright demand: "Look'ee, deary; give me three-and-sixpence, and don't you be afeard for me." And later: "If you don't give me three-and-sixpence, don't give me a brass farden. And if you do give me three-and-sixpence, deary, I'll tell you something." When she is walking with Datchery through the streets of Cloisterham shortly after her first meeting him, she asks: "Wouldn't you help me to pay for my traveller's lodging, dear gentleman, and to pay my way along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled with a grievous cough."

There is method in Dickens's emphasis on this urge for money, the old crone's outstanding characteristic. Just as in his reiteration of her tendency to self-pity, which goes hand in hand with her desire for gold. "O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! — Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!" is her refrain to Jasper. "My lungs is weakly; my lungs is dreffle bad. Poor me, poor me, my cough is rattling dry!" Thus she seeks to play upon the sympathy of young Drood. With Datchery she is less insistent upon her infirmities; she seems to recognize the fact that the white-haired stranger is not the man to be taken in. But as we have seen, she does work in her lament, "I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled with a grievous cough."

Now so strong an urge for money — spent beyond a doubt in the purchase of opium, — especially when linked with the self-pity she feels as the result of her wretched condition, constitutes a pregnant incentive to blackmail. And here, I believe, is the reason why she comes to Cloisterham for the first time in search of Jasper. The opening chapter is purposely vague as to time, but Dickens does tell us: "Not only is the day waning, but the year. — There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flagstones ..." Certainly it is late autumn as the story opens. When the Opium Woman makes her first visit to the cathedral town in quest of Jasper, it is shortly before December 24, the day she encounters Edwin Drood. Now Jasper has not been to her squalid den, so far as we can ascertain, since the occasion of his debauch described with some detail in the opening chapter. Is it not conceivable that she has come to dun him for money?

We do know that the choirmaster has been smoking opium on his own, as the following passages disclose.

1. "He takes from a locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills — but not with tobacco — and, having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully, with a little instrument, ascends an inner staircase ..." Chapter v.

2. " 'One would think, Jasper, you had been trying a new medicine for that occasional indisposition of yours'

" 'No, really? That's well observed; for I have.' " Chapter xiv.

But while it is true that Jasper has smoked opium in the privacy of his chambers, thus depriving the old crone of trade, there is nothing to indicate that he has done so on or shortly before December 24. Andrew Lang is therefore making a gratuitous assumption when he says, in "The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot" (p. 25): "Please remark that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and has saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the day when he clearly means to kill Edwin. This was a most injudicious indulgence, in the circumstances. A maiden murder needs nerve! We know that 'fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state of' Jasper's 'nerves' on the day after the night of opium with which the story opens. On December 24, Jasper returned home, the hag at his heels." Lang has no sound basis for making such an assertion; even the Minor Canon refers to Jasper's calm state on December 24.

I suppose Lang was led into this error by a speech made by the Opium Woman much later in the story. When she embarks upon her second pursuit of Jasper, in the closing chapter of the fragment, she says: "I'll not miss ye twice! I lost ye last, where that omnibus you got into nigh your journey's end plied betwixt the station and the place [Cloisterham]. I wasn't so much as certain that you even went right on to the place. Now I know ye did." But the Opium Woman here refers to a visit made by Jasper prior to December 24; she refers — if she has told the truth about the number of times she has been in Cloisterham — to that Monday night when she was seen at the Travellers' Twopenny by Jasper and Durdles, while the former was on his way home after the quarrel between his nephew and young Landless, and his subsequent visit to the house of Minor Canon Crisparkle. In other words, we must conclude that the Opium Woman remained in Cloisterham for some little time, almost a fortnight, since the famous quarrel occurred, in all probability, on Monday, December 12. After Dickens decided to remove the old hag from chapter viii, which was to become chapter v when he was obliged to transpose it from Part II to Part I because of the shortage in printed pages, he may have overlooked or forgotten the time elements involved, and may have proceeded later on the assumption that the Opium Woman actually had appeared in Cloisterham on the night of the quarrel. Whatever uncertainty arises in this question about when the woman arrived in Cloisterham for the first time is due, I believe, to that unfortunate transposition of a chapter.

At any rate, I am convinced that the Opium Woman must have been in Cloisterham prior to December 24, and that she had seen Rosa and Edwin together, and even overheard some of their conversation. Such a conviction is inevitable if one studies carefully what she says when she is found by Edwin on that particular date. It will be remembered that the young couple walked in the neighborhood of the cathedral and the river on Friday, December 23, for Edwin says to Rosa: "I dine with the dear fellow [his uncle] tomorrow and next day — Christmas Eve and Christmas Day." They sat upon some ruins, and strolled by the riverside, where they remained until after sunset. Then they came at last to the elm trees by the cathedral, and said their farewells, and there John Jasper saw their parting kiss.

On the next day — December 24 — Edwin meets the Opium Woman at dusk in the Monks' Vineyard. And what does she say to him? She announces that she has come from London. "I came here, looking for a needle in a haystack [meaning Jasper], and I ain't found it." She informs him that she smokes opium; that if he will give her money, she will tell him something. When he does give her some, she says: "Bless ye! Hark'ee, dear genl'mn. What's your Chris'en name?" Why should she put a leading question like that if she had never seen him before? And mark what follows. He gives her his name, whereupon she murmurs: "Edwin, Edwin, Edwin. Is the short of that name Eddy?"

Now here is conclusive evidence that the old hag has seen and overheard the couple on the preceding day, for Dickens has told us that no one but Rosa ever calls young Drood "Eddy." This conclusion is strengthened by her very next speech, after Edwin has replied in the affirmative: "Don't sweethearts call it so?" Can there be any further doubt that she has seen Edwin with Rosa?

"How should I know?" is Edwin's answer to her last question.

"Haven't you a sweetheart, upon your soul?" she counters.

"None."

She turns away, but Edwin reminds her that she was to tell him something.

"So I was, so I was," is her rejoinder. "Well, then. You be thankful that your name ain't Ned."

Since this is Jasper's habitual nickname for his nephew, the inference that the Opium Woman has heard Jasper mention it in wild talk during his debauches at her den leaps to the mind. She is beginning to associate Jasper with the young man standing before her through the media of "Edwin," "Eddy," and "Ned."

"Why?" asks Edwin.

"Because it's a bad name to have just now."

"How a bad name?"

"A threatened name. A dangerous name."

Jasper has talked in his opium-induced dreams; no other conclusion is tenable.

"The proverb says that threatened men live long," is Drood's reply.

"Then Ned — so threatened is he, wherever he may be while I am a-talking to you, deary [note the subtle way in which the woman states indirectly her knowledge that young Drood is Ned], should live to all eternity!"

And so Dickens drops another red herring to counteract such suspicions as may have been aroused in the reader's mind.

Like the three Weird Sisters who were weaving the fates of Macbeth and Banquo in Shakespeare's great tragedy, the Opium Woman plays her part in the respective destinies of John Jasper and his nephew. She has warned Edwin of the danger overshadowing him because he has satisfied her greed for money. The next move is up to him. But we are told that he resolves to say nothing of all this to his uncle on that night.

It should be noted at this point in the novel that the old crone does not know Jasper's name, his calling, or even the fact that he is a resident of Cloisterham. That is evident from what she says in chapter xxiii: "I wasn't so much as certain that you even went right on to the place." But she must have had a dawning realization of a close tie of some sort between the man who came to her den to smoke opium and the youth she now knows as "Edwin."

When she makes her third appearance in the den with Jasper, she has become more subtle in her dealings with the choirmaster. I have no doubt that her chance meeting with Edwin has occupied her thoughts on more than one occasion; that she has turned over in her mind ways and means to capitalize on her meager information. I am equally certain that she has seen copies of the placard distributed in London through Jasper's efforts. Now although Dickens does not say this in so many words, it is reasonable to infer that Edwin's full name appeared on that placard; I am therefore convinced that the old crone knows by now who the lost youth really is.

After lighting her candle, she recognizes her visitor, who has not been to see her for some time.

"I didn't suppose you could have kept away, alive, so long," she says, "from the poor old soul with the real receipt for mixing it. And you are in mourning, too! Why didn't you come and have a pipe or two of comfort? Did they leave you money, perhaps, and so you didn't want comfort?"

Always the question of money! And we should note that it is not Jasper's mourning attire alone that prompts the old hag to take for granted the death of some person close to the choirmaster.

"Who was they as died, deary?"

She is beginning to pump Jasper; her mind goes back to Edwin, to what she has read on the placards.

"A relative," he replies shortly.

"Died of what, lovey?"

"Probably, Death," is the curt answer.

She seeks to placate her visitor, who prepares himself for the opium pipe.

"Now you begin to look like yourself," she says. "Now I begin to know my old customer indeed!"

There is a double meaning in her last statement, for she has come to believe that Edwin's disappearance has the smell of murder about it, and that his murderer lies before her. And when she says, with reference to her wares, "He's going to take it in an artful form now, my deary dear!" she means that the "mixter" has been weakened by intent, so that she may get the smoker to talk. I have no doubt that she had long been planning for just such an opportunity.

It finally dawns on Jasper that the mixture is less potent than before. When he says as much, she is quick to reply: "It's just the same. Always the identical same." But we may be certain it is not.

As Jasper goes through what amounts to a confession of the murder of his nephew, the old crone is at his side, prompting him to continue, trying to pump him, like some evil bird of prey determined to tear his secret from his breast. And when at last he succumbs even to the weaker mixture of the drug and sinks into a stupor, she tries in vain to rouse him and flicks his face with the back of her hand.

"I heard ye say once, I heard ye say once, when I was lying where you're lying, and you were making your speculations upon me, 'Unintelligible!' I heard you say so, of two more than me. But don't ye be too sure always; don't ye be too sure, beauty!"

Jasper's wild words have been full of meaning — for her.

And presently she adds: "Not so potent as it once was? Ah! perhaps not at first. You may be more right there. Practice makes perfect. I may have learned the secret how to make ye talk, deary."

She might well have quoted another proverb: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." I do not see how Dickens could have made it more evident that from then on she intends to blackmail Jasper.

When he leaves the den, she puts her plan into immediate execution, following him to his mean hotel in the back of Aldersgate Street. As soon as he has come out again, she follows him for a short distance, then enters the hotel herself.

"Is the gentleman from Cloisterham indoors?"

She knows now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is from the cathedral town.

"Just gone out."

"Unlucky. When does the gentleman return to Cloisterham?"

"At six this evening."

She thanks her informant and hurries out. And then comes the gloating speech that proves her determination to blackmail the man who has been her best customer.

"I'll not miss ye twice! I lost ye last, where that omnibus you got into nigh your journey's end plied betwixt the station and the place. I wasn't so much as certain that you even went right on to the place. Now I know ye did. My gentleman from Cloisterham, I'll be there before ye, and bide your coming. I've swore my oath that I'll not miss ye twice!"

And so the harpy begins to close in on her prey.

I have never been persuaded that the Opium Woman is anything more than John Jasper's evil genius, a sordid creature who has made the most of an available opportunity. The greed for money so strongly implanted in her by Dickens has led to an inevitable conclusion: blackmail. That the old crone is related to Jasper by any tie of blood seems to me to be utter nonsense. So when J. Cuming Walters makes a statement to that effect, I cannot let it pass unchallenged. In Clues to Dickens's Mystery of Edwin Drood, he says of Jasper: "If we deduce that his father was an adventurer and a vagabond, we shall not be far wrong. If we deduce that his mother was the opium eater, prematurely aged, who had transmitted her vicious propensity to her child, we shall most certainly be right."

To this I says, "Nonsense!" We know that Jasper was some "six-and-twenty" years old when the story opens. We know further that the Opium Woman says of herself: "I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this [opium]; but this don't hurt me, not to speak of." What we do not know is how long she has been engaged in the traffic of the drug. But despite this lack of knowledge — and despite the fact that we are not told her real age, — how can Walters argue that she is John Jasper's mother who transmitted a vicious propensity for opium to her son after he was born? From what he has said before, he does not use the term "transmitted" merely as a synonym for "handed on," without any implication that Jasper's addiction to the drug was a matter of inheritance. He deduces that the addiction was inherited. His deduction simply does not square with the facts in the case. If what he says were so — and it is not, — then the Opium Woman must have known that Jasper was her son. Now we shall see that when the old crone meets Datchery she has no inkling whatever of Jasper's name, profession, or even his place of residence in Cloisterham.

Walters offers a second theory — and to my mind this fact implies that even he entertained some doubt about his first; it also involves a close tie between the Opium Woman and Jasper. "Another hypothesis — following on the Carker theme in Dombey and Son — is that Jasper, a dissolute and degenerate man, lascivious, and heartless, may have wronged a child of the woman's; but it is not likely that Dickens would repeat the Mrs. Brown story." This concept leaves me as cold as the former, but I do agree that Dickens would hardly repeat the Mrs. Brown story. It strikes me that Walters has curiously misunderstood the nature of John Jasper. The man is a drug addict, to be sure, but he is neither dissolute nor degenerate. Lascivious, yes; so far as his passion for Rosa is of a lustful kind. Heartless, yes; for he killed the nephew whom he once loved — just as Dickens destroyed his family life when he forced a deed of separation on his wife and followed the urge of his infatuation for a young actress.

But let us observe the Opium Woman in her association with Dick Datchery. Soon after she meets the detecting personality of the novel, she learns Jasper's full name and where he lives. She likewise obtains the information that he sings in the cathedral choir. None of these facts had she possessed before. We may be sure of that when Dickens writes: "The burst of triumph in which she thanks him does not escape the notice of the single buffer of an easy temper living idly on his means. He glances at her; clasps his hands behind him, as the wont of such buffers is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her side." Her manifest glee at learning what she had never known before makes Dick Datchery want to know more about her and her interest in Jasper.

He suggests that she may go up at once to Mr. Jasper's rooms.

She shakes her head, as "she eyes him with a cunning smile."

"O! you don't want to speak to him?"

She shakes her head again "and forms with her lips a soundless 'No.'" She is not to be rushed into a meeting with Jasper; she wants time to gloat over her new-found information and to lay her plans with care.

Mr. Datchery seeks to learn from whence she comes, but she evades his artfully framed question. He sees through her greedy nature, however, and his rattling of loose coins in his trousers' pockets brings forth the inevitable request for money, followed by the statement that she has been in Cloisterham only once before in all her life.

Pure chance has brought them to the Monks' Vineyard, where the surroundings — plus the still rattling coins — prompt her to recollect her interview with Edwin.

"By this token, though you mayn't believe it," she says. "That a young gentleman gave me three-and-sixpence as I was coughing my breath away on this very grass. I asked him for three-and-sixpence, and he gave it me."

She hopes Mr. Datchery will take the hint.

When that gentleman merely suggests that it was a little cool on her part to name her sum, she hurries into an explanation of why she wanted the money. She confesses that she wants opium; she states that it was last Christmas Eve that the young gentleman gave her money. She goes so far as to reveal the young gentleman's name: Edwin.

I am always impressed by the artistry with which Dickens handles this scene. The Opium Woman has given Datchery invaluable information simply because she craves the means of buying her favorite drug. She is acting throughout in character. At the same time, what the old crone does and says gives a new twist to the plot development of the story, since it paves the way for the subsequent use Dick Datchery will make of her.

"How do you know the young gentleman's name?" he asks.

"I asked him for it, and he told it me. I only asked him the two questions, what was his Chris'en name, and whether he'd a sweetheart? And he answered, Edwin, and he hadn't."

He gives her some money, and "with many servile thanks she goes her way."

But just as she is weaving her plans to blackmail Jasper, who has delivered himself into her hands, so she will be henceforth a pawn in the game whose moves are directed by Dick Datchery. When he sees her in the cathedral on the following morning — he has learned from Deputy that she plans to go there, — he is watching for her reaction to Jasper's appearance. He does not have to wait long to find out what it is. While Jasper chants and sings, she "shakes her fist at him behind the pillar's friendly shelter." And again: "she hugs herself in her lean arms, and then shakes both fists at the leader of the Choir."

To her simple mind, a man occupying so exalted a position — for such Jasper's office must seem to her — is a far riper subject for blackmail than she had anticipated. She cannot possibly restrain her unholy glee. Her actions do not escape the notice of Dick Datchery.

He speaks to her outside the cathedral.

"Well, mistress. Good morning. You have seen him?"

Still enraptured with her additional knowledge, she exclaims: "/'ve seen him, deary; /'ve seen him!"

"And you know him?"

"Know him! Better far than all the Reverend Parsons put together know him!"

And indeed she does, for she is convinced that he has murdered his nephew; she is convinced that she holds in her power a rich prize: a man who will pay as much as she may demand to keep safe his horrid secret and maintain his position in the Church. It is the realization of what has gone through her mind that leads Dick Datchery to perform a certain action before starting in upon his breakfast, prepared by Mrs. Tope.

"Before sitting down to it, he opens his corner-cupboard door; takes his bit of chalk from its shelf; adds one thick line to the score, extending from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom; and then falls to with an appetite."

Those were the last words of his novel Charles Dickens was ever to write, but in setting them down he informed his readers that Dick Datchery considered the Opium Woman the most valuable agent he could employ in the tracking down of John Jasper.

The impish Deputy, a "hideous small boy" of uncertain age, was likewise to play a part of some importance in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, although he appears in only four chapters of the existing fragment. Dickens has drawn him with the same care he expended on the Opium Woman, and the nameless waif moves us in much the same way as Gavroche, the gamin of Les Misérables.

I have called him nameless, for "Deputy" is no more than a term indicative of his lowly occupation at the Travellers' Twopenny. In a contribution to Household Words, published June 14, 1851, "On Duty with Inspector Field," Dickens wrote: "Why Deputy, Inspector Field can't say. He only knows that the man who takes care of the beds and lodgers is always called so." "Deputy" is likewise a synonym for "agent," so we shall not be surprised to find that this tatterdemalion is to become an assistant of Dick Datchery's, and that he, too, is to be instrumental in bringing John Jasper to justice.

When we first meet him in the chapter entitled "Mr. Durdles and Friend," we are conscious of his almost instinctive hatred of the choirmaster. Being such a small lad, he talks big to make up for his diminutive stature; but there is no mistaking the antipathy underlying the very first words he hurls at Jasper in lieu of the stones clutched in his hands: "Yes, I'll give 'em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold of me. I'll smash your eye, if you don't look out!"

An intense individualist, Deputy reverses the normal order of procedure in society through his quaint task of stoning Durdles home: the child looks after the man. And just as religion and the law are to be arrayed against John Jasper in the persons of Minor Canon Crisparkle and Hiram Grewgious, so the lowest rank of the social hierarchy will work against him in Deputy, one of its most humble representatives.

In "A Night with Durdles," this lad's hatred of Jasper is again manifest; once more emphasis is laid on the choirmaster's eye, almost as if Deputy sensed the hypnotic power possessed by Jasper. "I'll blind yer, s'elp me!" cries Deputy. "I'll stone yer eyes out, s'elp me! If I don't have yer eyesight, bellows me!" I shall have more to say about John Jasper's mesmeric abilities later on; it is worth noting that they are apparent even to this boy.

Dickens's memorandum for his manuscript "Plans" concerning Deputy's appearance in this chapter is not without its significance for the future development of the plot. "Keep the boy suspended," is what he wrote. There is no doubt that Deputy has seen Jasper at work after the "unaccountable expedition" has culminated in Durdles's drugged dream. When the boy cries out to Jasper, who accuses him of eavesdropping: "Yer lie, I haven't. I'd only jist come out for my 'elth when I see you two a-coming out of the Kin-freederel," we know that he is lying. Just as he lies in a more humorous vein in chapter xviii, when Datchery comes upon him stoning a sheep and accuses him of laming it. "Yer lie," is the lad's instant retort. "'E went and lamed isself. I see 'im do it, and I giv' 'im a shy as a Widdy-warning to 'im not to go a-bruisin' 'is master's mutton any more."

The boy's friendly relation with Datchery is based upon his realization that the white-haired stranger is no friend of Jasper's, and upon an intuitive feeling that Datchery is out to track down a common enemy. And there is a subtle hint that Deputy has been watching the choirmaster on his own account; he is unusually familiar with Jasper's place of residence.

"Lookie yonder," he says to Datchery, who has asked him the way to Mr. Tope's. "You see that there winder and door?"

"That's Tope's?"

"Yer lie; it ain't. That's Jarsper's. — Now look t'other side the harch; not the side where Jarsper's door is; t'other side."

"I see."

"A little way in, o' that side, there's a low door, down two steps. That's Topeseses with 'is name on a hoval plate."

Yes; Deputy is unusually familiar with the choirmaster's abode.

When Datchery and the boy meet for the last time in the final chapter, Deputy has reached such a point of intimacy in his relation-ship with the white-haired stranger that he calls him "Dick." And Datchery addresses the lad by a new name: "Winks."

"But, I say, don't yer go a-making my name public. I never means to plead to no name, mind yer. When they says to me in the Lockup, a-going to put me down in the book, 'What's your name?' I says to them, 'Find out.' Likewise when they says, 'What's your religion?' I says, 'Find out.'"

From which I conclude that Datchery has told his young agent that he is watching Jasper; that he means to bring him to justice; and that Deputy may one day have to give testimony in court.

We learn at a later stage of this conversation that Deputy is on familiar terms with the Opium Woman. His knowledge of her addiction to the drug — he speaks of her as "'Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer" — and of the fact that she lives in London among the "Jacks; and Chayner men; and hother Knifers," confirms my belief that the old crone spent some time at the Travellers' Twopenny before she met Edwin Drood on the day before Christmas.

We discover that Deputy is to ascertain the Opium Woman's exact address; this errand gives us concrete proof that Datchery intends to use the boy as his agent.

Some commentators believe that Deputy is related to one of the major characters in the story; that he is the illegitimate son of John Jasper; or that he is some kin to the Opium Woman. Such assumptions are undoubtedly based on the fact that Dickens had often introduced relationships of this sort in previous novels — Smike's, for example. I find no justification for such belief in the text as we have it, and I am content to consider Deputy an agent of Dick Datchery's; an instrument to be used in bringing John Jasper to trial for murder.

I find it necessary to say a few words about Bazzard, the angular clerk of old Hiram Grewgious, and his tragedy "The Thorn of Anxiety," which no one wished to bring out. I shall not recapitulate here the arguments presented in an earlier study to prove that he cannot possibly be associated with the Datchery assumption. I would simply direct the reader's attention to chapter xx of the novel, wherein Rosa flees to her guardian in London, and wherein old Grewgious dwells at such length on the play written by his clerk. It is hard to conceive of Dickens devoting so much space to "The Thorn of Anxiety" if it were to have no further bearing on his story. What was to be its ultimate purpose must forever remain one of the book's minor mysteries. When Dickens writes, "It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grewgious had related the Bazzard history thus freely, at least quite as much for the recreation of his ward's mind from the subject that had driven her there, as for the gratification of his own tendency to be social and communicative," I am sure he does so with his tongue in his cheek. There is clearly something more than meets the eye in the old lawyer's long-winded account of the tragedy, and I feel certain that Dickens meant to develop this particular aspect of his plot to a greater extent. Just how he would have done so is beyond any logical suggestion I can offer. But there was in Cloisterham a "drooping and despondent little theatre," and in the unwritten part of the novel it may have been destined to become famous as the shrine wherein "The Thorn of Anxiety" came out at last. Since the author of the tragedy was "a gloomy person," I somehow associate that attributive adjective with those qualifying the little theater.

Mr. Luke Honeythunder, that bumptious philanthropist with the voice of Stentor, seems a very minor personage indeed to have any influence on the mystery or the eventual ramifications of the plot. And yet when Minor Canon Crisparkle visits him in the London chief offices of the Haven of Philanthropy six months after the disappearance of Edwin Drood, Mr. Honeythunder makes a statement that calls for some consideration. He has turned over to the Minor Canon the accounts of his late wards, Neville and Helena Landless, now of age, for Mr. Crisparkle has undertaken to accept them. And he has expressed his opinion that Mr. Crisparkle should have enrolled himself as a member of the Society. Then he adds: "I might think one of your professions better employed in devoting himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be undertaken by a layman."

What is the full implication of this remark, revealing as it does the fact that Mr. Honeythunder is aware of John Jasper's relentless pursuit of his late ward, Neville Landless? Who, in Cloisterham, has informed Honeythunder of the choirmaster's efforts? Has John Jasper himself been in contact with the philanthropist? I have no answers to these questions, but they inevitably raise themselves in my mind whenever I reread the passage. Was Honeythunder eventually to join with Sapsea, and thus make a team of jackasses? We do know that the statement I have quoted is in a part of the chapter excised by Dickens himself when he read the proof. John Forster saw the last three numbers of the story through publication; in his capacity of literary executor to the novelist, he allowed the excision to remain, along with several others. Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill; certainly we shall never know whether Forster had sufficient knowledge of the subsequent plot development to justify him in his decision to include this material stricken out by Dickens. Here again I am inclined to believe that we are faced with a minor mystery, but one of no great importance. It is a foregone conclusion, however, that Luke Honeythunder would have received a sound moral thrashing from the hands of his creator before the novel was over, had Dickens lived to complete it. To deduce more than that would be to delve into the mine of pure speculation.

There is no question in my mind, however, that mesmerism, animal magnetism, or hypnotism as we know it today, was to play a highly important part in the second half of Edwin Drood. It is my belief that hypnotism alone explains John Forster's statement concerning the novel, "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 italics are mine.) It was inevitable, I contend, that Dickens would one day use hypnotism as a major element in one of his novels, for he was himself an able mesmerist.

As early as 1842 he had written to John Forster: "And speaking of magnetism, let me tell you that the other night at Pittsburgh, there being present only Mr. Q. and the portrait-painter, Kate sat down, laughing, for me to try my hand upon her. I had been holding forth upon the subject rather luminously, and asserting that I thought I could exercise the influence, but had never tried. In six minutes, I magnetized her into hysterics, and then into the magnetic sleep. I tried again next night, and she fell into the slumber in a little more than two minutes — I can wake her with perfect ease; but I confess (not being prepared for anything so sudden and complete) I was on the first occasion rather alarmed."

Again, in 1849, Dickens wrote to his friend Forster: "Ever since I wrote to you Leech has been seriously worse, and again very heavily bled. The night before last he was in such an alarming state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve, that I proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the middle of the night I fell to; and after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on in the sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded little Mrs. Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of hay — What do you think of my setting up in the magnetic-line with a large brass plate? Terms, twenty-five guineas per nap.' "

Mamie Dickens supplies a bit of evidence concerning the dynamic power possessed by her father. Writing in a more serious vein, she states in My Father as I Recall Him: "I can remember now, as if it were yesterday, how the touch of his hand — he had a most sympathetic touch — was almost too much sometimes, the help and hope in it making my heart full to overflowing. He believed firmly in the power of mesmerism, as a remedy in some forms of illness, and was himself a mesmerist of no mean order; I know of many cases, my own among the number, in which he used his power in this way with perfect success."

Additional evidence is afforded by Gladys Storey, who writes in Dickens and Daughter: "Subsequent to the birth of Mrs. Perugini [Kate Dickens] her father became acquainted with Doctor John Elliotson, the physician (the first doctor to use the stethoscope), who practised mesmerism upon those of his patients who expressed a preference to this method of treatment for their ailments. He founded a mesmeric hospital, and Thackeray dedicated Pendennis to him out of gratitude for his services.

"Dickens became deeply interested in the subject, and it was not long before he tried to produce the mesmeric coma upon his wife, when he discovered that he possessed quite remarkable powers of animal magnetism. — Mrs. Perugini recollected her father trying to alleviate her in this way during an illness, but they were too temperamentally alike for it to take effect. Yet with her sister, Mamie, his powers were entirely successful."

Concerning Dr. John Elliotson, mentioned above, Robert W. Marks, author of The Story of Hypnotism, has the following interesting information: "... his contribution to the scientific extension of hypnotism was enormous. Although he had no insight into its essential nature, he was far ahead of his contemporaries in sensing its therapeutic importance. His experiments convinced him that mesmerism had far-reaching value in the treatment of those disorders we now classify as psychoneuroses, that it was a useful prescription in many medical cases, and that it was able to offset the torture and terrors of the then pre-chloroform surgery."

That Charles Dickens had done some reading on the subject is inferable from an article written by Dame Una Pope-Hennessy, author of one of the most recent lives of the novelist. I quote from this article, which appeared in The Dickensian for 1945 with the title "The Gad's Hill Library." "His clergyman friend, Chauncey Hare Townshend, who was one of the first Englishmen to study Animal Magnetism abroad, presented him with a copy of his book, 'Mesmerism/ and next to it on a shelf stood another friend's book, 'Human Physiology,' in which Dr. Elliotson described surgical operations carried out on patients in a state of hypnotic trance."

I consider of the greatest significance, however, in its bearing on Edwin Drood, the ensuing letter written by Charles Dickens to Sheridan Le Fanu after the novelist had actually begun work on his final manuscript:

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent Wednesday Twenty-Fourth November, 1869

My Dear Sir, — In reply to your obliging letter, I beg to assure you that I shall be truly glad to count upon you as a very frequent contributor.

Your sketch is very new, striking, and touching. It should make a remarkable story.

Let me explain to you that I am now about to begin to publish in All the Year Round (at the end of each No.) a serial story by Fitzgerald, of about one good volume in length. A longer serial story being always in course of publication at the same time, and each No. containing only 24 pages, it is desirable that the rest of the matter should be always at such times, if possible, complete in itself. For the reason that the public have a natural tendency, having more than two serial stories to bear in mind at once, to jumble them all together, and do justice to none of them.

I think the enclosed letter will interest you, as showing how very admirably the story of Green Tea ["Green Tea," by Sheridan Le Fanu; in All the Year Round for October and November, 1869.] was told. It is from the lady I mentioned to you in a note, who has, for thirty or forty years been the subject of far more horrible spectral illusions than have ever, within my knowledge, been placed on record.

She is an English lady, married to a foreigner of good position, and long resident in an old Italian city — its name you will see on the letter — Genoa. I became an intimate friend of her husband's when I was living in Genoa five and twenty years ago, and, seeing that she suffered most frightfully from tic (I knew of her having no other disorder, at the time), I confided to her husband that I had found myself to possess some rather exceptional power of animal magnetism (of which I had tested the efficacy in nervous disorders), and that I would gladly try her. She never developed any of the ordinarily-related phenomena, but after a month began to sleep at night — which she had not done for years, and to change, amazingly to her own mother, in appearance. She then disclosed to me that she was, and had long been, pursued by myriads of bloody phantoms of the most frightful aspect, and that, after becoming paler, they had all veiled their faces. From that time, wheresoever I travelled in Italy, she and her husband travelled with me, and every day I magnetized her, sometimes under olive trees, sometimes in vineyards, sometimes in the travelling carriage, sometimes at wayside inns during the mid-day halt. Her husband called me up to her, one night at Rome, when she was rolled into an apparency impossible ball, by tic in the brain, and I only knew where her head was by following her long hair to its source. Such a fit had always held her before at least 30 hours, and it was so alarming to see that I had hardly any belief in myself with reference to it. But in half an hour she was peacefully and naturally asleep, and next morning was quite well.

When I left Italy that time, the spectres had departed. They returned by degrees as time went on, and have ever since been as bad as ever. She has tried other magnetism, however, and has derived partial relief. When I went back to Genoa for a few days, a dozen years ago, I asked her should I magnetize her again? She replied that she felt the relief would be immediate; but that the agony of leaving it off so soon, would be so great, that she would rather suffer on.

She is, as you will see, a very brave woman, and has thoroughly considered her disorder. But her sufferings are unspeakable; and if you could write me a few lines giving her any such knowledge as she wants, you would do an action of equally unspeakable kindness. — My Dear Sir, — Faithfully yours always.

Why, in the course of a business letter dealing to some extent with the problems of editorial policy in regard to magazine publication, should Dickens have recounted — with so vivid a wealth of detail — his quarter-of-a-century-old Italian adventure in mesmerism? Undoubtedly his account was partly due to the letter he had received from the English lady. She was the wife of Mr. De la Rue, a Swiss banker, and Dickens had found her to be an "affectionate, excellent little" woman. But I contend that the fullness of his narrative to Le Fanu was in a larger measure occasioned by the fact that once again animal magnetism per se was occupying his mind, and that it was doing so because he intended to feature it in Edwin Drood. My contention seems to be justified when certain scenes of the novel are subjected to a critical analysis along mesmeric lines. [Derived from the name of its great exponent, Franz Anton Mesmer, mesmerism, or animal magnetism, involved the idea that a sort of current flowed from one endowed with peculiar powers into the persons or inanimate objects touched by his hands. At first Mesmer believed that magnets were capable of transferring the universal fluid of the atmosphere into the bodies of his patients; he also believed that the fluid was possessed of healing properties. When he discovered that he could produce the same effects upon his patients by using articles devoid of any magnetic quality, he changed his conception of the phenomenon. He decided that it was the power within the practitioner as such that produced the results obtained; this power he called "animal magnetism." Today we should probably say with Bernheim, often called the father of modern hypnotism, that hypnotism "is merely a state of acute susceptibility to suggestion." See Robert W. Marks, The Story of Hypnotism, p. 24.]

There are at least six distinct places in Edwin Drood where we may observe the power of animal magnetism in operation. The first reference to the phenomenon occurs in the third chapter, when Dickens writes: "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 am drunk, I must be drunk again before I can remember where), so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being." We have here, of course, more than a faint echo of the famous episode in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone wherein Franklin Blake, under the influence of laudanum, reenacts his removal of the yellow diamond by going through the same series of actions which he performed on the original occasion of his purloining it when he was under the effects of the same drug. Perhaps Dickens made with deliberate intent this none too indirect allusion to the highly popular tale he was out to surpass; certainly he was not suggesting that John Jasper would destroy his nephew in an opium-induced dream and later confess to a murder which had been successfully accomplished only within his mind. If such were the case, Edwin Drood would not have disappeared. Nor did Jasper attempt to murder his nephew while under the effects of the drug, fail in the undertaking, but actually think he had been successful. We have seen that he did not indulge in opium prior to the murder. And if Dickens's manuscript "Plans" prove anything at all, they prove that the choirmaster was acting throughout in accordance with a definite, carefully considered scheme for murder. Nor was John Jasper a dual personality in the psychological sense, although there went on within him — as in all men — the ever-present struggle between good and evil. That passage about animal magnetism has thrown many a commentator off the track; I see in it little more than Dickens's own peculiar way of informing his readers that the phenomenon was to be a feature of the novel.

We see animal magnetism at work for the first time when Rosa and Edwin are seated outside the cathedral windows after their lovers' quarrel described at length in this same third chapter. They listen to the organ and the choir.

"I fancy I can distinguish Jack's voice," Edwin remarks.

" 'Take me back at once, please,' urges his Affianced, quickly laying her light hand upon his wrist. 'They will all be coming out directly; let us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don't let us stop to listen to it; let us get away!' " (The italics are mine.)

John Jasper here projects himself through the dominant chord of organ music, and Rosa receives the full impact of his personality and passion for her in the vibrant tones.

This episode is but a prelude to the more striking piano scene in the seventh chapter. Mr. Crisparkle and his mother are gathered with their guests in the drawing room after the dinner given in honor of Helena and Neville Landless. Jasper, seated at the piano, accompanies Rosa while she sings. And Dickens tells us that "he followed her lips most attentively, with his eyes as well as hands; carefully and softly hinting the key-note from time to time." Here, just as before, is the mesmerist in action, forcing himself and his unwelcome love upon the singer through the insistent note. And the choirmaster mesmerizes his pupil into a state bordering on hysteria, for she finally bursts into tears and shrieks out: "I can't bear this! I am frightened! Take me away!"

It is on this occasion that Dickens makes us aware that Helena Landless is to be Rosa's champion; that she, too, is possessed of the mesmeric gift. When Edwin, with his usual obtuseness, remarks: "Pussy's not used to an audience; that's the fact. She got nervous, and couldn't hold out. Besides, Jack, you are such a conscientious master, and require so much, that I believe you make her afraid of you. No wonder," Helena repeats: "No wonder." She has recognized to a far greater degree than Edwin the mechanism of mesmerism.

And when Edwin exclaims: "There, Jack, you hear! You would be afraid of him, under similar circumstances, wouldn't you, Miss Landless?" she answers: "Not under any circumstances."

Surely Dickens has informed us that circumstances of such moment will eventually arise that Helena will confront Jasper in a contest involving their respective mesmeric powers.

Later in the same chapter, when the two young women are in the bedroom they are to share in the Nuns' House and Rosa is pouring her heart out to Helena, the harassed girl says of Jasper to her new-found friend: "He haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe from him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of."

Again John Jasper projects himself through his peculiar power, for the mesmeric force was believed to be capable of penetrating and passing through any obstacle.

Having clearly established the fact that animal magnetism is to play a major part in the novel, Dickens now abandons it for a while, for he does not care to insist too much upon it. It does not reappear until Minor Canon Crisparkle walks to Cloisterham Weir after the momentous interview with John Jasper and Hiram Grewgious, following Edwin Drood's disappearance. So preoccupied is the good gentleman on this occasion that he does not realize he has reached one of his favorite spots until the sound of falling water makes him aware of his surroundings.

" 'How did I come here!' was his first thought, as he stopped.

" 'Why did I come here!' was his second.

"Then, he stood intently listening to the water. A familiar passage in his reading, about airy tongues that syllable men's names, rose so unbidden to his ear, that he put it from him with his hand, as if it were tangible."

He came to the weir in response to the insistent command of John Jasper, who willed him to go there through his mesmeric power; he came to the weir because the choirmaster wanted him to find Edwin's watch and chain and his shirt pin, planted there in the night by the choirmaster. And the reference to Milton's Comus, wherein is found the line, "And airy tongues that syllable men's names," enables Dickens to suggest that Minor Canon Crisparkle is aware that Jasper sent him — so much aware, indeed, that he makes a motion with his hand as though to repel the man himself.

But he came to the weir before Edwin's jewelry had been planted; his microscopic eyesight, his minute examination of the posts and timbers, and three separate and distinct references to the starlight making all things visible prove that fact. And so "the Weir ran through his broken sleep all night," until in the morning he revisits the place and finds what Jasper meant him to find.

The final use of animal magnetism in the fragment is made when Jasper pours out his unholy passion for Rosa by the sun dial in the garden of the Nuns' House. The choirmaster exercises his strange power throughout the episode, as will be readily seen from the following quotations:

1. "The moment she sees him from the porch, leaning on the sun-dial, the old horrible feeling of being compelled by him, asserts its hold upon her. She feels that she would even then go back, but that he draws her feet towards him." Note the use of the verb form "draws," as with a magnet.

2. "He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the intention [she is not looking at him, it should be remembered], and draws her hand back. His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows, though her own see nothing but the grass."

3. "After several times forming her lips, which she knows he is closely watching..."

4. "She is conscious of his looking at her with a gloating admiration ..."

5. "Again Rosa quails before his threatening face, though innocent of its meaning, and she remains."

6. "The frightful vehemence of the man, now reaching its full height, so additionally terrifies her as to break the spell that has held her to the spot."

7. "Rosa faints in going up-stairs, and is carefully carried to her room and laid down on her bed."

Here we have seen Jasper the mesmerist at his work of so dominating the girl he madly loves that she faints, through a sort of defense mechanism, in order to blot out the horror she has endured. Yet at the very opening of the following chapter Dickens says: "Rosa no sooner came to herself than the whole of the late interview was before her. It even seemed as if it had pursued her into her insensibility, and she had not had a moment's unconsciousness of it."

I cannot conceive of Dickens cutting the element of animal magnetism from his novel after so many evidences of its function in the half he had completed. And I firmly believe that Jasper was to be hypnotized before he would tell how he had murdered Edwin. Since Helena Landless is the only character in the story capable of outsmarting Jasper at his own mesmeric game, it seems to me inevitable that she will be the one to bring about his confession. When we consider that she is the twin sister of Neville; that the two are "much alike; both very dark, and very rich in colour"; that she had on four occasions "dressed as a boy," and shown "the daring of a man," we may be certain that she was to confront Jasper in the guise of her brother. She was to have done so, I believe, after Jasper was finally captured, and after he had in some way brought about Neville's death. Then and then only, as I see it, would Helena have been able to dominate the mind of the choirmaster, who was himself a mesmerist of no mean ability. Picture Jasper in the condemned cell, convicted of the murders of Edwin Drood and Neville Landless. Suddenly, and at night, Helena appears before him, dressed in her brother's clothes. Would that not be a situation to stir the imagination of Dickens, to quicken his pen, to justify his statement to John Forster that he had "a very curious and new idea for" his "new story"? And how true it would be when the novelist went on to say: "Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." Under such circumstances as I have outlined, John Forster had every reason to write, as he did, that "the originality" of Edwin Drood "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." (The italics are mine.)

And so we were to have Jasper's confession, written by himself as of another man, for he will have ceased to be the choirmaster known to Cloisterham and will have become a terror-stricken wretch facing the gallows; and this confession will have been "elicited from him as if told of another" through the mechanism of mesmerism, when he will not be conscious of his own identity.

Thus do I read the stars.

Having exhausted the landmarks, both great and small, that might with justification be considered to afford clues to the unwritten half of the novel, I have only to record my own ideas concerning the development it might have had if Charles Dickens had lived to complete it. It is of course impossible to determine in what order Dickens would have handled this or that angle of the plot, or to what degree he would have further emphasized all or several of the characters already introduced. I do feel certain, however, that he would have added no other persons of any great importance. Whether or not I have read the stars with any degree of accuracy, I am convinced that what I have to say in my closing paragraphs would enter into the second half of Edwin Drood.

Dick Datchery would capitalize on the fact that the Opium Woman was eager to blackmail Jasper, merely to obtain money from him. He would eventually learn from her all that she knew or suspected, and would acquire valuable information from both Durdles and Deputy. There might even be a repetition of the "unaccountable expedition," as Professor Jackson has suggested, with Datchery accompanying the old stonemason in lieu of Jasper. Datchery would ultimately instruct the Princess Puffer to inform Jasper about the ring of diamonds and rubies carried by Edwin Drood upon his person the night he was murdered. The choirmaster would then make a nocturnal visit to the Sapsea tomb — the secret burial place of his nephew — to obtain the ring, not only because it was a damning piece of evidence against him, but because he would see in it the "missing link" destined to prove the undoing of Neville Landless. John Jasper would be met at the tomb by Datchery, Tartar, Minor Canon Crisparkle, and young Landless. The ring would be taken from him, and would establish beyond a reasonable doubt not only the identity of his murdered nephew but also the exact place of his burial. As I have argued in a previous study, Dickens was proceeding on the erroneous assumption that quicklime completely destroys a cadaver, whereas the scientific truth of the matter reveals the fact that it acts as a preservative.

In a desperate effort to escape, Jasper would break away from his captors and climb to the summit of the cathedral tower, with the intention of committing suicide. He would, however, be taken by Tartar and Crisparkle before he accomplished his purpose; but he would again break away from them long enough to attack Neville Landless and throw him from the tower. Entrance to the stairway being cut off, Jasper might try to climb down the outside of the tower. But Tartar and Crisparkle would be after him, and force him back to safety. I have considered such a possibility only because the climbing abilities of both men have been stressed in the first half of the novel. And I have often wondered whether Dickens had read Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo, whom he admired, and if so, whether the tragic end of Dom Claude Frollo might not have suggested some similar treatment centering about the cathedral tower in Edwin Drood. I am sure, at any rate, that Neville would not have died before learning that his name had been cleared of all suspicion.

Jasper would be charged with the murders of Edwin Drood and Neville Landless, and after his trial, not to be a major feature of the novel, he would be placed in the condemned cell. As I have already contended, he would be confronted there by Helena Landless in the guise of her brother, and there she would force him by means of her mesmeric power to confess the details of Edwin's murder. He would be hanged by the neck until dead, and would thus make good his oath: "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."

Sapsea and Honeythunder would surely be confounded. We should, I believe, learn more about Bazzard, whose tragedy "The Thorn of Anxiety" would be produced at last. And we should have more of the delightful skirmishing between Miss Twinkleton and the Billickin. Rosa would marry Lieutenant Tartar, but it would be Hiram Grewgious who, for the sake of sentiment, would place the ring of diamonds and rubies upon her finger. Minor Canon Crisparkle would marry Helena Landless.

Such is my brief summary of what might have been; but how cold and feeble it sounds when I think of the warmth and dramatic power that would have quickened it if Charles Dickens had only lived! But his creative genius would functions no more after that 8th of June, 1870, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood will forever remain a half-told tale. Being a tale told by a master writer, it is full of pregnant possibilities, signifying something. What does it mean to the reader of today? Mr. V. S. Pritchett, in The Living Novel, gives a forceful answer to the question: Edwin Drood stands at the parting of the ways between the early Victorian and the modern attitude to murder in literature, and also, I suspect, at the beginnings of a change in Dickens himself. The earlier murders of Dickens belong to the more turbulent decades of the nineteenth century. By the late 'fifties a calm had been reached; the lid had been levered back on to the pot of society and its seething had become a prosperous simmer. When Wilkie Collins wrote The Moonstone and Dickens, not to be outdone, followed it with Edwin Drood, we begin the long career of murder for murder's sake, murder which illustrates nothing and is there only to stimulate our skill in detection and to distract us with mystery. The sense of guilt is so transformed that we do not seek to expiate it vicariously on the stage; we turn upon the murderer and hunt him down. Presently, in our time, the hunt degenerates into the conundrums of the detective novel which, by a supreme irony, distracts us from our part in the mass murders of two wars. One or two critics have suggested that the struggle with the unfamiliar technique of the hunt was too much for Dickens and that it killed him and his novel. We cannot know whether this is so; but both those who dismiss the book as the last leaden effort of a worn-out man, and those who observe that it is the most careful and private of Dickens's novels, are agreed that it is pitched in a key he has never struck before."

It is indeed so pitched, for its central theme is the enigma of a man's soul torn by the eternal struggle between good and evil — a soul whose internal warfare is rendered the more dramatic because it belongs not only to John Jasper, choirmaster and murderer, but also to Charles Dickens, a great literary artist. And when Mr. Pritchett closes his penetrating essay on the novel by saying that "the kind of realism employed in Edwin Drood reads like an attempt to reconstruct and co-ordinate his [Dickens's] world, like a preparation for a final confession of guilt," I believe he has come close to the heart of the matter. As always, in this fragment destined to remain forever a great mystery, Charles Dickens had something to say to us. I have already suggested that in his alter ego John Jasper he was taking himself to task for having sinned against the moral code of his day and the deeper, finer instincts of his nature.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been and is now — for me, at least — a fascinating subject for speculation. It is my hope that the studies I have written may stimulate further interest in the novel and its author, and that other appraisals or solutions may be forthcoming. Beginning as "an amiable hobby that shies at nothing and kicks nobody," my effort to unravel the mystery has become an engrossing avocation — a real labor of love. I do not feel that this labor has come to an end because I have completed the five studies I had planned or because I have done with what might have been. In that fragmentary firmament which Charles Dickens called The Mystery of Edwin Drood the stars shine on, and I may still fix my gaze upon them, seeking for the letters I have yet to learn.