The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1123]
“Come back — come back!” exclaimed the woman, wrestling with and clasping him. “Do not touch him on your life. He carries other lives beside his own.”
The dénouement fails to account for this exclamation.
In the beginning of the story much emphasis is placed upon the two female servants of Haredale, and upon his journey to and from London, as well as upon his wife. We have merely said, in our digest, that he was a widower, italicizing the remark. All these other points are, in fact, singularly irrelevant, in the supposition that the original design has not undergone modification.
Again, at page 57, when Haredale talks of “his dismantled and beggared hearth,” we cannot help fancying that the author had in view some different wrong, or series of wrongs, perpetrated by Chester, than any which appear in the end. This gentleman, too, takes extreme and frequent pains to acquire dominion over the rough Hugh — this matter is particularly insisted upon by the novelist — we look, of course, for some important result — but the filching of a letter is nearly all that is accomplished. That Barnaby’s delight in the desperate scenes of the rebellion, is inconsistent with his horror of blood, will strike every reader; and this inconsistency seems to be the consequence of the afterthought upon which we have already commented. In fact the title of the work, the elaborate and pointed manner of the commencement, the impressive description of The Warren, and especially of Mrs. Rudge, go far to show that Mr. Dickens has really deceived himself — that the soul of the plot, as originally conceived, was the murder of Haredale with the subsequent discovery of the murderer in Rudge — but that this idea was afterwards abandoned, or rather suffered to be merged in that of the Popish Riots. The result has been most unfavorable. That which, of itself, would have proved highly effective, has been rendered nearly null by its situation. In the multitudinous outrage and horror of the Rebellion, the one atrocity is utterly whelmed and extinguished.
The reasons of this deflection from the first purpose appear to us self-evident. One of them we have already mentioned. The other is that our author discovered, when too late, that he had anticipated, and thus rendered valueless, his chief effect. This will be readily understood. The particulars of the assassination being withheld, the strength of the narrator is put forth, in the beginning of the story, to whet curiosity in respect to these particulars; and, so far, he is but in proper pursuance of his main design. But from this intention he unwittingly passes into the error of exaggerating anticipation. And error though it be, it is an error wrought with consummate skill. What, for example, could more vividly enhance our impression of the unknown horror enacted, than the deep and enduring gloom of Haredale — than the idiot’s inborn awe of blood — or, especially, than the expression of countenance so imaginatively attributed to Mrs. Rudge — “the capacity for expressing terror — something only dimly seen, but never absent for a moment — the shadow of some look to which an instant of intense and most unutterable horror only could have given rise?” But it is a condition of the human fancy that the promises of such words are irredeemable. In the notice before mentioned we thus spoke upon this topic —
This is a conception admirably adapted to whet curiosity in respect to the character of that event which is hinted at as forming the basis of the story. But this observation should not fail to be made — that the