The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot [10]
"Drood would not have changed countenance on hearing a fact he had known six months previously." But if Drood was playing at being somebody else, he would, of course, give a kind of start and stare, on hearing of the opium. When he also hears from the hag that her former benefactor's name was Edwin, he asks her how she knew that - "a fatuously unnecessary question," says Mr. Walters. A needless question for Datchery's information, if he be Drood, but as useful a question as another if Drood be Datchery, and wishes to maintain the conversation.
DATCHERY'S SCORE
Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in cryptic chalk strokes. He does this, says Mr. Walters, because, being Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand. But nobody would WRITE secrets on a door! He adds "a moderate stroke," after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters, "Edwin Drood would have learned nothing new whatever" from the hag.
But Edwin would have learned something quite new, and very important - that the hag was hunting Jasper. Next day Datchery sees the woman shake her fists at Jasper in church, and hears from her that she knows Jasper "better far than all the reverend parsons put together know him." Datchery then adds a long thick line to his chalked score, yet, says Mr. Walters, Datchery has learned "nothing new to Edwin Drood, if alive."
This is an obvious error. It is absolutely new to Edwin Drood that the opium hag is intimately acquainted with his uncle, Jasper, and hates Jasper with a deadly hatred. All this is not only new to Drood, if alive, but is rich in promise of further revelations. Drood, on Christmas Eve, had learned from the hag only that she took opium, and that she had come from town to Cloisterham, and had "hunted for a needle in a bottle of hay." That was the sum of his information. Now he learns that the woman knows, tracks, has found, and hates, his worthy uncle, Jasper. He may well, therefore, add a heavy mark to his score.
We must also ask, How could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know "the old tavern way of keeping scores? Illegible except to the scorer. The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against him," as Datchery observes. An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to England, would not argue thus with herself: she would probably know nothing of English tavern scores. We do not hear that Helena ever opened a book: we do know that education had been denied to her. What acquaintance could she have with old English tavern customs?
If Drood is Datchery, then Dickens used a form of a very old and favourite FICELLE of his: the watching of a villain by an improbable and unsuspected person, in this case thought to be dead. If Helena is Datchery, the "assumption" or personation is in the highest degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her possibilities, and the personation is very absurd.
Here the story ends.
THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY
FORSTER'S EVIDENCE
WE have some external evidence as to Dickens's solution of his own problem, from Forster. (2) On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he began to work at his tale, Dickens, in a letter, told Forster, "I have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not communicable (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." Forster must have instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should be communicated to HIM, for he tells us that "IMMEDIATELY AFTER I learnt" - the secret. But did he learn it? Dickens was ill, and his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out. "Fules and bairns should not see half-done work," and Dickens may well have felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely simmering in the author's own fancy.
Forster does not tell us that Dickens communicated the secret in a letter. He quotes none: he says "I was told," orally, that is. When he writes, five
DATCHERY'S SCORE
Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in cryptic chalk strokes. He does this, says Mr. Walters, because, being Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand. But nobody would WRITE secrets on a door! He adds "a moderate stroke," after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters, "Edwin Drood would have learned nothing new whatever" from the hag.
But Edwin would have learned something quite new, and very important - that the hag was hunting Jasper. Next day Datchery sees the woman shake her fists at Jasper in church, and hears from her that she knows Jasper "better far than all the reverend parsons put together know him." Datchery then adds a long thick line to his chalked score, yet, says Mr. Walters, Datchery has learned "nothing new to Edwin Drood, if alive."
This is an obvious error. It is absolutely new to Edwin Drood that the opium hag is intimately acquainted with his uncle, Jasper, and hates Jasper with a deadly hatred. All this is not only new to Drood, if alive, but is rich in promise of further revelations. Drood, on Christmas Eve, had learned from the hag only that she took opium, and that she had come from town to Cloisterham, and had "hunted for a needle in a bottle of hay." That was the sum of his information. Now he learns that the woman knows, tracks, has found, and hates, his worthy uncle, Jasper. He may well, therefore, add a heavy mark to his score.
We must also ask, How could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know "the old tavern way of keeping scores? Illegible except to the scorer. The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against him," as Datchery observes. An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to England, would not argue thus with herself: she would probably know nothing of English tavern scores. We do not hear that Helena ever opened a book: we do know that education had been denied to her. What acquaintance could she have with old English tavern customs?
If Drood is Datchery, then Dickens used a form of a very old and favourite FICELLE of his: the watching of a villain by an improbable and unsuspected person, in this case thought to be dead. If Helena is Datchery, the "assumption" or personation is in the highest degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her possibilities, and the personation is very absurd.
Here the story ends.
THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY
FORSTER'S EVIDENCE
WE have some external evidence as to Dickens's solution of his own problem, from Forster. (2) On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he began to work at his tale, Dickens, in a letter, told Forster, "I have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not communicable (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." Forster must have instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should be communicated to HIM, for he tells us that "IMMEDIATELY AFTER I learnt" - the secret. But did he learn it? Dickens was ill, and his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out. "Fules and bairns should not see half-done work," and Dickens may well have felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely simmering in the author's own fancy.
Forster does not tell us that Dickens communicated the secret in a letter. He quotes none: he says "I was told," orally, that is. When he writes, five