38 



♦ KNOWLKDGE ♦ 



[December 1, 1887. 



Rightly to understaud the force of the resemblance 

 between " the two scenes, of which these passages are 

 the close, it must be remembered that if Datchery is really 

 Di-ood. then in each scene we have the same person ; in 

 eiich scene Drood shows the same kindly and considerate 

 way of talking to the old and feeble (" always kindly," we 

 aie told of Drood ; and as kindly to the child as to the aged, 

 if Datchery is Drood), in each Drood has been reminded by 

 the old opium-eater of his love for Eosa ; in the first he had 

 just made the sacrifice of that plighted troth which he had 

 but then learned to value; in the second his thoughts were 

 on that sacrifice — no other — when the old woman thought 

 he was weighing the value of a few coins ; in one scene he 

 has a foreshadowing of the danger to be feared from Jasper ; 

 in the other he knows the danger he has to face in exposing 

 Jasper for the ^-illain he is. We can understand, then, how 

 it comes to pass that the selfsame tones are heard in both 

 passages throughout both scenes. Even the old opium-eater 

 somehow felt, she knew not how, that the white-haired man 

 addressing her was no other than the " young gentleman " 

 she had met there before.* We must not be duller-witted 

 than she was. 



Note, further, that when Datchery had met Jasper 

 without being detected, he regarded that as a ditficult task 

 achieved — •' For a single bufler, living on his means," he 

 said, " I have had a rather busy afternoon." But after the 

 scene with the old ojsium-eater, he says of his work, " Hum I 

 ha I a very small score, this ; a very poor score." Albeit, 

 when he finds that she has, like himself, a strong feeling 

 against Jasper, he adds "a thick line to the score, extending 

 from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom," and falls 

 to " on his breakfast with an appetite " — these being the 

 very last words of the story, and signifiamt words they are. 

 Some other points disclosed in the story as written may 

 be noticed here, though, in truth, it would be easy to fill a 

 volume with the consideration of the multitudinous touches 

 introduced by I)ickens into this only half-written novel. 

 It is clear that Kosa knows perfectly well that Drood is not 

 really dead. Of course, Grewgious would not let Jier for 

 whom he had such tender and chivalrous feelings remain a 

 moment in doubt on this point. But, apart from that, her 

 whole conduct is inconsistent with the belief that she is as 

 troubled by the mystery of Edwin's disappearance as she 

 certainly would have been, sensitive and tender-hearted as 

 she was, had it really been a mystery to her. Even the way 

 in which she speaks of Jasper to Grewgious as ''his uncle," 

 shows that they both think of Drood as a living man. But 

 this is shown even more clearly by the very passages which 

 some regard as suggesting that she sorrows for Edwin as 

 dead. When she is first beginning to be in love with Tartar 

 she thinks of Edwin, saying, " Poor, poor Eddy 1 " Now, 

 had she formerly loved Edwin, the newly-born love for 

 Tartar, Edwin being dead, would have suggested this 

 thought, naturalh' enough. But as she had never felt more 

 than a sisterly love for Edwin, it is clear there is another 

 meaning in her sorrowful thought of him : and what else 

 should it be but the thought that nuw there is no hope for 



* It was no new idea of Dickens's thus to picture the unconscious 

 influence of individuality making itself felt through all disguise, 

 through all real change of condition. We have already noticed one 

 case — viz. where Mrs. BofBn somehow feels that John Harmon, 

 whom she had last seen and known as a child, is near her, when the 

 realJohn Harmon is there disguised as the secretary, Rokesmith, 

 and now a man who, though still young, has been made serious and 

 grave by many sorrows. And there are many other e.'iamples. Of 

 course we are carefully told that the old woman was reminded of 

 the former meeting with Drood "by the sight of the place " But 

 this is only to blind us as far as possible to the truth that she 

 recalls the former conversation, because, changed though he is in 

 appearance, she is talking to the ven- man with whom she talked 

 before. 



Edwin that she ever can love him. She knows Edwin is 

 alive ; she knows that Edwin loves her ; she has heard this 

 through Grewgious, and has even promised Grewgious (pro- 

 bably) that if ever the time should come when she may feel 

 love for Edwin she will sa\' so. When she comes to Grew- 

 gious after Jasper had terrified her, and has begun by saying 

 that " she had taken a sudden resolution," she remembers 

 this promise, and, lest Grewgious should think the sudden 

 resolution related to Edwin, says in the same breath, " Poor, 

 poor Eddy ! " — an exclamation which the keen old man is 

 not at a loss to understand, as we note by his sympathetic 

 response. And every expression of regret for Eddy on Rosa's 

 part will be found to relate to her dead love for him, or 

 rather for the love that had never lived. 



How, then, was the story to have ended ? It appears to 

 us that, independently of what Dickens said to Forster on 

 this point, the end is very clearly foreshadowed. Of the 

 four men who are in love with Rosa, two are to die. Jasper 

 will be driven to the tomb where he supposes Edwin's dust 

 to lie, to seek for the ring of which in due course Grewgious 

 will tell him.* There, seeing his supposed victim (as the 

 outside picttu-es of the original monthly numbers show 

 Edwin I)rood) standing alive and threatening, he w-o\ild fiy 

 with a shriek from the menacing vision, as he would con- 

 sider it, to be pursued by Neville, Tartar, and Crisparkle 

 (as also shown on the cover) up the \\ inding stairs along 

 which he had led Drood a year before to his doom. In this 

 pursuit, or rather in the attack on Jasper, Neville was to be 

 slain. (No character in all Dickens's novels was ever more 

 distinctly doomed to death, by the clear evidence of the 

 narrator's tones, than Neville Landless.) The death of 

 Jasper was, we conceive, to have been like that of Jonas 

 Chuzzlewit and of Slinkton in " Hunted Down ; " Rosa was 

 to marry Tartar ; and Helena, Crisparkle. We imagine 

 that Dickens would have found noble exercise for his special 

 powers in showing Neville Landless rejoicing in the happy 

 fortune of Tartar's love for Rosa, though he had viewed so 

 angrily Edwin's seemingly prosperous love, in the days when 

 Edwin was not in earnest and did not even know the love 

 that was in his heart. Edwin was doubtless to remain to 

 the end devoted to Rosa, even as Grewgious had remained 

 devoted to the memory of Rosa's mother. There was to 

 have been no bitterness, however, in Edwin's heart towards 

 Tartar in regard to his own less fortunate love. A certain 

 wistfulness such as we see already in Datchery, and on 

 Rosa's part a certain sad regi-etfulness — nothing more : 

 nothing to pain those who had followed Edwin's story, more 

 than we are pained by the gentle tenderness of Tom Pinch's 

 love for Mary Chuzzlewit— a love as tender and as pure as 

 his love for her as Mary Graham. 



OvSTER-OPEXlss MosKET. — Mr. Alfred Carpenter, of the Marine 

 Survey Office. Bombay, has observed Macacus monkeys on the island 

 off Sniith Burmah opening oisters with a stone. Ttey bring the 

 stones from high-water mark down to low water, selecting such 

 stones as they can easily grasp. They effect the opening by 

 striking the base of the upper valve until it dislocates and breaks 

 up. They then extract the oyster with the linger and thumb, 

 occasionally putting the mouth straight to the broken shell. The 

 way they have chosen is the easiest to open the shell. 



* In the singularly amusing conversation between Grewgious, 

 Oisparkle, and (eventually) Tartar, a conversation in Dickens's best 

 style, Grewgious, in advising that the caller (Tartar, as it turns out) 

 shall be admitted, remarks that it is well ti take advantage of any 

 such opening as may present itself. " I could relate an anecdote in 

 point," he says, " but that it would be premature." It is impossible 

 to say what this refers to, but one may guess that perhaps Grewgious 

 when in Cloisterham had looked in at fhe jeweller's who had talked 

 with Drood about his jewellery, and from him learned (what Drood 

 had learned") that Jasper had a most exact knowledge of all Drood's 

 ornaments. This would have suggested the power of the ring to 

 hold and to bind the guilty wretch. 



