Nov. 14, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



401 



Told Story is invented. 



been heard beforebyDurdles*), Jasper casts downthe lantern 

 and flies from the tomb. But even as he rushes forth he is 

 faced by two men, from ■whom he turns (utterly unnerved 

 by the horror of the tomb) to seek the only path of escape 

 — the winding staircase of the Tower. They follow him 

 ■closely, Neville first, Tartar close by him, Drood himself 

 but a few steps behind Tartar, and Crisparkle following. 

 Seized by Neville at the top of the staircase, Jasper turns 

 and struggles fiercely with the man he hates. Neville 

 receives his death-wound (but lives long enough to know 

 that his name has been cleared), Tartar, Drood, and 

 Crisparkle capture Jasper, and the villain is cast into 

 prison, but not till he has been confronted by his supposed 

 victim and by Grewgious and made to feel how, while he 

 supposed himself safe, every movement of his had been 

 known to them and watched by them. In the knowledge 

 that Tartar loves Rosa and is loved by her, Jasper's 

 punishment is complete. 



Very little of this suggested close of Dickens's Half- 

 Dickens himsalf told very nearly 

 all of it, in what the story itself 

 discloses unmistakably,! in what 

 he said to Forster and to Miss 

 Hogarth, and finally in the in- 

 structions to Mr. Fildes respecting 

 the illustration?. 



With regard to these illustra- 

 tions, we know that a picture 

 showing Jasper in Rochester gaol 

 was to have appeared towards the 

 close of the book. But there were 

 earlier indications in Mr. Fildes' 

 work under Dickens's in- 

 structions (and not explained 

 to Mr. Fildes, of course, so 

 far as their bearing on the 

 story was concerned) which 

 are full of meaning. Yet, 

 strangely enough, they seem 

 to have been quite overlooked by 

 most readers. Or perhaps most of 

 these read from the cheaper editions, 

 in which the 

 old illustra- 

 tions of the 

 paper covers 

 to the monthly 

 parts were not 

 reproduced. I venture to give two 

 of the small pictures from the love 

 side of the cover, two from the 

 murder side, and the central picture 

 below, which presents the central 

 horror of the story — the end and 

 aim of the " Datchery assumption" 

 and of Mr. Grewgious's plans — 

 showing Jasper driven to seek for 

 the proofs of his crime amid the 

 dust to which, as he thought, the 

 flesh and bones, and the very clothes 

 of his victim, had been reduced. J 



Nothing more sensational had ever been invented in 



* A dog was certainly to have been introduced into the story 

 — probably it was to have been Neville's (Crisparkle would advise 

 Neville to pet a dog-friend) : and the "howl of a dog" was doubt- 

 less heard by Durdles after Neville's death, a few minutes after 

 Jasper's shriek of horror. 



t I include among these indications such remarks as Neville 

 Landless's, that " He hoped he might live " to see himself cleared. 

 Any one who understands Dickens knows as certainly from this 



fiction than the terrible punishment devised for Jasper. 

 Yet amidst the gloom and horror even of that part of the 

 story there would have been found room for touches of 

 humour and pathos after Dickens's best manner. When 

 we consider the course of the other events which were to 

 have led to the denouement, we feel still more what a 

 loss the missing half of this fine story has been to litera- 

 ture. The relations between Tartar and Neville would in 

 particular have been full of interest. In the earlier part 

 of the story we see Neville roused to fiery wrath with 

 Drood, — but not because of rivalry. We feel that Neville, 

 though proud and fiery, will not be moved to wrath by 

 Tartar's love for Rosa ; nay, that his own love for her will 

 cause him to sympathise with the earnest love of the brave 

 and honest sailor. The relations of Helen and Tartar 

 would also have been a fine subject for such a pen as 

 Dickens's, She would quickly feel that Tartar was worthy 

 of Rosa, and both she herself and her brother, in their 

 love and esteem for Crisparkle, would be naturally drawn 

 towards the man who had saved Crisparkle so gallantly in 

 early boyhood. 



But most difficult to deal with, 

 and therefore worthiest of Dickens's 

 pen, would have been the relations 

 of Edwin, after his identity had 

 been revealed, with Landless and 

 Tartar. Neville would have been 

 more in sympathy with Edwin 

 Drood — earnestly loving Rosa, 

 loving her like himself without 

 hope — than even with Tartar ; and 

 Edwin would now thoroughly 

 sympathise with the feel- 

 ings which had driven 

 Neville to an outbreak of 

 wrath against himself. Puri- 

 fied by trial, strengthened 

 though saddened by his 

 love for Rosa, Edwin would 

 have been one of those characters 

 DickMis loved to draw — a character 

 entirely changed from a once care- 

 less almost 

 trivial self, 

 to depth and 

 earnestness. 

 Neville was 

 to have died, 

 but we may 

 had learned 



be sure not before he 

 to understand the 

 change which Edwin's character had 

 undergone. Between Tartar and 

 Drood, though rivals awhile for 

 Rosa's love, a warm friendship was 

 to grow, in which Rosa, Helena, and 

 Crisparkle were to share — while aU 

 were to join in changing the ways of 

 dear old Grewgious from the sadness 

 and loneliness of the earlier scenes 

 to the warmth and light of that 

 kindly domestic life for which, angular though he thought 

 himself, his true and genial nature fitted him so thoroughly. 



that Landless will live so long and no longer, as if Dickens had 

 said as much. In a similar way (to cite one from hundreds of 

 cases when we are told in his " Wreck of the Golden Mary," that Mr. 

 Karx " iej?f his secret,") we know certainly that Mr. Ean is 

 marked down for death, early though the remark comes in the story. 

 X Above are shown Durdles's spade and bundle, and the great 

 key of the tomb, from which we learn that near Durdles and the 

 tomb the central meaning of the mystery is to be sought. 



