The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Charles Dickens and Monica Feinberg Cohen

Did Edwin Drood simply vanish into the night on Christmas Eve, or was he murdered with a black silk scarf by his uncle Jasper? Or was he possibly done in with a walking stick, brandished by one Neville Landless?

It has only been a few months since John Jasper, the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral, received a visit from his nephew Edwin. Edwin is contemplating ending his arranged engagement to Rosa Bud. The neglected bride-to-be, however, has two other admirers: Rosa’s terrifying choirmaster, the very same uncle Jasper, and her best friend Helena’s volatile twin, Neville Landless. With both John and Neville toting possible murder weapons to a Christmas Eve dinner, Dickens’ greatest unsolved mystery heats up fast.

Alas, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left unfinished at Dickens’ death in 1870, compelling generations of readers to rummage among shadowy clues—and a large cast of sinister and comic characters—to deduce Edwin’s killer for themselves. If, that is, Dickens ever intended him to be murdered at all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411438439

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.

Book preview

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

CHARLES DICKENS

INTRODUCTION BY MONICA FEINBERG COHEN

Introduction and Suggested Reading

© 2012 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Originally published in 1870

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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INTRODUCTION

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD EMERGED AS THE WORLD’S MOST captivating unsolved murder mystery when Charles Dickens died before its completion in 1870. Of the novel’s twelve projected parts, three had been published and three remained on Dickens’ desk when a stroke ended his life at the age of fifty-eight. By taking the secret of Edwin Drood’s disappearance to his quiet grave in Westminster Cathedral, Dickens left a grief-stricken public in a frenzy of speculation that lasted well over a century. To this day, novelists, scholars, playwrights, essayists and musicians attempt to finish Dickens’ last masterpiece, but without the imaginative energy, eccentric caricatures, ethical commitments and soul-searching anxieties of the novel’s master. From its opening in the smoky and exotic dissipation of a Victorian London opium den to its portrait of John Jasper, the criminal torn between his erotic fascination with the nubile Rosa Bud and his genuine love for the man who is both his nephew and rival, Dickens’ last novel plumbs the depths of a psychic netherworld never before represented in fiction. It not only anticipates the psychological thrillers and detective fiction of the fin-de-siècle, but prefigures with uncanny prescience what we have come to recognize as the alienated self of modernity. Although the novel is technically unfinished, its sensational atmosphere and penetrating psychological insights remain as thrilling today as they did to Victorian audiences over a century ago.

Born on February 7, 1812, to a clerk in the Naval Pay Office, Charles Dickens spent his early years first in Portsmouth and then in London. When he was twelve years old, his father was imprisoned for debt, a traumatic experience that Dickens would revisit in various ways throughout his fiction. While the rest of the family stayed with his father in the Marshalsea prison, Dickens was sent to work in the Warren’s Blacking Factory, a rat-infested, dilapidated building, where he typed up labels and pasted them on pots of shoe polish, sitting sometimes on display in a window where pedestrians could view him at what he felt to be menial and demeaning work. After his father’s release, Dickens returned to day school, but his formal education ended in 1827 when he was sent to work as an office boy for an attorney. In 1829, he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor’s Commons Courts and in 1832, a shorthand reporter of Parliamentary debates in the House of Commons. He began in 1833 to publish vignettes of London life, using the pseudonym Boz, a nasal corruption of Moses, a character in Oliver Goldsmith’s popular 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield, and in 1836 was financially able to marry Catherine Hogarth, who would eventually bear him ten children before their official separation in 1858 when he began a liaison with the eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan.

One of the most popular and prolific writers of all time, Dickens created novels that stand as virtual monuments: Oliver Twist (1838), Dombey and Son (1848), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865) have thrilled readers for generations all over the world. Possessing one of the most forceful voices in the Victorian reform movement, Dickens also fought tirelessly for more humane poor laws and prisons, more efficient courts, more just copyright laws, and a more enlightened educational system. He transformed the novel into the dominant form of entertainment in the nineteenth century and one of the most influential instruments of social change. After a series of grueling tours performing public readings, Dickens’ health deteriorated and he died on June 9, 1870, leaving unfinished his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Popular sentiment demanded a burial in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey where he still rests among the giants of English letters.

At the time of his death, Charles Dickens was considered the best-known and most popular novelist in the western world. As his biographers have documented, his appeal in England transcended social and economic divisions: one of his sons recorded that a walk with his father pantomimed a regal parade in which people of every occupation and social echelon greeted him. In France, he was the only English writer, with the exception of Shakespeare and possibly Sir Walter Scott, celebrated by a popular as well as a critical audience: the English author most pirated, Dickens was even dubbed the master of all hearts by the French critic and historian Hippolyte Taine. Of course, he was especially fêted in commercial America, where Little Nell Cigars, Mantalini Plugs, Pickwick Snuff and Dickens Collars welcomed him and his most beloved characters among the fanfare of his second visit in 1868. With his portrait hanging famously in the study of Tolstoy’s estate, and his books comforting Dostoevsky in Siberian exile, Dickens influenced a generation of Russian novelists with an impact that rivaled Pushkin.

The Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle called Dickens’ death an event world-wide. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that he never knew an author’s death to cause such general mourning. A reporter of the Moniteur des Arts grieved, My pen trembles between my fingers at the thought of all we—his family—have just lost in Charles Dickens. Italian headlines declared Carlo Dickens è morto. In the popular plea that he receive burial at Westminster Abbey, contrary to the terms stipulated in his will, The Times of London editorialized, Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race, might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Dickens. . . . When she heard of his death, a London street urchin cried, Then will Father Christmas die, too? The boy who had once faced unrelieved poverty and social ignominy had achieved more than the professional success that enabled him to buy the legendary mansion Gad’s Hill; he had brought pleasure to a multitude through his unparalleled storytelling. A fairytale ending worthy of a Dickens novel!

The Mystery of Edwin Drood opens with one of the most powerful passages in the entire Dickens canon: John Jasper’s opium hallucination, which collapses the symbolic space of an English cathedral into the exotic figures of countless scimitars, dancing girls and white elephants in order to represent the phantasmagoric collage of a man’s scattered consciousness. As if to simulate the perverted apprehension of a distorted mind, the novel begins—as it will end—with a march of insistent existential questions. And we soon learn that this man lives a double life: he is both a drug addict who frequents the squalid opium dens of East London as well as the respected and admired Choirmaster of Cloisterham, a cathedral town modeled after the Rochester in which Dickens himself spent part of his childhood. The disorienting effects of the passage derive from the delirium that finds in the Cathedral’s solid architecture the unsettling imagery of the Orient’s sensual shadows. Upon Jasper’s return to his ecclesiastical duties, he displays singular and mesmerizing musical gifts, which some critics have identified as reflecting Dickens’ own tortured view of artistic identity.

After this arresting start, the novel shifts to the more pedestrian topic Dickens initially claimed as the story’s main interest, the relationship between Jasper’s nephew and ward, Edwin Drood, an engineer who plans to join other colonial professionals in Egypt, and Jasper’s reluctant music pupil, Rosa Bud, who has been terrified by the Choirmaster’s sexual pursuit. Edwin and Rosa, like John Harmon and Bella Wilfer of Our Mutual Friend, were betrothed to each other as infants by their fathers’ dying wishes. For this reason, Drood is Jasper’s sexual rival even though the uncle’s love for his nephew is given elaborate and passionate representation. When Edwin disappears mysteriously one Christmas Eve, Jasper emerges as the main suspect. Unknown to Jasper, however, is the fact that Edwin and Rosa had decided to call off their engagement. This development would cast Jasper’s crime in a new light: the torturous murder of a beloved rival would transform into a pathetically unnecessary death and a pointless criminality.

Doppelgänger is a useful term for thinking about The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It refers to a malevolent double, the prefiguration of a split personality, a shadow that contests individual wholeness and challenges both psychic and generic integrity—that is, it represents a destabilizing of both character and of genre. In this sense, not only does Jasper’s deranged self haunt his upstanding self, but the novel itself is divided between detective fiction and psychological portraiture. Just as Jasper leads two lives so does the novel.

Readers have been starkly divided between seeing in Drood the prototype of a detective novel, the case G. K. Chesterton makes in an illuminating preface to a later reprint of the book, and seeing instead a penetrating and disturbing psychological study of the criminal mind. As John Allen Stevenson remarks in The Encyclopedia of the Novel, ever since Cain gave God a cagey answer to the question about his brother’s whereabouts, the story of crime and its detection has been a popular one. Although the American writer Edmund Wilson dismisses the application to Dickens and persuasively distinguishes between the melodramatic elements in Dickens’ fiction and the cloak-and-dagger novel, the influences of Dickens’ friend and theatrical collaborator Wilkie Collins and the tremendous success in the 1860s of sensation fiction are clear in Drood’s concentrated pacing, Manichean atmosphere, and recasting of the familiar English landscape in exotic and mind-altering terms.

Readers who identify Drood as detective fiction tend to be those who expect a novel to be driven primarily by plot. Chesterton, in fact, describes Drood as the only one of Dickens’ novels in which plot reigns supreme. As detective fiction, however, Drood leaves, like the taunting elf of Chesterton’s imagination, a myriad of unanswerable puzzles: Is Drood dead or in hiding? Did Jasper kill him or does he only think he has? What is Jasper’s connection to the opium dealer, Princess Puffer? Why has she followed him to Cloisterham? Who is Datchery? Whom will Rosa marry in the end? Much time and energy has been spent on answering these very questions, including two mock-trials in the early twentieth century, one in Philadelphia with lawyers, scholars and businessmen playing the dominant roles, and one in London with G. K. Chesterton as judge and Bernard Shaw as foreman of the jury. The 1985 New York musical-theater version left the mystery to be solved by audience vote. The American critic Howard Duffield, in an influential essay of 1930, convicted Jasper as a member of the Phansigars, an Indian religious cult committed to strangulation and a focus of English rule in India during the first half of the century. The British actor Sir Felix Aylmer exonerated Jasper in 1964 on the grounds that Edwin was the victim of an Egyptian blood feud involving his and Rosa’s fathers. Speculations still abound.

John Forster, Dickens’ close friend and biographer, argues, however, that Dickens was less concerned with plot than with character: for Forster, the story revolves around Jasper, the straight-laced, golden-voiced choirmaster, who lives a secret life as a homicidal opium addict maniacally obsessed with a young woman. After Dickens’ death, Forster claimed that the focus of the story—one might say its real mystery—was psychological. Quoting a letter from Dickens dated August 6, 1869, Forster makes the author’s interest in the criminal mind clear:

I have laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the story would be gone) but a very strong one, though difficult to work. The story, I learnt, immediately afterward, was to be that of a murder of a nephew by his uncle; 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 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. Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed. . . .

Although many scholars have rejected this hurried summing up on the grounds that Forster only quotes Dickens saying his idea has changed and cannot be communicated, Luke Fildes, Dickens’ illustrator for the serial installments, in a 1905 letter to The Times insisted that Dickens meant for Jasper to murder Edwin with the black scarf he wore around his neck, and which consequently needed to appear in an earlier illustration. Moreover, Dickens asked Fildes to visit prison cells perhaps in preparation for illustrating the final scene. Resistance to the idea of Jasper as the murderer comes most vehemently from those who see the novel as a detective story whereby the murderer’s identity cannot be revealed too early or too obviously. As Henry James once said, however, what is character but the determination of plot and what is plot but the illustration of character? We can conclude that to the extent the novel is a detective story, its generic doppelgänger is a psychological portrait—and one of deep significance to Dickens himself.

The last decade of Dickens’ life was marked by two experiences, each emblematic of the double life he explores in Drood: in his covert liaison with the young actress Ellen Ternan, Dickens abandoned his role as paterfamilias to a bustling Victorian household and played a predatory middle-aged man initiating a young girl into a life of adulterous secrecy; in his increasingly maniacal and fervent public readings, Dickens left his role as author of sentimental Christmas stories and life-affirming novels and chose—compulsively—to play a murderer. In both cases, the oscillation between respectability and villainy anticipates the split personality Robert Louis Stevenson would explore sixteen years later in The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.

The public readings perhaps provide the most eloquent reflection on the murder mystery that stands as Dickens’ last mortal words. Eager for profits lost to literary pirates throughout his professional life, Dickens, a gifted and dynamic actor, turned increasingly to public readings of his most popular novels. His favorite and most shocking compilation was the scene of Sikes’ murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist, in which the criminal bludgeons the good-hearted prostitute to death for having restored the innocent orphan, Oliver, to his benevolent friends. Always fascinated by crime, Dickens featured moving prison scenes, dramatic trials and blood-curdling executions throughout his fiction; indeed his personal library at Gad’s Hill contained A Select and Impartial Account of the Lives, Behaviour, and Dying Words of the Most Remarkable Convicts, from 1720 to Present Times, 3 vols (1745); John Howard, and the Prison World of Europe by Hepworth Dixon (1850); Thoughts in Prison by Dr. W. Dodd (1815); Alexandre Dumas’ Crimes célèbres, 8 volumes (1841); Trials at the Old Bailey (1779–80); and State Trials, 21 volumes (1809–14). This interest in crime took a new form in the readings of Sikes and Nancy. Here, like a man haunted by a doppelgänger of his own making, Dickens played both victim and victimizer with characteristic intensity. Shocked audiences, thus whipped into a hysterical frenzy, screamed and fainted and applauded. Joking about his murderous instincts, and the horror he inspired, Dickens also expressed a terrifying sense of being hunted and haunted, as if he were indeed a criminal about to be hanged.

How appropriate and yet how tragic that reading such words would produce a death sentence of another sort. Having already lost sight in his left eye, Dickens’ doctors and friends begged him to forgo reading Nancy’s Murder, the scene that raced his pulse and paralyzed his leg. A year later the anticipated stroke felled this remarkable artist. The murder mystery that Dickens left unfinished in the end is no more or less than an intimation of the human frailty that divides the man from the artist, the sane from the criminal, even the life from the death.

Monica Feinberg Cohen was educated at Yale College and Columbia University, where she now teaches nineteenth-century literature. She is author of Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: Women, Work and Home.

CONTENTS

I. THE DAWN

II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO

III. THE NUNS’ HOUSE

IV. MR. SAPSEA

V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND

VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER

VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE

VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN

IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH

X. SMOOTHING THE WAY

XI. A PICTURE AND A RING

XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES

XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST

XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?

XV. IMPEACHED

XVI. DEVOTED

XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL

XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM

XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL

XX. A FLIGHT

XXI. A RECOGNITION

XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON

XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN

SUGGESTED READING

 CHAPTER ONE 

THE DAWN

AN ANCIENT ENGLISH CATHEDRAL TOWER? HOW CAN THE ANCIENT English cathedral tower be here? The well-known massive grey square tower of its old cathedral? How can that be here? There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sun-light, and thrice ten thousand dancing girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and, shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

Another? says this woman in a querulous, rattling whisper. Have another?

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight, the woman goes on as she chronically complains. Poor me, poor me, my head is so bad! Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye’ll remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it? Ye’ll pay up according, deary, won’t ye?

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents.

Oh me, oh me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according.’ Oh my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits in a mouthpiece this way, and I takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.

She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearthstone, draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple, and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly.The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still.

"What visions can she have? the waking man muses as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it. Visions of many butchers’ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that? Eh?"

He bends down his ear to listen to her mutterings.

Unintelligible!

As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation.

Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and, seizing him with both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.

What do you say?

A watchful pause.

Unintelligible!

Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar, and fairly drags him forth upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the woman has taken possession of this knife, for safety’s sake; for, she too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side.

There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had no sense or sequence. Wherefore Unintelligible! is again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some rat-ridden door-keeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes out.

That same afternoon, the massive grey square tower of an old cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession, having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, WHEN THE WICKED MAN—— rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered thunder.

 CHAPTER TWO 

A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO

WHOSOEVER HAS OBSERVED THAT SEDATE AND CLERICAL BIRD, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.

Similarly, service being over in the old cathedral with the square tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and diverse venerable persons of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.

Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery, and yet cold, behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the cathedral wall has showered half its deep red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked uneven flagstones, and through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low arched cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with a goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio music-book.

Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?

Yes, Mr. Dean.

He has stayed late.

Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took a little poorly.

Say ‘taken,’ Tope—to the Dean, the younger rook interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.

Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been tendered to him.

And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken—taken, repeats the Dean; when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken——

Taken, sir, Tope deferentially murmurs.

—Poorly, Tope?

Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed——

I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,’ Tope, Mr. Crisparkle interposes with the same touch as before. Not English—to the Dean.

Breathed to that extent, the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect homage) condescendingly remarks, would be preferable.

Mr. Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short—thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock—when he came in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew DAZED: Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn’t seem to mind it particularly himself. However, a little time and a little water brought him out of his DAZE. Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying: "As I have made a success, I’ll make it again."

And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he? asked the Dean.

Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself. And I’m glad to see he’s having his fire kindled up, for it’s chilly after the wet, and the cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he was very shivery.

They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed window a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening

Reviews for The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An incomplete, and final, book by Dickens. The fact that it was incomplete is a shame, really, because it had just started to pick up for me when the story abruptly ended and there was a lot of setting up, I thought, to make the plot able to flow. Nevertheless, this is not his strongest work and I felt that there was much that would have benefited from editing. Yet, as this is an incomplete work and never shown to publishers before death, I figure that you have to take the book as is.2.5 stars- worth checking out for Dickens fans.

[ericcostello-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For the most part, I've liked the Dickens novels I've read; Bleak House is possibly the biggest exception, largely because that novel started to get bogged down about half-way through. This novel, albeit unfinished, doesn't really suffer from that problem. The pacing is good throughout, with perhaps the one exception of the sequence involving a dim London landlady that was nearly the last thing Dickens wrote. One can easily see why a few generations of readers have strained to come up with solutions for the mystery set by Dickens, since it is an intriguing one. (For my part, I believe that there has been no murder, and that Edwin Drood has vanished for his own reasons, to return later.) One of the joys of the book is the setting: Cloisterham (read: Rochester) is vividly evoked, to the point where it is easy to imagine the setting. The only character I wasn't keen on was Rosa Bud (ugh, name). Frankly, I think that Edwin Drood giving her up was a good job. A number of the other characters are a lot of fun, especially the nasty piece of work that is Honeythunder, and the gentle and good Crisparkle. Well worth a read.

[philsyphe · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Before reading any works by Charles Dickens, I really wanted to like everything he’d penned. I expected to like everything, in fact, because of his reputation. Alas! “Edwin Drood” is yet another of this highly-acclaimed and super-successful author’s novels that failed to engage me.Too many characters, too many adverbs, and too much rambling on with no purpose equals a slow and unengaging narrative.I see most others reviewers have high praise for both book and author, but sadly I can’t concur.

[juva_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In a quiet English town, something very mysterious is about to occur. Mr. Edwin Drood, a young man blessed by fate and circumstances is going to vanish without trace. Only his watch and shirt pin are found. The most likely suspect is his rival, another young man, less fortunate and possessed of a passionate disposition. It seems the two loved the same young girl and many suppose that the one did away with the other. However, as the reader knows, the young Drood and his lady Rosa have recently broken off their engagement. It had been decided upon by their deceased parents and the two feel unsuited. Moreover, Drood's uncle was also powerfully obsessed with young Rosa. After the disappearance, he makes violent love to Rosa in the garden and threatens her with some dreadful consequence if she does not give herself to him.This story has become quite famous as an unsolved and unsolvable mystery. It was began by the author shortly before his death and it's conclusion is unknown. The plot is dark and haunting and full of much promise.

[rickyhaas · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This has been my least favorite Dickens Novel out of the five I've read. I thought the pacing was a little slow and the characters were more bland. I felt that the first half of the book was introducing characters and their relationships with one another. Then the murder finally happens and the pacing picks up, but then within a few chapters the pacing slows back down. This book took me about three months to read, I was able to finish Great Expectations, which is twice the size, within three weeks. I would only recommend this book to people who like early mystery novels or are avid fans of Charles Dickens.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe a five star book if Dickens would've completed it. No fault of his. But still has his typical great writing, at times dark and foreboding at others funny and whimsical, and filled with amusing characters. Takes place in Cloisterum a gothic fictional town where Edwin disappears. I should also mention the reader does and excellent job with the different voices and accents. Deserves accolades on his own.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Young Drood and younger Rosa were promised to each other by their now-deceased fathers. Neither looks to the other as the spouse they would have chosen, yet their wedding date is drawing near quickly. Drood has an uncle who is maybe too involved in his life, while Rosa has the headmistress of her school, and watching them both are the local clergymen. Their small community is thrown into an uproar when orphans, a nearly grown brother and sister from Ceylon, are delivered as wards. The brother instantly shows his feelings for Rosa and his violence towards Edwin, who soon after disappears.Peopled with so many interesting, but lesser characters, I can't say why this book of just over 250 pages has taken me over a week to finish. It has it's problems. The back cover of my edition calls it "not one of the writer's greatest works", mainly as Dickens didn't get to complete it. The mystery doesn't take place until over 100 pages in, and one of the main characters has an unfortunate nickname, turning some of the lines unintentionally funny. But Dickens has such a way of weaving these well-defined characters, giving them bits of humor, bits of anger and remorse that they are far more real than most written in his time.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this on audio book, and I think that added to the experience. This is Dicken's last book, and it is unfinished, meaning that we'll never really who did poor hapless Edwin in. The book was surprisingly amusing, some of the conversations and comments on the characters or their actions make this a gleeful listen. There is, though, the dark to counteract the lightness, and the brooding character of John Jasper is a dark enough to be my candidate for likely villain. His passion (unwanted) for Rosa and opium habit add up to that for me. There is an array of characters here to support the action. Mr Chrisparkle and Rosa's ward (no idea of the spelling) are both lovely characters, with a strong moral and common sense but a strong compassion and humanity that stand as a great deal of good to contrast with Jasper. Rosa shows signs of coming into her own by the time the book ceases, with Helena being a positive influence on her. She also has two other suitors, and the question as to who she will end up with remains open. There is a lot to like in this, the range of characters, the light and shade, the humour and the underlying mystery. I wonder where it was going to go...

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat hard to rate this one, as it ends, of course, about halfway through. It sure would be great to know how Dickens planned to bring this book to a close - is Drood really dead? Who is Dick Datchery? But, even left undone, there are some great characters and good set pieces here, and even with some of the silly bits, it's quite a fun read.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This would have been a tremendous book had Dickens lived to finish it. Definitely Dickens characters and mysterious plots at his very best. I will now read The D. Case which purports to solve the mystery and I think there is also a book in which several authors try their hand at writing the rest of the book. I think that would be fun as well.

[nosajeel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once again presumptuous to rate the book. But even by Dickens' standards this would merit five stars. Perhaps the biggest frustration is the title, wishing to know whether or not it is actually a mystery -- with my reasonably strong money being on the fact that it is not. I think it was Our Mutual Friend with the preface saying something like don't congratulate yourself on solving the mystery -- it's not supposed to be one. Either way, John Jasper is a worthwhile addition to the canon of characters, as are about a half dozen others in this novel that begins and essentially ends in an opium den.

[sublunarie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love Dickens more than perhaps any other author that has ever existed. The first Dickens I ever read was David Copperfield. I know from that experience, that it is in my nature to struggle with Dickens love of slow-building plots. It wasn't until almost page 400 of Copperfield that something had clicked with me, and by the end it was my favorite book of all-time.So the downside of Edwin Drood is that it is unfinished. Not that the blame can really be laid on Dickens himself, it's not as if he just up and decided to push off this mortal coil before finishing his story. Unfortunately, he left behind the slow-build. The endless character introductions and the beginning of plot-weaving. Due to it being a mystery novel, many, MANY characters are introduced and at one time I considered drawing a chart just to keep it straight. The afterword of my edition reflects upon other writers that have written about - or even tried to finish - Edwin Drood. The question you would ask is who was the murderer. The consensus seems to be it is John Jasper, which to me is highly unfortunate as the entire set up of Mr. Jasper is basically "this guy is a creep and he probably did it". In my dream ending, Rosa would have been the murderer - content to not be married to Edwin but not willing to let him marry anyone else either.Overall, I had a very difficult time reading the build-up knowing there would be no payoff. I considered not finishing the book a number of times. This work is for hard-core Dickens lovers only.

[shirleybell · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This one only has 3 stars from me because it is unfinished. Otherwise, I would have given it 4 stars. This is the second of Dickens' books I have read, and I enjoyed the intrigue and the wonderfully descriptive style he has, and his characters are so unique! I wish I had not read this on my kindle, though, as I think Dickens is far better read in a paper book, where you can more easily flick back and forth to remind yourself of who all the characters are!

I would love to know how he would have ended it, but I like to think that Neville was innocent and Nadler guilty and he got his come-uppence in the end!

[clair.dlune · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The ending would have been GREAT!

[booklove2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ah, the unfinished novel. Charles Dickens died a few hours after writing part of this book, about half way through his plan for 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'. Edwin Drood mysteriously disappears Christmas Eve. His timepiece is found in the river. He just broke it off with his fiance, Rosa Bud, that it seems everyone in the town is in love with. Being a mystery, the murder of Edwin Drood went unsolved when Dickens died. If there even was a murder, as they never find the body of Drood. Dickens loved his surprise twist endings. Anyone could have been the murderer. Or it could have been something other than murder entirely. If Dickens had the story entirely planned out, maybe the murderer hadn't even been included as a character up to the halfway point. Imagine if the ending to 'Great Expectations' wasn't known. So there are points off for no ending. But Dickens is always enjoyable. I love the style of writing from the 19th century. I especially loved a description of an old timey food pantry/cupboard. The sweet jars had calligraphy labels while the savory jars had bold print. As it stands, there is isn't really the usual Dickens theme of addressing an important topic, such as poverty. 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' seems to be just a murder mystery. The pricelessness of this book (and this edition: the Modern Library) is a transcript of a mock trial held featuring some famous writers 50 years after 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' was published. The trial seems to take some liberties with the plot, but it brings up some interesting points. But with a half-finished mystery, it's hard to tell what happened within the mind of Charles Dickens. We will never know. My enjoyment of the lesser known (and unfinished) Dickens work makes me think I wouldn't have a problem reading any of the others. I'm looking forward to them.. if only my reading time would allow such hefty tomes. I'm also looking forward to 'Drood' by Dan Simmons... and the BBC movie airing next month.

[jasonlf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once again presumptuous to rate the book. But even by Dickens' standards this would merit five stars. Perhaps the biggest frustration is the title, wishing to know whether or not it is actually a mystery -- with my reasonably strong money being on the fact that it is not. I think it was Our Mutual Friend with the preface saying something like don't congratulate yourself on solving the mystery -- it's not supposed to be one. Either way, John Jasper is a worthwhile addition to the canon of characters, as are about a half dozen others in this novel that begins and essentially ends in an opium den. 

[janwillemnoldus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

French translation with an original (apocryphal) conclusion. The solution of the mystery makes of this version an original creation based upon the unfinished novel by Dickens.

[upstairsgirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you'd told me 20 years ago I'd find a Dickens that I didn't want to end, I'd have laughed myself sick, but here it is. Dickens's final, unfinished novel centers around the mysterious disappearance of a young man who's recently both broken up with his fiance and fought with one of her other admirers. The Penguin Classics edition has extensive introductory material and appendices that go into exhaustive detail about what Dickens's plans for the novel are known to have been, using his own notes and reports of conversations he had with his illustrator. There's a helpful appendix on opium usage in England as well that explains some of what Dickens is likely to have been thinking about when creating the character of Jasper Johns. The half-novel itself is, as always, very funny and very tightly plotted; it's a pity that Dickens did not live long enough to finish the story, because it would undoubtedly have been excellent, and I'd love to know how he meant to tie all of the pieces of the mystery together in the end. (The extra material in the Penguin edition hints at how this might have been done; as usual I wish I'd left the introductory material for after I read the story, as Penguin introductions tend to give away too much.)

[laurenbdavis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dickens died before he finished it, and the female lead is described in terms that would make any feminist snarl, however, even with those frustrations, it's a heck of a read. Dickens descriptions of the opium addicts alone are worth the book's effort. It's all classic Dickens - the names, "Rosa Bud," (with the unfortunate nickname of "Pussy") "Grewgious," "Rev. Crisparkle," "Durdles," "Dick Datchery," "Princess Puffer" (the opium seller), and a boy known as Deputy who is consistently described as "a hideous boy. There is allusion to class prejudice, as well as racial prejudice, and Dickens' famous sense of injustice is well evident. Suspenseful and at times laugh-out-loud funny, I recommend it. However, if the idea of reading an unfinished novel is discouraging, the intrigued reader can find some hints as to the murderer's identity in the work of Dicken's biographer and friend, John Forster, (The Life of Charles Dickens, 1876 in two volume II: p. 451-452). Forster tells of correspondence he received on the subject from Dickens:"...was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; 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 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. Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it. So much was told to me before any of the book was written; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last interview. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer."

[samfsmith_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Dickens’ last unfinished novel. My cunning plan is to read this, then read some of the many novels that attempt to finish the novel for Dickens, or deal with the end of Dickens life. Any excuse to read more books!Actually, even though the novel is unfinished, it’s a satisfying read. Edwin Drood disappears. He is a young, happy-go-lucky, man who was engaged in an arranged marriage. Just as Edwin and his fiance break off their engagement, he disappears. Public suspicion falls on a friend of his, another young man. But all clues tend to point to his uncle Jasper, who seems obsessed with Edwin’s fiance. Jasper is also a secret opium addict, smoking it in the opening scene in a den in London.No one knows where Dickens intended to take the novel. Is Edwin really dead? Or has he just disappeared because of the termination of his engagement? We’ll never know, but that hasn’t stopped other writers from speculating.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not much of a mystery, but a fine story! Lots of tension and suspense and some great characters, just like a good Dickens tale. I was quite drawn in and even a bit surprised by some of the characters reactions and actions. Pleasantly surprised I should say. I did think it unraveled a bit towards the end, but Mr. Dickens probably would have fixed that if he had lived a bit longer.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I knew at the outset that Dickens died before he had the chance to finish this novel, but I didn't realize how incredibly eager I was going to be to have it solved! It seems that he was just getting somewhere, and that there was going to be some climactic action coming up shortly, and then poof. No more book. But on the other hand, it was so good getting to that point, and as noted, I am aware that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was unfinished, so I can't say that I was all that frustrated, really. It's the getting to the end (or the leave-off point) that mattered, and it was a great ride. I won't go over the story/plot here; it is very well known. Movies have been made; I believe there was a stage production or two as well, and there are (as I saw written somewhere) entire websites and pundits devoted to solving the mystery.This edition has a preface by Peter Ackroyd, a Dickens biographer, and an appendix by GK Chesterton. Chesterton provides several theories about what may have followed if Dickens had been alive to finish his work. One more thing: I read this on the heels of Dan Simmons' most excellent novel "Drood," and it puts a lot into perspective.I would definitely recommend it -- if you MUST have an ending, then don't read it, but as I said above...the getting there is most of the fun. Most excellent.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Four years, many speaking engagements, and a trip to America intervened between Charles Dickens' penultimate novel and his final one, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.Ever since his involvement in a train accident in 1865 on his return from France, and perhaps even before, Dickens was ailing with a variety of illnesses, some of which were at least aggravated by overwork and his refusal to reduce his schedule. It was thus in 1869 that he began writing his final novel of which the first six of the originally intended twelve monthly parts were published in 1870. He died in June of that year with the mystery unfinished.Edwin Drood begins in an opium den and the air of mystery that surrounds that venue grows as the story progresses. At the center of the story is Edwin Drood, his fiancee Rosa Budd, his uncle John Jasper, Canon Crisparkle, and the Landless twins, with others to numerous (as was Dickens' way) to mention. The style is fresh and new for Dickens, especially when contrasted with the heavier more convoluted style of Our Mutual Friend which immediately preceded it. The first half of the story introduces conflict and doubt for the young Drood and we see glimmers of danger headed his way in the remaining finished sections. Although incomplete, the novel has appeal and is well worth reading.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dickens's last, half finished novel. This is reasonably fast paced compared to some of the author's works. It is a great shame he died before this could be completed as the elements of a good mystery are there and it leaves off at what feels like the threshold of a fairly significant revelation. As ever, some colourful characters and great language. But why is it written in the present tense?Other stories in this collection not yet read.

[whatthedickens_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A pity that Dickens didn't this one before his death. Many dark themes are explored by Dickens, and an interesting snapshot of the underbelly of life in London in the late 1800s. Might have been Dickens greatest work . . . but we will never know.