Strange Case of John Jasper - Decadence and 'Drood'

Charles Dickens’ famously unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) has prompted hundreds of studies surmising what was to happen, amateur and academic, and fictional continuations and conclusions, including one supposedly dictated by the ghost of Dickens, and approved by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his spiritualist role. They are collectively known as ‘Droodiana’, and I pick them up whenever I see them.

Drood enthusiasts rely upon a number of different sources for clues, including Dickens’ letters, the recollections of his friends, the artwork prepared for the book, and of course the text itself. It is a cheerful game and has been conducted with gusto and ingenuity. A key piece of evidence is in a letter Dickens wrote to his friend John Forster: ‘I have a very curious and new idea for my new story . . .  a very strong one, though difficult to work.’

All who comment, or continue, therefore have got to take good account of that. And it must be said that some of the theories about the book just don’t appear to meet this description. The idea advanced might be ingenious enough, and quite plausible, but is it really so novel, or so difficult? Some of the most popular don’t seem quite up to the mark, as critics have observed.

One persistent idea is that Drood, seemingly murdered and interred in the crypt of Cloisterham Cathedral, in fact survives and returns to haunt his would-be murderer, driving him to confess or to revisit the scene and give himself away. This would be a dramatic plot, no doubt with twists and turns, but it simply doesn’t seem new enough nor, on the face of it, all that difficult: quite conventional in fact.

Another well-supported idea is that Drood’s body, buried in quicklime to prevent identification (as was supposed to be the effect then), is nevertheless identified by a ring which has not perished. This, again, would be a perfectly satisfying crime thriller, but it doesn’t seem striking enough to merit Dickens’ evocation.

A third set of theories or continuations makes use of various permutations of impersonation: one or some of the characters are not what they seem. There is plenty in the first half of the book to support this idea, but again it is hardly new: in fact, imposture and concealed identity are a staple of Victorian mysteries. It is more likely that these elements are in fact red herrings: Dickens was always an artful storyteller and was probably here laying a false scent.

An interesting argument was put forward in a short study, The Mystery in the Drood Family by Montagu Saunders (Cambridge University Press, 1914), dated in the Preface ‘Sept. 1914’. Saunders seems to have published no other book. The author draws attention to what may be a deliberately brief and throwaway allusion in Chapter III to ‘animal magnetism’ and to ‘two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course’. This suggests to him that Dickens’ theme was ‘the idea of a murderer attempting and intending to fasten his crime on to another, but in reality tracking himself’.

There Saunders leaves it, but his basic idea may be extended much further. The opium den scene which opens the novel is curious and seems out of place with the scenes in respectable Cloisterham that follow, ’a city of another and a bygone time’, a fictional portrayal of Dickens’ beloved Rochester. The opium den must have some real significance in the novel. And the book as it stands is full of uncanny atmosphere, including premonitions, the scene in the cathedral crypt, mysterious figures, a great storm and a prevailing sense of dread. It is likely that Dickens intended to sustain and intensify this weird quality.

Perhaps, therefore, Drood has indeed been murdered and did not survive, but this was done by John Jasper in a state of delirium caused by his opium visions. When he recovers from these, he has no recollection whatever of the crime, or at most a very dim, unformed sense of tragedy or doom. The theme would, therefore, anticipate Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). But the Jekyll in Jasper, all oblivious to his Hyde role, is outraged by Drood’s murder, has suspicions of another character, and investigates the crime with vigour. What he doesn’t at first realise is that each clue he uncovers is leading, not to his suspect, but back to himself. And when at length the horrible truth forces itself upon him, he tries to cover his tracks, and so awakens suspicion and starts his own downfall.

The ‘very curious and new idea’ that Dickens had, in this reading, was that of an oblivious murderer unwittingly investigating and incriminating himself. It was ‘difficult to work’ because the reader would have to believe that Jasper could commit the crime and yet have no knowledge of it. Also, great skill would be required in portraying the gradual dawning of the truth, and the change in Jasper’s behaviour this induces.  In the Chapter III quotation, Dickens gives examples of the parallel ‘two states of consciousness’, one of them being drunkenness. But opium intoxication is of course even stronger than that, and we have been amply prepared in the opening chapter for its hold on Jasper.

If this solution to Dickens’ intentions is correct, then he was not only writing a highly ingenious crime mystery but anticipating by over a decade the interest in dual personalities found in fin-de-siecle macabre fiction, such as not only Stevenson’s tale, but Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Dowson and Moore’s lost novel The Passion of Dr Ludovicus (written 1889-90), and Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894). What we may have in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, therefore, is the first harbinger of the Decadence, complete with strange drug visions, a fascination with the uncanny, tormented souls, and the singular machinations of evil.

(Mark Valentine)