The Problem of 'Edwin Drood': A Study in the Methods of Dickens

by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll

the dawn again

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER III—THE ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE WRAPPER

Much attention has been given to the illustrations on the wrapper and their significance. So far as I can find, the question was first raised in the Spectator. On 1st October 1870, in a review of the first edition of Edwin Drood, the Spectator complained that the publishers had not given a facsimile of the vignetted cover. The critic proceeds: ‘By whom was the lamplight discovery of a standing figure, apparently meant for Edwin Drood, in the vignette at the bottom of the page, intended to be made?’ He inquired also whether the man entering with the lanthorn was John Jasper, and what were the directions given by Mr. Dickens as to the ascent of the winding staircase represented on the right hand of the cover. The Spectator asked for any authentic indications which might exist of the turn which Dickens intended to give to the story. ‘Nor can we see how it can be possible that no such indications exist, with this prefiguring cover to prove that he had not only anticipated, but disclosed to some one or other, many of the situations he intended to paint.’ Since then others, and in particular Mr. Andrew Lang, have with much insistency declared that the bottom picture represents a meeting of the risen Edwin Drood with his horror-stricken uncle, John Jasper.

In reply to these questions certain considerations may be adduced:

1. We have already shown from the testimony of Charles Allston Collins, as reported by his widow, and by Sir Luke Fildes, that he, at least, was not aware of any such intention in the mind of Dickens. On the contrary, Madame Perugini and Sir Luke Fildes are convinced that Edwin Drood was murdered. More than this, Charles Dickens the younger, who was more or less in his father’s confidence, agreed with them. As we have noted, he affirmed that his father had told him that Edwin Drood was murdered, and he constructed his play on that basis.

2. I attach much weight to Madame Perugini’s suggestion that whatever her father meant or did not mean, he was certainly not the man to give away on the cover the answer to the mystery. He may have meant—he very probably did—before he began the story to mystify his readers a little. This is shown, I think, by the various suggested titles printed on page 57. But as he rejected those titles, it is plain that he thought them unsatisfactory, and that he refrained from raising in the title at least the question whether the murder of Edwin Drood was accomplished.

3. I had prepared materials for a chapter on the wrappers of Dickens’s novels as used in the monthly parts, but it is not necessary to go into particulars. I am glad to find myself in full agreement with the eminent Dickens scholar, Mr. B W. Matz, who attaches no importance to the covers. I put no trust in the wrapper of Edwin Drood any more than I should in that of Pickwick, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, Dombey and Son, and many others, for a suggestion of any intricate points in any of their plots. The only covers which may be reliable in this respect are A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and Sketches by Boz. Each of these works was issued in parts after their respective stories had appeared complete in other forms. All the others must have been designed before the first parts were published, and knowing the freedom which Dickens allowed himself we can attach little importance to the evidence of a particular cover as an index to the story.

When Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., completed his seventy-second year, on 4th July 1912, he was interviewed by a representative of the Morning Post, and said:

The cover of Our Mutual Friend, with the representation of different incidents in the story, I drew after seeing an amount of matter equivalent to no more than the first two one-shilling monthly parts. Here it is: you will see that I depicted among other characters, Mr. Silas Wegg. Well, I was aware that Wegg had a wooden leg, but I wanted to know whether this was his right or his left leg, as there was nothing in the material before me that threw light on this point. To my surprise, Dickens said: ‘I do not know. I do not think I had identified the leg.’ That was the only time I ever knew him to be at fault on a point of this kind, for as a rule he was ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and, I might almost add, the life-history of the creations of his fancy.