Thus, the Reviewer. The Novelist begs to ask him whether there is no License in his writing those words, and stating that assumption as a truth, when any man accustomed to the critical examination of a book cannot fail, attentively turning over the pages of Little Dorrit, to observe that that catastrophe is carefully prepared for from the very first presentation of the old house in the story; that when Rigaud, the man who is crushed by the fall of the house, first enters it (hundreds of pages before the end) he is beset by a mysterious fear and shuddering; that the rotten and crazy state of the house is laboriously kept before the reader, whenever the house is shown; that the way to the demolition of the man and the house together is paved all through the book with a painful minuteness and reiterated care of preparation, the necessity of which (in order that the thread may be kept in the reader’s mind through nearly two years) is one of the adverse incidents of the serial form of publication? It may be nothing to the question that Mr. Dickens now publicly declares, on his word of honour, that that catastrophe was written, was engraved on steel, was printed, had passed through the hands of compositors, readers for the press, and pressmen, and was in type and in proof in the Printing House of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans before the accident in Tottenham Court Road occurred. But, it is much to the question that an honourable reviewer might have easily traced this out in the internal evidence of the book itself, before he stated, for a fact, what is utterly and entirely, in every particular and respect, untrue.
The blows are dealt with a will, and it should be noted that Dickens is more irritated at the stupidity of the reviewer in failing to see the way in which he contrived the catastrophe than at his mistake in the fact. It is to be noted also that Dickens considered that his serial form of publication compelled him to be almost too minute, copious, and constant in keeping the thread in the mind of a reader whose attention had to be maintained for nearly two years.
PART II—ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION
CHAPTER V—WAS EDWIN DROOD MURDERED?
I reply in the affirmative, and for the following reasons:
I.
1. The external testimonies as given in a previous chapter are all explicit as far as they go in their testimony that in the intention of Dickens Edwin Drood was murdered. There is first the testimony of John Forster. To him Dickens plainly declared that a nephew was to be murdered by his uncle. The murderer was to discover that his crime was useless for its purpose, but he was not to be convicted in the ordinary way. It was by means of a gold ring, which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which the body had been cast, that the murderer and the person murdered were to be identified.
2. Madame Perugini corroborates Forster’s testimony, and points out that the only thing on which he is not positive is the ending of Neville Landless. He guards himself by saying, ‘I think,’ and this makes his testimony to the more important facts the more impressive. Madame Perugini, who thoroughly understood the relations between Forster and Dickens, finds it impossible to believe that Dickens should have altered his plan without communicating with Forster. Forster’s strong character, and the peculiar friendship that existed between him and Dickens, make it impossible to believe that Dickens should suddenly become ‘underhand,’ and we might say treacherous, by inventing a plot which he did not intend to carry into execution. Forster became a little jealous of Dickens’s confidence, and more than a little exacting in his demands on it. This Dickens knew, and smiled at occasionally. But he was very careful not to wound his friend’s very sensitive nature, and he so trusted Forster’s judgment as to be uneasy and unhappy if he did not obtain its sanction for his decisions and his actions. If there had been any change of plan Forster would certainly have been told. He never was told.
3. Again, we know that Charles Dickens the younger positively declared that he heard from his father’s lips that Edwin Drood was dead. I have been able to print part of a play written by Charles Dickens the younger and Joseph Hatton. This shows beyond contradiction that the authors believed Drood to be dead. Mr. Hatton says: ‘Consulting his son, Charles, to whom I offered my sketch, I found that his father had revealed to him sufficient of the plot to clearly indicate how the story was to end.’ How far this may apply to details we cannot be sure, but most certainly it certifies the death.
4. To this I may add that Madame Perugini’s own firm belief that Drood was dead is of no small importance, considering that she was the wife of Charles Allston Collins, who drew the much discussed wrapper. It did not occur either to Madame Perugini or her husband that there was any doubt as to the fate of Edwin Drood.