Mr. Cuming Walters has been so kind as to read the proofs.
If there are those who think that the problem does not deserve consideration, I am not careful to answer them. It is a problem which will be discussed as long as Dickens is read. Those who believe that Dickens is the greatest humorist and one of the greatest novelists in English literature, are proud to make any contribution, however insignificant, to the understanding of his works. Mr. Gladstone, in his ‘Essay on the Place of Homer in Education,’ mentions the tradition of Dorotheus, who spent the whole of his life in endeavouring to elucidate the meaning of a single word in Homer. Without fully justifying this use of time, we may agree in Mr. Gladstone’s general conclusion ‘that no exertion spent upon any of the classics of the world, and attended with any amount of real result, is thrown away.’
Bay Tree Lodge, Hampstead,
Sept. 1912.
INTRODUCTION
The three mysteries of Edwin Drood are thus stated by Mr. Cuming Walters:
‘The first mystery, partly solved by Dickens himself, is the fate of Edwin Drood. Was he murdered?—if so, how and by whom, and where was his body hidden? If not, how did he escape, and what became of him, and did he reappear?
‘The second mystery is—Who was Mr. Datchery, the “stranger who appeared in Cloisterham” after Drood’s disappearance?
‘The third mystery is—Who was the old opium woman, called the Princess Puffer, and why did she pursue John Jasper?’
It is with the first two of these mysteries that this book is concerned. In the concluding chapter some hints are offered as to the third, but in my opinion there are no sufficient materials for any definite answer.
The problem before us is to decide with one half of Dickens’s book in our possession what the course of the other half was likely to be.