Drawing the (Un)finished Line in <em>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</em>
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Saverio Tomaiuolo
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Victorian illustrations
Drawing the (Un)finished Line in <em>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</em>
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Essays
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2022-10-18
2023-05-31
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Saverio Tomaiuolo
2023/05/31
10.13125/2039-6597/5348
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Cassino University, Italy
2039-6597
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Victorian illustrations
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Drawing the (Un)finished Line in <em>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</em>
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13
           Drawing the (Un)finished Line
           in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

                               Saverio Tomaiuolo

Abstract
     Studies devoted to The Mystery of Edwin Drood have tended, in some
cases, to dismiss it as a great albeit incomplete novel, whereas others have
pushed forward, rather than backward, the speculations raised by this text,
with a series of hypotheses regarding the disclosure of the mystery, and
its possible epilogue. Notwithstanding the status of Dickens’s last novel as
an unfinished text, The Mystery of Edwin Drood features a closed narrative
structure and may be studied as a finished text. Charles Allston Collins’s
sketched wrapper design and Luke Fildes’s wrapper and illustrations reflect
the novel’s mixture of symbolic and realistic elements and feature a com-
plete visualisation of its main themes. In this respect, these visual texts may
be also analysed and “read” as original and independent, rather than de-
rivative, works. Finally, the mystery the title alludes to suggests the actual
impossibility of disclosing all of the novel’s (and illustrations’) enigmas and
encapsulates a paradigm of unsolvability that is central to The Mystery of Ed-
win Drood.

Keywords
    Charles Allston Collins; Charles Dickens; Luke Fildes; The Mystery of
Edwin Drood; Victorian illustrations




Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5348
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood




          Drawing the (Un)finished Line
          in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

                               Saverio Tomaiuolo

      Charles Dickens’s relationship with illustrations and illustrators was
based on a series of collaborations, contrasts, friendships, misunderstand-
ings, misreadings, deaths, and afterlives, which began with his first novel
The Pickwick Papers (1836) and ended with the unfinished The Mystery of
Edwin Drood (1870). In a sort of narrative and visual circle the first novel by
Dickens was the work of a dead illustrator and of a surviving writer, and
the last one of a dead writer and of a surviving illustrator. Notwithstand-
ing the status of The Mystery of Edwin Drood as an unfinished manuscript
which has inspired an endless number of hypotheses on its development
and conclusion, this novel features, as it were, a closed narrative structure
and may be studied as a finished text. Charles Allston Collins’s wrapper
and Luke Fildes’s illustrations reflect the novel’s mixture of symbolic and
realistic elements, and feature a complete visualisation of its main themes.
Finally, the mystery the title alludes to (that is, Edwin Drood’s disappear-
ance) suggests the actual impossibility of solving all of the novel’s enigmas,
and encapsulates a paradigm of unsolvability that is central to The Mystery
of Edwin Drood, intended here as a narrative and as a visual text.
      Symbolically, Dickens was born as a novelist on 20 April 1836 with
the suicide of Robert Seymour, the first illustrator of The Pickwick Papers.
In February 1836 Edward Chapman (of Chapman & Hall) was informed
by Robert Seymour of his project to illustrate the adventures of a fictional
«Club of Cockney Sportsmen», to be published – as Chapman and Sey-
mour agreed – in shilling monthly numbers, so as to be available to a larger
number of readers. Dickens seemed the best choice because of his style,
which mixed journalism and narrative fiction, as presented in Sketches
by Boz (1836). However, business worries and anxieties (added to what
was probably depression) and the tense relationship between writer and
illustrator lead to a tragic conclusion: in the back garden of his Islington
residence, in Liverpool Street, on 20 April 1836 Seymour took his own life,
just before the second number of The Pickwick Papers was being published.
Dickens was now solely in control of his novel and after having excluded


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George Cruikshank (who had illustrated Sketches by Boz) because he was
too busy, and after having agreed with Chapman & Hall that the third
number of The Pickwick Papers should consist of only two illustrations and
thirty-two pages of letterpress – reversing the number of images and writ-
ten pages – he accepted William Hall’s suggestion to employ Robert Wil-
liam Buss. The problem was that Buss was not an expert in the process of
etching and, despite his attempts to learn it in a couple of weeks, the results
were unsatisfying. Although Buss’s etchings The Cricket-Match and The Fat
Boy Awake on this Occasion Only were attached to the third number, they
were soon suppressed and replaced by those drawn by Hablot K. Browne
(«Phiz»), who was chosen as the definitive illustrator. The serialisation of
The Pickwick Papers generated – in Catherine J. Golden’s words – «an un-
precedented publishing boom and established a formula for publishing
fiction: an instalment accompanied by illustrations came out independent-
ly in a part issue or as a feature in a monthly or weekly periodical»; then,
after the completion of serials, «publishers bound up the parts along with
the illustrations into a simple printed edition» (Golden 2017: 2). Finally,
the whole package was bound by a coloured wrapper, usually green,
which was exactly the same for each number, except for the issue date.
With a few exceptions, Dickens’s novels appeared in monthly instalments
of thirty-two pages with two illustrations (advertisements were put before
and after them) that preceded the printed texts. The two plates were print-
ed and attached in front of the written text; accordingly, readers first saw
illustrations and then texts. This aspect is a further demonstration of the
relevance of images (and of Dickens’s use of them), since «Victorian serials
often spoke to the eye, with illustrated wrappers and images playing a rich
– even primary – signifying role for readers» (Leighton and Surrige 2018:
9)1. In this respect, Dickens’s oeuvre cannot be dissociated from its visual
rendering, since written words and illustrations inform (and sometimes
even complement) each other. Like novels or short stories, illustrations
may be «read like texts» in Peter Wagner’s words (Wagner 1996: 17), and
approached not just as derivative or secondary visual products but rather,
in intermedial terms, as being in dialogue with their source. Illustrations
and images accompanying written texts (including in Dickens’s case also
wrapper designs) are thus connected to the descriptions they refer to and,


    1
      According to John Harvey, «author and artist worked for a public which
did not easily imagine what it read, and so found illustrations a valuable aid»
(Harvey 1970: 3).


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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



at the same time, isolated from them, and likely to be subjected to specific
analyses.
      Thirty-three years after The Pickwick Papers, Dickens with The Mystery
of Edwin Drood came back, as it were, to where it all started, likewise, his re-
lationship with the illustration process similarly testified to difficulties and
procrastinations. The setting of his childish memories and of many events
recounted in The Pickwick Papers, Rochester – where he decided to live dur-
ing his last years in Gad’s Hill Place – was turned into the fictional town
of Cloisterham in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Burdened by serious health
issues (lameness, giddiness, inability to raise his hand to his head etc…), in
1869 doctors advised Dickens to cancel his final reading tour before its con-
clusion, cutting the seventy-seven performances that he had planned. After
a short pause, he was allowed to deliver a short farewell series of readings
that concluded on 15 March 1869 in London, and on 1 April of the same
year the first instalment of what was to be his last novel came out. Dickens
was well aware that his end was approaching, to the point that he added
a clause to the contract with his publisher Chapman & Hall for repaying
part of the anticipated money in case he died, or could not complete his
novel. This is one of the reasons why The Mystery of Edwin Drood is (un-
surprisingly) shorter than his previous works, and it is composed of only
twelve monthly numbers – instead of the usual twenty – of which Dickens
could complete only six before his death on 9 June 1870. The publication
of The Mystery of Edwin Drood ushered endless debates on its remaining
plot and epilogue (and a plethora or spurious endings and continuations)2,
although direct and indirect testimonies – including his son Charles Dick-
ens Jr., his daughter Kate Dickens, his friend and biographer John Forster
and the two illustrators Charles Allston Collins and Luke Fildes – agreed
that the Cloisterham Cathedral choirmaster John Jasper was the murder-
er of Edwin Drood by means of a necktie (burying his nephew’s body in
quicklime inside the Cathedral crypt to accelerate the process of decompo-
sition). As for the other characters, namely Rosa Bud (or «Rosebud»), Stony
Durdles, the small boy known as Deputy, Reverend Septimus Crisparkle,
Mr. Hiram Grewgious, Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Neville Landless and his twin
sister Helena, Dick Datchery, Tartar, and Princess Puffer, their destiny has
been uncertain and only partially foreseeable. Kate Dickens gave another
possible hint at the narrative organisation of the novel’s epilogue in the
Pall Mall Magazine in June 1906, where she recalled her father’s words on


      2
          For an investigation of the solutions to the mystery, see Orford 2018b.


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the originality of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which according to Dickens
did not lie in the mystery but in the psychological description of John Jas-
per. The novel’s villain at the end of the novel would confess his crime
in his prison cell in the third person, as if it were told by another. This is
confirmed by Luke Fildes’s son in his memories of his father, according to
whom Dickens had the intention to visit Maidstone jail and to bring his
illustrator with him (Fildes 1968: 10), in order to visualise the setting of
Jasper’s final confession and to help him create an illustration that could
surpass Cruikshank’s famous plate Fagin in the Condemned Cell in Oliver
Twist (1837).
      The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been initially dismissed, in some cas-
es, as a great albeit incomplete narrative or worse as a failure3, whereas
in other cases critics have been prone to push forward, rather than back-
ward, the speculations raised by this text, focusing on the disclosure of
the mystery, and on the possible epilogue. Nevertheless, an analytically
productive way to appraise Dickens’s novel (as well as its illustrations)
does not lie in approaching it as a fragment, but as a closed textual unity
and as a completed piece that can be scanned through the instruments of
critical reading. This approach is supported by the peculiar way in which
Dickens has unknowingly (un)finished his novel, since the last chapter re-
turns cyclically to its opening by having Jasper coming back to the same
opium den with which the narration started. Partially dismantling and dis-
missing Droodist debates on the evolution of (and solution to) The Mystery
of Edwin Drood, Gerhard Joseph writes that, whatever may have been the
novelist’s intentions, the chapter that he left «allows us to make meaning
of both Dickens’s novel and life as if what we have […] is all there», so as
«to read that chapter as an ending of a finished manuscript rather than as
the exact middle» (Joseph 1996: 172). The title of this unfinished novel is to
be interpreted as assertive rather than inquisitive, despite its author’s hes-
itations over it. Dickens’s initial uncertainty is testified by the presence of
seventeen working titles – which have confounded and sometimes mislead
readers and critics – such as Flight and Pursuit, Dead or Alive?, One Object in
Life, The Loss of Edwyn [sic] Drood, or The Disappearance Edwyn [sic] Drood. In
line with its final title, Dickens’s novel, as well as the complete evolution
of its plot, should remain a mystery forever. As a closed textual unity, in
The Mystery of Edwin Drood words and illustrations leave intact the enigma


    3
       Wilkie Collins was extremely critical against The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
defining it «the melancholy work of a worn-out brain» (Collins 1890: 3).


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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



the title alludes to, since – through their specific style and semiotic densi-
ty – they both construct a written and visual narrative that opens itself to
multiple readings.
      Our Mutual Friend – Dickens’s last completed novel – was published
in 1864, with illustrations by Marcus Stone, who later decided to devote
his energies to painting instead of producing black-and-white drawings.
Dickens, who was in need of an illustrator for his soon-to-be new novel, ex-
cluded «Phiz», who in 1867 had been stuck by paralysis, and decided to en-
gage his son-in-law Charles Allston Collins, Wilkie Collins’s brother, who
had married his daughter Kate in 1860. Dickens’s main idea was to move
away from having caricatural illustrations and to opt for a more realistic
and darker approach to the visualisation of his text. This is indicative of
Dickens’s search for a new figurative language that was different from the
one that characterised his previous novels. Notwithstanding his previous-
ly negative views on the pre-Raphaelites – expressed in a vehement attack
against John Everett Millais’s Christ in the House of his Parents (1849-1850),
published in the June 1850 number of Household Words – Dickens’s attitude
towards these artists changed, to the point that he would employ an un-
official member of the Brotherhood to give visual form to his unfinished
novel. Weakly by constitution, his son-in-law had become famous for his
painting Convent Thoughts (1851) and had already experimented with real-
istic subjects (focusing on social issues) in Drink – a drawing once thought
to be by John Everett Millais, but recently attributed to Collins – inspired
by George Cruikshank’s series of etching entitled The Bottle (1847). For this
reason, Dickens hired him for the wrapper design and illustrations of The
Mystery of Edwin Drood, as confirmed by a letter dated 14 September 1869
to Chapman & Hall. However, after having sketched the wrapper design
and some illustrations, Charles Collins was forced to abandon the project
due to his ill health, which would lead to his premature death in 1874.
Before starting his work on the wrapper design for The Mystery of Edwin
Drood, Collins was given by Dickens’s publisher (upon the writer’s advice)
the original wrapper for The Pickwick Papers, which reproduced the typical
Wheel-of-Fortune Design that would appear in almost all of Dickens’s se-
rialised novels. For the creation of his wrapper design, Collins took inspi-
ration from Hablot Browne’s model, and followed Dickens’s indications,
which were deliberately vague and approximate, so as to preserve the mys-
tery of the storyplot. In Cuming J. Walters’s opinion, «[what] Collins knew
or did not knew we shall never learn. Dickens, having decided on a mysti-
fication, would not be likely to tell the artist all about it and ask to give the
secret away on the wrapper». Therefore, Dickens «would aim at as much


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                                       Fig. 1

concealment as possible, and, where revelation was unavoidable, would
make the revealing obscure and delusive» (Walters 1912: 226). Collins’s
design has been an object of debate for many critics, and its visual opacity
may be compared to the textual opacity of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
This is the first example of the ambivalence and complexity in the visual
translation of an unfinished novel dealing with a mystery. There have been
speculations regarding Collins’s wrapper: as it stands, it is probably one of
the most reliable sources for the eventual development of Dickens’s novel,
and even its allusiveness as a rough but engaging sketch is in line with
the nature of The Mystery of Edwin Drood as an ambivalent and inherently
mysterious text. At the same time, «[the] sparseness of detail in Collins’s
much discussed sketch for the wrapper, together with the angularity of its
lines», as Jane R. Cohen argues, «suggests [Collins’s] hesitation as well as
his ill health» (Cohen 1980: 213)4.
      The textual “reading” of Collins’s wrapper design should be coun-
ter-clockwise, beginning from the top and then moving from the upper left
downwards (Fig. 1). In the top left-hand side, an allegorical female figure


    4
       For an analysis of Collins’s and Fildes’s wrapper designs and illustrations,
see Dickens 1972: 238-43, Dickens 2002: 294-8, and Tomaiuolo 2015.


                                                                                      181
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



stands for Love, whereas its specular image on the right-hand side of the
page (with a dagger) is a male figure standing for Murder, Hate, Death
or Vengeance; in Fildes’s wrapper, this latter image will acquire feminine
traits, recalling the traditional representations of Lady Macbeth with dag-
ger in hand5. The couple sketched on the top left probably represents Ed-
win and Rosa, pensively watched by a character, who may be identified
as Jasper, on the right. Moving downwards, there is another (presumably
allegorical) female figure who stares at a notice regarding Edwin’s loss,
surrounded by a branch of roses. On the left, there is a woman (Rosa or He-
lena) and her light haired suitor, identified by many critics with Tartar; he
wears a moustache, so he can be neither Edwin (who in the novel does not
have a moustache) nor Jasper (who is dark-haired). On the left corner we
can see Princess Puffer. The light-bearer on the right of the central tableaux
– probably set in the Cloisterham Cathedral crypt – has been identified as
Jasper, whereas the illuminated figure may be interpreted as a resurrected
Edwin as the product of a hallucination generated by guilt (a fact that may
recall, again, Macbeth), as Neville or even as Helena Landless disguised as
Datchery. The figure is putting his/her fingers in the upper buttons of his/
her coat, searching for what is perhaps Edwin’s wedding ring, which had
resisted the corrosive effects of the lime, and which will be one of the clues
through which Edwin’s body would be recognised. On the right-hand cor-
ner of the wrapper there is another opium smoker, who has masculine
traits. Moving upwards to the right-hand side we can notice a winding
staircase, with local policemen pursuing somebody. The top figure point-
ing to Jasper is probably Jasper himself, who confesses his own crime as if
told by another, as reported by Kate Dickens. This is confirmed by a letter
written by Dickens’s son-in-law (and illustrator) in May 1871, addressed to
a theatrical impresario, in which Charles Allston Collins explains that «the
figures hurrying up the spiral staircase» are led by Jasper, «who points un-
consciously to his own figure in the drawing at the head of the title» (qtd.
in Dickens 1972: 238).
      After Collins’s dismissal, Dickens found himself facing the same prob-
lems that he had to face when he was working on The Pickwick Papers. In his
search for a new illustrator none other than his old Pre-Raphaelite enemy
Millais helped him. After having seen Luke Fildes’s illustration for Victor
Hugo’s L’homme qui rit (1869) (entitled Houseless and Hungry, which depict-


      5
       On the influence of Macbeth (1605-1608), see Duffield 1934, Collins 1965,
and Jacobson 1986.


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                                    Fig. 2

ed some vagrants awaiting admission to a workhouse) on the first issue of
The Graphic, published on December the 4th 1870, Millais realised that the
peculiar graphic style of Fildes – based as it was on realistic representation
and on the prevalence of dark hues – could fit in with the mood of Dick-
ens’s novel-in-progress, and immediately brought with him a copy of the
weekly to the writer’s residence at number 5 Hyde Park Place, exclaiming
«I’ve got him!». In order to test Fildes’s capacity, Dickens (via his publisher
Chapman & Hall) requested that he prepared a couple of drawings from
David Copperfield. Satisfied by the result, Dickens found in Fildes a perfect
visual intermediary for the style that he decided to adopt in The Mystery of
Edwin Drood, which was, at the same time, realistic and allusive, visually
detailed and symbolic. Fildes’s first task was therefore to complete Collins’s
sketched wrapper design (Fig. 2). Although Fildes’ figures are more neatly
drawn, the identity of some of them still remains difficult to associate with
a specific character, contributing to enhance the paradigm of mystery that
characterises Dickens’s novel. The single branch of roses surrounding the
female figure looking at the loss notice on the left in Collins’s wrapper now
has expanded to the whole central section of the design (a subtle wordplay
with the name of the main female character, Rosa Bud). The spade, the key
and the dinner bundle that appear just upon the lower tableaux – which
were not in Collins’s original sketch – evidently belong to Durdles, who


                                                                                   183
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



is now given a central role in Edwin Drood’s disappearance, and in the
eventual resolution of the mystery. One of the main changes is represent-
ed by the pursuing figures on the right-hand side, who were depicted as
policemen by Collins, and who now wear plain clothes, probably because
the chronology of The Mystery of Edwin Drood excluded the presence of an
official police force at the time the story is set. The significance of particu-
lars in Fildes’s (and Collins’s) wrapper design may be studied according
to Mieke Bal’s reflections on the value of visual details, especially in the
case of those (seemingly minor) elements that activate further hermeneu-
tic suggestions. Fildes’s and Collins’s dissemination of emblematic objects
(the dagger, the spiral staircase, the roses, etc.) that often seem to be “out of
place” represents, as Mieke Bal suggests, a «contradiction that tears open
the work, the monstrous element that reveals the flaws and disparities and,
because it provokes astonishment, offers never-ending possibilities for the
understanding of these works» (Bal 2004: 1289). The ambiguous and even
misleading nature of the details included in the wrapper designs for The
Mystery of Edwin Drood does not only enhance the mystery of Dickens’s un-
finished novel but becomes «the basis for a quite different understanding»
(Bryson 2001: 3) of the wrapper as visual textual unities that are specific
and individual elements that can be “read”.
      Like Marcus Stone, Fildes was an academic painter trained at South
Kensington and the Royal Academy and was distant from the Hogarthian
style of Cruikshank, since he was involved in the so-called «social realist
movement». Whereas earlier illustrators such as Cruikshank or Phiz were
caricaturists interested in the comic grotesque – an element that finds a
narrative homologue in Dickens’s early novels – the artists of the Sixties
«created a new visual idiom, a complicated and sometimes challenging
way of showing in black and white which embraced a variety of subjects,
themes and styles» (Goldman and Cooke 2012: 2). These various styles,
which reflected the relationship between mid-to-late Victorian literary
trends and figurative art, ranged from the neo-medievalism of Dante Ga-
briel Rossetti to the idyllic imagery of George John Pinwell, from the do-
mestic settings of John Everett Millais to the social realism of Luke Fildes
and the classicism of Frederic Leighton. The definition «Victorian Social
Realism» refers to a specific group of British artists that included, among
others, Luke Fildes, Frank Holl and Hubert von Herkomer, who in the
1870s «provided documentary illustrations from the lives of the poor, es-
pecially in London» (Treuherz 1987: 9), and whose works appeared main-
ly on the pages of The Graphic. Influenced by the first wave of Victorian
realists such as Richard Redgrave (see for instance The Sempstress, 1841,


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                                   Fig. 3

and The Outcaust, 1851) and George F. Watts (The Irish Famine, 1849-1850,
and Found Drowned, 1849-1850), these artists focused on working class life
and subjects, reconfiguring the lesson of the Pre-Raphaelites on the value
of minute details and accurate observation to develop a renewed realistic
figurative style. Wood engraving was the prevalent mode of reproducing
illustrations during the mid-to-late Victorian age, with the firm of the Den-
ziel brothers as its most important representatives. With the aim to provide
more precise and satisfying illustrations, Fildes decided to introduce a new
method in the wood-engraving process: in order to avoid the problems
related to the transition from paper to woodblocks (which resulted in poor
visual quality), he decided to photograph his drawings, enabling them to
be more easily reproduced on woodblocks by wood engravers and succes-
sively compared to the final result in illustrations, before being printed.
      Fildes’s wood-engraved illustrations for The Mystery of Edwin Drood
reflect not only Dickens’s darker narrative approach in his last novel
(where comic elements are lessened, with the sole exception of auction-
er-turned-Mayor Mr. Sapsea) but also its deliberate ambiguity. In this sense,
Fildes’s illustrations may be described as «iconotexts» because – as Peter
Wagner puts it – «they integrate the semantic (denotative and connotative)
meaning of the written texts that are iconically depicted, urging the “read-
er” to make sense with both verbal and iconic signs in one artifact» (Wag-
ner 1996: 16). Like all visual texts, his illustrations (and wrapper design)
must be aligned with interpretation rather than simply with «perception»,
in contrast with what Mieke Bal has described as the «visual essentialism»


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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



of traditional art history (Bal 2005), which tended to treat artifacts as works
appealing only to the eye rather than to textual analysis. In the Court, the
first illustration that accompanied The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Fig. 3) is set
in a London opium den, and its description is inspired by a real visit dur-
ing which Dickens was at Shadwell, accompanied by some friends and by
a member of the police. The man on the right who has just pierced together
his «scattered consciousness» (after taking opium) and who is «supporting
his trembling frame upon his arms» (Dickens 2002: 9) is John Jasper. His
figure and clothing are in contrast with the mass of the drugged people
sleeping in the bed (on the left), which include the Lascar, a Chinaman
and a haggard woman, although they cannot be easily identified. In the
corresponding section of the novel Jasper has not been introduced yet, and
therefore this image reflects the allusive quality of Dickens’s text, raising
questions rather than answers. The Lascar’s imaginary knife (a weapon
that was already introduced in the right-hand upper section of Collins’s
and Fildes’s wrappers) anticipates proleptically and alludes to the murder
that will take place in the novel:

         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
      (Dickens 2002:10).

     The difficulty, or rather the impossibility, to understand what it is tak-
ing place at the beginning of the novel (and in its illustrations) – as well as
the mystery that it is going to unfold – is enhanced by the presence of the
expression «Unintelligible!» (Dickens 2002: 10), pronounced by Jasper with
reference to the sentences spoken by the opium woman. This first panel is
therefore perfectly readable and at the same time allusive and «unintelligi-
ble», explicit and mysterious, like the novel itself, enhancing the polysemic
quality of Dickens’s novel (and of its visual transposition). Since Dickens
and Fildes may be considered as the creators of two different narrative
and visual texts, the illustrations to The Mystery of Edwin Drood cannot be
treated as a «homogeneous site of ideological and semiological coherence»
but become «a space of dispersion and sedimentation in which conflicting



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                                    Fig. 4

possibilities work in parallel with – or, in certain cases, against – authorial
cl/aims and objectives» (Mermoz 1989: 502).
      The necessity to approach The Mystery of Edwin Drood as a finished
text that includes a series of internal cross-references is confirmed by the
fact that Fildes’s illustrations replicate the same setting from different per-
spectives and in different moments. For instance, the novel’s last illustra-
tion (included in the number published posthumously in September 1870,
three months after Dickens’s death) returns to the first plate, mirroring its
opening. Sleeping It Off (Fig. 4) is set in the same opium den of In the Court,
but this time it is Jasper who is unconsciously lying on a bed, with Princess
Puffer trying to decypher his mysterious and «unintelligible» words; the
crime has been already committed (Edwin Drood has been presumably
strangled, and his body buried in quicklime). The Lascar’s imaginary knife
presented in In the Court – a symbol of murderous violence – has turned
into a brutal reality in Jasper’s case. The light from the candle contrib-
utes to enhance the darkness of the room, and may be visually associated
with the two candles illuminating Jasper in another illustration entitled
At the Piano, where a candle is put in front of him. In both cases, Jasper is
put – alternatively – in darkness or in light as if to replicate his psycho-
logical duality. As Philip V. Allingham writes, «Dickens’s untimely death
resulted in the illustrations coming full circle, so that the novel visually
breaks off where it began, with the sordid opium den of Princess Puffer
and her respectable customer with the hidden life, choirmaster John Jas-
per» (Allingham 2022).


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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood




                                           Fig. 5


      In the second plate of The Mystery of Edwin Drood we move from the
enclosed space of In the Court to an open garden. The prevalence of dark-
ness of the previous illustration is counterbalanced by the light that domi-
nates Under the Trees (Fig. 5). The confusion and «unintelligible» nature of
the figures in In the Court is narratively and figuratively juxtaposed to the
visual neatness, and by the clarity of intent exemplified by Edwin Drood
and Rosa Bud’s decision to break off their engagement. Fildes has taken
some liberties in the figurative representation of characters (Rosa appears
serious and meditative, whereas in Dickens’s text she is coquettish) and of
the setting (the scene in The Mystery of Edwin Drood is set in autumn; on the
contrary Fildes uses a spring backdrop). These as well as other changes are
not to be considered as misreadings of Dickens’s source text, but should
be approached within the framework of translation theory, because illus-
trations may be studied as a creative form of textual transposition. The
transition from a system of signs (the novel) into another (the illustrations)
translates «the verbal texts into visual terms. Like all translations, they ap-
proximate the source, critique it, supplement it, and employ a different vo-
cabulary in another language […] what the source text expresses» (Patten
2011: 292).
      The garden in the Nun’s House featured in Under the Trees reappears
in another illustration, entitled Jasper’s Sacrifices (Fig. 6), which offers a de-
tailed visual representation of Jasper’s morbid feelings and obsession, and
of his «mad» love for Rosa:


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                                      Fig. 6


        Rosa, even when my dear boy was affianced to you, I loved
     you madly;… even when I thought his happiness in having you for his
     wife was certain, I loved you madly;… even when I strove to make him
     more ardently devoted to you, I loved you madly;… even when he
     gave me the picture of your lovely face so carelessly traduced by him,
     which I feigned to hang always in my sight for his sake, but worshipped
     in torment for years, I loved you madly;… in the distasteful work of the
     day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or
     wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed,
     carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly (Dickens 2002: 214,
     my emphasis).

      Also in this case the setting (the garden in Miss Twinkleton’s boarding
school) is reintroduced, but the situation is totally altered. However, Fildes
chooses to use a different visual style, in particular because he dramatises
Jasper’s morbid feelings, whereas in Under the Trees Edwin and Rosa seem
to be “fixed” in their decision. In this emotionally charged scene, charac-
ters have theatrical poses, according to a figurative language that may be
interpreted in light of Fildes’s interest in drawing en plein air, using live
models in real places. The symbolic title of chapter 19 (“Shadow on the
Sun-Dial”) is also alluded to in this illustration, which presents a sundial
on the left. Compared to clocks, sundials are traditionally associated to
idyllic setting; on the contrary, in this case their function is different. As
Steve Dillon states, in this plate «Jasper seems to cast a thick shadow onto


                                                                                     189
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



the grass to the left of him, and Rosa leaves that side of the empty bench.
He stands directly between the sundial and the empty part of the bench, as
if literally embodying his shadow qualities». The garden, which was «no
doubt charming in sunlight» in the illustration Under the Trees, has become
here «close and claustrophobic» (Dillon 2002: 72). The bench that was pre-
viously occupied by Edwin in the second illustration is now ominously
empty. The absence of Jasper’s nephew is counterbalanced by Rosa, who
retreats on hearing Jasper’s words and on seeing him approaching her. The
scene presented in this illustration corresponds to a specific paragraph of
the novel, in which Jasper refers to his own «sacrifice»; the title of Fildes’s
illustration is to be intended as a reference to Jasper’s devotion to Rosa
(towards whom he has sacrificed everything) as well as to his sacrificial
killing of Edwin Drood:

          «Reckon up nothing at this moment, angel, but the sacrifices that I
      lay at those dear feet, which I could fall down among the vilest ashes
      and kiss, and put upon my head as a poor savage might. There is my
      fidelity to my dear boy after death. Tread upon it!».
          With an action of his hands, as though he cast down something
      precious.
          «There is the inexpiable offence against my adoration of you. Spurn
      it! […]»
          «I love you, love you, love you! If you were to cast me off now – but
      you will not – you would never be rid of me. No one should come
      between us. I would pursue you to the death» (Dickens 2002: 217-9).

      In Fildes’s plate, Jaspers’s gesture and his empty arms seem to offer
Rosa the ghostly body of Edwin as a token of his contorted feelings in a
sort of pagan ritual. This is just an example of the capacity of visual texts to
integrate and enrich literary texts, since novels «are “thickened” – that is,
rendered narratologically far more complex – by the presence of illustra-
tions» (Leighton and Surrige 2018: 19).
      Jasper’s study is included in various illustrations, which offer a specif-
ic indication of the villain’s nature. On Dangerous Ground (Fig. 7) presents
Jasper as an apparently amiable host, who tries to mediate between Ed-
win and Neville after their argument, caused by Neville’s interest in Rosa
and by Edwin’s sharp commentary on Neville’s racial origin. However,
Jasper’s real intent is to lead them to a more violent confrontation, using
as an excuse Rosa’s unfinished picture, drawn by Edwin, that hangs in
his room. In this, as well as in other cases, the role and nature of Jasper as



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                                    Fig. 7

a plot-maker makes him a sort of updated Dickensian version of Shake-
speare’s Jago, the villainous plot-maker in Othello. Therefore in The Mystery
of Edwin Drood John Jasper is «inventing a plot and writing a book about a
murder that has not yet taken place. As a character […] he is writing a var-
iorum version of the novel in which he appears, attempting to control its
plot and define some of its characters» (Tracy 2006: 29). In this illustration,
Jasper is standing between Edwin (on the left) and Neville (on the right),
looking at the latter and gesturing towards the former. His attitude shows
that he is in full control of what is taking place, and indicates his capacity
at mesmerising people. Jasper’s ability was already introduced in chapter
7 (“More Confidence than One”), in which Rosa had confessed to Helena
that she was terrified by Jasper’s mesmeric looks: «He hauns my thoughts,
like a dreadful ghost […]. He has made a slave of me with his looks» (Dick-
ens 2002: 70, my emphasis). Jasper’s mesmeric look may be connected to
Dickens’s interest in mesmerism, and in particular in the experiments con-
ducted by his friend Dr. John Elliotson. Dickens himself tried to cure the
wife of an acquanitance, who suffered from a nervous disorder, via animal
magnetism. As Paul Schlicke contends, «Jasper’s powers over Edwin and
Neville are evidently a form of mesmerism, reflecting Dickens’s keen inter-
est in that subject» (Schlicke 2011: 401).
      Jasper’s description in chapter 8 (“Daggers Drawn”) and in its corre-
sponding illustration (On Dangerous Ground) is certainly different from the
one included in Mr. Grewgious Has His Suspicions (Fig. 8). This plate trans-
lates in visual terms a specific paragraph in chapter 15 (“Impeached”),


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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood




                                           Fig. 8

which recounts Jasper’s meeting with Grewgious, who informs him of
Edwin and Rosa’s decision to break off their engagement, and of the use-
lessness of Jasper’s crime. The scene is set, again, in Jasper’s study. Before
swooning in front of Grewgious, Edwin’s presumed murderer is depicted
as «a ghastly figure», which lifts «its outspread hands towards its head»
and turns «with a writhing action from him» (Dickens 2002: 176):

          Mr. Grewgious heard a terrible shriek, and so no ghastly figure,
      sitting or standing; sew nothing but a heap of torn and miry clothes
      upon the floor. Not changing his action even then, he opened and shut
      the palms of his hands as he warmed them, and looked down at it
      (Dickens 2002: 176).

     The title of Fildes’s illustration (Mr. Grewgious Has His Suspicions) is
revealing because it implies that the «angular» and detached Grewgious
suspects Jasper. The lawyer’s meditative gesture (he is in front of the fire-
place, warming his hands) indicates that he is intent on studying and un-
derstanding Jasper’s suspicious reaction to his words. The choirmaster’s
body, lying on the floor, is almost inhuman (he is described as a «heap
of torn and miry clothes») and recalls the shapeless opium smokers pre-
sented in the first illustration. Dickens certainly approved the choice of
Fildes’s title, which points at Grewgious’s suspects on Japer, although the
novelist was often elusive with his illustrators. In an interesting memorial
document that shows the ambivalent relationship between life and fiction,


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                                       Fig. 9

Fildes recalled his first meeting with Dickens, during which the great Vic-
torian novelist appeared to him as a sort of vision. When approached by
the twenty-five years old painter, Dickens greeted him courteously: «He
was dressed in dark clothes; I cannot quite recall the cut of the coat, but
it was loose and unbuttoned, – a black silk neckerchief was loosely tied with
hanging hands round his throat» (qtd. in Kitton 2015: 208, my emphasis). The
reference to Dickens’s neckerchief is important, in particular in light of an-
other episode also recalled by Fildes. During the composition of the fourth
number of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens asked Fildes to prepare an
illustration featuring Jasper who mounted the gatehouse steps with a mur-
derous expression and with a neckerchief wound twice around his throat; at
this point Fildes asked the reasons for this choice, since Jasper – in Fildes’s
illustrations – used to wear a small back tie. At this point, Dickens with
some reluctance revealed that Japer would use his black scarf to strangle
Edwin, a scarf that is similar to the one that Dickens himself was wearing
during his first meeting with Fildes. Dissuaded by Fildes, Dickens finally
decided to put aside his idea for this illustration.
      The social context in which the events of The Mystery of Edwin Drood
take place is also relevant. At the Piano (the third illustration, which accom-
panies chapter 7) (Fig. 9) features Jasper playing the piano, surrounded by
almost all the protagonists of the narrative, who belong to different social
classes. In this illustration Fildes adopts a series a shifting “focalisations” that
can be studied and interpreted in narratological terms, demonstrating that



                                                                                      193
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



visual texts include narrative strategies that are analogous to those included
in literary texts, and may be accordingly “read” (Bryson 2001: 12). From the
position of Jasper’s head viewers can infer that he is fixing Rosa, who is sing-
ing. Dickens’s description – which focuses on his morbid attraction to her, to
the point that she bursts out crying – is a narrative commentary on Fildes’s
visual text and, as it were, integrates it, confirming the peculiar nature of
mid-to-late nineteenth-century illustrations as “bimodal texts”, in Lorraine
Jansen Kooistra’s definition (Kooistra 1995, Kooistra 2011):

         Mr. Jasper was seated at the piano as they came into his drawing-
      room, and was accompanying Miss Rosebud while she sang. It was
      a consequence of his playing the accompaniment without notes, and
      of her being a heedless little creature, very apt to go wrong, that he
      followed her lips most attentively, with his eyes as well as hands;
      carefully and softly hinting the key-note from time to time […]. As
      Jasper watched the pretty lips, and ever and again hinted the one
      note, as though it were a low whisper from himself, the voice became
      less steady, until all at once the singer broke into a burst of tears, and
      shrieked out, with her hands over her eyes: «I can’t bear this! I am
      frightened! Take me away!» (Dickens 2002: 66).

      The dark-haired and tall Helena Landless, who is looking at Jasper, is
next to Rosa; on the left, Neville Landless leans against the piano, probably
contemplating Rosa. A distracted and absent-minded Edwin, on the right,
is nervously playing with Miss Twinkleton’s fan (she is sitting next to him).
Edwin’s posture and attitude suggest his lack of sentimental attachment
to Rosa, whereas Neville’s interest in Rosa prefigures his feelings. On the
right-hand corner Reverend Crisparkle – another character who could be
an alternative contender of Rosa’s affection – watches the scene. In this
plate Fildes is subtly introducing the love triangle involving Neville, Rosa
and Jasper. By offering another depiction of Jasper (who is in contrast with
the one included in the first illustration) Fildes implies that the degraded
Jasper of In the Court is also a lover of music, and therefore possesses a
double personality. Jasper’s mysterious and elusive nature is figuratively
conveyed through his peculiar position, since viewers cannot look at his
face.
      Durdles Cautions Mr. Sapsea Against Boasting (plate number 6) (Fig. 10)
is another illustration that describes the social context of the events, and
features the comic character of Mr. Thomas Sapsea (Dickens’s only tribute
to the satirical caricatures of his first novels), as well as Stony Durdles, a



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                                     Fig. 10

stonemason and Cloisterham’s undertaker, who will unknowingly play a
major role in Edwin’s murder. These characters represent two socially an-
tithetical classes, namely the rising businessman and the proletariat.

       Durdles with his dinner-bundle in his hand, is indeed beheld
    slouching towards them. Slouching nearer, and perceiving the Dean,
    he pulls off his hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm, when
    Mr. Sapsea stops him.
       «Mind you take care of my friend», is the injunction Mr. Sapsea lays
    upon him.
       «What friend o’ yourn is dead?» asks Durdles. «No orders has come
    in for any friend o’ yourn».
       «I mean my live friend there».
       «O! him?» says Durdles. «He can take care of himself, can Mister
    Jarsper».
       «But do you take care of him too», says Sapsea.
       Whom Durdles (there being command in his tone) surlily surveys
    from head to foot.
       «With submission to his Reverence the Dean, if you’ll mind what
    concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he’ll mind what concerns him».
       «You’re out of temper», says Mr. Sapsea, winking to the company to
    observe how smoothly he will manage him. «My friend concerns me,
    and Mr. Jasper is my friend. And you are my friend».
       «Don’t you get into a bad habit of boasting», retorts Durdles, with a
    grave cautionary nod. «It’ll grow upon you» (Dickens 2002: 129).



                                                                                     195
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



      Despite their difference in social status – exemplified by Dickens’s
dialogues – the Cloisterham auctioner and the stonemason share many
traits: first and foremost they have an interest in graves and tombs (in a
comic episode in the fourth chapter, Sapsea described to Jasper his ide-
as for the inscription and for the grave that he intends for his late wife
Ethelinda) and they tend to talk about themselves in the third person.
Mr. Sapsea is the epitome of self-esteem (based as he is on Sir Posdnap,
a pompous man of the upper middle classes introduced in Our Mutual
Friend); on the contrary, Durdles is a much more mysterious figure; he is
«a little misty as to his own identity» (Dickens 2002: 41). Jasper has just
interviewed him on a tour of the crypts of Cloisterham Cathedral and on
the corrosive effects of quicklime (in which Edwin’s body would be pre-
sumably buried). Pete Orford comments on the presence of this and other
comic episodes (and characters) in a gloomy novel such as The Mystery
of Edwin Drood, arguing that its tragic tone «needs balance just as much
as the subsequent theories of enthusiasts and academics alike care, and
should, complement one another. By acknowledging the light as well as
the dark, the incidental as well as the fundamental, we can hope to better
understand Dickens’s final wok and its hold on our imagination» (Or-
ford 2018a: 311). In this illustration Jasper symbolically stands between
social respectability, education and self-conceit (Mr. Sapsea, along with
the Dean and Mr. Tope) and popular wisdom (Durdles). He is a member
of Cloisterham society – notice his position and posture – but wants to
exploit Durdles’s knowledge of the Cathedral crypts (the choirmaster is
carefully watching him).
      Rosa Bud’s unfinished portrait (drawn by Edwin Drood), which
stands on the chimneypiece of Japer’s study, becomes the occasion for Ed-
win and Neville’s confrontation in chapter 8, and represents an important
element in the study of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and of its illustrations.

         There, the first object visible, when he adds the light of a lamp to
      that of the fire, is the portrait over the chimneypiece. It is not an object
      calculated to improve the understanding between the two young
      men, as rather awkwardly reviving the subject of their difference.
      Accordingly, they both glance at it consciously, but say nothing.
      Jasper, however (who would appear from his conduct to have gained
      but an imperfect clue to the cause of their late high words), directly
      calls attention to it.
         «You recognise that picture, Mr. Neville?» shading the lamp to
      throw the light upon it.



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           «I recognise it, but it is far from flattering the original».
           «O, you are hard upon it! It was done by Ned, who made me a
        present of It».
           «I am sorry for that, Mr. Drood». Neville apologises, with a real
        intention to apologise; «if I had known I was in the artist’s presence – »
           «O, a joke, sir, a mere joke», Edwin cuts in, with a provoking yawn.
        «A little humouring of Pussy’s points! I’m going to paint her gravely,
        one of these days, if she’s good» (Dickens 2002: 75).

      Alongside Jasper, Rosa Bud is one of the most enigmatic characters
in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, since her unfinished characterisation and
destiny remain open to discussions, hypotheses and speculations. If on the
one hand she looks meditative and weak, on the other she is assertive and
far from innocent, as Edwin’s sexually allusive nickname «Pussy» implies.
Fildes has captured her ambivalence in his illustrations, which often con-
trast with Dickens’s descriptions (see Jasper’s Sacrifices or Under the Trees,
in which she is far more serious than her fictional counterpart). Rosa Bud’s
unfinished sketch epitomises her elusive nature which, like Dickens’s nov-
el, will remain forever a mystery. The fact that Dickens does not offer a
detailed “ekphrasic” description of Rosa’s portrait seems to imply that its
descriptive absence can turn into a further reservoir of multiple meanings.
With respect to Rosa Bud’s sketchy portrait, Steven Connor concludes that
«[the] unfinished picture is closer to its unfinished original than a finished
one could ever be» (Connor 1993: 95)6. Readers will never understand who
Rosa Bud – or «Rosebud», as she is sometimes called in the novel – really
is, and for this reason Dickens’s novel could be alternatively re-entitled The
Mystery of Rosa Bud. Likewise, cinema viewers will never understand the
real meaning of Charles Foster Kane’s whispered reference to another en-
igmatic «Rosebud» at the end of Orson Welles’s movie Citizen Kane (1941).
      Although it remains unfinished, The Mystery of Edwin Drood repre-
sents a fitting conclusion of Dickens’s life and career, a work that returns
to Dickens’s origins as a novelist, and as a person. The words included in
one of the final paragraphs of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in which the
narrator describes a brilliant morning that «shines on the old city», with its
«antiquities and ruins» that are «surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy
gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air» (Dickens


    6
       Even in Jasper’s mind «[the] image of Rosebud […] and the real Rosebud
are not quite the same, but Jasper’s desire to verify his dream will not, it seems,
stop even at murder to fuse the inner and the outer realities» (Michell 1966: 235).


                                                                                       197
Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood




                                          Fig. 11




                                          Fig. 12



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                                            Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)



2002: 279) are a gloomier recapitulation of the second chapter of The Pick-
wick Papers, a text that included many scenes and events set in Rochester.
In The Pickwick Papers «[that] punctual servant of all work, the sun, had
just risen, and begun to strike a light on the morning of the thirteenth of
May, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven» (Dickens 1999: 6).
Robert Seymour’s cover-design for The Pickwick Papers originally featured a
dreaming fisherman (probably Pickwick) on a boat near London’s Putney
Bridge (Fig. 11), which provided, as Jeremy Tambling puts it, «a frequent
Dickensian motif: a text being dreamed while the protagonist sleeps»
(Tambling 2018: 93). As indicated, after Seymour’s premature death Robert
William Buss was unsuccessfully engaged by Chapman & Hall to provide
illustrations for Dickens’s novel, and then dismissed in favour of «Phiz».
However, more than forty years after The Pickwick Papers, it was Buss him-
self who painted one of the most famous representations of Dickens, en-
titled Dickens’s Dream (1875) (Fig. 12). Copied from John Watkins’s 1863
photograph and partially based on Luke Fildes’s The Empty Chair (1870), in
Buss’s painting the writer is sitting in his study at Gad’s Hill Place. Like the
protagonist of Seymour’s cover for The Pickwick Papers, in Buss’s painting
Dickens is sleeping and dreaming, and is surrounded by many of the char-
acters that he has invented. Buss died in the same year in which he started
painting Dickens’s Dream, and his own work of art was left unfinished like
The Mystery of Edwin Drood and like Fildes’s illustrations, closing the circle
of creation and opening the panorama of future readings of Dickens’s last
and lasting masterpiece.




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Saverio Tomaiuolo, Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery of Edwin Drood



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                                    The Author
      Saverio Tomaiuolo

     Saverio Tomaiuolo is Associate Professor of English Language and
Translation at Cassino University, Italy. His areas of research are Transla-
tion and Adaptation Studies, Victorian Literature, and neo-Victorianism.
He has published Ricreare in Lingua. La traduzione dalla poesia al testo mul-
timediale (Carocci, 2008), In Lady Audley’s Shadow. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
and Victorian Literary Genres (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and Victo-
rian Unfinished Novels. The Imperfect Page (Palgrave, 2012). More recently,
he has written a critical introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
(Solfanelli, 2014), Deviance in neo-Victorian Culture (Palgrave, 2018), and La
Televisione dell’Ottocento. I vittoriani sullo schermo italiano (Mimesis, 2021).
He has also edited and translated a selection of Alfred Tennyson’s poems
(In Memoriam e altre poesie, Mondadori, 2022).

       Email: s.tomaiuolo@unicas.it


                                     The Article
      Date sent: 31/10/2022
      Date accepted: 28/02/2023
      Date published: 30/05/2023


                            How to cite this article
     Tomaiuolo, Saverio, “Drawing the (Un)finished Line in The Mystery
of Edwin Drood”, The Illustrated Fiction between the 19th and 20th Century, Eds.
C. Cao – G. Carrara – B. Seligardi, Between, XIII.25 (2023): 175-202, http://
www.betweenjournal.it/


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