How Charles Dickens’ Death and His Last Novel Inspired My Own Writing
Charles John Huffam Dickens died on June 9, 1870, leaving the novel he was then writing only half finished. He penned the words that close the sixth installment (of a planned 12) on June 8; the next day he was dead. In the 150 years since, interest in The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been massive and continues unabated to this day.
(What Is Pastiche in Literature?)
Why has interest been so immense over such a long period? Well, partly it must be because this is, after all, a story by the master, his last ever. Moreover, it was the only mystery, he ever wrote. But, and this is the contention of this article, the main reason is that Dickens was writing a truly intriguing tale of a yet-to-be-committed murder when he died, leaving countless readers hanging. Everyone who reads the completed first half of the Drood mystery inevitably tries to guess what happened in the story’s unwritten second half and, with luck, solve the mystery.
The basics of the story as set out by Dickens are straightforward. The sinister John Jasper, choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral, appears to be plotting to do away with Edwin, fiancé of Rosa Bud, so that he has a clear field to pursue his own mad obsession with the delightful young lady. Edwin disappears during a storm. Was he murdered by Jasper? And if so, how was Jasper brought to justice?
The number of attempts made to discover the ‘true’ ending, ranging from the ingenious (a Sherlock Holmes pastiche) to the absurd (The Mysterious Mystery of Rude Dedwin), attests to the remarkable interest generated by the novel. A 600-page bibliography published in 1998, for example, lists almost 2,000 attempts to unearth clues in the text, decipher how the plot might evolve, and, of course, answer the two burning questions.
One might have expected that fascination with this story would flourish in the 19th century and then tail off in the 20th. That obviously did not happen. In fact, interest has continued into the 21st century, as evidenced by a Broadway musical in 2012 in which the audience chooses the ending, a PBS Masterpiece production also in 2012, and in 2014, a one-day academic conference in Senate House in London!
(The Secret of the 25 Chapters in Nancy Drew Books.)
Given all this effort, imagine my surprise then when a clue that had not really been explored before, popped up before my astonished eyes. The clue has to do with the location of a diamond and ruby engagement ring. John Forster, Dickens’ friend and literary agent, claims in his 900-page biography of the author that the ring’s jewels were to be found in Edwin’s breast pocket after he disappears. The jewels allow identification of Edwin’s decomposed body and lead to Jasper’s capture.
This claim has been widely accepted but there is good reason to question whether the ring was in Edwin’s breast pocket on the night of his disappearance. According to Dickens’s timeline, this would require that the young man carries a ring of considerable sentimental and monetary value around in his waistcoat pocket for several days. Would he be so casual with a priceless jewel? Probably not. It is much more likely that he would lock it away for safe-keeping. And if so, all the attempted continuations to the story based on Forster’s claim are wrong.
Could the possibility of the ring being somewhere other than on Edwin’s person have been totally missed by everyone else? To find out, I wrote up the evidence in support of my ‘clue’ as a short article and submitted it to The Dickensian (a UK publication devoted entirely to Dickens) where I knew it would be subject to rigorous scrutiny by Britain’s foremost Dickens scholars. Scrutiny complete, the editors accepted my article as an original contribution to the ongoing debate about the mystery’s ending, and published it in the Summer 2012 issue.
With that validation in hand, I examined the raft of new possibilities for the novel’s ending that had now been opened up. The one I finally fastened on was 100 percent consistent with what Dickens had written, avoided the awkward length of time the jewels had to remain in Edwin’s pocket, and reflected Dickens’s approach to storytelling and his literary tendencies as evidenced by his other novels.
Once the excitement of my Eureka moment at finding an original solution had passed, my first thought was to write it up as a nonfiction account, submit it to The Dickensian and be done with it. But by that time, I had learned a great deal more about Dickens and his life including his separation from his wife, mother of his 10 children, and his liaison with a stage actress 20 years his junior, and I saw that my ending to Dickens’ mystery could fit nicely into an overarching storyline encompassing the author himself. And that became the plot for my first novel, Immortalised to Death.
Check out Lyn Squire’s Immortalised to Death here:
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The protagonist in my story, Dunston Burnett, is a diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, hardly detective material. For a quick (Dickensian) mental image of him, think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick. What makes matters worse is that the mysteries he encounters appear to be unsolvable. The question confronting Dunston (and the reader) is this: Are his limited detective skills anywhere near enough to unravel such apparently perfect murders?
The full answer will only be revealed by reading my novel and the other two in the three-book series featuring Dunston Burnett. Suffice it to say here that the picture is mixed.
(5 Lessons for Writers From Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.)
Inspiration can come from anywhere. In my case, delving into what lies behind the continuing fascination with Dickens’ death, and stumbling across a tiny, otherwise unnoticed oddity in the Forster-claimed resolution to The Mystery of Ewin Drood has transformed me from a boring writer of articles on economic development into an author of tolerably interesting (I hope) mysteries.