Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
Even at night, the river was specked with lanterns, and lurid with fires; far-off creeks, into which the tide washed as it changed, had their knots of watchers, listening to the lapping of the stream, and looking out for any burden it might bear; remote shingly causeways near the sea, and lonely points off which there was a race of water, had their unwonted flaring cressets and rough-coated figures when the next day dawned; but no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the light of the sun.
These and other gifts were shown in a long line of novels covering just thirty years, from Boz to Our Mutual Friend; for the last few years of his life, disturbed by his American tour, by increasing ill-health, and other things, produced nothing but the beginnings of an unfinished novel, Edwin Drood.
It describes, as will be seen, the disappearance of the young architect Edwin Drood after a night of festivity which was supposed to celebrate his reconciliation with a temporary enemy, Neville Landless, and was held at the house of his uncle John Jasper. Dickens continued the tale long enough to explain or explode the first and most obvious of his riddles.
Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in cryptic chalk strokes. He does this, says Mr. Walters, because, being Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand. But nobody would WRITE secrets on a door! He adds "a moderate stroke," after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters, "Edwin Drood would have learned nothing new whatever" from the hag.
"I say I'm a literary man," persisted TRACEY CLEWS, sharply. "I'm going to write a great American Novel, called 'The Amateur Detective, founded upon the story of this very EDWIN DROOD, and have come to Bumsteadville to get all the particulars. I've picked up considerable from Gospeler SIMPSON, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, and even the woman from the Mulberry street place who came after you the other morning.
Still there are many such incongruities in Dickens; and the explanation of Mr. Archer and Mr. Lang is an explanation. I do not believe that any explanation as good can be given to account for the tale being called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, if the tale practically starts with his corpse.
With the date of their wedding-day engraved inside, several gentlemen have preferred it to any other kind of memento. The rings are as coldly viewed as the bracelet. Edwin tells the tempter that he wears no jewellery but his watch and chain, which were his father's; and his shirt-pin. 'That I was aware of, is the jeweller's reply, 'for Mr. 'Twenty minutes past two, Mr. Drood, I set your watch at.
'I yes, I called it eloquence, said Mr. Crisparkle. 'But for Mr. Honeythunder's eloquence, I might have had no need to ask you what I am going to ask you. This Mr. Edwin Drood, sir: I think that's the name? 'Quite correct, said Mr. Crisparkle. 'D-r-double o-d. 'Does he or did he read with you, sir? 'Never, Mr. Neville. He comes here visiting his relation, Mr. Jasper.
Grewgious, who had been in love with her mother. To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his wife's engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to hand over to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and Rosa decided to marry. Rosa's little fortune was an annuity producing 250 pounds a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father's share in an engineering firm.
We think of Scott's earlier seizures of a similar kind, after which Peveril, he said, "smacked of the apoplexy." But Dickens's new story of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, first contemplated in July, 1869, and altered in character by the emergence of "a very curious and new idea," early in August, does not "smack of the apoplexy." We may think that the mannerisms of Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking