The Book of Lost Books (33 page)

Nikolai Gogol

{1809–1852}

IN 1845, GOGOL burned the manuscript of Part II of
Dead Souls
for the first time. “It was hard to burn the work of five years, achieved at the price of such morbid tension, every line of which cost me a nervous disorder,” he wrote; “the moment the flames had consumed the last sheet of my book, its contents were reborn, luminous and purified, as the phoenix from the ashes, and suddenly I saw how chaotic was all I had supposed to be orderly and harmonious.”

Even before this drastic action, Gogol had been cagey, to say the least, about the continuation of the book. He had reluctantly read some of it to a friend, Alexandra Smirnov, but had desisted abruptly when the first rumbles of thunder began to crack. “God himself,” he said, “does not want me to read something unfinished.” Many of his friends knew that he had staked much on Part II of
Dead Souls.
To both Vasily Zhukovsky and Pyotr Pletnev he had compared Part I to an overture for a work of unsurpassed importance. It was “no more than the portico of a palace rising within me.”

Part I of
Dead Souls
introduces Chichikov, a jovial, dandyish, vaguely abominable businessman, who arrives in the town of N. He rapidly makes the acquaintance of all the officials and landowners, and inveigles himself into their social calendar and provincial hierarchy. After a while he makes a tour of the landowners with a curious proposition. In order to tax them, the state reckons the size of their estates according to the number of serfs, or souls, they possess, and a census is carried out to determine this figure. Chichikov's proposal is to buy the serfs that have died, but whose names still feature on the census. It alleviates their tax, and he gains—well, he tells different people different stories as to why he needs dead souls. Is it illegal? No one knows. If it is a crime, it is born out of byzantine bureaucracy and feudal oppression. After all, selling living, breathing humans is perfectly acceptable.

Eventually, suspicions are aroused; but they are inflamed more by an anxiety that Chichikov has not paid each landowner the same amount for their dead souls than by any inkling of a demonic pact. But Chichikov escapes scot-free, his carriage speeding through N. and Gogol delivering a paean on the troika. The last direct speech is attributed to the typical Russian, who loves the speed and “mad carouse” of a hurtling troika: “To hell with it all!” The editor Mikhail Pogodin captured some of its sinister power when he described it as being like “a long corridor along which he dragged the reader and his hero Chichikov, opening doors left and right and showing a monster seated in every room.”

When
Dead Souls
appeared in 1842 (with the title altered by the censor to
Chichikov's Adventures, or, Dead Souls,
since the soul was immortal: Gogol had mordant fun with this in Part II), it was to thunderous applause. Pletnev wrote an enthusiastic review under a pseudonym in
The Contemporary,
where he echoed Gogol's conception of Part I. It was “a curtain raiser intended to elucidate the hero's strange progression.” Vossarion Belinsky, the rising radical critic, called it “the pride and honor of Russian letters.” Gogol left Russia for Europe, claiming the continuation involved some kind of pilgrimage.

Although Gogol's friends sympathized with his aesthetic ambitions, they were becoming increasingly aware that there was a manic element to Part II. Gogol believed that literary Russia had been “awaiting me as though I were some sort of Messiah.” The triptych he envisioned of
Dead Souls
covered Crime, Punishment, and Redemption: it was nothing less than a Divine Comedy of the Steppes, to use Henri Troyat's phrase. Gogol referred to it as “the history of my soul,” and dropped odd hints that he had now “acquired the strength to undertake my sacred journey . . . only then will the enigma of my life be resolved.”

Part I did contain passages implying something greater to follow. At the beginning of chapter 7 he contrasts two kinds of writers. There is one who “feels drawn to characters which reveal the high dignity of man,” by whom “young, ardent hearts are thrilled” and for whom “responsive tears gleam in every eye . . . He had no equal in power—he is a god.” The other is forced to show “all the terrible, shocking morass of trivial things,” and the public will “rob him of his heart and soul.” Which kind of writer would Gogol be?

Gogol had never been particularly reliable, or honest, with his friends, and had often relied on them to extricate him from financial crises. His behavior, now, exasperated them. The long-suffering and sponged-from Pletnyev referred to him as a “devious, selfish, arrogant and suspicious creature.” Gogol dropped ever more arcane insinuations about the true meaning of Part I. “For the time being it is still a secret, which will suddenly be revealed to the stupefaction of one and all (for not a single reader has guessed!).” “I shall starve to death if I must,” he wrote to Stepan Shevyrev, “but I shall not produce a superficial and incomplete work.”

A few chapters of Part II have survived. There are satirical cadenzas on eccentric reformers, utter gluttons, and world-weary loafers; these are joined by unbelievable paragons: the landowner Kostanjoglo, the official Murazov, and the Prince who is both the “callous instrument of justice” and the “intercessor for you all.” From these brief glimpses, little can be gleaned of Chichikov's moral conversion. Part III, it was hinted, would have taken him to Siberia, as a penitent. The complete
Dead Souls
would do no less than precipitate a total religious transformation of Russia.

Having burned his first attempt at Part II, Gogol's fanaticism intensified. He had intended to go to Jerusalem to give thanks for Part II: now he would go there to pray for inspiration. He also published the ill-advised
Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends
in 1847 before leaving. This justification of absolutism, which contained such sentiments as “A State without an absolute monarch is an orchestra without a conductor” and “The peasant must not even
know
there exist other books besides the Bible” earned him the unremitting enmity of Belinsky and caused profound embarrassment to his friends. Sergei Askakov lamented that “the best that can be done is to call him a madman.” Belinsky, more irate and more eloquent, berated the “apostle of ignorance” and maintained that “everything must be done to protect the people from a man who has lost his mind, were that man Homer himself.”

Jerusalem did not provide any divine editorial advice, and Gogol, plus manuscript, returned to Russia, where he became deeply embroiled with the equally unstable Father Matthew Konstantinovsky, who believed everything except the Russian Orthodox Church was inspired by Satan. He encouraged Gogol to enter a monastery and forgo the paganism of literature. God's wish was clear, and the penance exacted for the publication of Part I was the destruction of Part II.

At about three a.m. on February 24, 1852, Gogol summoned a servant and ordered him to kindle a fire. He started to feed manuscript pages into it. When the boy begged him not to, Gogol growled, “This is none of your business—better pray.” He clogged the fire with paper, and had to remove the charred bundle, containing Part II and even Part III, and feed them in one by one. When it was done, he crossed himself, kissed the boy, and collapsed in tears.

He then stopped eating. When he was asked by the attending priest, “What prayer do you want me to read?” he answered, “They're all good,” and after nine days of self-enforced starvation, died.

Charles Dickens

{1812–1870}

ON MARCH 9, 1870, Charles Dickens gave a private reading to Queen Victoria from his new work,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Set in the sleepy cathedral town of Cloisterham, the novel involves the opium-addicted choirmaster John Jasper, who is secretly obsessed with the fiancée of his ward and nephew, the eponymous Edwin Drood. Rosa has also come to the attention of another orphan, the hot-tempered Neville Landless, and when Drood disappears, his watch and shirt-pin found in the river, Jasper immediately accuses Neville of murder.

Dickens offered the queen the opportunity to know, in advance of her subjects, how the story would conclude. Whether through indifference or the understandable desire not to have the ending spoiled, Victoria declined. Dickens died less than three months later, with
The Mystery of
Edwin Drood
less than half-finished. Its title had become eerily apposite: Dickens left no notes, no plans, and no clues as to the outcome.

He might have been more careful. Only six years beforehand, Dickens had been on a train that derailed at Staplehurst, leaving only his carriage on the tracks. After helping two ladies off the train, Dickens went back to secure the manuscript of
Our Mutual Friend
that he had left on-board, and a hip flask of brandy. This brush with mortality did not change his working methods.

A disappointed public speculated about what would happen to the work: would, perhaps, Wilkie Collins supply an ending? Eager to scotch rumors of a continuation, Dickens's publishers Chapman and Hall sent a letter to
The Times,
insisting that “no other writer could be permitted by us to complete the work which Mr Dickens left.” That said, Collins revealed in 1878 that he had been asked to finish the novel, but had “positively refused.” No such firm declarations of principle fettered Collins's own publishers, who contracted Sir Walter Besant to complete
Blind
Love
ten years later.

Others had significantly fewer qualms. One Orpheus C. Kerr in New York adapted and burlesqued the plot of
Edwin Drood
under the title
The
Cloven Hoof,
which appeared in Britain in 1871 as
The Mystery of Mr E.
Drood.
The American market, unrestrained by too strict an interpretation of British copyright law, also produced
John Jasper's Secret
in 1872. In 1878, a female writer from the north of England under the pseudonym Gillan Vase wrote another continuation,
The Great Mystery Solved.
Most curious of all, Charles Dickens also completed the novel through the help of a spirit medium from Brattleboro, Vermont, and even puffed his next, posthumous novel,
The Life and Adventures of Bockley Winkleheep.

Although, in time, the number of full-length impostures and reconstructions dried up, speculation about
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
did not. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, who had famously, and to Dickens's chagrin, deduced the ending of
Barnaby Rudge,
countless bookish sleuths attempted to solve the riddle. Andrew Lang, the polymathic poet, translator, fairy-tale writer, biographer, mythologist, and editor (a man whose talents were so various, it was even claimed he was a committee), and M. R. James, the quintessential English ghost-story writer, both contributed solutions to the Drood enigma.

To put the conundrum simply: we know the criminal but not the crime. Dickens's manuscript list of projected titles offers
The Loss of . . . , The
Disappearance of . . . ,
and
The Flight of . . . ,
as well as
The Mystery of
Edwin Drood. Edwin Drood in Hiding
and
Dead? Or Alive?
are also considered. Against this, Dickens's biographer John Forster maintained that the novelist had told him that “the story was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle.” In the first chapter, as John Jasper enters the cathedral fresh from the opium den, he does so to the “intoned words, ‘WHEN THE WICKED MAN.'” Jasper is the villain, and Drood may or may not be dead.

Dickens took a great deal of care in the commissioning of covers for his works. The illustration for
The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
by Luke Fildes, is no exception. On the right-hand side, Jasper appears to be leading a search for the murderer, and points, inadvertently, to another picture of himself at the cloisters.

In the novel itself, Rosa seems to attribute to Jasper almost psychic powers of manipulation: she confides to Neville's twin sister, Helena, that she feels as if “he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of.” The reader knows, moreover, that Jasper has an unhealthy interest in the graveyard, and has even drugged the stonemason Durdles in order to obtain a set of keys. Durdles also reveals to him the presence of a lime pit “quick enough to eat your bones.” If all this were not sufficient to cast Jasper in a sinister light, it should be added that Jasper mentions to the jeweler that the only decorative accessories Edwin ever wears are his watch and shirt pin, the very articles found in the river. In his opium daze, the reader knows that Jasper fantasizes about strangling.

So it seems clear that Jasper is the guilty party. But what is the crime? Did he succeed in murdering Drood? Or is Edwin still alive, working to unmask his perfidious uncle?

M. R. James and Andrew Lang were both of the opinion that Drood was still alive. Chapter 14, which narrates the events leading up to the reconciliation dinner between Drood and Landless at Jasper's, after which Edwin disappears, is entitled “When shall these three meet again?”, presuming some future reunion (though it could well be the two adversaries and a corpse). In addition, Hiram Grewgious, Rosa's benevolent uncle, takes against Jasper very suddenly: because (so goes the theory) Drood has secretly informed him of Jasper's attempt on his life.

Another twist occurs in chapter 18. It opens with a new character, a “white-haired personage, with black eyebrows.” His name is Dick Datchery, and he has a strange interest in the habits of John Jasper. He announces himself by having the waiter look into his hat, and throughout the descriptions of him, particular importance is attached to this hat, and his shock of white hair. As he walks with the pompous Mr. Sapsea, he “had the odd momentary appearance upon him of having forgotten his hat . . . and he clapped his hand up to his head as if with some vague expectation of finding another hat upon it.” Dick Datchery, it seems, is in disguise.

Datchery, if you like stories where the murder victim is not actually killed, is Drood in disguise. A variation of this argument supposes that Jasper knocked Drood unconscious and placed the body in the lime pit: Drood revived, but not before his hair was bleached and his skin burned (forensic pathology not being Dickens's strong point). However, there are minor problems with this solution. For example, Datchery has to ask for directions to Jasper's house, even though, if he is Drood, he knows full well where his own house is. Or is this a complicated double bluff, a misdirection to convince people he really is a stranger?

On the other hand, let us suppose that Drood is dead. Unbeknownst to Jasper, Drood was carrying the diamond engagement ring which he was to return to Grewgious. If his corpse is in the lime pit or the Sapsea monument, the ring becomes an incriminating token of identification. He was taking the ring back to Rosa's guardian as they had agreed to amicably separate. When Jasper hears this he is distraught, because his murder, motivated by jealousy, was actually unnecessary.

But if Drood is dead, who is Datchery? Many of the other characters in the story might be in disguise.

We know that, during their abysmal childhood in Ceylon, Neville Landless and his sister Helena ran away from their guardian, and “each time, she dressed as a boy and showed the daring of a man.” Is Helena putting her cross-dressing to good use, to clear her brother's name?

Grewgious has a clerk, a failed tragedian named Bazzard. His acquaintance with the theater might suggest him as the perfect person to don a costume, and act as Grewgious's eyes and ears around the town. Is he Datchery?

Then again, there's Lieutenant Tartar. Both he and Datchery have sunburned complexions and a military air. In addition, there is an odd echo between them: Tartar is, he says, “an idle fellow”; and Datchery describes himself as “an idle buffer living on his means.” Is Tartar Datchery?

Is Grewgious Datchery? Is everyone Datchery? This is becoming chaotic!

Perhaps Datchery is simply Datchery: a wholly new character in the plot. It has been mooted that he could be a professional detective, hired by Grewgious to keep tabs on Jasper. Datcherys everywhere and not a clue as to who he really is.

The novel as we have it ends with Datchery making a connection between Jasper and the “Princess Puffer,” the crone who supplies him with opium and who has observed his psychotic episodes when under the influence. Dickens had already set up the idea of a split personality: “As in some cases of drunkenness,” he wrote, “. . . there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk again before I can remember where).” The drug would, one supposes, reveal the murderous truth that the rational side of Jasper can suppress. The net is undoubtedly tightening, though the conclusion still eludes the reader. In this way,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
is a gloriously perfect murder novel.

What is regrettable is not that we lack the neat summing up, but that we do not know how the tantalizing undercurrents of the story would have played themselves out. Despite its quaint Englishness,
The Mystery
of Edwin Drood
is shot through with Oriental images: Edwin plans to become an engineer in Egypt, the Landlesses are criticized for the “drop of what is tigerish in their blood,” lascars and Chinese immigrants flit through the opium smog of the East End. The “large black scarf of strong close-woven silk” which Jasper wears has even been seen as evidence that he is an initiate of the Thug sect.

And it would have ended, says John Forster, with Jasper. “The originality . . . was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close . . . The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him.”

Like Jane Austen's
Sanditon, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
shows a novelist eager to expand the range of his work. In the opening chapter of
The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
Dickens imagines himself in the hazed mind of an addict with cinematic precision: on waking, the unnamed character seems to see the cathedral spire, which gradually resolves itself into the bedpost. Twins, ghosts, exotic incomers, and repressed residents of small towns; drugs, murder, psychosexual manipulation, and moments of unutterable kindness: Dickens, in his last work, sets up a series of resonances and ambiguities that seem comparable to the films of David Lynch.