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Passage Illustrated: Datchery Amasses Further Information on John Jasper

It is no part of Mr. Datchery's design to discourage Mrs. Tope's loquacity at any time, and he now listens attentively to a recital of events that have recently disturbed the tranquil lives of the residents of Cloisterham. At last his patience is rewarded.

“Then, too, Sir,” the landlady rattles on, “we are to lose poor Mr. Jasper for a couple of days. The wonder is, as I said to Mr. Tope, that he havn't gone before, seeing as Doctor Green advised it more than once, and would have gone with him, too, having then time on his hands.”

“You mean, I suppose, Mrs. Tope,” says Mr. Datchery, as he helps himself to eggs and bacon, “that Mr. Jasper is going to London alone?” [Chapter XXXIX, “Weaving the Web,” pp. 435-436]

Comment

In Dickens's serial instalments, “Dick Datchery” is an outsider whose white hair and black eyebrows strongly suggest that he is wearing a disguise. He has taken up lodgings with the Verger and his wife, who conveniently live next door to Jasper's gate-house. As Crisp suggests in the present chapter, Datchery is continuing to monitor Jasper's movements and gather information about his comings and goings. He already knows about Jasper's drug-addiction, and strongly suspects that Jasper's visits to London fuel his habit. What use, readers wonder, is he going to make of Mrs. Tope's latest gossip about the choirmaster whom Datchery suspects of having murdered Edwin Drood?

Dickens intimates that Datchery is a younger man disguised as a retiree with time on his hands. He appears in Dickens's Chapter XVIII, "A Settler in Cloisterham," where the original author develops a lengthy description of the new arrival that implies his shock of white hair is not his own:

At about this time a stranger appeared in Cloisterham; a white-haired personage, with black eyebrows. Being buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout, with a buff waistcoat and gray trousers, he had something of a military air, but he announced himself at the Crozier (the orthodox hotel, where he put up with a portmanteau) as an idle dog who lived upon his means; and he farther announced that he had a mind to take a lodging in the picturesque old city for a month or two, with a view of settling down there altogether. Both announcements were made in the coffee-room of the Crozier, to all whom it might or might not concern, by the stranger as he stood with his back to the empty fireplace, waiting for his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry. And the waiter (business being chronically slack at the Crozier) represented all whom it might or might not concern, and absorbed the whole of the information.

This gentleman’s white head was unusually large, and his shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. [Chapter XVIII, “A Settler in Cloisterham,” p. 140 in the 1870 edition; p. 213 in the 1914 edition]

Dickens clearly intended to make considerable use of this enigmatic observer whom he had introduced in his August 1870 (fifth) instalment. Has Oldfield provided an image that is consistent with the above description? No. The well-dressed, middle-aged renter upon Mrs. Tope waits is certainly too slender, too fit, and too young of visage — although he certainly possesses "something of a military air," and is dressed much as Dickens initially describes him. What would early twentieth-century illustrator and caricaturist Harry Furniss have made of “Dick Datchery,” had he elected to include The Mysteries of Edwin Drood in The Charles Dickens Library Edition of 1910?

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With twelve illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 193, Piccadilly. 1870.

_______. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Reprinted Pieces. Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by S. Luke Fildes, R. A., E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879, Vol. XX.

Dickens, Charles, and W. E. C[risp]. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ed. Mary L. C. Grant. New text drawings by Zoffany Oldfield. London: J. M. Ouseley, 9 John Street, Adelphi, 1914.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.

Walters, J. Cuming. The Complete Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens: The History, Continuations, and Solutions (1870-1912). Illustrated by Luke Fildes and Frederic G. Kitton. London: Chapman and Hall, 1912.

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Created 22 August 2025