Jasper Sees What is Left of His Victim
1914
Wood-engraving
12.3 cm high by 10.2 cm wide, or 4 ⅞ by 4 inches, framed, p. 509
Zoffany Oldfield
Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood (completed by W. E. C.)
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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At length, summoning all the will-power he muster, he thrust the lantern into the dark void, and as he learned the awful truth the filmy look which had so often afflicted his sight again came over his eyes for a few seconds. For there, conjured up by his heated imagination, the figure of Edwin Drood rose up from his grave and stood before him — a shadow of silent terror to the distraught mind of the quaking murderer.
This apparition of Jasper's now thoroughly unbalanced brain, being merely the subconscious mental picture of his own recollection of his nephew when last he had seen him alive, passed almost as quickly as it had appeared. As it vanished, the belfry clock chimed two quarters after midnight.
Drawing the back of his gloved hand across his eyes, as though to clear away some mist that obscured his sight, his lips twisting and mowing like those of an idiot, and a trembling moan of unbearable mental suffering issuing from between his chattering teeth, the wretched man picked up the empty lime-sack, climbed over the broken masonry and proceeded to liket the mummy-like remains of what once had been Edwin Drood. [Chapter XLIII, “The Fate of John Jasper,” 508]
Three of the nine Oldfield illustrations focus on choirmaster John Jasper, a figure whom the early 20th c. illustrator has clearly based on the Fildes' composite woodblock engraving in the August 1870 instalment, Jasper's Sacrifices (Chapter XIX). The visitor to the Cathedral crypt wears a respectable, middle-class jacket and waistcoat, and sports the elongated sideburns with which Fildes had invested him. However, Oldfield has updated the style of clothing, giving the figure a much shorter jacket than the late Victorian frock-coat seen in the serial illustration for "The Shadow on the Sun-dial." The salient detail, however, is the hole in the masonry (centre) through which the choirmaster has gained access to the resting place of his nephew, Edwin Drood. The accompanying narrative text clearly explains that Jasper had used quicklime to dissolve the corpse of his victim, but that chemical had lost some of its potency through exposure to the air, and therefore the corpse had been only partially dissolved.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Illustrated 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.
Created 21 August 2025
