Sheila, you get caught up in Dickens writing, don't you? Even without an ending, frustrating as it is, he sure can write a story!
I have to say that Datchery's black eyebrows made me think immediately of Neville and Helena. Dickens had gone out of his way to describe their raven tresses. There was something else about Helena - how she used to go about disguised as a boy - remember that? Can Datchery be Helena? Where is she while away from Miss Twinkleton's? Is she really spending her time with Neville in London in that tiny room as he tries to study law? Helena is my first candidate for Datchery - who is clearly in disguise with that while flowing hair. The hair would have to be long and flowing to cover Helena's hair - why he shakes it, I don't have an explanation.
There's been a lot said about what the green wrapper reveals. Apparently Wilkie Collins' son, Charles, who is married to Dickens' daughter was the first illustrator. When he became too ill (opium addiction?) to carry on, Dickens met with Luke Fildes to continue to work. At that point, Dickens made some changes to the original wrapper, - Many think these changes indicate how Dickens intended to finish his novel.
Thanks for the enlargement of that wrapper,
PatH - it helps us see the detail... I'll put it up here again - so you can follow along with this explanation...
"The problematic figures are those that, having read the first half of the novel, we cannot confidently explain or identify, most especially the figure with the white hat in the fifth vignette. Writing in 1905, J. Cuming Walters proposed that the dark-haired, bewhiskered man holding the lantern is John Jasper, returned to the scene of the crime to confirm that Edwin is indeed dead, and that the young man in the Tyrolean white hat is Helena Landless (otherwise known as "Datchery"):
How complete would the surprise be when the watcher, seemingly a man, proved to be a woman; doubly startling when the seemingly old man proved to be a young woman; how utterly confounding to a man like Jasper, when he found, after so successfully deceiving and thwarting men all his life, that a woman brought about his downfall. [Walters 244]
While it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the mysterious figure in the white hat is Datchery (or, for that matter, Edwin Drood returned to life from abroad, or a figment of Jasper's guilty imagination), the pale skin and rounded features do not square with Helena's physiognomy. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Jasper and others about town would have failed to penetrate the disguise, Helena being so well known to them. R. A. Proctor (1887), has suggested that the "figure in a tightly-buttoned coat and with a large hat" (Walters 245) is Drood, whom John Jasper, acting under the influence of opium, had merely thought he strangled. Yet again, Dickens scholar Andrew Lang in "The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot" (also in 1905) advanced the notion that, while the "dark and whiskered man" (Walters 246) was indeed Jasper, the features of the other person indicate that the youth is "Edwin Drood, of the Grecian nose, hyacinthine locks, and classical features, as in Sir Luke Fildes' third illustration" (cited in Walters, 246), "At the Piano." Walters' theory about a disguised Helena Landless does, however, have its supporters: in particular, Henry Smetham in a series of articles in the Rochester and Chatham Journal (1905) speculated that Helena had assumed the figure of the murdered Drood in order to terrify Jasper into confessing his guilt. Some critics resolve the mystery without worrying about the identity of Datchery; for example,
*"S. Y. E." "Dickens and his last book; A new theory." [Article in Nottingham Guardian (Jan. 9 [1912]), suggesting that Drood "sailed for the East" and was not murdered; that Neville Landless was falsely accused of killing him; that Jasper, thwarted in his criminal designs, threw himself over the Cathdral parapet, and, in dying, confessed his ill deeds.] [cited in Walters, 263]
Although the issue of the identities of the pursuers climbing the circular stair at the right-hand side of the wrapper would seem relatively trivial compared top the identity of the smooth-faced stranger in white at the bottom centre of the page, there are two distinct and quite contrary interpretations of the leader. That the uniformed police of the draft have been transformed into a party of what Penguin editor David Paroissien terms "plainclothes men" (295) is not so great a matter. If the period in which Dickens set the novel is some thirty years prior to the date of composition, the change may simply reflect an attempt to correct an anachronism, the London Metropolitan Police (i. e., the "Bobbies" in crime and detection fiction such as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries) would not have existed when the authorities were in hot pursuit of Drood's killer. As J. R. Cohen suggests, the change may also be a deliberate attempt to inject ambiguities into the wrapper design; furthermore, the pursuers may well be a deputized "posse" such as the party of townsmen who apprehend Neville Landless on the highroad the day after Drood's disappearance. On the other hand, the location of the staircase may be limited to one of two places encountered in the letter-press: the postern of John Jasper's gatehouse, or the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral.
But who is the leader of the pursuers, if the two men wearing hats lower on the stair are, as J. R. Cohen proposes, Tartar and Crisparkle (whom she selects simply on the grounds that Dickens had planned to marry them to Rosa and Helena respectively, and because he had mentioned to Collins that he had thought of having Neville die in the pursuit of the real murderer)? The top figure, pointing upward in the general direction of choirmaster John Jasper in the top register, is unidentifiable in the draft, but with tailcoat and fair hair could well be Tartar--or the fair haired, fair skinned man of mystery at the bottom centre. The other possibility is fascinating in psychological terms because (if we can conceive of the figure as dark-haired) it could be John Jasper, pointing at himself, in which case the scene may represent the doting uncle's fruitless attempts to find his missing nephew, or (if his disappearance is the result of foul play) his killer.
To read the article in its entirety - and remember, this is just a theory! -
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/fildes/wrapper.html
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