A cup of coffee or tea for you on this fine Sunday. Cheers! 🙂

I believe the Dean in Dickens’s unfinished novel was an imposter, which gives him an ecclesiastical out when it comes to sacrilege. In short, it grants Dickens blasphemy immunity. Though the town is a thinly veiled Rochester, he wrote a disclaimer at the beginning of chapter 3 (below):

When you think about it, if Dickens didn’t delete Mr Tope’s mace in chapter 9, and readers DID discover that Jasper was pointing to Mr Tope who holds “the spike,” it wouldn’t have mattered because no one would’ve ever suspected the Dean as top villain. (Let’s see Wilkie Collins top THAT!)

If the music in the Super Bowl Starbucks commercial sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen the film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ Burt Bacharach’s composition “South American Getaway” is used in both. youtu.be/493-pTRNNxk?...

What do all these Vergers have in common? They hold a Verger’s rod that could double as a chalk line on a corner-cupboard door.

I just want to insert myself into this new cover pic of Blue Sky. (Knowing me, I’d hit the ice cream stand first.) 🍦

The old janitor laid his wrinkled hands atop the broom, along with his worn chin. He dreamt of sweeping his way to Olympic glory in the sport of curling! As he made his way atop the podium for the gold, a voice came over the loudspeaker: “Mr. Winkle to the cafeteria—three children just got sick.”

Dickens funniest joke of all-time? No doubt the Peter Piper Passage in Edwin Drood where Dickens cryptically writes of Mr Tope ‘picking’ the pickled Durdles out of his drunken slumber with his mace (the spike that intervenes actually intervening). It doubles as his most humourous clue, too.

I believe Dickens handled the wooden engraving plate for The Mystery of Edwin Drood and etched the lines that form an arrow directly pointing to Mr Tope’s mace, which I believe to be “the spike that intervenes.” Just one in a series of clues that point to the spike.

Ever notice in Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood that all the characters have names, with the exception of the Dean? (Perhaps Dickens was saving his name for the big reveal.)

I believe Nathan Lane would make a most humourous Seth Pecksniff.

In a letter to John Forster in August, 1869, Dickens wrote: “I laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work.”

Dickens was troubled when a little old lady guessed Esther Summerson’s parentage in Bleak House. So why, when illustrator Seymour claimed the originality of ‘Pickwick’, and Cruikshank ‘Twist,’ would Dickens have told Fildes that Jasper strangles Drood with the scarf? This just doesn’t make sense.

Dickens seems to have borrowed a page from Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter‘ by asking readers who the villains are in the first chapter of ‘Drood,’ then revealing them in bold print atop the second, “A Dean and a Chapter, Also.” Just like Poe’s ‘Letter,’ did Dickens hide the answer in plain sight?

Gemini; ChatGPT; Copilot; and Brave all believe Jasper is the one who intones “WHEN THE WICKED MAN” at the end of the first chapter in ‘Drood’. But they have it all wrong. When you look closely, it’s the Dean’s voice that is “intoned”; “feeble”; “cracked”; “monotonous-mutter”; and “dying”.

Jasper being the villain only proves that Wilkie Collins and George Bernard Shaw were correct, that The Mystery of Edwin Drood WAS the melancholy work of a worn-out brain by a man three-quarters dead. We have to give Dickens more credit and respect than this (after all, he IS the Inimitable).

Fans of Dickens should relish in the notion that he would never leave us with a murderous protagonist who commits nepocide in his unfinished swan song. What he left us with is a “kinsman” who was truly “devoted” to his nephew all the while.

Anita and I on a secret mission with some of Our Finest (we were disguised as civilians, of course). 😉

Even prior to the “It was the best of times” passage, Dickens writes “Recalled to Life,” the recurring theme throughout the novel. Similarly, he introduces “the spike that intervenes” in the opening paragraph of ‘Drood,’ picking it up again in many other forms throughout his unfinished masterpiece.

1970’s Pilates ball

Perhaps John Jasper never wanted to kill then quick-lime his nephew Edwin Drood; perhaps he wanted to quick-lime opium housed in crypts at Cloisterham Cathedral in order to rid hisself, his town, and his nation from the evils of the drug.

That Great Black Scarf

The spike that intervenes, intervening.

Rest in Peace, Dr Michael Slater. youtu.be/rnqzcz1FUcI?...

Got our flowers planted just before the rains here in Florida. :::whew:::

Rosa seeking sanctuary in Cloisterham Cathedral.

Google’s AI (Gemini’s) interpretation of The Spike that Intervenes Theory of The Mystery of Edwin Drood:

“Since the mace was omitted, Jasper must be acquitted!”

For fun, I asked an unbiased judge, ChatGPT, which Drood theory would hold the most water in the court of law, and it was Mark Wheats’ “Spike that Intervenes Theory” that prevailed. (Keep in mind that this doesn’t even include “The Shell Game Theory of Drood”).

I asked AI about one of my books, and though it’s accurate when conveying back cover information, there comes a point where I can tell AI never read my story, so it starts fudging (like a middle schooler fudging a book report in front of class).

“It’s not what you cover in class, it’s what you uncover.” -Walter Lewin

Dickens may have changed Mr Tope’s position on the cover because Rosa is tipping off readers by looking back at him and his mace (the spike that intervenes), so Dickens had Charles Collins (or Luke Fildes) move the verger next to the arch instead. (Be sure to fully open pics.)

Very much enjoyed this episode! open.spotify.com/episode/5n9I...

Rosa may have made that “great black scarf” for Jasper and given it to him on Christmas Eve. Note below that as Miss Twinkleton censors stories for her pupils, she reveals that her students are learning embroidery, tambour, and crochet.

I visited the Omni Parker House in Boston last July, and the Press Room has Charles Dickens’ handwritten manuscript for ‘A Christmas Carol’ printed into its carpet. The door to Dickens’ room where he stayed in 1867 is also on site, as well as the looking glass he practiced ‘A Christmas Carol’ in.

Freud was 14 years old when Dickens died, so don’t believe all that gobbledygook about Jasper being psychologically tormented like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which was written 16 years after Dickens’ death). The villains in ‘Drood’ are easy to see, if one simply uses parsimony.

When it comes to the world’s greatest literary puzzle, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’, readers don’t need to have IQs above 130 to solve it. All that’s required is a loving, playful heart with the basic knowledge of nursery rhymes and childhood games.

Billy Wilder hits the nail on the head when he speaks about the future of film in his 1986 AFI lifetime achievement award speech: youtu.be/FCps-tOVzTE?...

The Dali Museum

I love the wrapper on the Anniversary edition of ‘The Dickensian’—so beautiful (Great articles too!) Definitely a collector’s issue!

It looks like Dickens didn’t want to reveal the clue of Mr Tope in procession with his mace too early (left pic), so he decided to give us another clue instead (right pic), one that is just as telltale as his deletion of the mace. He calls Jasper “the living waters”, likening him to Jesus.