Drood by Dan Simmons Page A

had belonged to Franklin or his men. Finally, Rae had discovered human remains, both in shallow graves and above ground, including two skeletons actually still seated in one of the ship’s boats tied to a sledge.
    What shocked England, beyond this terrible proof of Franklin’s probable fate, was that according to the Esquimaux that Rae had interviewed, Franklin and his men had not only died but had resorted to cannibalism in their final days. The savages told Rae of coming across white men’s camps where there were chewed bones, stacks of hacked-off limbs, and even tall boots with feet and leg bones still within.
    This horrified Lady Franklin, of course, and she rejected the report in its entirety (even going so far as to hire another ship, out of her own dwindling fortune, to resume the search for her husband). Dickens also was appalled—and fascinated—by the idea.
    He began publishing articles on the reported tragedy then in his journal,
Household Words,
as well as in other magazines. At first he was simply doubtful, stating that the report was
“hasty… in the statement that they had eaten the dead bodies of their companions.”
Dickens told us that he had consulted “a wilderness of books”—although he cited no specific sources—to prove that
“the probabilities are all against poor Franklin’s people having dreamed of eating the bodies of their companions.”
    As the rest of the nation either began to believe in Rae’s report (he did claim the government’s reward for conclusive proof of Franklin’s fate) or to forget, Dickens’s denial turned to serious anger. In
Household Words
he launched a scathing attack on “the savage”—his phrase for all non-whites, but in this case the scheming, lying, untrustworthy Esquimaux whom John Rae had lived with and interviewed. Dickens in our time was, of course, considered a radical liberal, but those credentials were not impeached when he spoke for the majority of Englishmen and wrote—
“. . . we believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel.”
It was simply impossible, he argued, that any of Sir John Franklin’s men had
“prolonged their existence by the dreadful expedient of eating the bodies of their dead companions.”
    Then our friend did a very strange thing. From the “wilderness of books” he had consulted to support his opinion, he chose 1001
Arabian Nights
—one of the most important books from his childhood, as he had told me several times—to prove his point. He wrote in summary—
“In the whole wide circle of the
Arabian Nights,
it is reserved for ghoules, gigantic blacks with one eye, monsters like towers of enormous bulk and dreadful aspect, and unclean animals lurking on the sea shore…”
to resort to eating human flesh, or cannibalism.
    So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum.
    I T WAS IN 1856 that Dickens took his campaign against the possibility of cannibalism amongst Sir John Franklin’s noble men to a new level… and one which would intimately involve me.
    While we were sojourning together in France—Dickens called me his “vicious friend” on such voyages and the time in Paris “our dangerous expeditions” (although while he enjoyed the night life and occasional conversations with young actresses, the writer never availed himself of the women of the night as I did there)—he came up with the idea that I write a play, to be performed at Dickens’s home at Tavistock House. Specifically it was to be a play about a lost Arctic expedition such as Franklin’s in which the Englishmen showed courage and valour. It also, he explained, had to be a story about love and sacrifice.
    “Why don’t you write it, Charles?” was my obvious response.
    Well, he simply could not. He was beginning work on
Little Dorrit,
giving readings, putting out his magazine… I was to write it. He suggested the title
The Frozen Deep,
since the play would not only be about the northern wilderness, but about the