Edwin Drood’s Opium Den

So the BBC did a two-part adaptation of Edwin Drood. Of course it was always the second part that was going to be most interesting as the scriptwriter, Gwyneth Hughes, was tasked with providing an ending to, of course, Dickens’s great unfinished novel. Readers of this blog though were probably more anticipating the start of the first episode given that the book starts with the protagonist John Jasper flopped out in a Limehouse opium den whacked out on the best Hunan puff and fantasying about killing Edwin Drood. I have yet to see the show and apparently the den was featured but the Chinoiserie was lightweight apparently though some pipes being filled were featured. Not sure if the great opium den madam Princess Puffer, based on a real life elderly East End pusher Dickens had met theatrically known as “Opium Sal” got much screen time – here she is in Edwin Drood:

‘At the bottom of this slough of grimy Despond is the little breathless garret where Johnny the Chinaman swelters night and day curled up on his gruesome couch, carefully toasting in the dim flame of a smoky lamp the tiny lumps of delight which shall transport the opium-smoker for a while into his paradise…‘O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, “I’ll have another ready for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay accordingly.” O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, deary – this is one – and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way and I takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen years afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.’

And here’s a Gustave Dore Limehouse opium den sketch to whet your apetitte: