Mr. Cuming Walters connects the figure of the whiskerless young man kneeling to a girl in a garden seat, with the whiskered Jasper’s proposal to Rosa in a garden seat. But Jasper does not kneel to Rosa; he stands apart, leaning on a sundial; he only once vaguely “touches” her, which she resents; he does not kneel; he does not kiss her hand (Rosa “took the kiss sedately,” like Maud in the poem); and—Jasper had lustrous thick black whiskers. Again, the same whiskerless young man, bounding up the spiral staircase in daylight, and wildly pointing upwards, is taken by Mr. Cuming Walters to represent Jasper climbing the staircase to reconnoitre, at night, with a lantern, and, of course, with black whiskers. The two well-dressed men on the stairs (Grewgious, or Tartar, and Crisparkle) also, according to Mr. Cuming Walters, “relate to Jasper’s unaccountable expedition with Durdles to the Cathedral.” Neither of them is Jasper; neither of them is Durdles, “in a suit of coarse flannel”—a disreputable jacket, as Sir L. Fildes depicts him—“with horn buttons,” and a battered old tall hat. These interpretations are quite demonstrably erroneous and even impossible. Mr. Archer interprets the designs exactly as I do. As to the young man in the light of Jasper’s lamp, Mr. Cuming Walters says, “the large hat and the tightly-buttoned surtout must be observed; they are the articles of clothing on which most stress is laid in the description of Datchery. But the face is young.” The face of Datchery was elderly, and he had a huge shock of white hair, a wig. Datchery wore “a tightish blue surtout, with a buff waistcoat and grey trousers; he had something of a military air.” The young man in the vault has anything but a military air; he shows no waistcoat, and he does not wear “a tightish blue surtout,” or any surtout at all. [Picture: Under the trees] The surtout of the period is shown, worn by Jasper, in Sir L. Fildes’s sixth and ninth illustrations. It is a frock-coat; the collar descends far below the top of the waistcoat (buff or otherwise), displaying that garment; the coat is tightly buttoned beneath, revealing the figure; the tails of the coat do not reach the knees of the wearer. The young man in the vault, on the other hand, wears a loose paletot, buttoned to the throat (vaults are chilly places), and the coat falls so as to cover the knees; at least, partially. The young man is not, like Helena, “very dark, and fierce of look, . . . of almost the gipsy type.” He is blonde, sedate, and of the classic type, as Drood was. He is no more like Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles. Mr. Cuming Walters says that Mr. Proctor was “unable to allude to the prophetic picture by Collins.” As a fact, this picture is fully described by Mr. Proctor, but Mr. Walters used the wrong edition of his book, unwittingly.