Dante Club

by Matthew Pearl

  As the others fell silent, Rey inquired as to the context.

  Fields explained: “When we mistakenly believed that the murders were racing our translation, Officer, I asked my printer, Mr. Houghton, to ensure that nobody had been tampering with Mr. Longfellow’s proof sheets as they were being made and thus somehow anticipating our pattern of translation.”

  “Good God, Fields!” Lowell tore Houghton’s note from Fields’s hands. “Just when we thought Greene’s sermons explained everything. This flips the whole thing over like a flapjack!”

  Lowell, Fields, and Longfellow found Henry Oscar Houghton busy composing a threatening letter to a defaulting plate maker. A clerk announced them.

  “You told me that none of the proofs were missing from the file room, Houghton!” Fields had not even removed his hat before he began to shout.

  Houghton dismissed his clerk. “You’re quite right, Mr. Fields. And those still haven’t been disturbed,” he explained. “But, you see, I deposit an extra set of all important plates and proofs in a strong vault downstairs, in precaution against the event of a fire—ever since Sudbury Street burned to the ground. I’ve always thought none of my boys use the vault. They have no call to—there certainly is not much of a market for stolen proof sheets, and my printer’s devils would just as soon strike a game of pool as read a book. Who said, ‘Though an angel shall write, still ’tis the devils must print?’ I mean to have that engraved on a seal one day.” Houghton covered his dignified chuckle under his hand.

  “Thomas Moore,” Lowell could not help answering, all-knowingly.

  “Houghton,” said Fields. “Pray show us where these other proofs are kept.”

  Houghton led Fields, Lowell, and Longfellow down a flight of narrow stairs and into the basement. At the end of a long corridor, the printer spun an easy combination into a roomy vault he had purchased from a defunct bank. “After I had checked on Mr. Longfellow’s translation proofs in the file room and found them complete, I had a thought to check my security vault. And, lo! Several of Mr. Longfellow’s early proofs for the Inferno portion of the translation have taken flight.”

  “When did they go missing?” asked Fields.

  Houghton shrugged. “I do not enter these vaults very regularly, you understand. These proofs could have been gone for days—or months—without my noticing.”

  Longfellow located the bin labeled with his name and Lowell helped him sort through the Divine Comedy sheets. Several cantos of Inferno were gone.

  Lowell whispered, “They seem to have been taken entirely higgledy-piggledy. Parts of Canto Three are gone, but that seems the only one stolen which also has a corresponding murder.”

  The printer horned in on the poets’ space and cleared his throat.

  “I could gather together everyone who would have access to my combination if you’re so inclined. I’ll get to the bottom of this. If I tell a boy to hang up my overcoat, I expect him to come back and tell me he has done it.”

  The printer’s devils were running the presses, restoring foundry type to the cases and scrubbing away the ever-flowing lagoons of black ink when they heard the signal of Houghton’s bell. They herded into the Riverside Press coffee room.

  Houghton clapped his hands several times to silence the usual chatter. “Boys. Please, boys. A minor problem has been called to my attention. You surely recognize one of our guests, Mr. Longfellow of Cambridge. His works represent an important commercial and civic portion of our literary printings.”

  One of the boys, a red-haired rustic with a pale-yellow face soiled with ink, began squirming and casting nervous glances at Longfellow. Longfellow noticed this and signaled Lowell and Fields.

  “It seems some proofs from my basement vault have been . . . mislaid, shall we say.” Houghton had opened his mouth to continue when he caught the restless expression on the pale-yellow devil. Lowell arched his hand lightly on the agitated devil’s shoulder. At the sensation of Lowell’s touch, the devil toppled a colleague to the floor and darted away. Lowell gave immediate chase and rounded the corner in time to hear footsteps race down the back stairs.

  The poet dashed to the front office and down the steep side stairs. He burst outside, cutting off the deserter as he ran along the riverbank. He threw a lusty tackle, but the devil eluded him, sliding down the frosty embankment and tumbling hard into the Charles River, where some boys were spearing eels. He smashed through the river’s wrapper of ice.

  Lowell took a spear from a protesting boy and fished out the ice-shocked devil by his water-logged apron, which was tangled in bladderworts and discarded horseshoes.

  “Why did you steal those proofs, you blackguard?” cried Lowell.

  “What’r’ya jawin’ about? Away with you!” he said through chattering teeth.

  “You’ll tell me!” said Lowell, his lips and hands shaking almost as much as his captive’s.

  “Go stubble your red rag, ya shit ass!”

  Lowell’s cheeks flared. He dunked the boy by the hair into the river, the devil spitting and shouting into the chunks of ice. By this time, Houghton, Longfellow, and Fields—and a half-dozen hollering printer’s devils from ages twelve to twenty-one—had squeezed out the front doors of the press to watch.

  Longfellow tried to restrain Lowell.

  “I sold the damned proofs, I did!” the devil yelled, gasping for air. Lowell raised him to his feet, holding his arm tight and keeping the spear at his back. The fisher boys had salvaged the captive’s round gray cap and were trying it on for size. Breathing wildly, the devil blinked out painful ice water. “I’m sorry, Mr. Houghton. I never thought they’d be missed by nobody! I knew they were just extras!”

  Houghton’s face was tomato-red. “Into the press! Everyone back inside!” he yelled to the disappointed boys who had wandered outside.

  Fields approached with patient authority. “Be honest, lad, and this’ll come off better in the end. Tell us straightaway—to whom did you sell those sheets?”

  “Some crank. Happy? Stopped me when I was leaving work one night, jawin’ ’bout how he wanted me to heave out twenty or thirty pages or so of Mr. Longfellow’s new work, any pages I could find, just enough so it wouldn’t be missed. He kept edging me ’bout how I could put a few extra beans in my wallet.”

  “Blast your red whiskers! Who was he?” asked Lowell.

  “A real swell—tall hat, dark greatcoat and cape, beard. After I yessed his plan, he palmed me. I never seen the pig-widgeon again.”

  “Then how did you get him the proofs?” asked Longfellow.

  “They wasn’t for him. He told me to deliver them to an address. I don’t think it was his own house—well, that was just the sense from the way he talked. I don’t remember what the street number was, but it ain’t far from here. He said he’d get the proofs back to me so as I wouldn’t feel no heat from Mr. Houghton, but the jackcove never came back.”

  “He knew Houghton by name?” Fields asked.

  “Listen good, man,” said Lowell. “We need to know exactly where you took those proofs.”

  “I told you,” the shivering devil answered. “I don’t remember no number!”

  “You don’t look that stupid to me!” Lowell said.

  “Guess not! I’d remember easy enough if I went by the streets on my trotter, I would!”

  Lowell smiled. “Excellent, because you’re taking us there.”

  “Nah, I ain’t turning stag! Not unless I keep my job!”

  Houghton marched down the embankment. “Never, Mr. Colby! Choose to reap another’s harvest and you’ll soon sow on your own!”

  “And you’ll be hard-pressed for another job locked up in the blockhouse,” added Lowell, who didn’t exactly understand Houghton’s axiom. “You’re going to take us to the place you delivered those proofs you stole, Mr. Colby, or the police will take you there for us.”

  “Meet me back in a few hours, when night falls,” the devil replied in proud defeat after considering his options. Lowell relea
sed Colby, who bolted off to thaw at Riverside Press’s stove.

  In the meantime, Nicholas Rey and Dr. Holmes had returned to the soldiers’-aid home where Greene had preached early that afternoon, but they found nobody who fit Greene’s description of the Dante enthusiast. The chapel was not being prepared for its usual supper spread. An Irishman, bundled in a heavy blue coat, lethargically nailed boards over the windows.

  “The home’s been spending nigh all its money heating the stoves. The city hain’t approved more funds for soldiers’ aid, that’s how I hear it. They say they gotta close up, at least for the winter months now. Doubt we’ll see it reopen, ’tween us, sirs. These homes and their mangled men are too strong a reminder of the wrongs we’ve all done.”

  Rey and Holmes called on the manager of the home. The former church deacon seconded what the caretaker had told them: It was a function of the weather, he explained—they simply couldn’t afford to heat the premises anymore. He told them there were no lists or registers maintained of the soldiers who made use of the facilities. It was a public charity, open to all in need, from all regiments and towns. And it wasn’t just for the poorer lot of veterans, though that was one of the charity’s stated purposes. Some of the men just needed to be around people who could understand them. The deacon knew some soldiers by name and a small number of those by regimental number.

  “You might know the one we seek. It’s a matter of absolute importance.” Rey relayed the description George Washington Greene had given them.

  The manager shook his head. “I’d be happy to write down the names of the gentlemen I do know for you. The soldiers act as though they’re their own country sometimes. They know one another much better than we can know them.”

  Holmes wriggled back and forth in his chair while the deacon nibbled at the feather end of his pen with painstaking slowness.

  Lowell was driving Fields’s coach to the Riverside Press’s gates. The red-haired printer’s devil was sitting atop his old spotted mare. After cursing that they were putting his horse at risk for the distemper, which the board of health had warned was imminent after a review of stable conditions, Colby sped through small avenues and down unlit frozen pastures. The path was so circuitous and unsure that even Lowell, master of Cambridge since infancy, was disoriented and could only stay on course by listening for the pounding hooves ahead.

  The devil pulled in rein at the backyard of a modest Colonial house, first going past and then turning his horse around.

  “This house here—that’s where I brought the proofs. Dropped them right under the back door, just as I was told to.”

  Lowell stopped the coach. “Whose house is this?”

  “The rest is up to you birds!” Colby snarled, sandwiching his heels into his mare, who galloped away over the frozen ground.

  Carrying a lantern, Fields led Lowell and Longfellow to the piazza at the rear of the house.

  “No lamps lit inside,” Lowell said, scraping frost from a window.

  “Let’s go around the front, take down the address, then return with Rey,” Fields whispered. “That rogue Colby might be playing games with us. He’s a thief, Lowell! He could have friends in there waiting to rob us.”

  Lowell slammed the brass knocker repeatedly. “The way this world goes for us lately, if we leave now, the house will have vanished by the morning.”

  “Fields is right. We must step lightly, my dear Lowell,” Longfellow urged in a whisper.

  “Hullo!” Lowell shouted, now pounding his fists on the door. “There’s nobody here.” Lowell kicked the door and was surprised that it swung open with ease. “You see? The stars are on our side tonight.”

  “Jamey, we can’t just break in! What if this house belongs to our Lucifer? It is we who’ll end up in the blockhouse!” Fields said.

  “Then we’ll make our introduction,” Lowell said, taking the lantern from Fields.

  Longfellow stayed outside to watch that the carriage was not spotted. Fields followed Lowell inside. The publisher shuddered at every creak and thud along their way through the dark, cold halls. The wind from the open back door sent the draperies fluttering in ghostly pirouettes. Some of the rooms were sparsely furnished; others were entirely bare. The house had the thick, tangible darkness that accumulates with disuse.

  Lowell entered a well-appointed oval room with a chapel-like curved ceiling, then he heard Fields suddenly spit and scratch at his face and beard. Lowell drew the lantern’s light in a wide arc. “Spiderwebs. Half formed.” He placed the lantern on the center table of the library. “Nobody’s lived here for some time.”

  “Or the person living here doesn’t mind the company of insects.”

  Lowell paused to consider this. “Look around for anything that might tell us why that rogue would be paid to bring Longfellow’s proofs here.”

  Fields began to say something in response, but a garbled shout and heavy footfalls careened through the house. Lowell and Fields exchanged looks of horror, then scrambled for their lives.

  “Burglary!” The side door into the library was flung open and a squat man in a wool dressing gown came charging in. “Burglary! Account for yourselves or I cry ‘Burglary!’”

  The man thrust his strong lantern forward, then paused in shock. He glared as much at the cut of their suits as their faces.

  “Mr. Lowell? That you? And Mr. Fields?”

  “Randridge?” cried Fields. “Randridge, the tailor?”

  “Why, yes,” Randridge answered shyly, shuffling his slippered feet.

  Longfellow, having run inside, traced the commotion to the room.

  “Mr. Longfellow?” Randridge fumbled off his sleeping cap.

  “You live here, Randridge? What were you doing with those proofs?” Lowell demanded.

  Randridge was bewildered. “Live here? Two houses down, Mr. Lowell. But I heard some noise, and thought to check on the house. I feared there was looting afoot. They haven’t boxed up and removed everything. Haven’t quite gotten to the library, you can see.”

  Lowell asked, “Who hasn’t removed everything?”

  “Why, his relatives, of course. Who else?”

  Fields stepped back and waved his light over the bookshelves, his eyes doubling at the inordinate number of Bibles. There were at least thirty or forty. He dragged out the largest one.

  Randridge said, “They’ve come from Maryland to clear out his belongings. His poor nephews were terribly unprepared for such a circumstance, I can tell you. And who wouldn’t be? At all events, as I was saying, when I heard noises, I thought some fellers might be trying to make away with some souvenir—you know, for the sensation of it. Since the Irish began moving into the neighborhood . . . well, things have been missed.”

  Lowell knew exactly where Randridge lived in Cambridge. He was mentally galloping through the neighborhood, looking two houses in every direction with the frenzy of Paul Revere. He commanded his eyes to adjust to the dark room, to search out the dark portraits lining the wall for a familiar face.

  “No peace these days, my friends, I can tell you that,” the tailor continued with a sad lament. “Not even for the dead.”

  “The dead?” Lowell repeated.

  “The dead,” whispered Fields, passing Lowell an unclasped Bible. Its inside cover was neatly inked over with a complete family ancestry, written in the hand of the house’s late occupant, the Reverend Elisha Talbot.

  XVI

  University Hall, 8th October 1865

  My dear Reverend Talbot,

  I would like once more to emphasize the freedom you ought consider remains in your capable hands as to the language and form of the series. Mr.______ has given us his assurances that he looks forward with great honor to printing it in four parts for his literary review, one of the chief and last competitors to Mr. Fields’s Atlantic Monthly for the minds of the educated public. Only remember the most basic of guidelines to achieve the humble goals promoted by our Corporation in the present instance.

  The fir
st article should, employing your expert stroke on such matters, lay bare the poetry of Dante Alighieri on religious and moral grounds. The sequel ought find your doubtless inscrutable exposition of why such literary charlatanry the likes of Dante (and all alike foreign claptrap, increasingly encroaching on us) has no place on the bookshelves of upright American citizens, and why publishing houses with the “international influence” (as Mr. F. does frequently boast) of T., F. & Co. must be held responsible and must be submitted furthermore to the highest standards of social responsibility. The final two pieces of your series, dear Reverend, ought analyze Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Dante translation and reprove this heretofore “national” poet for attempting to conscript an immoral and irreligious literature into American libraries. With careful planning as to highest impact, the first two articles would precede the release of Longfellow’s translation by some months in order to arrange public sentiment in advance on our side; and the third and fourth would be released simultaneously with respect to the translation itself, with the aim of reducing sales among the socially conscious.

  Of course, I needn’t emphasize the moral zeal we trust and expect shall be found in your writing on these topics. Though I suspect you require no reminder of your own experience as a young scholar at our institution, but rather feel its weight each day on your soul as do we, it might do well to contrast the barbaric strain of foreign poetry embodied in Dante with the proven classical program championed by Harvard College for now some two hundred years. The gust of righteousness from your pen, dear Reverend Talbot, will serve as sufficient means to send Dante’s unwanted steamer back to Italy and to the Pope who waits there, with victory in the name of Christo et ecclesiae.

  I remain, ever Thine,

  When the three scholars returned to Craigie House, they held four such letters, addressed to Elisha Talbot and headed by the emblazoned seal of Harvard, as well as a stack of Dante proof sheets—the ones missing from Riverside Press’s security vault.