13
On the day Forster had arranged it, at precisely the agreed hour, Dickens stood in the Winters’ parlor at Artillery Place trying to choose a perfect pose to strike. Here he was, at the marbled hearth of his own first flame, long-dead embers stirring inside him. He didn’t know what it meant, what he wanted from her, whether it was wrong to have come at all, but the very thing he’d complained of lacking, with no idea how to get, had appeared in the form of a pink letter—inspiration, at last. He pulled the envelope from his pocket and admired the large curlicue letters. It was Maria’s own hand, not changed at all, which made him wonder at how clever life can be.
In the most innocent days of his youth, Maria was his sun. What a devoted poor fellow he’d been when even a sideways glance from her made him impossibly happy. She flirted, he doted, writing heartsick letters if he couldn’t see her, sometimes twice in one day. But when he declared his hope for everlasting romance and marriage, she laughed at him, called him “a mere boy,” pronounced his prospects not good enough, and cast him aside without mercy in favor of Henry Winter, “a merchant of good standing.” Her stinging rejection, just before he turned twenty, was, for a time, the all-absorbing event of his life. Forster was right: she had torn his heart to bits. But he had her to thank, too, knowing he’d fought his way out of poverty and obscurity with one perpetual idea of winning her back. Those days were far behind him. She had become Mrs. Henry Winter, and he, a man. But her letter awakened some unexpected longing in him, not for Maria, but for who he was then.
How strange, to return to the place of his own long-ago undoing, in hopes of somehow being redone.
Dickens leaned an elbow on the mantel, a well-chosen stance, he thought, dignified with just the right amount of feigned indifference. He caught sight of himself in a large gilt mirror and straightened his fine magpie waistcoat. It was bold and theatrical, shawl-collared, with broad blue and green stripes. He’d borrowed it from an old actor friend, William Macready, for just this occasion.
“Oh, Maria,” he rehearsed in a quiet voice, “how I’ve dreamed of this day. Why, there are things locked in my breast that I never thought to bring out anymore—”
“Sir, Mrs. Winter,” announced her valet.
Maria Beadnell bustled into the room, plump as a fresh-baked meat pie, dressed as near to a peacock as any woman can achieve, and dripping with jewels. Dickens turned to take it all in. Here she was, backlit by morning rays streaming in through tall windows, like the corona of a solar eclipse around her. His memory filled in the dark center.
“Oh, Maria! How I’ve longed for this day—”
“Charley!” She walked toward him, hands crossed over her heart. “Is that really you?”
It was Maria, in all her glory. He’d once thought her voice that of an angel’s, high-pitched and jingly, though today it had a nasal resonance he didn’t remember at all. She was close to him now, coming into soft focus. It was such a simple question, “Is that really you?” But his tongue lolled in his mouth. The sight and sound of her had flung him back all those years to the idiotic, goggle-eyed young man he’d been when they met. He determined to utter something profound, befitting the man he’d become. He would pay tribute to what she’d meant to him; Maria had ruined him, yes, but he’d risen like a phoenix, all because of her. When he finally concocted the words to say so, a sneeze appeared on her horizon, wiggled and rolled across her eyebrows, which had definitively grown into one. And there it was, the great event itself, like a blast of buckshot across the room.
“Good grief!” Maria laughed and produced a monogrammed silk kerchief. “‘Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger; sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger.’ I can never remember whether it’s a sign of good fortune or an omen of bad luck!”
She honked into the kerchief and tucked it back into her lace undersleeve before taking both of his hands in hers. Maria Winter, née Beadnell, had a very bad cold.
“But never mind me,” she said, talking in rapid fire. “Just look at you! The Charles Dickens! Why, you’ve not changed one whit. Well, of course, you are famous now, but in every other way—though so very, very famous! I want to hear every detail! Do you know Thackeray? Oh, never mind. I want to hear about you. All about you.”
Maria installed herself on a carved Empire sofa with great rolled arms and hairy paw feet. Prattling away, she patted the cushion beside her, insisting Dickens should sit.
Dust clouds rose from the gray damask.
14
“She’s a featherbrained, flighty, fribbling busybody who cares only for my celebrity, and nothing for who I am!” Dickens moaned to Forster the next day, blowing into a handkerchief of his own. “And as if I had not suffered enough, I must now pay with a raw chest, a dizzy head, and a stuffy nose twice the size of my own.”
Forster shook his head.
“She wants to meet again as soon as possible,” said Dickens.
“What did you say?”
“What could I? Honestly, I think her in some way in love with me.”
“Or perhaps not,” said Forster, with a look of knowing more than he was letting on.
“Oh, it was a pitiful display, I assure you.”
“That I believe. However, I’ve done some ferreting around, and the fact is that Henry Winter is a bankrupt.”
“What?” Dickens fell flat against the slatted back of the chair. “The divine, industrious Henry Winter for whom she threw me over, quite unceremoniously, with a barrage of small humiliations, one of which was telling me he was a man I could never hope to equal?”
“Yes. That one.”
“Why, Maria did nothing but sing his sugary praises, practically from the rooftops—”
“Well, he’s in the gutter now.”
“So she was begging a favor, like everyone else?”
“I believe she may be greasing the wheels for a loan.”
Dickens leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, God. What have I done?”
“I recommend avoiding her.”
“But I have nothing to give. Less than nothing.”
“Then at all costs, steer clear.”
Dickens scratched his fingers through his hair, working his scalp, his embarrassment.
“What you need, my friend, is a jorum of hot rum and egg in bed, with blankets, under the care of your devoted wife.”
“Oh, Forster. Had I only listened to you. I’ve been unfair to Catherine, and in this, her favorite season.”
Forster put his elbows on his desk and pulled at his muttonchops. “Well, the season has only barely begun.”
*
Dickens doubled his normal clip, determined to make a fresh start with his family. They were all acquainted with his ups and downs, but Catherine most of all. Of course he would live with the tree inside the house, and admire whatever wall covering she chose, even if it created a dizzying concurrence of circles and stripes or fought with the pattern in the carpet. He vowed to speak not a word of the foyer’s bold green.
His heart rose as he turned the corner onto Devonshire Terrace, then abruptly stopped beating. A large green-and-black park-drag coach stood in front of his own iron gate, loaded at the top with steamer trunks. Young Charley was pushing Timberdoodle into the carriage from behind; Walter pulled at his collar from the front. Katey and Mamie, in smart traveling clothes, emerged from the house.
“Girls. Where are you going?”
“To Scotland. Grandmama’s,” said Katey, putting on her bravest face.
Walter looked at his father mournfully, and sniffled. It was clear he’d been crying. “Is Christmas really canceled, Papa?”
“Why aren’t you coming with us?” asked little Frank, sticking his own tear-and-candy–stained face out of the carriage.
Katey walked, stiff-spined, past her father, but Mamie stopped in front of him with a look of sincere concern, more than her usual. “I shall miss you, Papa.”
“In you go, children!” said Catherine sternly.
“In time to bid us farewell, I see,” she said, tying a bow with quick, sharp movements.
“Why Scotland? Is your mother unwell?”
“Mother is fine, Charles. The trouble is with you.”
Dickens looked at Doreen, who held fast to her mistress’ side, as if she, too, knew exactly where the trouble lay, but relished the thought of hearing it. Determined not to endure her smug stare a second longer, he opened the carriage door and held out an insistent hand. Doreen turned up her nose, grabbed on, and heaved herself inside, jostling the coach and its contents. He clapped the door closed after her, and turned to his wife.
“What do you mean, the trouble is with me?”
Catherine snapped open her reticule, a green silk-velvet purse framed in cut steel, and produced Maria’s pink letter. It surprised him to see it in her kid-gloved hand, having banished it from his own mind already.
“Apparently, in your haste yesterday, you left this behind,” she said. “Yet Mrs. Winter believed it an important souvenir of your meeting.”
“I want no souvenir.”
“I believe it her souvenir, Charles. She paid us a visit this morning, quite unannounced, to say how much she regretted not having you autograph it while you were in her drawing room, and wondered whether you might do so before returning it to her. At your convenience, of course.”
“Catherine. There is nothing between us.”
“I should think not.”
“Maria Beadnell is a bird-witted gossipmonger—”
“Then why did you go?”
Dickens pulled off his hat and let it drop to his side. He studied the cobblestones under his boots, which offered nothing in his defense. Even if Forster was right about Maria’s true motive, it was no excuse at all.
“Because I’m a fool.”
“On that we quite agree.”
She turned toward the carriage, where the children pressed their faces against the glass. Dickens reached for her forearm, not wanting her to go. She looked at his hand curled around her sleeve, with cool emerald eyes. He pulled away, sheepish, and shook his head.
“Catherine, please.”
She tipped her proud chin and waited.
“I realize you cannot be entirely sympathetic to the demands I feel upon me just now. To my state of mind.”
“Nor you to mine.”
“But you’re changed toward me.”
“We are changed toward each other.”
“Perhaps I’ve not been at my best—”
“You’ve been at your worst. Terrorizing the children. Nagging me about the household refurbishments—”
“But you deck the halls as if this were Windsor Palace!”
He gasped as soon as he said it, as if to suck the words back inside. He hadn’t meant to be harsh, but the corners of her mouth wilted, and her eyes glossed with tears. These were the weeks of her ups and downs, and when the smallest kindness could buoy her he had instead made it worse.
“Oh, Catherine. If you’d only let me explain.”
“I think it quite explains itself.” She handed him the pink letter and pursed her lips. “Perhaps I do derive joy from things you regard as frivolous, Charles. But beneath it all, I have not forgotten what matters. And until you remember, I think it best we be apart.”
“You’re leaving me?” he asked, incredulous, searching her face for the wife he knew to be patient and fair.
It was Catherine’s turn to search the ground at her shoes. She was a proud woman, and could be fierce when called for, even in low spirits. Dickens knew her to rarely change course, once decided. She looked up from beneath the brim of her bonnet to meet his gaze.
“I am, for now, leaving you to yourself.”
Dickens looked at the pink letter in his hand. It now seemed so ridiculous and pointless a folly on his part. He wanted to disagree, protest, make his own case, but he knew she was right. He was hardly fit for his own company, much less hers. No amount of groveling or humility would change it. Instead, he opened the carriage door and offered an apologetic hand. Catherine swept up the skirts of her traveling suit and slipped her gloved hand into his, if only to steady her step. He held on tight.
“Will you return by Christmas?” he asked.
“I cannot say. But rest assured, we shall have Christmas wherever we are. With or without you.”
Catherine stepped into the carriage, releasing her husband’s hand. He hesitated, folded the steps, and closed the door behind her. The coachman, who had waited respectfully by, boarded the top and took the reins. Walter and Frank waved through the window. Young Charley put his hand to the glass. Dickens matched it finger for finger, until the coachman urged the horses away, hooves clattering down Devonshire Terrace. He stood alone in the middle of the street and watched the carriage disappear around the corner, listened until there was no sound at all. He was mad at the world, mad at himself.
“Oh, damn it all.”
Part II
15
By midmorning on his first day alone, Dickens began to enjoy his ill-gotten peace. He dismissed the cook first thing, discharged two workmen, and drove a decorator to gather his chintzes and flee. He assumed his writing post at half-past eight in good twig and high spirits, with nothing, as far as he could tell, to stand between him and a quick Christmas book. No hammering at the walls, patter of feet on the stairs, or clatter of pans in the basement kitchen. Even Topping tiptoed about.
Dickens did miss his fusee clock, which had been recovered from an azalea bush in the garden and declared a dead loss. But, now captain of his own ship, he saw time stretched out before him, and calm, quiet seas. His bowsprit pointed straight to the unseen shore of a new story. Embarking was never easy, but he could concentrate everything he had on the task now that he was free to be diligent without any distraction at all. He had a full stack of fresh foolscap and a good supply of a new blue ink that was said to dry upon leaving the pen. No more smudges or blotting. Just thoughts and words, paper and quill.
He put a finger to each temple, elbows splayed like a flying jib, filled his lungs with air, and squeezed his eyes shut. But instead of pictures in his head, a bout of seasickness roiled his gut. He stared out over the garden, but all he could see were steel-colored clouds conspiring for a late-morning storm. That first vertiginous thrill of being alone to do whatever he pleased, write whenever he wanted, crashed and died. When the rain did arrive, pelting the windows with drops the size of boiled sweets, he had to slap his own cheeks to keep from nodding off. He cleaned his nails with the letter opener, pulled a few mem-slips from his pocket, and pasted them onto the wall.
When morning rounded the bend for noon and the tempest outside blustered on, Dickens had a clipped conversation with the Master’s Cat (who offered no useful ideas at all), took three stretching breaks, a light lunch, and a cold bath to clear his head. By late afternoon he had one half-written paragraph that was illegible for all the scratching-out and barely good enough for the bin. He ran his fingers through his curls until they stood like jagged peaks in all directions. When he laid his cheek to rest on the green tooled leather surface of his desk, he caught sight of the miniature portraits of his children hanging side by side on a far wall, framed in gold and seed pearls, and had to look away. The quiet was more than he could bear.
He supped alone on cold beef, bathed again, and retired to bed early in hopes a good solid sleep would freshen his writing mind. But mostly he tumbled and tossed and lost the usual battle with the bedcovers. Catherine would be halfway to Scotland by now, parted from the husband who had clumsily betrayed her trust. Perhaps a separation was for the best. He had suffered a frenzy of fa
lse feeling, a grasping for his past instead of his present. Maria meant nothing to him. But it was a weakness in him to have reached for her at all, to believe she held a clue to something he’d lost along the way. The biggest terror of all was not being able to write, having no inspiration, no source, no reservoir of words and feelings, no one to prop him up or spur him on. No one to be his mirror, to reflect back what he thought he might be.
When the rat-a-tat-tat of the rain on the roof subsided, the chime of a clock tower in some distant square called to him. Desperate for a change of scene, he mistook it for company, got up, and went out. His first ten miles, he calculated, were quick ones. He had nothing to do and nowhere to go, but not one desire to turn home. There was nothing for him there, only empty corridors and groaning wood floors. He wanted noise and puddles, action and light. London was a never-ending spectacle, a great floating pageant. Surely he could count on it to fill his head with novel things, or at least show him where to look.
By mile twenty, he despaired of ever meeting a new thought again. He had inklings on every tired subject save the Christmas book, which triggered nothing in him but contempt for Chapman and Hall. There was nothing to do but let his boots carry him farther into the labryinth of the city. The fingernail moon vanished behind a curtain of mist and soot that fit his mood. Fog hovered in the hat brims of cabdrivers, rolled into stairwells to blanket snoring beggars, crept down the Thames bridge by bridge. It was a bludgeoning, hairy mist, he thought, like a prowling thief that would follow on your heels, knock you over the head, steal your thoughts, chew them up, and spit them out right in front of you, tiny particles scattering away on the brackish air. It was just the right weather for chasing phantoms about town.
Everything was strange, and everyone a stranger.
Dickens couldn’t remember, suddenly, whether he’d crossed the Thames two times or three. Water lapped hard against a post; old wooden buildings rose above him like menacing monsters. Rats scurried at his feet. He had come to the river’s edge, but which edge, and what way to turn? Sweat pearled on his brow. He took off his hat to wipe his face with a kerchief. When he pulled his watch from his pocket, he startled to find it had stopped at quarter-past ten.
Mr. Dickens and His Carol Page 6