The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Yes, yes, of course they have,” Dickens stammered, rather taken aback by the aggressive directness of this young woman who never ceased in the bathing of her poor bruised patient as she spoke, “as have Miss Elizabeth Siddal and Mr. Rossetti.”

  At their mention, Florence Nightingale did pause in her ministrations to her patient. “Those two sent you here?” There was suspicion in her voice.

  “Yes,” Dickens answered.

  “Just what do you want of me?”

  “Miss Siddal said that you know Marie de Brevecoeur better than anyone, that you could help us to find her,” Dickens explained.

  Miss Nightingale raised her eyebrows in recognition and glanced quickly from one of us to the other as if trying to decide whether to trust us or not.

  “It is about the murder of Eliza Lane, isn’t it?” she finally said. “Marie would never do that.”

  “We know. We know,” Dickens hastened to reassure her. “We think that the murderer is a man with whom she keeps company, a tall, French-speaking man with a mustache called John Barsad.”

  “He is the evil one, that’s certain.” Miss Nightingale nodded her head. “If I could get Marie loose from his influence, well…” She let her wishful thinking trail off as she bent once more to her patient.

  Dickens did not press her. We waited in silence as she completed the bathing of the bruised limbs of her drugged patient and turned with her sponge and basin to her more difficult charge. Surprisingly, whether because of the light touch of her hand or the coolness of the water on the sponge, the tethered madwoman seemed to calm under Miss Nightingale’s gentle ministrations. By the time the bath was finished, the poor woman had dropped off into a fitful sleep.

  “This is important work that you do,” I overheard Dickens whisper to Florence Nightingale as we followed her out of that airless ward and into a smaller workroom, which housed a drain and a water pump. “What has brought you to it?”

  “I first tended to my father, who was a very kind man, in a hospital when he was dying.” Though somewhat surprised at Dickens’s interest, Miss Nightingale answered quite forthrightly. “It gave me satisfaction to tend to the sick. It gives my life direction.”

  As I eavesdropped upon their conversation and observed Dickens as he listened to this young woman, I could clearly perceive the powerful impression she was making upon him. This was no Mistress Quickly of a nurse, no gin-tippler of the sort that Dickens himself had described.*

  “I went to Alexandria two years ago to work in a hospital with the sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul,” she continued, warming to her subject. “Those nuns taught me that nursing was a profession, like that of doctors and solicitors and clergymen. Unfortunately, nobody in England seems to agree.” She finished with a shrug of frustration.

  “Perhaps you can change that,” Dickens said, and smiled at her.

  “Perhaps.” She looked strangely back at him, no longer distrustful, but almost grateful that he had taken the time to listen to her. That was, I must admit, one of Dickens’s great strengths. He was a wonderful listener.

  “I have other patients to tend to this afternoon,” Florence Nightingale turned our conversation toward its conclusion.

  “Can you help us to find Marie de Brevecoeur?” Dickens pressed.

  “Perhaps.” She paused and looked hard at Dickens. “I will have to look into it. I do not know where she lives. I have only met with her in public places. But she confides in me. She makes money for this Barsad.”

  “How?” Dickens pursued Miss Nightingale when she attempted to flee the subject.

  “As an actress,” she resigned herself to answering, “in private performances.”

  “What sort of private performances?” Dickens was relentless in his questioning.

  “At Kate Hamilton’s and in séances. I have attended séances twice. They are, shall we say, ‘different.’”

  “Kate Hamilton’s?” Dickens repeated the name as a question.

  “You have been there and seen her?” Florence Nightingale spoke in an alarmed voice, and looked sharply at Dickens.

  “No, we have not, but Miss Siddal mentioned that establishment.”

  “Then you know that men watch women make love to other women there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that is not all. Some men bring their wives there to be molested. All is not always what it seems there. Some women taunt their husbands by performing there. Eliza Lane has performed there, with Marie de Brevecoeur. Did you know that?”

  “No, we did not.” Dickens was utterly thrown by this revelation. I think he really believed that he knew what was happening in this strange sexual underworld. But, as we were to find out, none of us, not even Inspector Field, fully understood the twisted motives of this case. London in those days was so like that; nothing was ever what it seemed.

  “Kate Hamilton’s productions are not Marie de Brevecoeur’s best performances,” Florence Nightingale declared as a means of changing the subject.

  We both stared at her in dumb show.

  “It is Wednesday, is it not?” She seemed serious in her question, as if she had absentmindedly lost connection to time and space owing to her voluntary confinement in this madhouse.

  “Yes,” Dickens answered, puzzled.

  “There is a spirit rapping on Thursday nights, a private séance,” she explained. “Marie serves as hostess for the medium. You must pay to attend. Perhaps you will find her there.”

  Dickens stared questioningly at her, and his wondering look actually amused her.

  “Oh, I don’t believe in such silliness,” she laughed, “but Marie seems to. Here, I shall write down the address. I will be happy to attend with you if you wish. I would like to see Marie freed from this man Barsad’s influence.”

  With that, our conversation came to an end, except for one last private exchange which I observed between Dickens and her just as we were about to leave. A rather thick packet of bills passed from Dickens’s hand into the pocket of her work smock. He had found yet another charity to support.

  As we drove away from the Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum, Sleepy Rob stopped once just before the Lambeth Bridge to check his horse’s bridle. Then he stopped again on the Victoria Embankment to climb down and walk all around his cab before climbing back up and continuing on to Bow Street. When we pulled up in front of Bow Street Station to deliver our report to Inspector Field, Sleepy Rob apprised us that we had been followed by a black coach drawn by two horses ever since we had left the lunatic asylum. He was sure, however, that it was not Collar’s Protectives coach, which seemed right since Collar believed that he already had his killer.

  But if it was not Collar, who could it be?

  * * *

  *In Victorian England, phrenology was the young science of measuring people’s heads with calipers in order to speculate upon their mental capacities.

  *Such as Sarah Gamp in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit.

  Nellie in Newgate

  August 14, 1852—Morning

  I was sitting next to Dickens in the Kensington Magistrate’s Court the next morning when Ellen Ternan was led in. She did not look much the worse for wear despite having been forced to spend two nights in the holding room at St. James Station. Much to Dickens’s relief both Field and Rogers had joined us in the gallery of the courtroom just before Miss Ternan was brought in.

  Her hair was a bit tousled, but she had clearly been allowed to make a complete morning toilette, and she looked clean and fresh despite her ordeal. Of course, that sort of appearance comes easily, even under stress, to persons of Miss Ternan’s youth. If I had been forced to sleep in gaol two nights running, I would emerge looking like a disgruntled porcupine.

  The magistrate was a Mr. McWhelply, who exhibited all of the gruff disinterest of his Scottish ancestry until Miss Ternan was announced and the word “murder” raised its viperous head in his courtroom. The word caught his (and everyone else’s) attention. A murmur buzzed through the courtroom as if
a hive had just been whacked. All eyes flew to Dickens’s Ellen as she was escorted into the dock.

  Magistrate McWhelply made quick work of her.

  “For murder? A woman? Worst kind,” he pronounced, and turned to Inspector Collar for an explanation.

  “Yes sir.” Collar, a model of fawning respect for the court and bloodless protector of the civil peace, addressed the high justice like a true martinet. “The affair at Coutts Bank, Your Honor, murder of another woman it is.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Yes sir.” Collar produced the green scarf. “Belongs to the accused and was used to strangle a Miss Eliza Lane at the previous mentioned bank.”

  “Quite so. Thank you, Inspector Collar.” And that seemed to close the case for Chief Magistrate McWhelply. However, as a necessary afterthought, he stared off into space as if contemplating a beckoning trout stream and asked no one in particular: “Is there anyone present here to speak for Miss”—and he consulted his charge sheet to find her name—“um, Ternan?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, indeed. Here to speak for the accused, your honor. Jaggers of the Middle Temple, Your Honor. Council for Miss Ternan, Your Honor.” He had heaped enough toadying “Your Honors” upon the magistrate that that worthy seemed almost buried under them.

  Dickens had wasted no time in retaining the formidable Jaggers. That worthy’s name immediately caught Magistrate McWhelply’s attention, and, for the second time that morning, a knowing buzz spread through the courtroom. I guess in those parts the words “murder” and “Jaggers” had come to be synonomous.

  Jaggers is a bulky, bald specimen who bludgeons his way through the frail gate that bars entrance from the gallery to the small stage before the bench where the legal theatrics are acted out.

  Jaggers is incredulous.

  Jaggers is incensed.

  Jaggers is intense.

  Jaggers is aghast that such meagre evidence and malicious hearsay would even be considered in such a fair and universally esteemed court of justice.

  But, unfortunately, none of Jaggers’s theatrical exertions are enough to carry the cause this day.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jaggers.” Magistrate McWhelply nods knowingly as he looks around for his mallet of justice, which has somehow been misplaced. He proceeds to dismiss Ellen’s lawyer with a wave of his hand in lieu of a good gavel pound, as if that worthy were a piece of lint that had landed annoyingly upon his sleeve.

  Jaggers withdraws reluctantly, his face flushed from his entreaties, his unargued brief clutched in his troubled hand.

  “Bound over to the Queen’s Bench,” McWhelply growls, still swiveling his head in search of his missing gavel. “Take her away. She will be remanded to Newgate.” With that dreaded pronouncement, Magistrate McWhelply finally found his wooden mallet and gave the table a resounding bang even though it was too late. From the tragic look on Charles’s face, the magistrate might well have been pounding the last nail into Ellen Ternan’s coffin.

  Dickens rushed to the front of the courtroom to try to get a final word with his Ellen, but the constable hurried her off so quickly that he could not speak with her. Frantically, he followed her outside, but by the time he fought his way through the indolent crowd of court hangers-on, she was already padlocked into the closed prison cart and he could not even catch a glimpse of her as that tumbril rumbled off.

  We—Field, Rogers, and myself—caught up with Dickens, standing, utterly forlorn, in the cobblestone street. But before we had even a chance to plot our next move, Collar and his man descended upon us, no doubt to gloat. Field, however, never gave him a chance to lord it.

  “Inspector Collar, congratulations. It is in the hands of the courts now, it is.” The tone of Field’s voice gave all evidence of his having washed his hands of the case.

  “Yes,” Collar said with a smirk, “I am sure, and the court obviously agrees, that we have got our man.”

  “You mean ‘woman,’” Field corrected him with a congenial grin.

  “Yes, of course, ‘woman,’” Collar corrected himself with a knowing laugh of the sort men exchange amongst themselves in the privacy of their clubrooms.

  I was afraid that Dickens was going to step up and strike the man, but he restrained himself. To all of our relief, Collar decided not to tarry to discuss the case, but with a patronizing salute continued on with his man in tow to their waiting police post-chaise.

  “Bloody twit!” Serjeant Rogers cursed him in a stage whisper as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “That he is, foursquare,” Inspector Field agreed, “but the good is that he is out of our hair.” And with that Field turned to Dickens, more to cheer him up, I think, than to plot any startling new strategy. “Which means that we have an open field.”

  “While Miss Ternan pines away in Newgate.” Dickens was a portrait of despondence.

  “There is no good to be gained in feelin’ sorry for ourselfs,” said Field, turning deadly serious. “We have no choice but to keep turnin’ over rocks till we find our murderer.”

  Field paused to let Dickens think on that.

  “I have a good feelin’ about your Miss Nightingale.” Field’s gravity seemed to pull Dickens out of his depression and back into the detective’s game. “If she can lead us to this Frenchwoman who dresses like a man, then I will wager we’ll find our friend Barsad close by.”

  “This spirit rapping, then, may be our best chance,” said Dickens, grasping eagerly at the hope that Field held out like some poor shipwrecked mariner grasping for a spar.

  “Yes, and tonight we shall see where Miss Nightingale’s phantoms will lead us.” And with that Field nodded to Rogers and turned to leave.

  “But I fear there is another possibility,” Dickens said, stopping them.

  “And wot might that be?” Field’s crook’d forefinger shot to the side of his right eye.

  “Angela Burdett-Coutts has apprised me of a man out of her past, a seducer of women, who she fears might be involved in this confusing affair.”

  “And who might that be?” Field’s sudden anger was nearly palpable, smoldering beneath his dark eyebrows and the grim set of his mouth as he spoke.

  Dickens told the whole story, of this James Barton and the false marriage, to Field and Rogers right there in the street. It was information Dickens should have imparted (in fact, was directed to by Miss Angela herself) to Field before.

  Field held himself under admirable control, I thought. He did not admonish Dickens for holding back the story to this late hour, but it was clear that he was displeased.

  “Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Field finally said when Dickens had completed his revelation. “But we must follow the signs that are the clearest, and for now this Barsad and his gang of women is our best chance. Tonight at Bow Street.”

  And with that curt order, Field turned on his heel and was gone.

  Meeting the Puppetmaster

  August 14, 1852—Early Evening

  Miss Nightingale had promised to escort us to the private séance that evening, and she proved as good as her word. She appeared at Bow Street Station at six and informed us that the spirit rapping would commence at eight in private rooms on Southwark Bridge Road across the river. Strangely, almost every turning in this case seemed to take us across that pestilent river and into those hot and dusty neighbourhoods of Lambeth and Southwark, where the greater part of London’s population seemed to be so busily constructing the railway.

  When we set off from Bow Street to follow Miss Florence Nightingale’s lead, we were in two coaches. Dickens rode with her in Sleepy Rob’s hansom. I joined Field and Rogers, who was on the box, in the black Bow Street post-chaise. It was slow going through the streets at that busy time of the evening, and it took us a good while to wind our way through the pedestrian mobs to the base of old Southwark Bridge. There, at Field’s expressed suggestion, we stopped to dine at a riverside tap. Field fondly called it the Old Bridge Coffee House, though the paint on its sign hanging over the door wa
s so faded and cracked that none of us could verify whether that was truly the public house’s title or not.

  Throughout that whole tedious journey through the crowded London streets, all of us, in both coaches, had kept a sharp eye out for that sinister coach which Sleepy Rob had assured us was on our track that afternoon. Despite our vigilance, however, no such coach was observed moving in our wake. Either, we speculated, it was staying far back, or it had been replaced by a less identifiable mode of surveillance, or it had never existed in the first place. But Sleepy Rob was hardly an alarmist, and both Dickens and I agreed that if he felt strongly enough that we were being followed, then the chances were quite good that we were.

  At the Old Bridge Coffee House, the five of us dined on beer, ham, and fluffed potatoes, plotted our course, and were offered a full description by Miss Nightingale concerning what to expect at this séance. At half seven we resumed our coaches and proceeded across Southwark Bridge and into Southwark Bridge Road led by Dickens and Miss Nightingale, who knew the proper house. It had been determined over dinner that Miss Nightingale, accompanied by Dickens and me, would attend the séance while Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers would wait outside on the chance that our French friend might appear and invite confrontation.

  The house which Miss Nightingale pointed out and before which Dickens and she alighted (Field and Rogers pulling up directly across the way, for me to disembark and join the two principals), was a high, narrow brownstone utterly indistinguishable from any of the other high, narrow stone fronts which lined both sides of the wide thoroughfare leading to the bridge. On closer inspection, its only distinguishing mark was a small white card tacked to the frame of the front door and lettered thusly in black ink:

  MADAME FONTANELLE

  MEDIUM

  SÉANCES—THURSDAY EVENINGS

  We knocked and the door was promptly opened. Miss Nightingale had thoroughly prepared us for the superstitious theatrics we might encounter during this spirit-rapping session, but she had not prepared us to be greeted at the front door of this spiritualist establishment by none other than a demure and glassy-eyed Marie de Brevecoeur herself.