The guilty fingers were clutching an object: Dickens’s tie-pin.
His own right hand still holding fast the prisoner’s wrist, Charles Dickens reached out in the dark with his left hand and seized the prisoner’s burlap hood. “You show a great interest in my possessions . . . Mister Poe.”
Dickens snatched away the hood, revealing the pale sweaty face of Edgar Allan Poe.
“You recognized me,” murmured Poe. “How?”
Farther down the prison corridor, the sounds emerging from one particular cell made plain that this cell’s denizen was engaged in work as a cobbler. Still holding fast to Poe’s wrist, Dickens drew him nearer to this cell, so that the steady tack-tack-tack of its occupant at his shoemaker’s last would supply some cover for their whispered conversation.
“My agent George Putnam made some inquiries about you, after our meeting,” Dickens said to Poe. “I was intrigued to learn, sir, that you reside scarcely three city blocks westward of this Eastern State Penitentiary. Nonetheless, I did not expect to meet you actually within this prison’s gates.”
Poe smiled bitterly, while fingering the eyeholes of his burlap hoodwink. “Then you are in the minority, Mr Dickens, for there are thousands of others who fully expect that Edgar Allan Poe will eventually be found in one prison or another.”
“Fair enough.” Dickens nodded. “As to how I recognized you . . .” Dickens once again cast his eyes downward, towards both men’s feet. His own bespoke shoes, made for him by Gillingham’s in Old Bond Street, were naturally crafted to fit him. But the far more penurious Edgar Poe was obliged to own a pair of “straights”, the inexpensive working-man’s shoes which were made to fit either the left or the right foot equally well, and which therefore fitted equally badly on both. Yesterday, Dickens had remarked a distinctive stain of sputum and blood on Poe’s left shoe. Just before unmasking Poe in this prison corridor, Dickens had seen that self-same stain on the hooded prisoner’s right shoe . . . and known it as both the same stain and the same shoe, now worn by the same man’s other foot.
Charles Dickens had sufficient sympathy for his fellow man, and sufficient tact, to know that Poe’s pride would be wounded were he to learn that Dickens had recognized him by a stain on his shoe . . . a stain more shameful because Poe clearly lacked the money to buy a proper pair of symmetries – shoes with a distinct left and right – and because Poe lacked either the time or the diligence to clean his shoes properly. Rather than give a truthful answer to Poe’s question, then, Dickens replied: “I recognized you, sir, by . . . the air of authority about you, undisguised even when your head was shrouded in that hood.”
Poe preened himself, and almost seemed to purr. “You are a poor sort of pick-thief, though,” Dickens went on, “for I noticed your hand in my pocket as soon as it entered. And you are even more a curious exemplar of the cut-purse trade by the fact that your hand within my pocket was making a deposit, not a withdrawal.”
The purloined object now returned to Charles Dickens’s hand was not the precious diamond tie-clasp which he had worn during his first meeting with Edgar Poe. That article was still safe in Dickens’s travel-case, packed for his onward journey. This tie-pin in his hand was a diamante counterfeit, of cheap paste: a “prop” memento from Dickens’s days as an actor. When dressing himself this morning for the unwanted reception, Dickens had chosen this ornament – rather than the other – to be worn in the confusion of that crowded hotel lobby. The paste tie-pin, if misadventured, would be no real loss.
“You are an honest man, to return this to me,” said Dickens, tactfully neglecting to mention that Poe had returned a worthless object, and that Poe had kept the tie-pin long enough to ascertain its worthlessness.
Poe licked his lips nervously before replying: “When you agreed to shake hands with all comers at today’s reception in the hotel, Mr Dickens, I joined the receiving line, so as to gaze one more time upon the most famous and popular author alive. However, so as not to seem desperate – seeking an audience with you three times in two days – I saw fit to wear a disguise.”
Dickens nodded. “Indeed; while I was shaking hands in the reception line, I noticed a man who . . .” Charles Dickens checked himself abruptly, narrowly avoiding another revelation that might give offence to the pauper Poe. During his ordeal in the hotel lobby this morning, Dickens had suddenly been reminded of Poe when a man approached him emitting the same paraffin stench as this Philadelphia author . . . and whose handshake had transferred inkstains to Dickens’s fingers. That man’s hair had been dark brown: the same shade as Poe’s, but he had a beard and side-whiskers which Poe lacked. The facial adornments had been a disguise, then. “There was a man in the reception line who had . . . the same air about himself as you possess,” said Dickens diplomatically.
Again, Poe preened himself. “Well, Mister Boz, as I stood in that long line of well-wishers, waiting my turn to greet you, I had much opportunity to examine the man directly in front of me in the receiving line. Comprehend my surprise when I saw that he too was disguised, in a beaver-beard even less convincing than my own. You may guess my astonishment when – plain as day, mind you – this bearded scapegrace briefly greeted you in the hotel lobby . . . and as his right hand clasped yours, I saw his left hand plunge to your waistcoat, and plunder this tie-pin.”
Dickens nodded again. The gaudy diamanté ornament looked expensive enough to be worth stealing.
Poe resumed his confession: “I was so outraged at this man’s . . . ahem! I was about to say his bare-faced theft, but his false beaver makes that description incorrect. I was so enraged by his theft that, quite without thinking, I took out my letter-opener and . . .”
As Poe uttered these words, his left hand reached within his coat. Charles Dickens, with a rapid movement of his own left hand, seized Poe’s wrist and held it fast while Dickens’s right hand explored the inner pocket where Poe’s fingers had ventured. Dickens’s eyes widened in astonishment. “This is your ‘letter-opener’, Poe?” The Englishman drew the object forth, and the gas-light of the prison corridor gleamed on a narrow steel blade which Charles Dickens now brandished by its wooden handle.
“‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’” he declaimed. “If my memory serves, Poe, this is a blade of the sort which Venetian assassins call a stiletto.”
Poe stared fixedly into Dickens’s eyes, neither man blinking.
There was a dark stain on the blade. Charles Dickens had already observed that Poe was untidy in his habits; Dickens felt certain that it was the blood of Hosea Levis which the unkempt Poe had neglected to clean from the stiletto.
“You stabbed Levis with this knife,” Dickens accused him. “Quite without thinking, Poe? Are you certain?” Dickens released his grasp on Poe, yet retained hold of Poe’s dagger. In the dim light of the prison corridor, Charles Dickens’s soft grey eyes seemed like gimlets piercing the mind of Edgar Poe. “Again, sir, I have learnt a few things about you. Thirteen months ago, you nearly obtained a position of comfort and respect for yourself.”
Edgar Poe sighed heavily. In early 1841 – just over a year past – Poe had drawn up a prospectus for a new periodical titled The Penn Magazine, to be edited by himself at a comfortable salary, and published by his colleague George Graham. The Second Bank of the United States had promised to advance sufficient funds to launch the publication . . . then withdrawn that promise when the Schuylkill Bank collapsed.
“Strange, is it not?” said Edgar Allan Poe. “Men’s lives are hostage to random elements of chance. My editorial career was extinguished by the diddlings of Levis, an utter stranger. Yet other souls prosper from incidents equally random. Our United States are now governed by John Tyler, better known as ‘His Accidency’: a man who was never elected President, yet leapfrogged into the office over William Henry Harrison’s corpse.”
“I wonder, Poe,” said Dickens, peering carefully into the eyes of the other man while, nearby, the prison-cobbler steadily continued his tack-tack-tack. “Dur
ing your long wait in the reception line, observing the man in front of you as he occasionally turned in profile and glanced round, did you recognize the face which adorns police handbills throughout Philadelphia? Did you see through his beard, and know him as Hosea Levis . . . the man whose embezzlement doomed your unborn enterprise? I wonder, Edgar Poe: when your blade stabbed Levis, was your hand guided by conscious thought? If it was, sir, then I give you credit for merely wounding the man rather than killing him, and so allowing him to be taken into custody. Answer this at least, Poe: when you infiltrated the horde of Philadelphians who had turned out to shake hands with the famous Charles Dickens, what happenstance prompted you to attend the affair in disguise . . . and equipped with a dagger of murderous design?”
Dickens had noted that Edgar Poe’s forehead was unusually high and broad; now, a vein in that forehead began to quiver. “I deserve to be as famous as you are, sir,” Poe answered. “I have laboured for acclaim as hard as you have done – harder! – yet it eludes me. I have observed from history, though, that there are two ways to achieve renown: either become a great man, or be the obscure man who kills that great man.”
“So, you entered the lobby of the United States Hotel this morning,” Dickens asked, “equipped with dagger and disguise, expecting to confront me, and intending to become famous?”
Edgar Allan Poe, already pale and sallow, turned more pale at this moment.
“What I intended is a matter known only to my soul and its maker,” Poe said carefully. “In the time it took me to venture from my home in Philadelphia’s northwest outskirts to the hotel, I recalled that my wife and my aunt are dependent upon me for their welfare. If I were alone in the world, with no dependents, this morning’s events might have run otherwise.”
For a long moment, each man peered into the other’s soul. It was Dickens who looked away first, shuddering. He still held forth the stiletto. Quietly, Poe took this weapon by its haft, and returned the Italian dagger to his own inner pocket.
“Explain this, at least,” Dickens prompted him. “How come you to be in this prison, wearing a hood as if you were one of the inmates?”
Poe laughed mirthlessly. “Easy enough, sir. The guards and warders of this penitentiary are notoriously hospitable to bribes. Even someone as paupered as myself can raise enough coin to bribe one of the gatesmen here.” Poe held up a new-minted American silver dollar, depicting robed Liberty seated with cap and shield, gazing skyward at an arc of thirteen stars. “I gave a guard one of these dollar coins, plus a three-dollar banknote from the Republic of Texas.”
Dickens stared hard at Poe. “You bribed your way into prison, sir? Most of the traffic flows in the opposite direction. Well, at least that explains the hood you wore: you did not wish to attract the attentions of prison guards whom you had not bribed, therefore you hooded yourself so that they would assume you were an inmate. But why bribe your way into prison, man?”
Edgar Allan Poe sighed once more, then spoke: “Mister Dickens, I will be plain with you. My writings are not so known as they deserve to be. I am nowhere near so rich as I merit. I desperately need both wealth and acclaim: the former, so as to have funds to aid my sickening wife, and the latter to heal my sickened soul. You have so much, sir, and I so very little. I desired to make an impression on you, to make sure you would keep your promise and commend me to the London publishers. When I learnt that you would be visiting this penitentiary – quite near my Coats Street residence – I slipped in here, determined to return this stolen tie-pin to you, and so affix myself in your memory.”
Poe’s words, with their combination of braggadocio and humility, had the chime of truth. Charles Dickens clasped Poe’s hand, and shook it firmly. “I assure you, Poe, that I shan’t forget you soon. This morning, while dressing in my hotel suite, I glanced through your Tales of the Grotesque. Several of them seemed familiar . . . and then I recalled why. They have already been published in London magazines: without attribution to your name, and I suspect without compense to your pocket. Confound our two nations, then: yours and mine, which share a language but refuse to share a copyright law. Truly, both John Bull and Cousin Jonathan pick each other’s pockets.”
Edgar Poe bit his lip nervously. For a moment, he reminded Charles Dickens of this prison’s timid inmate who kept rabbits. Now Dickens spoke: “I will say one thing more, Poe. I shall not look within your soul, to learn whether or not your stabbing of Hosea Levis was intentional assault. But know this much: you and I, as authors, must repeatedly journey into the darkest regions of men’s souls, and describe what we find there. I have read enough of your work, Poe, to see that you are peculiarly qualified to chart the darker paths of humanity. As for your own path, sir: it would better suit your talents if you remain in sunlight, rather than take some dark course of action which might ensure that your next detection story will be penned inside a prison cell.”
Perhaps it was the dampness of this penitentiary, but there was perspiration on Poe’s forehead. He wiped it, with a grimy handkerchief.
Dickens reached out and clasped both of Poe’s stained hands within his own manicured grip. “You have given me a gift, Poe. Your ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, and your discussion of its structure, have taught me the rudiments of your detection-stories. I intend to apply your rules within my own fictions, and to write a few mystery tales of my own. For that gift, I thank you.” Dickens twisted Poe’s hands slightly within his own grasp, and the expression on Poe’s countenance changed as he was aware of some intrusion between his palms. “My regards to your ailing wife, sir,” Dickens went on. “And . . . may this find her better.”
Dickens turned, and strode away down the corridor, eager to rejoin his escorts Vaux and Brodrigg. Edgar Allan Poe, blinking and shuddering in the prison darkness, opened his hands to see what was within them. He beheld a double eagle: a twenty-dollar gold piece. A charity-gift from a wealthy author to a less fortunate one.
Poe’s pride urged him to fling the coin into the brick-dust. But necessity overruled his pride. He pocketed the coin, turned, and hurried down the corridor of the nearest dark radius towards the distant sunlight beyond . . . all the while sensing that, in time, it would be the darkness that claimed him evermore.
The Lord No Zoo
Deirdre Counihan
On his return from America it took Dickens some while to summon up the energy or inclination to return to writing fiction. He found the production of American Notes an onerous chore, but once he had settled down to his next book and decided on the name, Martin Chuzzlewit, it all began to flow again. He was happy with the novel, although sales were poor initially until they recovered when the public took the eccentric character of the nurse, Sairey Gamp, to their hearts.
In Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens created one of the first private investigators in English fiction in the shape of Mr Nadgett, who unmasks Jonas Chuzzlewit as the murderer of the swindler Montague Tigg. Jonas Chuzzlewit had married Mercy Pecksniff, the daughter of Seth Pecksniff, an architect who had tried to inveigle himself in with the rich, old Martin Chuzzlewit, in the hope of benefiting in his will. Jonas’s cousin, Chevy Slyme, had worked with Tigg, also in the hope of gaining an inheritance, but he subsequently joins the police force. The real hero of the novel is not the younger Martin Chuzzlewit (grandson of the old man) but Tom Pinch, Pecksniffs saintly assistant who sees good in everyone and tries his best to make everyone happy.
One of the key features of the novel, evident from the opening paragraph, is the matter of ancestry and inheritance. Dickens takes much time explaining the complicated Chuzzlewit family tree and concocting the joke that upon his death bed, one especially obscure member of the family, when asked who his grandfather was, responded “the Lord No Zoo”, which thereafter became synonymous with any dubious ancestry.
The following story takes place some years after the end of the novel and is set at the Great Exhibition, held in Hyde Park during the summer of 1851. It was organized at the behest of Prince Albert,
husband of Queen Victoria, who wanted to celebrate all that was wonderful about technical and industrial progress throughout the world. It was here that Joseph Paxton created the original Crystal Palace. Dickens visited the Exhibition twice but was not enthused by it, even though it displayed two statues based on his characters, Oliver Twist and Little Nell.
Deirdre Counihan is a specialist in art and art history, particularly archaeological art. Her knowledge is central to her novel The Panther (2006), an alternate history set on the Silk Road, which she travelled along herself a few years ago. She is also co-editor, with her sister, of the literary magazine Scheherazade.
Imagine a forgotten palace, vast in its dignity, a dark house of a thousand windows. Imagine an edifice so immense that in its heyday guests would be given confetti of different colours to guide them, like Hansel and Gretel, safe back to their allotted rooms.
Imagine what was the longest ornamental façade in Europe, yet everywhere enveloped in a thick morning mist that seeped its way up from the valley below, rancid with the effluent of pits and foundries and furnaces, and coiled its way round even the statues on the topmost pediments. Contemplate the crowd of thousands, all in their drab best, who trudged up the magnificent avenue of three hundred beech-trees, through the dawn rain, to shift and shuffle respectfully on the hundred acres of rolling lawns.
This was The House of Frame. Only five windows flickered with a sickly light in that time just before daybreak. Only one mourner stood beside the coffin of Clarence, The Fifteenth Duke, on its silver bier, ready for the funeral procession, ready for the footmen and the wreaths and the hearse drawn by four black horses which would conduct its occupant, once one of the richest men in Great Britain (but dead now, it was rumoured, in deepest ignominy) to his family’s tomb.
Only one mourner had kept a vigil through the night: a dignified lady of advanced years, but dressed in the height of good taste, The Dowager Lady Frame; and beside her stood her lawyer. He was there to tell her of another death, of a most insignificant man, a retired man in a small way of business over two hundred miles away in the south, and she was pleased, grimly delighted.
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 14