The Dons and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “What do you mean by discreetly?”

  “First of all, I mean separately,” Field weighed his words. “Two gentlemen from London out on the town in Oxford, like you and Wilkie, would certainly be noticed. Good Lord, Charles, you would be noticed almost anywhere you go! You ’ave already been there once, ’ave been seen in the town,” Field continued. “You can return without attracting too much attention.”

  “But you said that we were all going to Oxford.” Dickens either was not following along too well or was getting impatient with Field’s coyness.

  “We are, only not together,” Field answered mysteriously, tipping a wink in Serjeant Roger’s direction, “and not just the four of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Dickens was all ears.

  “You and Wilkie can go and stay with this Dodgson at the college, can you not?”

  “Yes, he has said so,” I assured Field.

  “Rogers and I shall go to Oxford and take lodging,” Field paused for effect, “but not as London detectives. We will be there to purchase beer. There is a famous brewery, isn’t there? Or to buy a riverboat. Or…well…something.”

  “How about bicycles?” I suggested rather archly. “There were certainly plenty of those about.”

  Field looked at me as if I were some sort of blithering idiot. I am not certain that he even knew what a bicycle was, though he probably did since he seemed to know almost everything else.

  “But I ’ave a further plan,” Field confided. “I want someone else on the scene. I want open eyes very close to the action.”

  “What action? Who? What do you mean?” Dickens now took his turn at waxing idiotic.

  Field just left Charles hanging, and turned unexpectedly to me: “What about this Irish publican of the, the…”

  “The Bulldog,” I supplied the name that he was groping for.

  “Yes, what about ’im? Can ’ee be trusted? Will ’ee ’elp us?”

  “Yes, he can be trusted,” I answered his first question, then countered his second with my own: “Help us how?”

  “You said that this Bulldog place is right across the way from Christ Church College?” Field was quietly interrogating me.

  “Yes, it is,” I answered. “You can look in its doorway from Dodgson’s room.”

  “And you said that this murdered man’s gang of political Dons ’angs out there, right?”

  “Yes, according to Mike and Dodo, they do, yes,” I answered.

  “Good, then ’ere is my plan,” and he leaned in close to us. “I wants to get up a little play, some street theatre, if you will, only it will be real, not on a stage.”

  We all leaned forward towards him, tightening the circle of our conspiracy. I felt like one of those silly witches in Macbeth.

  “I want to put someone into this Bulldog place to spy for us, someone who will ’ave the run of the place, can eavesdrop on the customers, maybe even make friends with some of the people we wants to check up on, eh?”

  “Mike the barman?” Dickens guessed. “You want him to spy on his own patrons?” he added with a note of rightful skepticism.

  “No, not at all,” Field quickly corrected. “I am sure ’ee is a good man, but that would be too much to ask. I just want ’im to ’ire a new server who can go amongst the customers, per’aps ’ear what they’re talkin’ about.”

  “A server,” Dickens was thinking aloud again; “it would have to be a woman, then.”

  “Yes, to serve them pints and spy on the Christ Church people,” Field paused as if weighing the wisdom of proceeding, “and perhaps entice one of them into ’er confidence so that ’ee might reveal their secrets.”

  “Entice?” Dickens repeated.

  “Well,” Field hesitated, “perhaps that was not quite the proper word. ‘Tempt’? No, that is no better. Somehow enter their closed circle in order to expose their secrets. That is what I meant.”

  For some reason Dickens looked strangely at him: “Who did you have in mind to play this spy?”

  “I first thought of Irish Meg,” Field began, glancing across to register my reaction, “she ’as done this sort of thing for me before, she ’as. But then I thought better of it. She’d always been a spy among a lower class of people, the dodgers of the streets, and these are Oxford Dons we are tryin’ to deceive ’ere.”

  The look of relief on my face must have been telling because Field threw off a tight little grin in my direction.

  “What I need ’ere is a real actress.” Field’s voice rose at the excitement of it. It was he who was doing the acting turn and I suddenly realized that Dickens was his audience of one. “I need a professional actress who can make these Oxford blokes open up, who can get ’em in their cups and make ’em tell who killed this Ackroyd in Lime’ouse ’Ole.”

  “And who might that be?” Dickens’s voice seemed almost resigned to the power of Field’s will.

  “Why, Miss Ternan, of course.” Field laughed as if it had all been decided and the joke was on all of us for taking so long to figure it all out.

  But Dickens chose not to acquiesce without a good grumble. “Now that is out of the question,” he protested. “It is too dangerous. Why she is just a child, ahem,” Dickens caught himself, “a young woman, I mean.”

  A stifled grin of amusement at Dickens’s discomfiture twitched at the corners of Inspector Field’s mouth, but was successfully subdued.

  “I won’t allow it,” Dickens blustered on, “and I know Miss Ternan would never be foolish enough to consider such a proposal.”

  “Why I think she will be all ears,” Field chided Dickens. “I know that she is presently between plays at Covent Garden and I shall pay ’er ’andsomely for ’er time and talent. And besides, this is a capital chance for ’er to polish ’er acting skills in a starrin’ role rather than those merely decorative parts she ’as been playing in the plays she ’as been in since returning to London. Why, I think Miss Ternan will jump at the opportunity.”

  “Oh come now, you cannot be serious,” Dickens scoffed unconvincingly. “She is a professional actress. She would never stoop to this.”

  “To play such a part in the theatre of the real?” Field was almost taunting Dickens with his intuition into the motivations of that young woman’s mind. “Do you think a real actress could ever pass it up? And especially Miss Ternan, after all she’s been through. Why, it’s that kind of turmoil in a life that makes ’em actresses in the first place, sends ’em into the world of make-believe. It’s the bad childhoods and the brutal fathers and the unloving mothers and the lack of attention that puts ’em on the stage, pretending to be somebody else, ’igher, better, richer, more loved. Pass up this part? Not likely. No real actress could.”

  Field’s animated soliloquy on actresses squashed all of Dickens’s bluster. It made him realize that it was not his decision at all, but Ellen’s, and that Field had some compelling arguments that might well overrule all of Dickens’s possessiveness and fears for her safety. As for me, I was unutterably relieved that Irish Meg, who was so happy (and safe) in her work at Coutts Bank, was not going to be drawn back into Field’s web.

  Field waited a long moment upon Dickens’s silence.

  “I can ask ’er then, Charles?” He posed it in the quiet, serious voice of a close friend concerned for his comrade’s permission, but he did not wait for an answer. “She is absolutely perfect for this role. You know it, and I know it, and she will see it right away.”

  “But it could be dangerous,” Dickens protested weakly. He was defeated and he was beginning to realize it.

  “Perhaps,” Field was unperturbed, “but we shall keep a close eye upon ’er, and she will not be alone.”

  “What do you mean?” Dickens’s whole demeanour had changed. No longer was he the alarmed protector of innocent womanhood. He had returned to his more familiar role of detective co-conspirator.

  “Thompson will go into Oxford with ’er. ’Is orders will be to never let ’er out of ’is sight. We shall bo
rrow ’im from Miss Burdett-Coutts and, who knows, ’ee may come in ’andier on this case than any of us can imagine.”*

  “Tally Ho Thompson!” Dickens was aghast.

  “Yes.” Field smiled benignly. “Who better? ’Ee will fit perfectly into the woodwork of this Irishman’s pub. Who better to be a tapster? An Oxford workingman whose wife ’as driven ’im out to the pub? You know ’ow Thompson is. ’Ee can fit in anywhere. ’Ee can come and go at will. And ’ee will protect Miss Ternan with ’is life, you know ’ee will,” and with that Field closed the subject. Dickens retreated, almost sullenly, into his own thoughts.

  Field, obviously not wanting to leave it like that, made one more attempt to appease him: “Should I ask ’er, or would you rather?”

  “No. No,” Dickens looked at each of us in turn, realizing that he must abdicate whatever power he held over the young woman and let her decide for herself, “you ask her. I only fear that you are right and she will say yes.”

  “I have no doubt that she will if I can gauge ’er mettle at all.” Field clapped the table with his closed fist. “She is a spirited young woman, beautiful, well-spoken, perfectly cast for this part.”

  The rest of our conversation that evening dwelt upon some of the other minor mysteries of the case that needed to be solved.

  Why was Ackroyd murdered? And why in London?

  Obviously so he would not be identified so easily, so that it could be made to look like a street robbery.

  Who ransacked his rooms and what were they or he looking for?

  Speculation upon these matters kept us talking well past midnight. The gas lamps were blinking weakly through the heavy November fog when Dickens and I said good evening to Field and Serjeant Rogers at the door of the Bow Street Station and struck out on the short walk to Wellington Street. Predictably, Sleepy Rob’s growler was tied up in front of the Household Words offices. Our personal cabman seemed to have this sixth sense that told him where to be when Dickens needed him, and he rarely disappointed. This night, however, when we roused him from his slumbers beneath the horse-blanket, it was to ferry me back to my rooms in Soho. Normally, I would walk, but it was such a bitter, dark night that I rejoiced to see Rob’s cab waiting to take me home.

  Imagine my great surprise when Dickens decided to ride along. He gave some lame excuse that he needed to take some more of the night air before retiring. It was only after I had been left at my doorstep and Rob’s growler had clattered off that I realized what Dickens was really up to. He was going to seek out his Ellen. To warn her? To caution her against Field’s plan? To press her to refuse? Irish Meg was fast asleep when I let myself into the flat, and as I lay awake beside her in our bed I was curious to learn what degree of success Dickens’s nocturnal visit to his beloved mistress would bring.

  Months later, in fact, after that whole Oxford affair was finally resolved, I asked Dickens if he had gone to Ellen that night to argue against Field’s plan.

  “I wish I had,” he answered grimly. “I went to her house, had Rob pull up in the street right before her door, but, in the end, I did not go in. I wanted to warn her against it, to tell her my fears, describe her risks, but I did not do it.”

  “Why not?” My curiosity was aroused. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I just sat there in the cab in the dark street and looked at her house, prayed that she would not do it, and if she did, which I knew she would, that she would not be hurt.”

  “What made you change your mind?” My interrogation was impertinent, for I really had no business asking these private questions, but my curiosity had quite run off from my sense of propriety.

  “She did,” Dickens did not hesitate to answer. I think he actually welcomed the opportunity to talk to someone about his unwieldy relationship with this fiercely independent young woman who was not even half his age. “She had made it quite clear that if I was ever going to be to her what I wanted to be, that if we were ever truly to be lovers, that I must stop treating her like a child, that I must treat her as an equal. She was adamant about that, and her rule applied to every aspect of our relationship, from the most public to the most private.”

  I was rendered almost speechless as he spun out this remarkable meditation with such alarming openness. It was the sort of confidence that rarely passed between two gentlemen. It was as if the drawbridge had been let down over the moat that protected our whole intensely private age and real life had been allowed to come in.

  “Don’t you see, Wilkie,” he said it as if he were trying to understand it himself, “it had to be her choice. I could not tell her what to do, because my fears were those of a father, a protector, not a lover. She held all the power. I had to let her make her own choice in the matter. God help us,” and he broke the tension with a shrug and a tiny inimitable bubble of laughter.

  Ah, the fictions that we all weave around our lives. Dickens’s personal novel was proving much more difficult in the composition than any of the published novels that he purveyed on a monthly basis.

  * * *

  *After the affair of “The Feminist Phantom” as recounted in The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens, Tally Ho Thompson became full-time bodyguard to Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, the director of Coutts Bank, and one of the richest and most powerful women in Victorian England.

  The Rehearsal

  November 27, 1853—Morning

  The next morning, without hesitation, Ellen Ternan agreed to be Inspector Field’s spy in Oxford. Dickens and I had accompanied Field and Serjeant Rogers to Miss Ternan’s rooms, which were in a high, gabled house on Garrick Street just off St. Martin’s Lane. They were pleasant enough lodgings, possessed of the advantages of being within an easy walk of Covent Garden Theatre, Ellen’s place of employment with Macready’s troupe, and being equally convenient to Dickens’s offices and mid-week residence in Wellington Street.

  “Oh, Inspector Field,” Ellen Ternan answered in high seriousness when he made his case for her to take the leading role in his play, “I will play any role that you give to me. You have done so much for me in the past that there is little I could ever do to repay you. Oh, Charles,” and she turned to Dickens, “this is so exciting. I shall go along on one of your detective jaunts. What a lark!”

  As you might imagine, Dickens looked on with much less enthusiasm. I must credit him, though, with not interfering. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves to help Field prepare Ellen for her role as our agent in Oxford. Her preparation that morning was truly like a rehearsal for a play. First off, Field and Dickens (he was, after all, the reigning novelist of the age, and if anyone was going to give Ellen a fictional life, he decided that it was going to be him) gave her a name and a past life that she could take into Irish Mike’s pub and trot out for the entertainment of the customers. We all thought that her new identity would be a theatrical one, with a name out of Shakespeare and an exotic past, but that was not Field’s style at all.

  “Your name will be Ellen,” Field started off the rehearsal. “You won’t ’ave any trouble answering to it. Ellen Byrne, let’s say. Irish, so you’ll fit in with Mike the Irish publican. Parents from Dublin, but you’ve never been. Grew up in London, a railway builder’s daughter. The Bulldog is where you will work as a server, carrying pots of beer to the drunkards, the Dons, and the laughing students. They will all fall in love with you, and you will smile and tease.”

  She realized that it was Inspector Field’s turn to be centre stage with Dickens feeding him his dialogue. He was like all of the stage managers she had known: demanding, yet offering her the chance to escape all of the confusion in her life. It was an attractive offer, but she knew, as every good actress does, that taking on a new life meant giving up the old, meant consenting to live by the playwright’s script and the stage manager’s rules. Oh yes, Ellen Ternan knew what Field was offering as he bombarded her with the facts of her new identity. If she did, however, she did not show it in any ostensible way. She listened as Field thundered around her as if he were Macre
ady blustering away as King Lear.

  Field pummelled her with questions about her life as this barmaid character: “Your father, ’ow was ’ee?”

  “He wasn’t. He was never there. Always working on the railway. On Sundays he’d be drunk.”

  “Ugly drunk?”

  “No, he left us alone. Slept it off all afternoon. Went to work next morn.”

  “Where?”

  “Wapping, on the railway line.”

  “And your mum?”

  Ellen darted a quick glance at Dickens, then made a rather comical, sour face.

  “Ah yes, Mummy.” Ellen’s voice was laden with sarcasm to the point that Field and Dickens and I all burst out laughing. Ellen’s humorous quip was but one more indication of how far she had come from that terrible low point caused by her own mother’s exploitation and abandonment of her.*

  “Mummy,” she went on. “She also worked out of doors, a washerwoman for a big house on Finsbury Square. She left me to care for my little brothers. A bad lot, those two tykes were. But they sent all three of us to the Ragged School. They did that. How’s that sound?” and she broke character to get reassurance from Field and Dickens that she was playing her part in the right key.

  “That’s fine, wonderful,” Field applauded.

  “And ’ow did you become a barmaid, a public ’ouse serving girl?” Field prodded Ellen back into character.

  “I don’t know. How did I? You haven’t given me that yet,” she answered with a quiet shrug of her hands, her soft eyes moving from Field to Dickens and back to Field.

  Field hesitated, looked to Dickens for aid.

  Suddenly, Dickens’s whole demeanour changed. The sullen worry which had hung over the proceedings from the moment Ellen had consented to take the role of spy suddenly lifted like a mist from a moor. By accident, Ellen and Field had bumbled upon the one role in this whole theatrical production that he could play better than anyone else, that of the creator of the fiction.

  “Why, you left home for a boy,” Dickens answered almost without thinking, “when you were only sixteen.”