“And you are ’ow old now?” Field broke in gleefully.
“Nineteen, twenty next month.”
“You loved him, but he was—no, became—a drunkard, got in with bad fellows,” Dickens was wading knee-deep into his story. “He abandoned you and you had to find work. You went to work in a public house in London, the Lord Gordon Arms,” and Dickens canted his head for Field’s approval.
“Aha, very good.” Field grinned. “They will vouch for ’er there if anyone takes the trouble to inquire. Yes, they will.”
“But after two years there,” Dickens gleefully spun out his story, “you needed to get out of London. Your mother had found you and was begging you to come home. You went to Victoria and took the first train out of the city. It landed you in Oxford. Irish Mike gave you work at the Bulldog.”
Almost as if spent by the effort, Dickens subsided back into the cushions of the loveseat upon which he sat.
“The publicans of the Lord Gordon are James Potterson and ’is wife Abby.” Field tapped the table with his formidable forefinger. “I will tell them to vouch for you if anyone asks.”
“You are nineteen, almost twenty. You are an experienced London serving girl, despite your young age. You are quite friendly and smart despite your ’ard life and your ill luck at love.” Field pounded these facts of their fiction at her as if he were nailing down a lid on her new identity.
“Wilkie,” Field startled me, “’ow should she dress? Where should she live? What victuallers should she fancy? Where can we meet ’er? ’Ow can we get messages to ’er?”
Clearly, Field was done pummelling her part into her for the moment and had turned to me for help in setting his scenario.
“Why, uh, dress? Uh, live?” I was trying to gather my wits.
“Yes.” Field’s violent forefinger raked at the side of his eye in impatience. “Do the Oxford servers dress differently from our London barmaids? Where would a pub girl live in Oxford? You know the place better than we.”
I think Field must have meant it as a compliment, but the way he said it, so clipped and impatient, it came out something like “Get on with it, man, we haven’t got all day!”
An expectant silence fell over the room as I tried to address one issue at a time. How would Dickens do this? I thought. Conjure a character out of thin air? I looked hard at Ellen, tried to envision her as a barmaid in the Bulldog.
“She’d show her neck,” I said in an outburst of memory. “I’ve never seen a barmaid who didn’t. A form-fitting blouse cut low beneath her neck.”
“Scooped,” Ellen nodded.
“Yes, scooped, but rather low, down to her, the tops of, well…”
“Yes, I see,” and a tight little grin at my discomfiture took possession of Field’s hitherto rather grim face.
But Dickens was not amused. I think he thought I was tarting his beloved Ellen up for the sake of the performance. He looked as if he was going to speak out angrily in protest, but Ellen Ternan never gave him the chance.
“Of course, a peasant blouse with small puff sleeves off the shoulder; perfect.” Ellen seemed to be envisioning herself in costume as I had been attempting to do. “Over a long flowing skirt of grey cotton.”
“And black leather boots that lace up the front in eyelets,” I completed her costume.
“You seem to have been highly observant of the barmaids during your stay in Oxford, Wilkie.” Dickens made a rather sour joke.
I was sorely tempted but I resisted. I almost blurted out what kinds of undergarments they wore as well, but I held my tongue, only because such gentlemen’s raillery might have proved embarrassing to Ellen.
“And with your hair tied back, and colour on your lips and cheeks and around your eyes,” I added seriously for the sake of the illusion, but cocking one eye in Dickens’s direction to register his dismay at each heightening of the commonness of his Ellen’s fictional persona.
“My God!” Finally Dickens could stand it no longer. “You are going to make her look but one cut above a common street whore!”
Field was calm, almost amused. “But Charles,” he said quietly, “that is exactly what a barmaid is.”
Ellen laughed and smiled at Dickens. “He’s right, you know. It must be believable or there is no use in doing it at all.”
Dickens stared silently at us as if a cork had been stuck in his mouth.
“And where should she live?” Field tugged me back from my enjoyment of Dickens’s momentary discomfort.
I thought on that and lit upon the perfect solution: “There are cheap boardinghouses on Blue Boar Street and Bear Lane just off St. Aldate’s, directly behind Christ Church. The covered market is where she would buy her bread and eat her meals when she didn’t take them in the pub. What do you mean by ‘Where can we meet her?’” All this hard thinking was making me rather nervous.
“Once she is in place, working in the Bulldog for the Irishman, we will need a safe place where no one will observe us or disturb us as we speak, a place where she can safely go without anyone following her, somewhere none of the frequenters of the Bulldog would venture,” Field answered.
“I see. Then it must be away from St. Aldate’s and Christ Church and the Bulldog. Somewhere the Dons would never go.”
I thought hard on it.
“What about St. Mary’s Church on the High Street?” My voice sped up with excitement. “It is well away from Christ Church and the Bulldog, and anyone can go there to pray. It has quiet corners where a conversation could go on unnoticed.”
“And pray tell, how would you know?” Dickens mocked.
“Well, God knows I haven’t spent a great deal of time there in prayer,” I took his teasing with good humour, “but Dodgson and I used to go there for the choir and the pipe organ. It is the biggest in all of Oxford.”
“Splendid, then,” Field put his seal upon that plan. “Take a dark scarf that will cover your ’ead and face when you go to church. We’ll ’ave Thompson, who will never be far from you, tip you a wink or pass you a note when we wish to speak with you in private and you can meet us in St. Mary’s Church. Other than that, if you meet any of us anywhere in the city, you will not know us. Do you understand?” But he was looking at Dickens, not at Ellen, and his gaze was sending a message that Charles could not mistake.
Dickens acquiesced. He stared morosely first at Field, then at Ellen, but he did not object to the plan, to the enforced separation from his love that the plan occasioned. Sensing Dickens’s acquiescence, Field grew more bold, pushing the plan in a direction that I am sure he knew would torment Charles.
“Well and good,” Field nodded, tapping his formidable forefinger upon the arm of his chair, “but now let us get down to things a bit more personal.”
“And that would be, pray tell?” Dickens had not completely lost either his sarcastic voice or his protective concern for his mistress.
“That would be,” Field proceeded carefully, “the manner that ’er charges in the pub will treat ’er.”
“What do you mean?” Ellen asked with an innocence that would actually have been charming if it had not bespoken so much danger.
“I mean,” Field turned on her, “that you will be a common barmaid, a young, ’andsome woman, unmarried, and these men will treat you as such.” That bluntly said, Field turned suddenly to me: “I don’t suppose, Wilkie, that these Oxford Dons behave any differently than do your usual run of London rakehells and blades in our city pubs, do they?”
“No, no, they do not,” I stammered. “Serving girls in Oxford are every one fair game just as they are for gentlemen on the town in London. Why, in fact, Oxford Dons, because they are all lifelong bachelors and locked up in the dark halls of their colleges all day, are perhaps an even more lustful and drunken lot when they are out on the town of an evening.”
“There you ’ave it!” Field slapped the arm of his chair decisively. “You are goin’ to ’ave to fight them off every evenin’, Miss Ternan. You are goin’ to ’
ave to laugh and smile and wink and tease, and that will just inflame them the more. They will want to take you ’ome with them, or to an ’otel.”
“An Oxford Don would never take a woman back to his rooms,” I corrected Field. “The whole college would know about it by morning. It just isn’t done.”
“So, where would ’ee take ’er, then?” Field asked, more out of simple curiosity than as a furtherance of Ellen’s spying education.
“Well…” I thought about it, “perhaps to an upper room in the pub hired for that purpose, or, as you said, to a disreputable hotel, or, if it were summer, they would go walking by the river, or,” I suddenly remembered, “to the boathouses. I’ve heard some Dons have keys to the boathouses.”
“Aha! Beware the boathouses!” Dickens growled in exasperation. “Really!”
“Miss Ternan,” Field grew suddenly serious, “I brought this up as a warning to you. These men’s raillery will seem innocent at first, but some of them, especially in their cups, will want to go farther. You must take care. You must be friendly with them, stand their bawdy jokes and rude advances, but do not be mistaken, you are there only to observe, to listen and remember what you ’ear, to gain whatever information you can about their dealings with this Ackroyd, our dead Don. It is the information we want. Nothing is more valuable than information these days.”
I do not know if this speech was meant so much for Ellen as for Dickens, to placate his fears for her safety. I must say though that it did seem strange to hear Field giving his “only observe” speech to someone other than Dickens and myself. That speech was always how he sent us off in the past to gather information for his investigations.
“Yes, I understand,” Ellen Ternan answered Field’s warning speech. “I have dealt with these types of men before, in the theatre.”
“And you shall always ’ave Thompson close at ’and if anything ’appens that you cannot ’andle,” Field assured her (and Dickens).
“But what if I am not in trouble, and yet he thinks that I am or it appears that I am?” Ellen asked.
“You are really going to be quite good at this,” Field signalled his approval of her spy’s foresight. “That is a brilliant question.”
Dickens shifted nervously in his chair, not comfortable at all with his mistress’s brilliance at this whole unsavoury business.
“I will instruct Thompson,” Field proceeded, “to never let you from ’is sight except in those most obvious of times when no ’arm can come, when you are bolted into your room for the night or when you are busy working in a crowded public ’ouse. But you must develop some signal for Thompson to pounce, a danger sign that cries out ’elp and brings ’im on the run.”
“But what shall that be?”
“Somethin’ out of the ordinary, I would think, somethin’ ’ee would pick up on right away.” Field was more thinking aloud than directly answering her question.
There was a restive moment of silence as we all thought on it.
“A cigar!” Dickens burst out. “Light up a cigar, as so many of the hoydenish women are doing these days. That will catch that scapegrace Thompson’s eye.”
“Yes, a cracking good idea,” Field agreed.
“You’ll carry some small gentleman’s cigars, and if you find yourself in any trouble that you cannot get out of alone, just light one up and Thompson will know to step in.”
“As long as I don’t have to smoke the whole thing,” Ellen laughed. “That would be worse than the fate Tally Ho is rescuing me from.”
We all laughed, but I sensed that Dickens’s gaiety was a bit strained. Is it not ironic how ultimately we become the victims of our own fictions? You might say that Ellen Ternan was a character in a novel that Dickens had been writing for almost three years, ever since he met her backstage at Covent Garden and fell in love at first sight. Now we all were rewriting her character for this new fiction that we were creating. My whole goal in life in those days was to write a novel, create fiction out of thin air as Dickens did every day, and that was exactly what we were doing. And that was what made Dickens so nervous about this whole affair. Unlike his novels, he could not control the outcome, write a happy ending.
“That’s it, then,” Field’s proclamation startled me out of my reverie, “the day after tomorrow, you and Thompson leave for Oxford, Miss Ternan, and the rest of us shall not be far behind. Wilkie, send an urgent message to your chum Dodgson and direct ’im to make the proper arrangements with this Irish publican. Rogers, contact this Morse and tell him that we are coming and what we will need.”
All his orders barked around our small circle of plotters like the true Serjeant-Major that he was, Field turned back to Ellen, his voice much quieter: “Remember, you are only there to gather information. Find out who Ackroyd’s opium companions were, what those men talk about and think about, ’ow they spend their time when they are not being Dons. The smallest thing may be the most important. But”—and Field turned with a mischievous grin towards Dickens—“as it was so eloquently put a minute ago, ‘Beware the boathouses!’”
Even Dickens could not help smiling at that.
* * *
*In Dickens’s first case with Inspector Field (The Detective and Mr. Dickens), Ellen Ternan’s perverse actress mother attempted to prostitute her daughter to three different men. It was this betrayal by her own parent that drove the sixteen-year-old Ellen to attempt suicide. In a later case (The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens), Mrs. Ternan reappeared as a participant in a blackmail plot against the fortune of Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts.
Setting the Stage
November 27–29, 1853
With our leading actress in place and her supporting cast given their parts, we left Ellen Ternan’s house that sharp November morning ready to get up our play. It had been determined that Rogers would collect Ellen in the police coach that afternoon and transport her to the Lord Gordon Arms to go shopping with Mrs. Abby Potterson, the wife of the publican, for clothes appropriate for an Oxford tavern server. Messages were sent to both Dodgson and young Morse, instructing them to scout accommodations and generally prepare for the arrival of our theatre troupe. Her wardrobe complete, Ellen and Tally Ho Thompson would depart London for Oxford on the evening train.
When they arrived in that city, they would disembark the train separately. Thompson would make his way to the town and contact young Morse at the police station, while Miss Ternan would make her way to Christ Church and inquire of the porter for a message (from Dodgson) that would direct her to her lodgings. The next day, she would take up her employment at the Bulldog and Thompson would take up, once again, his not unfamiliar life of loitering. We hoped that only Mike the Irish publican would suspect that she was anything other than what she appeared. Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers expected to make their entrance into Oxford the following day, and take up their lodgings in the town.
As for Dickens and me, we were unable to join them until the weekend because we both had commitments to fulfill before we could take the train down. But as those days passed and first his Ellen and then the others left town, I could see that Charles was agitated, champing to be near his love, to watch over her. He was committed to a charity dinner on Friday, the success of which was utterly dependent upon his speaking, thus we could not leave until the morning train on Saturday. Sleepy Rob was alerted, and a message was sent to Mrs. Dickens at Broadstairs proclaiming that her husband would not be able to join her and the children for the weekend, due to pressing business out of the city.
On Thursday and Friday, Dickens prowled the Household Words offices like a caged panther. He would work on his novel for a few minutes, then move to the mag’s editing table, then come back to my cubicle to bother me.
“This is all a terrible idea, Wilkie,” he finally blurted out on about his fourth or fifth circling of the premises. “What if something should happen to her? What if one of them realizes that she is a spy and kills her as they did that Ackroyd in Limehouse Hole? I will never be able to
live with myself.”
I wanted to just tell him outright that he should quit deceiving himself, that he really had no say in the matter at all, and that his beloved Ellen had no interest whatsoever in his rather comical image of himself as St. George, her protector. Somehow, he was simply not capable of seeing the rather rude fox-in-the-henhouse interpretation affixed to his relationship with the young Miss Ternan. But I had neither the heart nor the stomach for telling him the truth.
The charity dinner on Friday night took place at the London Tavern, a popular place for these affairs due to its huge, open commons room, which could accommodate scores of spectators as well as a number of dining tables and a podium for speaking. The evening was to benefit the Guild of Literature and Art, which collected funds to help both serious struggling artists and older destitute artists who have fallen sick. “In order to benefit from this one,” Dickens would joke, “you have to either be so bad you can’t sell your work or so sick you can’t do your work.”
It should have been a lovely affair, and it was (for the revelers who witnessed the proceedings). But for Dickens and me, it was just something to be gotten through before we could get on with the case.
I had heard Dickens give this speech perhaps a dozen times before. He was masterful in its presentation; after all, he had spent his whole life as an actor and entertainer. It was light and funny and serious all at once, and well worth listening to; but as he spoke, I found my mind wandering into other taverns and more private rooms.
I saw Ellen Ternan in the pub moving slowly around a table filled with heavy, tweed-coated men, collecting empty pints, serving full ones, moving slowly, listening intently, missing nothing.
I saw my Meggy coming out of the great stone bank and on the steps meeting a man in a dark greatcoat and a high beaver hat. Placing her hand in the crook of his arm, she walked off with him into the cavernous expanse of Trafalgar Square.
The Dons and Mr. Dickens Page 8