The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens
Page 5
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*In 1780, during the Catholic Riots, also called the Gordon Riots because they were planned and incited by the radical fanatic Lord George Gordon, Newgate was stormed (much as was the Bastille in Paris in 1789), set afire, and all of its prisoners let loose by the rioters. Dickens examined this historic episode in detail in his novel Barnaby Rudge (1841). Dickens’s familiarity with that place most probably explains why he was not as strongly moved by the experience of Newgate as were Collins and Irish Meg. It was not the first time that Dickens had been there, at least in imagination.
*This change in execution procedures was occasioned by the outcry against public hanging immediately following the executions of Sylvia Manning and her husband in November of 1849. Dickens’s own eloquent letter to the Times describing the obscene spectacle was instrumental in stirring up the public outcry against those barbaric displays. Coincidentally, it was at the public hanging of Mrs. Manning that Dickens was first introduced to Inspector Field.
*The Outer Circle is the bridle- and footpath that rings Regent’s Park. Rotten Row is the straight bridlepath on the southernmost end of Hyde Park.
Cheatin’ Gallows Jack
January 10, 1852—one A.M.
Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers loitered in the shadows of the turnkey’s lock as we crossed the gloomy courtyard.
“Newgate’s no place for ’onest men this time o’ night,” Field said as he stepped out of the shadows to intercept us. “Nor wimmin neither,” he added as an afterthought.
His appearance startled us all, excepting perhaps Charles, who sharply answered: “From what we’ve seen of it tonight, it’s no fit place for any man.”
“They puts themselfes ’ere,” Field reflected. “We picks ’em up an’ delivers ’em to this door. It’s they who sets their course.” Field wore his exceedingly sharp hat and carried his exceedingly dangerous stick and, when he jabbed his ferocious forefinger at the inner depths of the prison to punctuate his metaphor, there was no mistaking the professional detective, the nemesis of London’s night streets for whom we had gone on duty eight months before.
“Why ’ave you thrown my Tally ’O inta this ’orrible place?” Bess was cowed and hanging back with Meggy, and there was a quaver in her voice as she spoke, but she knew she must make this weak attempt to stand up for her beleaguered man.
Field ignored her.
“What is it?” Dickens moved close. “Why are you here?”
“We must talk,” Field’s voice dropped to a nearly inaudible whisper—so that the turnkeys would not hear, I presumed—“but not ’ere,” he added in a conspiratorial murmur. “Can yew, an’ all o’ yer party, retire to the Lord Gordon? I’ve instructed ’em already…ta snug a room for us.”
“Of course,” Dickens, speaking for all yet consulting none, asserted. As his eyes met mine for my expected nod of silent assent, I once again caught that fire of restless anticipation, which only the promise of experience out of the ordinary lit in them. It was as if Dickens needed the constant reassurance that he was real, that the world of his novels truly existed, that his existence meant something. In other words, the fire that Inspector Field and the night streets kindled in Dickens was a cleansing fire, which burned away the isolation and unreality of his novel-writing life, gave him flight from his fictions and, ultimately, passage back into them. Inspector Field ushered Dickens out of art into life and Dickens, turnabout, transformed that life into art. “We’ve got a cab waiting,” Dickens whispered back. “We will follow you.”
The turnkey, jumping to Field’s terse order of “Open up,” passed us through the lock without challenge. But then Field did a strange thing. Holding me back until after Dickens had passed out of the prison walls, he whispered, again conspiratorially, “Wilkie, make some excuse to talk to the turnkey, show yerself to ’im, go,” and he gave me a sharp push to the shoulder with his forefinger.
I knew not what to say. “Yes, ah, sir, ah, turnkey,” I stammered. “We, ah I mean, have provided Thompson, the inmate we visited, with some coin. Can you, however it is done here, can you see that he gets a room, a better place, whatever is the custom.” I seemed to be making little sense. The man stared wide-eyed as I babbled. Field hovered over my shoulder in the darkness. “You will be suitably rewarded when we return if all goes well,” I finished lamely. Field tapped me once again with his controlling forefinger as a signal that it was quite enough. The black-browed man in the small booth nodded vacantly as I fled. The small episode fluttered me.
Inspector Field’s hulking black post chaise, like a chariot from hell with its caped coachman shivering on the box and its black stage horse pawing the paving stones and snorting smoke, waited in the shadows against the high wall of Newgate. Our hansom loitered nearby.
“We must not talk ’ere,” Field whispered once again. “The less we’re seen together ’ere the better,” he added mysteriously.
Our cabman, his crooked top hat protruding crazily from the huddle of blankets in which he had buried himself, dozed on the box. Field struck the side of the cab smartly with his fiercely knobbed stick, sending our cabman straight up in a flutter of blankets and a mutter of curses. “The Lord Gordon Arms in King’s Abbey off Bow,” Field commanded with an upward jab of his murderous stick.
“Careful with ’at bloody oar, guv,” the cabman squawked, his crabbed hand catching his crooked hat, which had tipped off his scrawny head. The man continued with a string of curses muttered under his breath, a litany that sounded suspiciously like “Faggin’ West End swells struttin’ ’ores bloddy pleece wit loud sticks bangin’ box bloody ’ell,” or something near, as the four of us climbed into the cab and Field closed us in tight. Our cabman, whose name I later discovered to be Sleepy Rob Colby, seemed to suffer from a strange malady that sent him into a peaceful doze whenever he was not directly engaged with something or someone. Oddly enough, as this case unfolded, Sleepy Rob attached himself to our entourage as personal cabman. Uncannily, we found him waiting (and nodding off) outside our Soho flat whenever we found ourselves in need of transport. One more sharp rap on the door with Field’s stick sent us careening off down the street, our vehicle moving as erratically as the contours of our cabman’s cockeyed hat.
Once inside the cab, huddled close for warmth, our knees touching, I, and I’ll wager the others as well, felt an immense relief at wiping the dust of Newgate from my hands and feet. Speeding along High Holborn toward Bow Street, we all were occupied with our own thoughts. Once I felt Meg’s hand squeezing my leg, but when I looked up out of my own reverie she simply smiled as if acknowledgment with my eyes was all she needed.
As for Dickens, he kept his own counsel. That fire, however, never left his eyes. It burned like the bright tip of a cigar in the darkness. It was the visible flame of what Dickens, just before Christmas, had named to me an “intolerable restlessness” smouldering beneath the surface of his seemingly ordered life. Seeing that fire flash in Dickens’s countenance I once again felt as if I were a character in one of his novels, as if he were pulling me along by the sheer force of his restless imagination. Soon I realised that Dickens was rehearsing his lines, as a good actor does, in preparation for the imminent confrontation with Inspector Field. His eyes flamed in anticipation of once again taking centre stage. Some men prefer to remain backstage, but others, like Dickens, must come out from behind the curtain to make the audience think and feel and laugh and cry, must persuade them, touch them, move them. Field was like a playwright whom Dickens realised delivered him exciting parts to play in the theatre of the real.
We pulled up in front of the Lord Gordon with a clatter of hooves and wheels and a rattle of reins. Field’s sinister black post chaise was directly behind and, directing our coach to wait while Field sent his back to the livery for the night, we all got down and went into the public house together.
I had not been back to the Lord Gordon* since the Ashbee affair, but it was obvious that Dickens had become as much of a regular t
here as were Field and Rogers. Miss Katie Tillotson, the ruddy publican, was sitting at the tap of the clean, well-lit house. She greeted Field and Rogers and Dickens jovially by name while nodding amiably to the rest of us. Field ordered spiced gins all around and Dickens added a request for “two plates of that excellent toasted cheese.”
“And please send a mug of spiced gin out to our cabman,” I added. To my unconsidered afterthought, Dickens nodded his approval.
That business done, Miss Katie pointed us down a hallway and we retired to a private rear chamber where a vacant-eyed boy of about sixteen blessed with large ears and a slack jaw was already busy blowing up the fire with a fat ancient bellows. In mere moments he had it blazing like Dante’s Inferno. Soon thereafter, Miss Katie and the dull-faced boy returned with our mugs of gin and Dickens’s plates of toasted cheese. Thankful to be out of the cold, we sipped greedily from our steaming mugs. That hot gin, spiced with lemon and nutmeg, tasted so hearty, warmed so deep, that I, at that moment, could understand how one could become as addicted to it as to opium or the sexual lure of a woman. Sure that all was secure, Miss Katie retired with her idiot boy in tow. It was a combative Dickens who finally broke the silence.
“Surely, Field, you can’t really think that Thompson killed those women,” Dickens began his defense.
Field stared levelly at Charles for a moment then, inexplicably, grinned.
“What?” Dickens raised his eyebrows at his antagonist. “What is it?” Dickens asked, darting a glance over his shoulder to see if someone was standing behind him prompting Field’s eccentric behavior.
“Nothin’, it’s nothin’,” Field mumbled as he buried his face in his mug of gin.
“I say, it really is impossible for me to believe that Thompson could have murdered those two women,” Dickens caught him up again.
“I don’t bleeve it for a minute,” Field answered rather matter-of-factly.
“Well, whatever the appearances—” Dickens was charging right on with his defense of Thompson when what Field had said suddenly registered upon his consciousness. “What did you—”
A strange mischievous grin danced across Field’s face as he cut Dickens off. “Thompson fancies wimmin too much ta ever kill one.” Field chuckled. “That’s why we’re goin’ to cheat Gallows Jack. I know Thompson didn’t kill those wimmin. I know there’s more goin’ on ’ere than meets the eye. That’s precisely why I wants yew ta ’elp Thompson escape.”
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*This public house, to which Inspector Field had introduced Dickens and Collins during their previous collaboration as described in that first commonplace book, was named after Lord George Gordon, the anti-Catholic fanatic who led the mobs in the popularly called Gordon Riots of 1780.
Inspector Field Changes His Colours, or, Inspector Field, Playwright
January 10, 1852—toward dawn
It goes without saying that we were all perfectly stunned, mouths agape, at Field’s announcement.
“Escape!” Dickens gasped.
“’Tis true? Do yew mean it?” Scarlet Bess jumped up.
Meggy looked at me and I at her. Both of us felt that this evening, spent in the company of these demented people, was taking yet another predictable amble into the bizarre. She shook her head discreetly in minor disgust, and I agreed wholeheartedly with her silent sentiment. They interrupted us in our warm bed and dragged us all over London in the cold raw hours of the night for this?
I was gratified that Dickens had been as much in the dark as I in recognising Field for the playwright of this whole Newgate Prison-George Barnwell scenario.* But once Dickens knew, a change came over his demeanour, and Field’s face too relaxed into a gloating grin, accompanied by that knowing flick of his forefinger to the side of his eye. Dickens knew that he had been gulled and, I am sure, was already plotting his revenge. And, I am equally sure that Field was thinking: Yes, Dickens old man, this ’as all been but a game ta draw yew in.
Field sat in his chair sipping his hot gin with his exceedingly sharp hat still on his head and his exceedingly sharp eyes darting from one of us to the next. For a moment he seemed amused, but then, with a sharp tap of his forefinger on the oaken table, he commanded our attention.
“I’ve known that Tally ’O Thompson didn’t kill those wimmin from the very beginnin’,” he began, and Scarlet Bess broke down in tears once again. I glanced at Meggy but, instead of tending to Bess as she had been doing the whole evening, she was glaring at Field, the colour starting to rise at her cheekbones, the fire of anger kindling in her eyes.
“What? Then why have you dragged us all over London, sent us into that infernal dungeon, in pursuit of this ridiculous charade? Why have you cast Thompson into Newgate at all if you have known him innocent all along?” Dickens protested.
“Because I need both ’im an’ yew”—and Field made a horizontal sweep with his controlling forefinger to include all of us—” ’im in Newgate an’ yew visitin’ ’im in Newgate.”
“I don’t understand.” Dickens was no longer combative. His voice took swift passage from puzzlement to curiosity to quickening interest.
“Nor I,” my voice was more brusque. Field’s coyness certainly did seem an impertinent imposition upon our goodwill.
“I knew within moments after I came upon the scene o’ the murders that Thompson wosn’t our man,” Inspector Field began his narrative. “Oh, ’ee told us ’ee ’adn’t done ’em right off, but nobody bleeves a criminal. Wouldn’t look right at all if I took Thompson’s word for it right there in front o’ all me men, now would it, Serjeant Rogers?”
“Hoh no sir, not hatall sir.” Rogers was wearing his martinet smirk that said, Haven’t yew been had, yew smart gentlemen huv the writer class, which so annoyed me.
“But I needed time ta piece together wot ’ad ’appened,” Field went on, “an’ ’avin’ Thompson in prison fit me purposes ev’ry which way. With ’im in Newgate, yew see, the real killer feels secure, thinks ’ee ’as gotten away, tossed us all up. With ’im in Newgate, we can ’ave the time for the chemists ta work on the corpses, per’aps find out ’ow they died. I knew that Thompson didn’t kill either o’ the wimmin. ’Ee’s not a killer. A ’eyewayman, a burglar, a pickpocket, yes! But ’ee’s not a killer. ’Ee’s too smart an’ too nimble ta ever git caught close ta a crime like this. I ’ad ’im taken up ta give me time, ta ’elp me plant a false trail. I knew our friend Thompson could bear up for a few days. I knew our friend Thompson ’ad been gulled, set up ta take the blame for these murders, so wotever I did wos in Thompson’s best intrest.”
The fire blazed in the Lord Gordon’s hearth. The fire of curiosity and anticipation blazed in Dickens’s eyes. Yet another fire, one of anger, rose to a blaze in Irish Meg’s commanding countenance. My own face must have been ashen in bewilderment. I had been perfectly happy at home that evening in Meggy’s arms before being dragged out into the company of these mad people and this smirking policeman. Of all the fires burning in that cosy chamber, Irish Meg’s was the first to burst out and singe the eyebrows of our facetious friend Field.
“Yew, yew, yew,” she was stammering with rage, but she managed to rein in her voice and her anger. “Yew think yew can do anything you bloody well please,” she accused him with a sharp jab of her own ferocious forefinger, “with anyone’s life. These two ’ad a good life”—she rubbed her hand along Bess’s hunched back as Bess, sitting, bent sobbing into her shawl—” ’til yew stepped in!”
“’Ee put their good life in danger ’imself,” Field spit at Meggy. He was in no mood to endure accusations from one who so recently had been but a common street whore. “’Ee put it in danger by takin’ up burglary once again, ’ee did.”
Field glared at Meggy, but she did not retreat, cowed, as she might have eight months before. She was still the same firewoman of the night streets, but stoked with a new confidence acquired with her step up in social class and her newly attained respectability as a gentleman’s mistress.
“’Ee did it for the money first, an’ because ’ee wos bored an’ wanted ta keep ’is ’and in ’is old game,” Field said softly, almost coaxingly, “but I don’t care about aw that, ’tis not important. Right now I need Thompson an’ I need ’im out ’o Newgate just as las’ night I needed ’im in Newgate.”
“Yew bastard,” Irish Meg shot one last weak spark futilely at Field, to which he simply replied with a raised eyebrow and a tightening of the mouth that said: That will be quite enough of this for now, Meggy!
His look forced Meg to subside into a sullen silence that I tried to show her I shared by reaching out to touch her hand. Violently, she pulled her hand away and glared angrily at me. What had I done? Or not done? That woman was the central confusion of my life. As I look back upon it now, it was, at that time, an immature tendency of mine to rush headlong into every confusing experience that presented itself. My excuse was that I was but following Dickens’s rule that it was necessary for a novelist to live life in all its variations in order to qualify to write about it. I owe that to Dickens. That novelist’s rubric of risk liberated me from the crabbed, hypocritical, guilt-plagued and podsnappered Victorian life sentence of so many of Dickens’s and my contemporaries. Remembering Meg’s fiery outburst at Field that night in the Lord Gordon’s snug makes me laugh now as I write. In the time that we were together, Meg acquired a nickname, of the sort that lovers append to each other, which only I called her, one of those private things we alone shared. She was my “Lucifer Box,” volatile, ready to ignite at any moment at the slightest possible friction. Of course, between the two of us, her nickname carried a more private designation, for it marked her most secret fire.