Dolby soon left Washington for Providence to arrange ticket sales there while the others went on to Baltimore before returning to Philadelphia. On one of the longer train rides, the whole group exhausted, Dickens stirred from a deep, uncomfortable sleep.
“What are you smiling at, my lad?” he asked Tom, who was sitting across from him.
“You've been asleep,” Tom said, his pleasant smile remaining in place.
Dickens thought about it. “I have, sir! And I suppose you're going to tell me that you haven't closed an eye.”
At Baltimore, seemingly spurred by his own harsh words on the train to Philadelphia, Dickens located Maria Clemm, Edgar Poe's mother-in-law who was living by the charity of the state.
“This was the very same building where he died,” the old woman said when she was brought to the courtyard of the Church Home where he sat waiting with Tom. “It was a hospital then. Were you a friend of Eddie's? Do you know what happened?” she asked absently. The attendant had already explained who he was, but she had forgotten.
“I am a brother writer. Every author, my dear Mrs. Clemm, every poet and every editor, has known his despair,” said Dickens gingerly. He entreated her to accept $150 for her care.
Dolby reunited with the party again in Philadelphia on the night of the farewell reading there. The manager had stopped directing calculated glances of anger at Tom over the Christmas Eve debacle; instead, he just ignored him. Dolby had enough to agitate him now. The advertisement circular for the Hartford engagement had been printed to say that the reading would last two minutes and that the audience members should arrive at least ten hours early to claim their seats.
Dickens only laughed but was surprised to see Dolby so angry about the circular.
“My dear Dolby,” Dickens said, gesturing toward a chair. “You seem to be at your wits’ end today. Don't be too serious about the papers. Why, depending on what American paper you read, my eyes are blue, red, and gray, and the next day I'm proven a Freemason. You know, I used to suffer intensely from reading reviews of my books before I made a solemn compact with myself that I simply would not read them, and I have never broken this rule. I am unquestionably the happier for it-and certainly lose no wisdom.”
The manager shook his head somberly and sat down. “The papers can use me up all they like, Chief. Let them, the pudding-head business and all the rest! I did not wish to worry you, but I received a visit from an agent from the Treasury Department, claiming we owe five percent on all proceeds in America.”
“Five percent!” Dickens exclaimed. “Is the fellow correct?”
“No! But he threatens to confiscate our tickets and any property we have and to take us prisoners if we try to leave the country. I have written some letters to lawyers in New York, but they have been slow in replying.”
“Fancy that!” Dickens tried to keep his tone light. “Well, we made friends in Washington, didn't we?”
“We had nearly every member of the political class at your readings!”
“I'd wager they would happily use their influence to swat away this pest, don't you think? Take a trip back there.”
Dolby went back to Washington for a day as instructed. He dined with the chief commissioner of Internal Revenue of the federal government, who confirmed that Dickens's readings were considered occasional and, as such, exempt.
“We will always have rogue collectors, a rowdy element here and there in this bureau,” the commissioner said to Dolby apologetically when writing out a letter at the table. “Why, Congress had to even investigate the tendency of some of our men to make, well, ungentlemanly demands of some of the new women bookeepers in Treasury. Keep my letter with you, Mr. Dolby. It should stop the mischief. Many of the collectors in the eastern states, you see, are Irish, and suffer greatly from Anglophobia. We hope to enlighten them yet with visits like yours from our English cousins.”
Returning immediately to Boston, to a Saturday dinner planned for Dickens and Dolby at the Fieldses’, felt like being home again when compared with their recent itinerant lives.
They took a long walk around Boston before the meal. The amiable Mr. Osgood pointed out places of interest. So much was being built. The Sears Building, at the moment formless piles of stone and dust and scaffold, was said to be on its way to be a grand palace of offices and shops of seven stories. “There,” Osgood said, pointing to it, “shall be Boston's first steam elevator when this building is finished. You see, they say that is where it will go.” A space had been left in the middle of the construction on each floor, at the very bottom of which was an engine room with a steam pump connected to a series of pipes extending to the top of the building. There was an elaborately decorated elevator car, like a small parlor room, resting on its side by the building.
“Before long, they say,” Osgood commented, “nobody will use stairs at all and we shall save the lives of fifty persons a year who die by falling down stairwells. I only wonder whether things in Boston have begun to change too rapidly to comprehend them. We will all move up and down by steam power.”
“Any politician with that platform has my vote,” said Dolby, who was openly spiteful of walking as much as was required by Boston and Dickens.
Joining the dinner at the Fieldses that evening was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had come from Concord. Unlike most of the Cam-bridge literary delegates-Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes-Emerson seemed only half interested in Dickens as a man and even less in Dickens as a writer. Yet the Concord Sage could not help laughing at Dickens's singing an old Irish ballad (“Chrush ke lan ne chouskin!”) over punch that Dickens made for the group; Emerson's laughing, in spite of his best philosophies, looked as if it must hurt.
There were several other grim faces at dinner that, like some imperceptible force, spread a dark cloud over the levity. The faces belonged to high-level Massachusetts politicians who insisted that after President Johnson's rash dismissal of the secretary of war, impeachment had become all but certain. The leaders of Congress were in secret meetings through the night. Chaos was in the air.
Chapter 25
THE NATIONAL POLITICAL CRISIS PREDICTED AT THE DINNER came to pass that Monday-articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson were issued for high crimes and misdemeanors for his defiance of Congress during reconstruction of the Union-and the public fell into a fervor. The lines at the ticket office that day were thinly populated-even most of the speculators were gone! Observing the public distraction and considering Dickens's health, Dolby canceled the next Boston reading series.
The staff did all they could to entertain Dickens during the quiet period. Dolby and Osgood raced each other in a walking match dreamed up by Dickens, which also gave Dickens an excuse to call for a grand dinner party. “That Osgood!” Dolby commented to Henry, who helped him prepare for the contest by fitting him with seamless socks. “Hardly ten stone and a half, my luck, I daresay he can move faster than me in any weather, much less in snow and ice. With his rheumatic smile all along. Mark my words, he is faster and stronger than he appears-in racing and otherwise. Confound that Johnson for being impeached.” Soon Dolby and Osgood were both leaving town to address the changes to the schedule. Tom and Henry Scott were left at the Parker House with Dickens. Compared with the rest of their time in America, these days at Parker's without any readings were absurdly slow. The weather and Dickens's health confined the novelist to his rooms for the most part. He was weakened by his sneezing and coughing and most of all by missing Gadshill.
When he was not at his desk writing, Dickens would talk with anyone who was nearby, waiter, staff or hotel guest. Tom was asked to bring the latest telegraphed reports to Dickens's rooms whenever they arrived from Dolby and Osgood. Another time, Dickens had received a letter from home that sent him into a melancholy mood. When Tom came to take mail for the last post of the day, Dickens was still staring at the letter.
“Surely not John Thompson!” Dickens exclaimed.
“Chief?”
“Thompson is o
ne of my men at Gadshill. The police discovered he was stealing money from my office cash box. After all these years! Why, I trusted him with my babies-I mean my manuscripts, delivering them here and there. What I am to do with, or for, the miserable man, God knows!”
“I'm very sorry, Chief.”
“Tell me,” the Chief said, “my good Branagan, do you read my books?”
Tom paused with surprise. Usually Dickens talked near but not really to him. He also remembered Dolby's words about their mission to keep Dickens content.
Dickens laughed at his hesitation. “Oh, you may tell the truth, Mr. Branagan! One more blasted ‘Dickensite’ and I may tip over from the weight. Nothing terrifies a writer like meeting his reader for the first time.”
“I do not often read novels, sir.”
“Sir? I want only strangers calling me ‘sir,’ and in truth I'd prefer strangers not to call me anything at all. Do you know why I am called Chief?”
“No.”
“Dolby never felt comfortable calling me Charles or Dickens. Well, I had at least been able to convince him to call me Boz.” Dickens continued his story, saying that one afternoon during a reading tour of Chester, Dolby had come to find Dickens in front of a fire with a Turkish fez and a bright muffler around his neck because cold air was coming into the room at the Queen's Hotel.
How do you feel? Dolby had asked, concerned.
Dickens had grumbled to this: Like something good to eat being kept cool in a larder. How do I look?
Like an old chief, Dolby had answered, but without the pipe.
“That is where it comes from. I respect Dolby more than I can say, for he overcame the same defect of speech that my India boy-that is my third son, Frank, now in Bengal with the police-had suffered with as a child from his severe want of application. Now, no novels at all, you say?”
Tom had forgotten the earlier subject. “Novels and romances pretend,” he commented.
“They lie, you mean to say?”
“Yes,” Tom replied. “They pretend to be what they are not.”
“The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true-without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see? The writer of books always puts himself in, his real self, but you must be careful of not taking him for his next -door neighbor.”
“It is still only imagination. Isn't it?”
“Let me show you something. Suppose this wineglass on the table were a character.” Tom nodded at the demonstration. “Good. Now, fancy it a man, imbue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs of thoughts spin and weave around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct with life. From there, the writing comes of itself until those two words, sorrowfully penned at last, stare at me, in capitals: THE END. But if I don't strike while the iron is hot-by iron I mean myself-I drift off again.”
Tom was not certain he fully understood, but he said he saw what Dickens meant.
“Do you?” asked Dickens. “That was a quick change of heart, Branagan. You're a slap-up man of good sense, I think. I'd rather you be honest with me next time, I'd always much rather that, whatever dear Dolby tells you.”
Taking Dickens's instruction to be honest to heart, Tom's thoughts turned to what was really on his mind since the cancellation of the readings. If Mrs. Barton had been attending all of Dickens's readings in Boston, as Tom suspected, she would have been disappointed, bitterly, by their cancellation. She would have felt personally insulted. If every other person in the country was too distracted by the impeachment to notice, she would not be-she might not even know there was an impeachment.
That night, Tom woke to the usual fire engines clanging outside. He had been dreaming when the noises pulled him out of his sleep.
He shook out his head as he sat in bed with his old flannels hanging on him. How strange the dream had been. The scene was a terrible railway accident like the one at Staplehurst where Dickens had nearly perished. Only Tom was in the novelist's place in this vision, and lowered himself down rocky ledge by rocky ledge to the bloodstained ravine where people screamed. Sheep and cattle, too, glided by his face as he tried to pull the victims to the shore of the river, only they were all dead, human and animal. Above, the first compartment of the train dangled over the broken bridge, raining loose pages of all Dickens's books into the river below.
Tom thought about this terrifying dream as he splashed his face with water from the wash basin and rubbed his eyes. His fingertips felt raw and cold against his skin. It was then he had an urgent premonition. Since tomorrow they would be leaving Boston, if Louisa Barton were going to act, it would be tonight. If she was not already at the Parker House, she would be. Tom knew it to be so.
Perhaps he was emboldened by the fact that Dolby and Osgood were not there to reprimand him. Tom dressed hastily and went down the hall to Dickens's door, where a hotel waiter sat guarding the entrance.
“What is it now?” asked the waiter, stirring spasmodically from a half sleep. He brushed Tom's hand off of his arm. “I'm dead beat tonight, fellow.”
“I need to speak with Mr. Dickens.”
“I doubt he desires an audience with anyone at this hour! Especially some Paddy porter! Come back in the morning.”
“You've had too much at the bar.” Tom waited, his eyes remaining fixed on the waiter.
“Very well,” the waiter huffed. He knocked on the door to the room and said there was a caller. Would Dickens allow him to enter?
“I'll be damned if I will!” came the novelist's reply from behind the door.
The waiter grinned triumphantly. Tom stood for a few more moments then, relenting, began to walk away. Just before opening the door to his own room, he heard sounds of a struggle-someone being strangled, a woman screaming out-all coming from inside Dickens's room. The waiter at the door looked paralyzed with fear. Tom ran back and dashed through Dickens's door.
There was Dickens in his velvet dressing gown, alone, standing before the massive mirror, his face wildly contorted and his hands squeezing a blanket as though it were his enemy's throat.
“Branagan! Come in,” he said cheerfully.
“Chief, I thought I heard…” Tom began, doubting his own senses.
“Ah, yes,” Dickens replied, laughing and then coughing. “I was just practicing a new short reading I've made-very different from the others. I have adapted and cut about the text with great care. Close the door there, if you would, and you'll hear some of it.”
The reading from Oliver Twist, one of the earliest novels of his career, told of Bill Sikes, the criminal, beating and killing his lover, Nancy, for betraying him by helping orphan Oliver's cause. Dickens acted this out step by step with vigor and violence that all brought out the inevitability of death. Tom felt a chill through his body as he seemed to watch the honest prostitute die before his eyes.
When it was done, Dickens fell back into an armchair and rolled his head in a circle to the left and right. “Nobody has seen it yet,” he said excitedly when he had his breath back. “I told Dolby, Fields, and Osgood about it at dinner. I have been trying it secretly, but I get something so horrible out of it I am afraid to do it in public.”
“It was petrifying, Chief. If any one woman in the audience screams, there could be an outbreak of hysteria.”
“I know it.”
“I suppose you can't sleep well with that on your mind,” Tom wondered.
“I can't sleep anyway! I have been coughing badly for three hours now and have not closed my eyes. Laudanum is the only thing that has done me good, but even soporifics fail me tonight. I have tried allopathy, homeopathy, cold things, warm things, sweet things, bitter things, stimulants, narcotics.”
Dickens pulled out the opiate mixture made from the various vials in his traveling medicine case and took another bitter spoonful. His previous energy had drained from him in the way it did when an actor went
behind the back curtain after a scene. There was a sense that a combination of exhaustion and narcotics had taken a full hold of him.
“I hope to get sword in hand again soon,” said Dickens wearily. “I am as restless, Branagan, as if I were behind bars in the zoological gardens. If I had any to spare, I would wear a part of my mane away by rubbing it against the windows of my cage.”
“Chief, you asked me before to be honest,” said Tom.
“Did I?” Dickens asked, sucking at his tongue. “What do you say? Perform the new scene or not? I thought it was one of my finest. Though perhaps I should not commit the murder in America, it may be too much for this country's sensibilities.”
Tom had to raise his voice to be heard over the other man's regular bouts of coughing. “Mr. Dickens, not that. I am concerned about Louisa Barton, the woman who came into your room once before, and has attended your readings regularly, following us to New York and assaulting that widow, possibly stealing your diary: I believe that lady could be looking for you here tonight.”
“Even with the Argus-eyed guardian at my door?” Dickens asked sarcastically. “You have a reason to think so tonight in particular, Mr. Branagan, I take it.”
“The last series of Boston readings have been canceled-I'll be bound she would have attended, and I know not what the result on her mental state would be after being denied this. This is the last night-she will try something to find you and get what she has wanted from you.”
“Which is what?”
Tom's confidence waned. “I don't know.”
“Have you finished?” Dickens asked angrily.
“I have said what I feel.”
“Your infernal caution will be your ruin one of these days!” said Dickens, releasing a loud sigh, and he sat at his desk. Tom knew his words had not been persuasive enough, even to his own ears, but was surprised at Dickens's furor. He readied himself to leave the room.
The Last Dickens Page 23