The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Bravo Dickens!” Inspector Field shouted as he struggled to his feet. “Would ’ave crushed me ’ead like a melon if you ’adn’t ’it ’im!”

  “Is everythin’ square, mates?” Thompson straggled up.

  “I think me arm is broke,” Field’s voice was tight with pain.

  Thompson moved to Ashbee who lay groaning upon the cobblestones.

  “My leg, the fool has broken my leg,” Milord spat, in a tone composed half of a whine and half of a curse.

  “If you two was ’orses, we’d shoot the both of ye,” the incorrigible Thompson laughed.

  Dickens saw no need to tarry at Field’s aid any longer. At a run he retraced his steps to attend to his beloved Ellen. When he reached the mouth of the alleyway, the girl was gone.

  A Hole in the Water

  May 11, 1851—midnight

  When Dickens returned to find the young girl gone, what thoughts must have whirled within his troubled imagination? As he stood alone, eyes searching for some glimpse of her, yet seeing only fog and dark and the impenetrable faces of stone tenements, his imagination must have taken charge. He must have seen her, muffled in her cloak, running, frightened, alone, fleeing the brutal men who had used her. He must have sensed her reaching out longingly for death, for deliverance. In his imagination he must have seen them all, Nell, Nancy—his own little Dora, Ellen, all of the lost children of his heart—as they fled, in the fog and the rain, from the brutality of men.

  I had noticed, since the death of his small daughter, that Dickens had come to rely more upon his inward vision than upon the clear facts that reality places before us. It was as if by the power of his imagination he felt he could transform reality into something less ugly and threatening and…final. Perhaps he thought that, through the power of his imagination, he could bring his daughter back; perhaps that is where his love for Ellen began. More and more, he chose to bring his inward eye, his imagination, to bear upon problems which seemed to demand the powers of deductive reason, the powers of Inspector Field’s profession. He seemed to be in a trance, yet he was seeing.

  “The girl, where is she?” Inspector Field asked, breaking Dickens’s reverie.

  “The river,” Dickens murmured. “My God, the river.”

  Field’s face was twisted with the pain of his injured arm; yet, at Dickens’s words, his whole carriage seemed to straighten. “She is drugged, not ’erself.” Field was like some thinking machine, processing information, distributing it. “She’ll make for the bridge. There are stairs to the water below, or she may go up on the bridge itself.”

  No sooner had Field spoken than Dickens was gone. Thompson arrived from one direction, I from the other. Dickens, at a flat run, plunged into the fog in the direction of the stinking Thames.

  “Go after ’im,” Field shouted, through his pain. “All is secure ’ere.”

  Thompson and myself did as we were bid. It seemed as if the sum of this long evening had consisted of the chasing of phantoms in the fog. Perhaps we knew—I don’t remember, because all was happening so fast—that the Ternan girl was out there, ahead of Dickens, fleeing from the one man whose only desire was to help her. As I look back upon it now, the cynicism of the intervening years challenges my last sentence. Who is to know what desires Dickens harbored within his heart? We chased after him blindly. He pursued her. She wandered in a hopeless dream. The fog swallowed them up. The river flowed before us…waiting.

  Dickens admitted to me, later, that he had no idea where he was going that night. The fog was so thick, and the visibility so poor, that each of his choices, of which turning to take in the maze, was made on pure instinct. He picked his way through that labyrinth of waterside streets. He did not need his eyes because the eyes of his mind knew every turning.

  Dickens raced down a filthy alley, then crossed a darkened street between mean buildings. He ducked into another narrow passageway. There, he found her hooded cloak discarded upon the stones. He picked it up, cast it aside, continued on.

  Before him, he could hear the river. The tide was coming in, and it broke with a violent slap against the pilings of the bridge and the stone seawalls. The river was close. With a rush, he burst out of that labyrinth of dark, low-lying streets, and came upon wide stairs beneath Chelsea Bridge. Its fog-haloed lights glowed palely in the night, burned dim in a fragile line, up and out to where they finally disappeared into that sea of fog. She was up there in her scarlet dress. He could catch brief glimpses of her as she moved between the gaslamps of the bridge. She was circling, it seemed—not progressing out upon the bridge, but moving aimlessly back and forth. As Dickens screamed her name, and broke into a run for the narrow stairs climbing up the walkway of the bridge, her movements lost their aimlessness.

  “Ellen,” Dickens screamed. “Stop! Wait for me!” It was a plea.

  Thompson and I broke out of the dark maze of tenement-walled streets onto the embankment. Dickens was running frantically toward the bridge.

  His cries for her to stop, to wait, were to no avail. She was mounting the railing beneath one of the gas-lit parapets.

  “Ellen, no! Please!” it was a scream of helpless anguish.

  For one brief second, poised on that bridge railing, his scream vibrating in the night air over the river, she froze, her eyes burning down upon him, as he ran toward her, far below. He stopped running, as if turned to stone by her gaze. Their eyes met for one long second, at the end of which she tentatively stretched her hand out toward him. But her arm dropped limply to her side, and, the next moment, she flung herself from the bridge.

  Dickens, it seemed to me, was in motion before she ever made that move to throw herself from the railing. He was sprinting at full speed back in the direction of Thompson and myself, who were standing at the top of the wide, stone boatmen’s stairs.

  She floated slowly down, it seemed, as if time had slowed, and she was but easing herself into the black current. She floated slowly down, her scarlet dress billowing out around her, catching the swirling river wind, seeming to buoy her up upon the air and break her plummet to the river below. She floated slowly down, as we watched in horror.

  “My God, she jumped,” I uttered, stupidly.

  “Stupid bitch!” Thompson cursed. “We’re in for it now.”

  Dickens dashed past us without a word. I don’t believe he even knew that we were there. He leapt down the boatmen’s steps, shedding his greatcoat as he went, and launched himself in a long flat dive out into the black water of the Thames.

  What was so amazing was the absolute fluidity of his act. He never hesitated. The run along the embankment, the descent of the stair, the dive, were all one decisive act of love and imagination.

  Thompson was down the steps at a bound, but was much cooler in his assessment of the realities of the situation. He stopped at the bottom to pull off his boots and discard his greatcoat. He marked the woman in the red dress floating on the surface of the tide, the splashes of Dickens swimming toward her, the speed of the current. That information assimilated, he, too, dove into the river, but not in the direction of the two swimmers. He came up swimming, at an angle well downstream of Dickens and the insensible girl. He was going to let the tide bring them to him.

  Throughout our long acquaintance, I have always marvelled at the quick and analytical intelligence of Tally Ho Thompson. He seems the very loosest of beings, and yet, when one observes, one realizes that there is no wasted motion in anything that the man does. He is, indeed, a marvel!

  As I watched this drama unfold before me on this watery stage, I was further amazed at the strength and stamina of Charles, as he swam to the aid of his suicidal love. He reached her before the water inundated her billowing gown, and bore her to the bottom of the river. They seemed to briefly struggle, but he later explained that the girl was unconscious, and he was merely wrestling her out of her scarlet dress, which, in its waterlogged state, threatened to pull them both down. He managed to strip the dress away, but the current was too strong,
and he could not swim with her in tow.

  By this time, however, the river had carried them into the grasp of Tally Ho Thompson. No one must have been more surprised than Dickens when, in mid-river, Thompson tapped him on the shoulder and said, “’Ullo mate, can I be of any assistance?” or something equally as comical. The two men arranged themselves on each side of the stricken girl, and, kicking furiously, made for the shore.

  But the current was strong, and the tide almost at the turn. They were being rapidly carried away.

  “Come, we must run and catch ’em at that first pier,” a voice thundered in my ear. Inspector Field and the revivified Serjeant Rogers had joined me on the stair.

  At that order from Field, Rogers set out at a limping run along the embankment. I could not allow that arrogant little bureaucrat to outdo me.

  Our headlong dash had the object of reaching a point on the river bank where we might intercept the swimmers, and pluck them from that powerful current. Our only hope was a narrow shipping pier, which extended out into the river. By the time we reached that rickety wooden catwalk, both Rogers and myself were fully blown, and the swimmers were closing fast upon us.

  We moved gingerly out upon the rotting pier. It was clear that we must climb down beneath the rickety flooring to the waterline in order to have any chance at hooking Dickens and Thompson, who must certainly have been nearing exhaustion. We managed to swing ourselves down and into position, each standing on a crossbeam nailed between the pilings of the pier. Our shoes were no more than six inches above the rushing current.

  “Take me arm an ’old tight,” Serjeant Rogers barked.

  I hated taking orders from that pompous martinet, but I grabbed a tight handful of his greatcoat, and wrapped my other arm, as far as it would go, around the moldy piling of the pier.

  Rogers leaned out as far as he could without toppling off into the rushing water.

  We could see the three swimmers bobbing erratically along in the current, heading directly toward our precarious perch, yet bouncing and swerving in their struggles to stay afloat. They were moving too fast. Rogers would have one chance—and one only—to grasp them.

  We waited. He leaned further, lower, utterly dependent upon my grip and strength.

  Our targets careened toward us on the tide.

  Rogers reached. He lunged desperately, almost pulling us both into the river. Somehow I held on, my arm compressing around that piling.

  He did it. Rogers came up with a firm grasp on Dickens’s foot. He dragged that foot up under the crossbeam upon which we stood and Dickens’s free arm clasped the wood. Soon Thompson, as well, was hanging by one arm, and gasping for breath. Their charge, ghostly white, insensible, hung between them, naked, hair plastered to her scalp, feet dangling in the race.

  Within moments, Inspector Field and two constables had come to our assistance. Carefully, we passed Miss Ternan up. Field covered her nakedness with his greatcoat. They rushed her to our waiting coach. Dickens scrambled up next, shouting the whole time, even while gasping for breath, that he must ride with the unconscious girl to hospital.

  But the coach did not immediately depart. Inspector Field was supervising the revivification of the girl. The two constables were chafing her hands and arms and cheeks. Field himself was pouring short sips of brandy from a bottle, evidently kept in the coach for just such emergencies. He passed the bottle to Dickens, who took a long and uninhibited draught of the strong liquor. The girl sputtered and coughed. Water flowed out of the sides of her mouth as the constables moved her head from side to side. Dickens leaned down, and I perceived that he was speaking with great intensity into her ear as she returned to consciousness.

  Days later, I remembered that tableau through the open door of the coach, and asked Dickens what he was so intent upon saying to the girl. It took some prodding, but I finally convinced him to share with me his words, spoken so intently at the very moment when the young woman was being restored to life.

  “I simply told her that I would take care of her,” Dickens admitted.

  “That is all? You spoke many more words than that,” I objected.

  “No, that is not all,” he continued. “I told her that life can be full, that I could help her to live. I told her that in recent weeks one clear thing which I had learned was that one simply cannot run away from reality, whether it be the reality of the world, or the reality of the undisciplined heart. She smiled at me, Wilkie. She smiled at that.”

  The black police coach, with Dickens and Field ministering to the girl, rattled off to St. Mark’s Hospital, leaving poor Thompson, Serjeant Rogers, and myself standing shivering in the street.

  “Th-th-thanks all ever, Fieldsy,” Tally Ho Thompson shouted after the departing coach. “Bloody guv’ner leaves me ’ere soaked to me skin, and freezin’ me bloody stones off. Thanks all to bloody ’ell, Fieldsy.”

  Another coach, equipped with blankets and, I hoped, a bottle of brandy similar to that with which Field had ministered to the girl, had been summoned, and would, no doubt, soon arrive. Standing there, shivering in that Thames-side street, was but a momentary interlude in what had been a frenetic evening of adventure, the likes of which I had never before experienced, in what (when in the company of Dickens and Inspector Field) I was beginning to consider to be my rather sheltered life.

  I turned to Serjeant Rogers, coincidentally, at exactly the moment that Serjeant Rogers was turning to me.

  “Serjeant Rogers, well done!”

  “Mister Collins, sir, we did it!”

  We stopped in mirrored surprise, staring suspiciously at each other.

  There was simply nothing else for it. Neither of us could help but burst out laughing at our own awkwardness and jealousy. He clapped me on the shoulder. I stuck out my hand for a triumphant shake.

  A Resolution of Sorts, or, Reality Rarely Ends Well

  May 12, 1851—Toward Morning

  St. Mark’s Hospital is both a lying-in and a convalescent establishment. In its whitewashed rooms, the young enter our violent world and the old, beaten down by the disease of reality, meekly depart. A black police coach, bearing a stricken young woman, accompanied by an Inspector of Detectives and the most famous author in all of London, was, to understate, a singular occurrence in the round of that old stone hospital’s grim routine. Because I did not arrive until some time after Dickens and Field delivered Ellen Ternan to the ministrations of the hospital staff, it was necessary for me to piece together what occurred in the wee hours of that morning, yet what occurred there is perhaps the most singular event of this strange history. Negotiations were entered upon, and a friendship between Dickens and Field was stretched to its limits and cemented. I can only report the shards of reality, because much of what happened there that night took place behind closed doors.

  When Rogers, Thompson, and myself arrived at St. Mark’s, Dickens and Field were sequestered in a small chapel off the central waiting area. Miss Ternan had been taken to a lying-in room. A young Doctor Woodcourt was in residence, and had taken charge of her care. He was a man well-known to Inspector Field, and, as was evidenced later, well trusted.

  A blowsy nurse as large as Forster; and with the breath of a dragon, was manning a desk near the hospital entrance. In her own ragged idiom, she described to me what had happened there prior to our arrival: “The two gennulmuns carried the poor shakin’ creetur in an’ give ’er to Mister Woodcourt, they did. Then they waited, scuffin’ back an’ forth ’til the doctor come out an’ did a lot of ’ead shakin’ in a very positive sort of way, an’ with that, the tall gennulmun commences ’and-shakin’ in an’ equally positive way, an’ the thick gennulmun takes a share, as well, but not near so positive. An’ then, after the doctor escapes the shakin’, the two gennulmun ’appen to walk my way. ’I must speak with you…in private,’ I ’ears the tall gennulman say to the thick gennulman. They looks at me. I points to the chapel door. An’ they been shut up in there ever since.” She told her story with a kind of des
perate hilarity.

  We did not have to wait long for Dickens and Field to emerge from their private colloquy. As they came through the door, they paused to shake hands, Dickens placing his left hand over Field’s already clasped hand, and clearly offering a fervid “Thank you.”

  Field, probably due to the pain in his shoulder, looked almost defeated. Dickens looked empty, as if all his words had been expended. It was not until twenty years later, on the day of Dickens’s funeral, that I learned exactly what had transpired behind those closed doors. They had struck a pact, out of mutual respect and mutual debt. The “tall gennulmun” had thrown his public position and respectability to the winds, and had spoken from the promptings of his heart. The “thick gennulmun” had chosen to humanely reinterpret the law, to the upholding of which he had relentlessly dedicated his life.

  In that pub near the Abbey, on the day that Dickens was laid to rest, I was told the details of the pact. It was an agreement that Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus would have nodded at with approval. In exchange for Ellen Ternan’s freedom, Dickens pledged that he would be on call for any detective work that Inspector Field required. He promised that he would give Field access to every level of society to which Dickens, in his position as one of the best-loved men in England, could be admitted. Willingly, Charles sealed this pact with this Mephistopheles of the London streets.