The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  I know not what powers of persuasion Dickens employed upon Inspector Field. Dickens had, after all, saved Field’s life in that dark alleyway. I do know, however, that Miss Ternan never faced prosecution for any of the crimes of this affair. I learned that, within a week, upon her recovery, she was placed in Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts’s home for fallen women at Shepherd’s Bush. It was not until full five years later, when it became public knowledge that Dickens was her protector—before he, in a public newspaper notice, declared his separation from his wife—that the world learned of the existence of Ellen Ternan.

  I could not help thinking, as the “tall gennulman” and the “thick gennulman” emerged from that chapel, shaking hands, of the first time I had seen them shake hands. It had been at the foot of the gallows. Dickens, like the St. George that I always think he thought himself to be, that night in that hospital chapel, saved his beloved Ellen from an encore performance of Mrs. Manning’s grisly dance of death.*

  Someday the world shall learn the truth about Charles and Ellen, but the world shall not learn of them from me. In the more than twenty years since Dickens took me under his wing, we have become more than friends, more than simply collaborators and fellow writers. And yet, the man that we paid our last respects to in Westminster Abbey lived in close proximity to Ellen, from all evidence a murderess, for the last fourteen years of his life. Whenever I thought of Ellen living under his protection, I wondered if he ever feared that she had the potential to do to him what she did to the first man in her tangled life. When Great Expectations was the talk of all London, years after the time of this memoir, the woman Estella was praised as a most interesting character. There was, of course, speculation among Dickens’s friends, never voiced in any public way, and certainly never intimated to Dickens himself, that Estella, in all her cold beauty, was indeed Ellen. But, as I read Great Expectations, I became fascinated by the appearance of Lawyer Jaggers’s housekeeper. It seems to my dull critical sense that Ellen Ternan could well be both characters: the object of love and adoration as well as the tamed murderess.

  There was nothing left to do after Dickens and Field emerged from their private discourse in the hospital chapel. Miss Ternan was to remain there, under the care of young Doctor Woodcourt. That young genius also insisted upon examining the injured shoulder of Inspector Field, and the graze-wound to the forehead of Serjeant Rogers. As it was, indeed, well past two in the morning, we left our two policemen to the doctor’s tricks. We clapped Tally Ho Thompson on the back, offering our thanks in that peculiar gruff, male way. When he bid us goodnight, there in the street, he looked eternally young and brash and bright, as if he had just arisen from a night’s sleep. He walked off jauntily, as if he had not at all spent the evening scaling buildings, fighting duels, riding at breakneck speed through the fog, wrestling giants, and swimming rivers. “Think I’ll go look for me Bess, I will,” he offered to no one in particular, as he left us standing there, both bone-tired, in that wet and foggy street.

  No hansom cabs were about, as it was so late of the evening (or early of the morning), so we were forced to walk back to our usual parting point at the bottom of Wellington Street. We dragged our weary selves along in quite untypical silence. He was either too tired or too reticent to talk, even to me, his faithful bulldog. To experience Dickens, wordless, was a near-historic event.

  * * *

  *It seems somewhat strange that Inspector Field, a officer of the law, would make such an exception. Yet Field was an extremely intelligent politician as well as a dedicated policeman. He must have realized the public-relations potential of his relationship with a voice in London as influential as that of Charles Dickens. Perhaps the four articles on the Metropolitan Protectives which appeared in Household Words in the months immediately following the events of this memoir, all of which reference Inspector Field by name and recount his exploits, were actually contracted for that very night. This does not imply that Field was a shameless publicity hound. Rather, it acknowledges that the Metropolitan Protectives were a new and undeveloped organization and Field was fully aware of the need to get the message of the Protectives’ value and proficiency out to the general London populace as well as to the politicians who control the purse strings of law enforcement.

  The Queen’s Night

  May 16, 1851—Evening

  Dickens had no time, whatsoever, to recover from the turmoil of that long and dangerous night. When I looked in upon him at the Household Words office the next day at noon, he was miraculously reinvigorated. He did not appear at all a man who had not slept for days. He did not appear at all a man who, only a night before, had knocked an attempted murderer off his pins, and saved a damsel in distress from certain death in the fast tide of the Thames. He was bright and quick and full of enthusiasm, as if the sun had suddenly come out in his life, after a long, dark winter of discontent.

  “The play’s the thing now, Wilkie,” he laughed. “We have but three days, and we are going to rehearse as we have never rehearsed before.”

  He meant it. For the next three nights, he drove us like a tyrant. He screamed at everyone, but no one seemed to care, because it was so clear that the old Dickens had returned from the abyss into which the deaths of his father and his baby daughter had cast him. It was utterly impossible not to believe his plea, that if one actor falls down in his part, we all fall with him. Thank God that the Duke of Devonshire, who had actually supervised the construction of the stage in his spacious music room, and who had turned all the comforts of his library over to the actors as a luxurious green room, was deaf. During those three nights of rehearsals, it seemed that Dickens was shouting his directions, and repeatedly stopping scenes in mid-line with his impatient “no, no, no, no, that’s not it!” in a voice loud enough to be heard out in the traffic of Picadilly. There was, of course, good reason to rehearse so hard. The Queen was coming to our opening performance. Most of the Court would be in attendance as well. The tickets were outrageously priced at five guineas, with all proceeds going to the Actor’s Benevolent Fund, and were being unhesitatingly reserved by the most noble figures in London society. Indeed, this Royal Amateur Performance of Bulwar Lytton’s new play, Not So Bad As We Seem, was taking on all of the appearances of becoming one of the social events of the season. Dickens was determined that our performance would be professional, and he drove us like galley slaves.

  The Queen’s Night, May sixteenth, arrived all too soon. Dickens was thoroughly unsettled, convinced that, due to his personal problems, he had not rehearsed us nearly enough, and that the performance was doomed to a humiliating failure. He could not have been more wrong. More than an hour before the performance, the splendid royal coaches began pulling up and disembarking their elegant occupants at the Picadilly curbstone, outside the Duke of Devonshire’s front gate. A ragged crowd had congregated across the street, but soon that small gathering of the curious had swelled to a worshipful mob of gawking, craning faces, waiting for Queen Victoria’s coach to make its appearance. As each coach pulled up, and disembarked its passengers, the same scene was played in mannered repetition. A gentleman, in black trousers and coat with a severe black hat upon his head, would step down, turn back, and offer his hand to an elegant, fair-skinned, bejeweled lady, who, upon securing both feet upon the ground, would dart a nervous glance across the street at the huzzaing crowd pushing at the makeshift barriers, which a small detachment of the Protectives in evidence had thrown up. The women’s jewels flashed in the gaslight of the palace. The women’s hair shown like gold or glistening ebony. The polished coaches rattled off, to be replaced by the next vehicle for speculation.

  Dickens and I watched the arrivals from a mezzanine window on the second storey of the Duke’s palace. There was the expected and the unexpected. Two days before the performance, Bulwar Lytton’s estranged wife, Rosina, had sent a quite mad letter to the Duke of Devonshire, denouncing her estranged husband, as well as Dickens, the actors, and even the Queen. In the letter, she threat
ened to steal into the performance, and thoroughly disrupt the proceedings. Precautions had been taken to intercept her, but she, evidently, chose to desist, and did not appear that night. However, to my great surprise, another did appear, whom I did not expect.

  Dickens, in conspiracy with Mister Tally Ho Thompson, arranged it. As we looked down upon the lords and ladies entering, a hansom cab trotted up. A tall, remarkably handsome gentleman, hatless, in a black evening suit, with a rakish white silk scarf twirled around his neck, stepped down. One at a time, he handed down two of the most dazzlingly beautiful creatures to grace the proceedings of the evening. Dickens howled with laughter when he observed the consternation on my face.

  It was, of course, Tally Ho Thompson escorting Scarlet Bess and my Meggy. All were dressed impeccably, both women in elegant dresses, their hair coiffed in the latest London style. The crowd stirred and stretched their necks to view their entrance into the mansion. What speculations must have murmured through the crowd?

  “Ladies-in-waiting to the Queen, surely!”

  “The son and daughters of the Duke of Devonshire?”

  “Irish nobility!”

  “I planned it all,” Dickens confessed, through his bursts of laughter. “They deserved some reward for all they did. Despite their past lives, they are potentially good people. Thompson is intent upon becoming an actor. Bess loves the rogue blindly. And Meggy…well.” He raised a comical eyebrow in my direction. “I thought you might enjoy seeing her again.”

  I could not help but laugh along with him.

  “Do you know what Meggy said when I suggested this little frolic?” Dickens asked, awash with mirth. “’Ah, a night among the swells, is it? I ’ope not too many of ’em recognizes me.’”

  From the very moment that Meggy had stepped down from that coach, beautiful in her elegant silk dress, her hair a cascade of Irish curls upon her white shoulders, my pulse had quickened, my heart tightened in anticipation. I knew that I would see her after the performance. I knew that I should become her escort for the remainder of this evening, perhaps for many to come.

  After Thompson, with his two stunning bookends, passed into the house, my eyes continued to scan the crowd. There was no need to hurry. The actors’ first call had not yet sounded. Dickens was summoned away to settle some last-minute production matter. I was left standing in that upper window, watching all the superficial magnificence of London society parade before me. My eyes moved back and forth from the lords and ladies stepping down, to the pointing, jostling, gossiping crowd, and came to rest on a most familiar figure. Inspector Field stood planted in the street, between the fragile barriers and the arriving coaches, like some guardian of the moat between the aristocracy and the lower classes.

  One last ugly scene remained to be enacted before the play could begin. A familiar black coach pulled up, driven by a too-familiar hulking giant of a coachman. The door opened, and Lord Ashbee struggled out. He was supporting himself on crutches. He handed down a young girl, who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen years of age, yet who was dressed and rouged like the most experienced harridan. He was openly flaunting his perverse gentleman’s tastes, and not a soul seemed to mind. The Grub Street rumours, concerning the nature and origin of Lord Ashbee’s injuries, had been sweeping London for the previous four days. The gossips speculated that his injuries had been sustained in a duel, which had been discovered and aborted by the Protectives, under the command of an Inspector Field of Bow Street. Ashbee’s antagonist in the duel was rumoured to be a wealthy and decadent lord, who had recently been in trouble with the police, who were observing his movements when they interrupted this affair, and who was also sporting visible injuries.

  Afterwards, I learned from second-hand reports, that when Lord Ashbee entered the Duke’s music room with his child companion on his arm, he actually had the effrontery to bow to the Queen, before taking his seat. The Queen, I was told, acknowledged his bow with an icy stare, looking right through him as if he did not exist. It does not seem at all right or proper that he should even be admitted into such company, does it? He is the evil nobleman incarnate, unequaled by Dickens’s Sir Mulberry Hawk, by Thackeray’s Lord Steyne, or by any creation of any of our modern writers, yet he enters perfectly undaunted. Thank heaven that the Queen saw fit to cut him.

  Backstage, Dickens called us all to our marks more than ten minutes before the curtain was scheduled to rise. We could hear the audience being seated in the music room. Dickens, the ultimate stage manager, moved from one of his actors to the next, offering each a final word of advice, or encouragement, or a final stage direction. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he once, years later, mused aloud on the occasion of another such amateur performance, “if the lives of real people could be blocked and directed in the way that actors can.” He stopped a moment to think. “But actors never cooperate when you try to direct them,” he laughed, “no more than real people do.”

  That night, backstage, waiting for the curtain to go up on Not So Bad As We Seem, I, for one, was not inclined to cooperate as directed. As soon as Dickens left us onstage to finish his own last preparations, I stole to one of the peepholes in the curtain, in hopes of catching a glimpse of Meggy in the audience. I could not, immediately, find Meggy’s glowing face, but, just to the left of stage center, my eyes made what seemed direct contact with those of Lord Henry Ashbee. I knew that I was secreted behind the curtain, yet I felt his demonic eyes boring into my soul, taunting me with the charge, that in my attraction to Irish Meg I was no less a whoremonger than he.

  I found Meggy. She and Thompson and Scarlet Bess were enjoying themselves immensely. Sitting in the midst of lords and ladies of the Court, and noble patrons of the arts, they were smiling and pointing and winking knowingly, as was everyone else in the audience. I noticed that Meg and Bess were drawing more than their portion of admiring stares and gallant glances from the gentlemen perusing their section of the audience. More than one elegant nobleman turned to his seat companion to remark enviously upon the extraordinary luck of the young gentleman, just there, who was accompanied by two such striking ladies. More than one time afterward, sitting in a public house with Thompson and Bess, Meg and I would laugh at the utter incongruity of that scene. “If they’d only known we was ’ores,” Meg once said, “they’d o’ stopped winkin’, an’ started turnin’ up their noses.” But that evening, Meg and Bess were two of the most exciting women in London society. Everyone was speculating on who they were, and how big their fortunes might be. In a sense, Meg and Bess were Dickens’s private joke on his whole audience.

  The Duke of Devonshire’s private orchestra struck up the overture, the gaslamps were lowered, the scented oil footlights suddenly blazed up, and the curtain rose. Dickens, playing Sir Henry Wilmot, stood at center stage. I, playing Sir Henry’s valet, bustled around administering to him for the whole first act. Bulwar’s play went splendidly. The night was, indeed, a triumph for Dickens. He was witty and lively onstage, something he had not been in any of our rehearsals. The Queen enthusiastically led the audience in a standing ovation for, in this order of command appearance, the playwright, the actors, the stage manager, and the host, the beaming Duke himself, who was lured upon stage to take his bow hand in hand with the actors.

  Inspector Field came backstage after the performance. Dickens rushed to him with hand outstretched. I joined them, away from the others, who were opening bottles of champagne sent back by the Queen.

  “Did you see him out there?” Dickens was asking Field as I came up.

  “Aye, I did.” Field’s smile of congratulation turned instantly to a dour admission of undeserved defeat.

  “His evil goes unnoticed,” Dickens said, his passion ringing clear, even though his voice was low and controlled, “while the poor and the lost are hounded and hung, for trying to keep themselves alive.”

  “We shall not get ’im at the Assizes. ’Ee ’as ’ired a quite powerful Solicitor, Jaggers of the Old Temple. We shall ’ave no
chance without the Ternan girl’s evidence.” Field shrugged. “So it goes.”

  “Ah, but we have gotten him, nonetheless.” Dickens leaned in to whisper to Inspector Field. “He is the scandal of both Fleet and Grub streets. The scribblers cannot get enough of our randy Lord Ashbee. His servants are being bribed for morsels of gossip. Information is leaking to the press in the most mysterious ways.” At that Dickens nudged Field in an attempt to cheer him up.

  “They write about a mysterious dark lady, who holds the key to the Ashbee affair,” I said, adding my tuppence to the conversation.

  Field grinned at Dickens, as if enjoying some private joke. “For some strange reason, ’er name ’as never come out,” he said, as he tipped me a sly wink. “She must ’ave very powerful friends.”

  Inspector Field had lost his man, but, in Dickens and myself, he had gained two constant friends, two lieutenants in his detectiving, for life.

  “I must get back to supervise my constables. We must not let the crowd get too close to the Queen,” Field made an abortive move toward the library door, which opened out upon the Duke’s formal gardens.

  “The Queen is expected back here. It shall be the better part of an hour before she will depart,” Dickens assured him.

  “Ah, but I must go nonetheless,” Field replied, his forefinger wandering up to scratch at the side of his eye. “I’ve got me eyes on two swell mobsmen spotted in the crowd tonight. They are a catch I cannot pass up.”

  Dickens and Inspector Field shook hands. They held their grip for a long moment, their eyes meeting in a declaration of loyalty and friendship.

  “That does it then,” Field broke their unspoken bond. “The case is closed.”

  “We have an agreement,” Dickens said, speaking directly and sincerely. “The time shall come when we shall work together again.”

  “Perhaps sooner than you think,” Field said, tapping Dickens playfully on the shoulder with his audacious forefinger.