The overeager bookseller himself popped out of the shop with a newspaper under his arm. He had the long neck and pointy nose of a weasel. “Any help required, sir?”
“What are these?” Dickens demanded, his bushy white eyebrows arrowing angrily into one.
“Books, sir,” said the man, clueless.
“Yes, I see that. But look, that one.” Dickens tapped the glass with his cane. “The Pickwicks do not go to Paris!”
“Oh, but they do, sir. And have a grand time of it. And are thinking of quitting Paris for Italy!”
“I—I—I—” His tongue tripped over his own outrage. “Dickens did not write that. These are p-p-plagiarisms. Piracies!”
“And selling like hot cross buns,” said the bookseller, quite pleased with the fact.
“But this isn’t right at all. It’s—wrong!”
“Only Dickens’ due, sir.” He unfolded his newspaper and flicked a front-page headline. “Fancy him nickin’ Oliver Twist off the one who drawed it.”
“Cruikshank?”
“Says so right here.”
The seller turned the paper around to prove it. There, occupying a good portion of the space above the fold, was an unflattering sketch of Charles Dickens as rogue and wrongdoer next to one of George Cruikshank looking utterly beatific. Over them, a tall headline in black-letter script: “A TWISTED TALE!”
“Says all the good parts was his idea,” said the seller, “stolen right out from under him.”
“Slander!”
The bookseller studied the sketch in the paper and the old man before him, back and forth. He cocked his head to have a better look when one of Dickens’ pasted-on eyebrows loosened and dropped lower than the other. “You look a bit like him, sir. But I thought Dickens a much younger man.”
Dickens plucked the paper from his hand. “Well, I know him. And he would never stand for this. Why, he would get an injunction to stop all you wretched people lining your vermin-eaten pockets with money that was rightfully his!”
“Sir, if Dickens had not the imagination to send the Pickwicks to Paris, pity on him and good for the one who did.”
Dickens pressed his dangling eyebrow flat against his forehead. “Bah! Humbug!” he bellowed, pivoting away.
His protest had gone off like a blast inside him, scattering debris to the very tips of his nerves. He felt hot on the outside but chilly within. Ice floes coursed through his veins. Walking was his only hope, and finding Forster, whose job it was to save him. But no sooner had he turned the corner when he spotted a stout-bodied evangelical woman in a dull beige bonnet and dress sitting on a step holding a sign: NOVEL READING CAUSES VIOLENCE! His simmering fit of pique now let loose all restraint. Dickens planted himself in front of her, harrumphed, grabbed the sign, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it three times.
“You devil man! Are you mad?” The woman stood in a righteous fury, drew back her purse, and clobbered him full in the face, sending his hat and spectacles flying into the filthy street. Not yet satisfied, she grabbed for a tuft of his white hair and yanked as hard as she could, when the wig came off in her hand. She screamed with shock at the sight of his scalp in her fist. Dickens clutched at the fire on his head. Leaning down to reclaim his crooked spectacles and tarnished hat, he snatched the wig from her hand.
“You see, madam,” he said, pounding his cane and puffing his p’s with a rush of hot air, “without the wig, I am much improved! But were I to pull on your hair, you would remain a pug-faced, pigheaded, petty evangelical who knows not one whit about the causes of anything!”
The woman dropped her jaw, her underchin ballooning like a frog. Satisfied he had won the last word, Dickens marched away. But he had lost control and didn’t like it. Eleanor had been right. He felt beleaguered by an army of people who wished him nothing but ill. It was clear he could mask himself, but that didn’t change the outer world, which seemed evermore to be against him at every turn. Offenses in all directions. If he could just get to Forster, the sooner, the better. So when a gray-suited man fell in step behind him, he did his best to ignore it. But with some irregular effort, the man soon caught up.
“Excuse me, Mr. Dickens?” he said in a mild, obsequious tone.
Dickens turned sharply. “Yes! No! Well, what is it you want?”
The man pulled a folded paper from his pocket and handed it off. The author, still being an author, took out a pencil and roughly scrawled his autograph, grunting under his breath. He pressed it into the man’s hand. “There you are. Now leave me alone.”
“Oh, but it’s for you, sir.” The man handed it back. “A writ to appear in Her Majesty’s High Court of Chancery in the suit alleged against you.”
“Cruikshank?”
“No, sir. It’s Magistrate Laing himself.”
Dickens unfolded the writ, stupefied. “Judge Laing is suing me?”
“Yer a popular man, Mr. Dickens!”
25
The Whig & Pen was wood-paneled and wainscoted, air thick with the smell of tobacco and spirits and the pompous wit and sniggering gossip of grown men. In a corner nearest the door, with the best possible view of people coming and going, William Thackeray held forth at his usual table with young Wilkie Collins and a few highbrow hangers-on. Forster dined by himself three tables away, back turned, nose buried in his newspaper. Dickens, restored to his full disguise—if a bit slapdash—stormed into the room, smacking the writ against his palm. He aimed straight for Forster, with no choice but to go by way of Thackeray, who kept one eye trained on this curious new arrival, without missing a beat of his own loud harangue.
“Everyone knows I’m having a great fight at the top of the tree with Dickens, who knows my books are a protest against his mawkish sentimentality. For if mine are true, his must be false!”
When contemptuous laughter ensued among Thackeray’s devotees, Dickens shot daggers at them over his shoulder, but he had one mission and must not be distracted. He bellied up to Forster’s table and flung the writ in front of him, narrowly missing the plate of boiled beef.
“How could you let this happen?” he demanded in a low whisper.
Forster bent the corner of his paper and peered over his glasses to where the writ lay, between him and his food. An old man stood over him in a lopsided wig, bushy white eyebrows, and twisted glasses. But the fur-collared coat gave him away.
“Incredible! Is that you?”
“Shhh!” Dickens laid his cane against the table and plopped into a seat. “It is I, and, quite frankly, more myself than I ever have been.” He tore off a piece of bread, gnawing it like a lion with a bone. “Yet not myself at all. Did you know Magistrate Laing is suing me?”
“Oh, that,” said Forster, wiping his mouth with a napkin tucked in at his collar. “Yes, well. Claims he’s the model for your Magistrate Fang. In Twist.”
“But Fang is Laing! Every writer works from some point of his own experience.”
“That’s all well, Boz, but did you have to mention his bald head and red cheeks, and his ‘drinking rather more than he should’?”
“But I’ve seen him! Drunk on the bench! Drunk and falling off the bench!”
“We’ll fight it, of course,” Forster assured him, folding his newspaper and surveying his friend’s strange garb. “Why are you dressed like that? And what’s wrong with your eyeglasses?”
Dickens tore the banged-up spectacles from his face, bent them into shape, and put them back on. “Never mind that now,” he said, peering around Forster’s head to Thackeray, who was staring back at them, always intent on knowing who dined with whom and why. “Let’s go. Too many eyes and ears, and nosy noses.”
Forster pierced his last chunk of beef, stabbed a potato with a carrot on top, swirled it once to mop up the plate’s juices, and swallowed the lot. He wiped his mouth and stood, threw down his napkin, and followed Dickens toward the door. They were steps from Thackeray’s table when Collins attempted a rebuttal.
“Still, Thackeray, you m
ust admire Dickens’ ability with characters.”
Dickens grabbed at Forster’s elbow to slow him. This would be worth a listen.
“Yes!” said Thackeray. “Why, whenever Dickens doesn’t know what to do, he simply throws another one on the fire!”
Another self-satisfied chortle erupted from the circle of sycophants. Dickens narrowed his eyes, headed straight for them, stuck out his tongue, puffed his cheeks, and blew a wide spray of spittle across the table right over their half-eaten chops. The men stared at their mutton in stunned disbelief. Jaws fell. Kerchiefs were drawn. Faces dabbed.
Dickens turned calmly and pressed through the door.
“That man is no member here!” shouted Thackeray with a wag of his signet-ringed finger.
Forster stopped in front of them, the color of claret all the way to his collar. “That man is in a club all his own, to which you will never find admittance! No driveling, sniveling bloviators allowed!”
*
On the street outside, buffeted by seasonal buyers and sellers, Dickens pulled the crumpled page of newsprint from his pocket and plastered it against Forster’s chest.
“And Cruikshank! Saying Twist was his?”
“So I’ve heard.” Forster unwrinkled the paper and frowned.
“But it’s a fiction! A comedy—”
“He has hired a solicitor.”
“Tragedy!” cried Dickens. “Good Lord. He can’t possibly win, can he?”
“No. But he can cost you plenty.”
“Then I shall sue him in turn! Both of them!”
“A chancery suit is a life sentence no matter which end you are on.”
“I am on the butt end, I assure you. Forster, you must put a stop to it.”
“I’ll do my part, but it will cost money, lots and lots of it, so you, too, must—”
“Finish the Christmas book.”
“Our victory depends on it.”
Dickens sighed and scratched his wig. He pulled the rolled pages from his pocket and held them out, an offering.
“Not finished. But promising nonetheless.”
26
In a crowded tavern in Shaft Alley, Forster rubbed his hands together as he read, working them like dough. He huddled over the pages, throwing his full weight into the task. Dickens leaned back in his chair, the better to have a clear view past the low shelf of Forster’s forehead. If Forster raised one brow, so, too, did he. If he grimaced, bit his lip. If he shook his head, Dickens suffered an unendurable agony.
“You are furrowing your forehead, John.”
Forster grunted, not looking up.
“And before that you sighed, though I did not mention it.”
“May I not finish?”
Dickens flounced about in his seat, twirled a spoon in his fingers. He peered out over the swilling crowd, suddenly aware that no one—not one soul—seemed the least bit interested in his presence, or, in fact, had any awareness of him at all. He had spent the morning being accosted, but now sensed the thrilling prospect of his own anonymity. Was his cover finally having its effect? Perhaps one man, two tables away, was staring at him, but he seemed most interested in the juncture where his leathery wig met his scalp. Dickens gave him an evil eye punctuated by his barbed brows, which frightened the man’s gaze away.
Finally, Forster turned over the last page. He restacked the pages neatly and gazed at the ceiling, tapping his fleshy fingertips together, thinking, thinking. Dickens held his breath.
“Well,” said Forster, “it is … interesting.”
“Yes. It is, isn’t it?”
“But when does the Christmas bit start?”
“Soon, I’m sure.”
“It’s just … a tad grim for what’s meant to be … a cheerful time of year.”
“What do you mean?
“Well, your Scrooge is a dreadful man.”
“Not so dreadful.”
“And this getup of yours, why, your Ebenezer fellow looks exactly as you do now.”
“I inspired myself!”
“To write a recluse? Who hates his neighbors, bemoans his friends, and despises his relatives?”
“They’re hateful people. They hound him for money. The poor man is tormented by his tribe of dependents, who all want a bit or a piece of him and cannot make a single step in the world without his aid!”
The decibel of their discussion rose above the ambient chattering and clinking of cups, attracting the attention of several customers. Forster leaned in to whisper.
“But he’s plotting the murder of Fred? The hapless distant cousin?”
“The cousin isn’t hapless. He’s … malevolent!”
“But your man doesn’t actually kill him, does he?”
“At the pace I’m going, he’ll be dead by Thursday morning.”
Forster looked at him, nonplussed. “But at Christmastime?”
Dickens slammed down his tankard and stood abruptly, sweeping his pages from the table. “Christmas need not always end in eggnog and sugarplums!” He rolled the pages back up, in fact tighter than before. “Though perhaps I will reconsider the murder.”
He adjusted his hat on top of his bald wig, grabbed his cane, and marched to the door, where he turned back with one last roar, rattling the rosewood stick overhead. “In fact, a lawsuit seems more in keeping with the spirit of the season!”
And with that, he pushed outside into thundering rain.
*
“Charles! Stop!”
Forster chased Dickens four city blocks and around three corners, raindrops pummeling his face. About to give up ever catching him, he found Dickens standing bewildered in front of Mudie’s, water pouring off the back of his hat. The shop was dark inside and out, surrounded by a crude scaffolding. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks since he’d been here, but its large glass panes were already cracked and grimy, a memorial to neglect. The storefronts on either side were the same, as if the whole block had gone dead overnight, now a mere ghost of a place.
“Good Lord, John!” he squalled, trying to drown out the rain. “Is Mudie’s gone out of business?”
“I certainly hope not.” Forster gasped and puffed, skimming the sweat and rain off his lip with a thumb. “They’ve just placed an order for five hundred of your Christmas book!”
Dickens drew back. “Five hundred in one shop? But how can they afford to—”
“A small … discount.”
“How small?”
“Thirty percent,” Forster spat out, as if the quicker he said it, the less it would bite.
“Thirty percent? But they’ll drive all other shops out of the literary market!”
“It will certainly separate the goats from the sheep—”
“Writers told what to write. Readers told what to read. People who do whatever you do … told what to do!” Dickens waved his arms like a windmill gone mad. “And once again, everyone making money on me but me!”
The rain renewed its assault, on again, off again, slanting and slashing away at them both. Forster strained his smashed bulldog face out of his collar, rivulets running down his jowls. “A percentage of something is a good deal more than a percentage of nothing. Which is what we shall have if you do not finish this blasted book!”
“I am knocking on the door, I assure you.”
“Mind you,” said Forster, cheeks flapping in the air, “your relatives’ creditors are at my door; your publishers at my throat. Christmas Eve is closing in, my friend. Two weeks! That means having it to the printer in one!”
The raw truth of Forster’s calculation snapped at Dickens like a whip. He had lost track of time, day and night, hours. There was no way to get from the middle to the end in one week, but nor was there turning back. He was in too deep now; the book must be written. He pulled off his hat and wig, rubbed his rimpled forehead, and hung his chin. Rain dripped off his limping curls.
“I know it’s true, what you say,” he said, flinging his hair back from his forehead. “But I’
m in a most disheveled state, John. And fear I’ve lost my muse.”
“Your muse?”
At the mere mention of Eleanor, the rain thinned and stopped in a span of seconds. Dickens, wet as a dog, took it as another sign. Signs everywhere. Why, if a rainbow now appeared in the cloud-heavy sky, it would be her doing, her presence in his life, her influence.
“Miss Lovejoy. Who made me want to write again. Why, I feel it was she who led me to Furnival’s Inn.”
“She led you?” Forster wiped his face hard with a waterlogged kerchief.
“Not meaning to in any way.”
“Or in every way? Let me guess, she has stolen your heart.”
“She has a husband.”
“And you a wife!”
“Who has all but done with me!”
Dickens wanted his friend to feel his despair. But Forster’s fists were in tight, knuckled balls; his eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“Think, Boz! It may not be your heart at all she’s intent upon stealing. This woman ‘works’ at your old theater, and ‘lives’ near your old lodgings? The coincidence is almost more than one can bear. And this husband of hers. Are you quite sure he exists?”
“She is somewhat mysterious—”
“Because she and her husband or paramour, or whatever he is, plot against you!”
“Why would they?”
“Plagiarisms! Parodies! Piracies! Just imagine what it would be worth to them to know what the great ‘Inimitable Boz’ is writing. So they can sell it to someone who will sell it to someone who will imitate you! Why, everyone wants to know.”
“Not Miss Lovejoy. She cares nothing for the book. Hasn’t even asked.”
“Of course not! Why must you be so naive? I’ve no doubt of it. The woman is a temptress and a thief.”
“She’s an innocent! It was she who disguised me. And my whereabouts remain a great secret.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Forster snorted. “She knows where to find you!”
Dickens jabbed a finger into the breast of his friend’s frock coat. It was a pent-up kind of pointing, full of old furies and new wrongs. “Eleanor Lovejoy is not my problem, Forster! It is these lawsuits, of which it is your job to rid me!”
Mr. Dickens and His Carol Page 12
