Mr. Dickens and His Carol

by Samantha Silva

  Forster brushed Dickens’ finger away, grinding his teeth. “Which I can only do once you’ve done with the book! With or without your silly ‘muse’!”

  Dickens recoiled. To hear Eleanor spoken of this way, as a conspirator, a plotter against him, a seductress, brought a bitter taste to his mouth. But Forster’s disdain for his “muse” was most hurtful of all. It meant he didn’t believe in it, in him, in the magic of words that came out of air and things and people and tiny shifts of mood and feeling, the street, the gaslight, the gossamer of all life, the high, the low, the things you reach for but cannot touch, the finely webbed shadow of meaning, bearing down, ephemeral and inescapable all at once, the things that cannot be said that demand to be said, that would never be said without him, not the way he said them.

  His work was a fight for all this. Whatever else was between them, he’d thought this was why Forster loved him.

  “Fine,” he said coldly, his lower lip a tightrope. “Tell Chapman and Hall I’ll finish the book in time for their profitable Christmas trade. And yours, of course.”

  Forster pulled at his chafing cravat, grunting like a boar.

  “And as for my relatives at your door,” said Dickens, “I’ll take care of them myself!”

  In a show of defiance he filled his lungs with a willful breath and strode away, his molten core hardening by the second. He knew Forster would be watching him, standing his ground, wanting the triumph of the last word, not entirely understanding what had passed between them. The sudden escalation, the fall.

  Ever true to himself, Forster called after him. “Mind your secret’s kept! And beware this Lovejoy woman!”

  Dickens turned, walking backward, to see him wagging a sausage finger.

  “I shall prove you wrong about her!”

  *

  In Printing House Square, Blackfriars, every day of the week (Sunday excepted) The Times was printed and distributed throughout the civilized world, its whirring machines throwing off six thousand sheets of eight pages an hour. On that particular day, in the front office, an awestruck apprentice nearly fainted on seeing the man who occupied the space before him, in fact not so much occupied as colonized, colonized as owned. Dickens had taken off the wig, but tufts of feathery hair plumed from his pocket. The false eyebrows and spectacles were not by themselves enough cover. In newspaper circles, Charles Dickens—former law reporter, parliamentary reporter, plain reporter twice over—was legend.

  The apprentice could not believe his good luck. “In this paper, sir? This very one?”

  “In every one! Across the land!”

  “Well, we’ve a nice spot you might like ’tween the shaving soap and the diuretic—”

  “I do not want a spot. I want a whole page!”

  “A whole page, sir?”

  “Yes. Now, read it back.”

  The apprentice cleared his throat, as if preparing his stage debut. “‘I, Charles Dickens—’”

  “Louder!” said Dickens, pounding his cane on the wood floor. “And with more feeling!”

  The apprentice straightened up, ribs jutting out like a ship’s bow, and took a nervous gulp of air. “‘I, Charles Dickens, declare publicly that as of this day and for all time to come I am no longer responsible for the debts incurred by my relatives, or relatives of my relatives, or friends of my relatives, or anyone but me. Signed, Charles John Huffam Dickens.’”

  27

  The Folly was the next stop on Dickens’ warpath. Outside, tall letters on a placard announced WILLIAM MACREADY IN HAMLET—SET TO MUSIC! The once-prosperous theater now seemed to change hands every other week, with an alternating whirl of entertainments meant to satisfy a fickle public, all proclaimed “the greatest hit of the season.” When drama didn’t suffice, melodrama was offered, then pantomimes and mock nautical battles, mixed in with the occasional dog drama, lion tamer, or rope-walker. A plot was fine, but even here, in this snug box of a theater, novelty and spectacle were preferred.

  In the pre-pandemonium of the evening’s performance, Dickens found Macready in his shabby dressing room, and begged him a favor. Half dressed for his Hamlet, in a doublet of ruined velvet, furs, and leather, Macready now stood, vaguely thumbing through an old cloth bound ledger worn away at the edges. Dickens cleaved to his friend’s shoulder, trying to keep him on task. But the actor railed away, gesturing, as he did onstage or not, for dramatic effect.

  “The critics simply build us up that they might then describe in some detail the very moment in which we fall from the heavens, where they themselves have installed us, and land, splat, on our faces, naked and writhing and useless.”

  “Bad reviews?”

  “The worst.” Macready turned to his old friend, frowning. “To care or not to care. That is more to the point.”

  Dickens softened, forgetting for a moment why he’d come. He recalled the night of their first and only joint review, so long ago. Forster had introduced them; Dickens straightaway offered to write a play for Macready, his hero, the eminent tragedian of Drury Lane and all England. But the critics had pounced upon opening night, calling it “an unfortunate little farce that ought to hurry its way into obscurity.” To salve their wounds, the playwright and actor conspired to empty a punch bowl of spiced smoking bishop, just the two of them, and pledged drunkenly to be devoted to each other from that moment on, without reservation. If anyone would understand his current state, Macready would.

  “Perhaps the page before. I have to know whether she works here.”

  Macready flipped a page and ran a disinterested finger down the column of names and dates and wages. “It’s not really my department.”

  “Yes. But I knew you’d at least try. For me.”

  “Of course I will. Lovejoy, you say?”

  “Surely you know her. A quite particular purple cloak? A seamstress? In costumes.”

  “Hmm … rings a bell. Though the young women come and go, you know.”

  Fidgety and bored of the task, he glanced back at Dickens and noticed the white wig blossoming from his friend’s coat pocket. Macready snatched it up. “I wore this wig when I gave my Lear! The critics loved my Lear!”

  “Yes. It was Eleanor who gave it to me, in fact, devised my disguise that I might walk, unknown, through the streets of London.”

  “Unknown? Why whatever for?”

  Dickens took the wig back and turned it in his hand. “I have, I’m afraid, tired of being Charles Dickens.”

  “Mmm. I think I see,” said Macready, at last finding a chord sympathetic to his own misery, a loathing for his own profession. “But I can assure you there is not a single critic in all of India. For critics are slack-spined and cannot stand up to the heat!”

  Dickens smiled wearily.

  “Although they’ve a mind to put up a Christmas show here,” said Macready. “Rumblings, in any case. Not quite to a script yet, but a money-spinner for sure. So they say. Shouldn’t delay India but a few weeks. A month at most.”

  “Yes, of course. But, please, Macready…” Dickens’ hopes were dwindling. “Her lips are like Burmese rubies, her eyes, Kashmirian sapphires.”

  “Good God, man. A bad case, have you?”

  “I only need to know whether she’s deceived me. If you say you do not know her, then my case is lost.”

  Macready nodded, moved by the shared plight of floundering men. Reinvigorated to the cause, he turned another page, tracing down the column. “Here she is! I’ve found her!” His finger moved along the line as he read. “Eleanor Lovejoy. Seven shillings and eight pence. Paid the week of November fourteenth—”

  “Yes!” Dickens leaned over Macready’s shoulder. “I knew Forster was wrong!”

  “—last year.”

  “Last year?” Dickens looked closer.

  “It’s the first entry I can find. November the fourteenth, last year.”

  “Perhaps another name, a maiden name—”

  “Most women who marry leave the theater at once. Are you quite sure sh
e still works here?”

  Dickens was reeling. He didn’t want to believe it, but here, finally, was a hard, cold fact written in rusty brown ink. He looked at his old friend with sunken eyes.

  “I am sure of nothing.”

  28

  The night was fraught with demons. They came and went in his dreams, frightened and rattled him. Loomed over his bed, led him by the hand, made him look at things he’d rather not see, including a door knocker with an ugly man’s face in it, distorted and mean. When he rustled to waking, relieved to have escaped one phantom, he fell asleep again only to be accosted by another. He woke up hot and twisted in his dressing gown, or shivering with cold.

  Pelting rain through the night had kept him from his usual walking remedy, but as soon as it stopped, Dickens got up, dressed down to every detail of his costume, and set out to shift his mood and shake the spirits that haunted him. The more he walked, the more his false garb became him. He carried himself like an angry old man, hunched back and puckered face, buffeting anyone who dared into his path. He pounded his cane with each step, even once shaking it at a beggar who tottered in his direction with bleary eyes and an outstretched hand. Head down, trudging through the holiday throng, he grumbled to himself, lips moving fast. Soon shoppers, carolers, even dogs crossed the street to avoid the madman walking their way.

  Dickens was glad of it. He was mad at Forster for doubting Eleanor, mad at himself for not—mad at the world for some nagging wrong it had done him.

  When at last he looked up, he found himself barreling toward Mr. Bumble, who stood beneath a ladder outside his shop, supervising the hanging of yet more holly and boughs. Bumble turned but seemed not to notice him. Dickens jagged into the street just in case, unaware of an omnibus bearing down fast. A sharp tug on the tail of his coat saved him at the last second, sending his already aggrieved hat flying into the muddy road. It was Bumble himself who leaned over to fetch it, slapped off a clump of dirt, and handed it back.

  “There you are, Mr. Dickens, good as new.”

  “You must be mistaken,” he said, putting his hat on and pulling it low. “I’m not Dickens.”

  “Of course you are. And nearly flattened by a bus, at that. Why, you must be in a terrible hurry.” Bumble looked his costume up and down. “Father Christmas, is it? A theatrical benefit, no doubt, for the Ragged School.” Bumble pulled out his red notebook and black pencil. “In fact, now that I have you safe and sound, I would be remiss not to remind you of our holiday fund for Field Lane. What shall I put you down for?” He licked the sharp pencil tip.

  Dickens readjusted his white tufts of hair. “Don’t put me down at all.”

  “Ah! You wish to remain anonymous this year?”

  “Are there no workhouses?” Dickens’ face splotched red.

  “Workhouses?” Bumble tried to make sense of it. “Ah! Well acted, sir,” he said, playing along, though clearly with no idea what his part in the charade might be. “’Tis the season.”

  Dickens took stock of the scene around them, Christmas traps and trimmings everywhere. Bumble’s Toy Shop itself dripped with faux-icicles and flocked evergreens. Customers in and out, towers of gold-wrapped packages, that annoying, cloying jingle bell over the door. He had never seen it quite this way before, the bald excess, the bold overembellishment, but it was clear to him now—the nothingness of all things. And how those things were peddled and hawked this time of year to willing victims who lined up for the pleasure of it, in fact fought for first place so they might be bilked and fleeced before all others. No one bothered to wait for a blast of seasonal cold air to put them in the proper mood; acquiring was all that was necessary to call it up, whatever the mood was, which even he had forgotten.

  His face burned red, newfound jowls shivering with fury. “Yes, ’tis the season. So you’d all remind us at every turn. Spend, spend, buy, buy, give, give. Well, I am bled dry. We are all bled dry! By the lot of you!” He poked Bumble’s notebook with staccato jabs. “You may put me down for nothing!”

  And with that, he turned for the muddied street, looked both ways, eyes wide open, and crossed to the other side.

  29

  Dickens couldn’t write and didn’t want to. There was a stewy mess inside him. He’d suffered one blow after another, but not even the pair of lawsuits eclipsed the painful truth that the ledger at the Folly had revealed. He felt chagrined and abashed. What if Forster had been right all along? A clever young woman had laid a trap for him, which he’d fallen into, no, leapt into, headfirst and feet flying. But if it was a trap, why would she admit to being married? Perhaps she was more clever than either he or Forster could conceive, and there was more of her plot to come. He had wanted only her kindness and company. Eleanor had repaid him with pretending. She had worked in the theater once, that was clear, knew her way about, the ins and outs, where things were found, and hidden. It was a perfect ruse.

  He recalled the day she’d first disguised him, the wig, the cane, how at ease she seemed. An actor, indeed. And if she no longer worked there, and had a husband but no means, or means but no morals, of course she would know that knowing what Charles Dickens was writing would be gold. At first he tried not to think of her at all, but she was lodged in his brain, inescapable. No amount of imaging forth on any other subject could make Eleanor Lovejoy go away.

  Finally, under cloak of darkness, he slipped away from Furnival’s late at night, wearing his own head and hair, to disappear into the tangle of fog-filled streets. He hoped to lose her once and for all, or at least lose himself. The day hung heavy on his spirit and London reflected his gloom in spectacular fashion. A heavy cloud floated overhead like a coalfield. Smoke from chimney pots rained down with specks of soot as big as snowflakes. The wicked emanation from wavering gas flames blurred the city, which seemed a wretched caricature of itself, daubed in charcoal and lampblack. It gouged out the eyes and jaundiced the cheeks of dog-tired dolly-mops and whores. Puff-faced drunkards staggered into foul streets and blind alleys, punching the air looking for fights, or stumbled into shadowy doorways to join with the beggars and thieves who snored and choked. A late pie-man trundled home with his sad, limping donkey pulling a broken cart. Two cabs clattered by, then none.

  The longer Dickens walked, the more he wanted to be alone. The last embers of waking life were an irritant, rubbing against his nerves. He was glad the theaters were dark and lifeless, that the last public houses were turning out their lights. He welcomed the ghostly quiet. When he reached the middle of London Bridge, he gripped its balustrade. The skin on his gloveless hands looked waxen and strange under the dim yellow lamplight, like a carapace growing thick and hard. Even without the wig and brows, he felt old and tired of the world. The gritty fog circled and pounced. Even the Thames beneath him roiled like a cauldron, then disappeared in the ether.

  Dickens looked toward Southwark, and though he couldn’t see five steps ahead, some greater darkness called him there and showed him the way. He knew it already. Though he hadn’t walked it in years, his boots remembered how to go, turning out of Angel Court onto the paved stones leading to Bermondsey. South of King, east of Borough High Street, north of Mermaid Court. There it was still, Marshalsea Prison rising from the brume like the menacing specter of ruined lives. It was a grim, forbidding barrack with insurmountable brick walls, a spiked wicket on top, and metal doors bristling with rivets and bolts, a memorial to vice and misfortune, human stupidity and cruelty. Of all the useless prisons in London, squalid and teeming with broken people—killers, arsonists, robbers, smugglers, and debtors most of all—Marshalsea was the worst of the lot, an extortion racket run for the profit of private gaolers who lined their pockets with garnish and chummage from pathetic debtors who had no defense against them.

  The prison was empty now, closed just a year, with blackened holes for windows and dead air for sound. Dickens stood before it, eyes cold and flinty. His fists, deep in his pockets, clenched with each slow, spiteful beat of his heart. An implausibly war
m wind on his face made him think of hell—or purgatory, even better. Closed or not, this was a prison in perpetuity, a forever place of no release.

  Never had Dickens known the desire to despise his fellow man, but here it was, in front of him now.

  With nothing more to show for his long night-wandering, and no desire for daylight as it encroached by small degrees, he turned back the way he’d come, head low and heavy, eyes set on the ground beneath his feet, blind to everything else. He wanted no commerce with the few working people straggling into the streets, sought no succor from the first breakfast-sellers. He wanted exile, and sleep, perhaps, but not to dream.

  Charles Dickens wanted to forget.

  30

  John Dickens stood at the window of No. 13 Furnival’s Inn with a newspaper folded under an arm of his coat and his hat in his hand. Charles Dickens walked in without a word, only half surprised to find his father standing there. He’d always had a way of tracking him, with a ferreter’s instinct; the son felt at times like prey. But the back of his father’s ill-fitting coat was sad and pitiable, a match for the groveling look on his white-whiskered face when he turned to greet his son, who hung up his hat with a sigh. This capped the night just right.

  “Hello, Charley.”

  “Father.” His ears pulled tight at the sound of his father’s voice. “How did you find me?”

  “Why, I deduced the fact! Concealing your whereabouts from your publishers, eh?”

  Dickens removed his coat slowly. He threw it on the back of a chair and waited, expressionless, letting the silence stand between them.

  “I spoke to Topping,” his father confessed.

  “You’re a clever man, Father.”

  “But you. How clever you are!” John Dickens wobbled between his good leg and his bad. The tremor in his hands was visible as he removed the newspaper from under his elbow and unfolded it. His son could see that its edges were worn to paper fur, pages coffee-stained and creased from too much handling, as if it had been read and reread, folded, pocketed, pulled out, and read again. He knew what was coming. The Times was open to his very large advertisement, as expected.