The Dante Club

by Matthew Pearl

  But months passed without the young woman replying to the gesture of the man she called Professor or Prof, though surely if she had read it she had seen herself in the character. When he finally did meet Fanny again, she made it quite clear that she did not enjoy being enslaved into the professor’s book for everyone to glare upon. He did not think to apologize, but over the next months did open his emotions to her in ways he had never done, not even with Mary Potter, the young bride who had died during a miscarriage only a few years after she and Longfellow married. Miss Appleton and Professor Longfellow began to come together regularly. In May 1843, Longfellow wrote a note, proposing marriage. The same day, he received her acceptance. Oh, Day forever blessed, that ushered in this Vita Nuova, this New Life of happiness! He repeated the words over and over again until they took on shape, had weight, could be embraced and sheltered like children.

  “Where can Houghton be?” Fields asked as his carriage was driven away. “He had better not have forgotten our dinner.”

  “Perhaps he was held up at Riverside. Madam.” Longfellow raised his hat to a corpulent woman passing them on the sidewalk, who smiled bashfully in return. Whenever Longfellow addressed a woman, however briefly, it was as if he were offering a bouquet of flowers.

  “Who was that?” Fields crunched his eyebrows.

  “That,” Longfellow answered, “is the lady who waited on us at supper at Copeland’s two winters ago.”

  “Oh well, yes. At any rate, if he is held up at Riverside, he had better be at work on your plates for the Inferno that we have to send to Florence.”

  “Fields,” Longfellow said with lips tightly pursed.

  “I’m sorry, Longfellow,” Fields said. “Next time I see her, I promise I shall lift my hat.”

  Longfellow shook his head. “No. Over there.” Fields followed the direction of Longfellow’s stare to an oddly bent man with a shiny oilskin satchel, who was walking a little too briskly along the sidewalk opposite.

  “That’s Bachi.”

  “He was once a Harvard instructor?” replied the publisher. “He’s as bloodshot as an autumn sunset.” They watched the Italian instructor’s walk crescendo into a trot and end with a sharp skip into a corner storefront with a low-shingled roof and shoddy window card that read WADE AND SON & CO.

  “Do you know that store?” Longfellow asked.

  Fields did not. “He seems to be in an important rush, doesn’t he.”

  “Mr. Houghton shall not mind waiting a few moments.” Longfellow took Fields’s arm. “Come, we might learn something more from him by catching him unprepared.”

  As they started toward the corner to cross the street, they both watched George Washington Greene gingerly step out of Metcalf’s Apothecary with an armful of goods; the man of many ills treated himself to new medicines as one would treat himself to ice cream. Longfellow’s friends often lamented that Metcalf’s potions against neuralgia, dysentery, and the like—sold under a sign depicting a wise figure with an exaggerated nose—contributed heavily to Greene’s frequent Rip Van Winkle spells at their translation sessions.

  “Good Lord, it’s Greene,” Longfellow said to his publisher. “It is imperative, Fields, that we keep him from speaking with Bachi.”

  “Why?” Fields asked.

  But Greene’s approach proscribed further discussion. “My dear Fields. And Longfellow! What brings you gentlemen out today?”

  “My dear friend,” Longfellow said, anxiously eyeing the canopy-shaded door of Wade and Son across the street for any sign of Bachi. “We have just come for dinner at the Revere House. But are you not meant to be in East Greenwich this time of week?”

  Greene nodded and sighed at the same time. “Shelly wishes me under her care until my health takes an upturn. But I shan’t stay in bed all day, though her doctor insists! Pain never killed anyone, but it is a most uncomfortable bedfellow.” He went into great detail about his newest symptoms. Longfellow and Fields fixed their eyes across the street as Greene prattled on. “But I oughtn’t bore everyone with the doldrums of my ailments. All would be worth the frustration for another Dante session—and still I have received no word of one for weeks! I have begun to worry the project has been abandoned. Pray tell me, dear Longfellow, that this is not the case.”

  “We have taken but a slight pause,” Longfellow said, craning his neck to look across the street, where Bachi could be seen through the store window. He was gesturing energetically.

  “We shall resume shortly, though, no doubt,” Fields added. A carriage pulled up at the corner across the street, blocking their view of the storefront and of Bachi. “I’m afraid we must take our leave now, Mr. Greene,” Fields said urgently, squeezing Longfellow’s elbow and steering him ahead.

  “But you are confused, gentlemen! You’ve passed the Revere House in the other direction!” Greene laughed.

  “Yes, well . . .” Fields searched for a passable excuse as they waited for a pair of oncoming coaches to cross the busy intersection.

  “Greene,” Longfellow interrupted. “We must make a brief stop first. Pray start for the restaurant and dine with us and Mr. Houghton?”

  “I’m afraid my daughter shall be cross as a terrier if I am not back,” Greene worried. “Oh, look who comes now!” Greene stepped back and wobbled off the narrow sidewalk. “Mr. Houghton!”

  “My most grave apologies, gentlemen.” An ungainly man in undertaker’s black appeared beside them and lowered his improbably long arm to the first taker, which happened to be George Washington Greene. “I was about to go into Revere House when I saw you three from the corner of my eye. I hope your wait was not long. Mr. Greene, dear sir, are you joining us? How have you been then, my good man?”

  “Quite malnourished,” Greene answered, now clothed fully in pathos, “in a life when our Wednesday-evening Dante circles were my first and last sustenance.”

  Longfellow and Fields alternated their surveillance in fifteen-second shifts. The entrance of Wade and Son was still blocked by the intrusive carriage, whose driver sat patiently as though his special commission were to frustrate the view of Messrs. Longfellow and Fields.

  “Did you say were?” Houghton said to Greene in surprise. “Fields, has this something to do with Dr. Manning? But what of the celebration in Florence waiting for a special printing of the first volume? I must know if the publication dates have been pushed back. I shan’t be kept dark!”

  “Of course not, Houghton,” Fields said. “We have just slackened the reins a bit.”

  “And what is a man accustomed to the pleasures of that weekly bit of paradise to do with himself in their stead, I ask?” lamented Greene dramatically.

  “I know not,” Houghton replied. “I worry, though, with the inflated prices printing a book such as this . . . I must ask, can your Dante overcome whatever Manning and Harvard plan to put in his way?”

  Greene’s hands shook as he raised them in the air. “If it were possible to convey an accurate idea of Dante in a single word, Mr. Houghton, that word would be power. That landscape of his world ever after takes its place in your memory by the side of your real world. Even the sounds which he has described linger in the ear as the types of harshness, or loudness, or sweetness, instantly coming back to you whenever you listen to the roaring of the sea or the howling of the wind, or the carol of the birds.”

  Bachi exited the store, and they could now see him perusing the contents of his satchel with an air of great excitement.

  Greene stopped himself. “Fields? Why, whatever is the matter? You seem to be waiting for something to happen across the way.”

  Longfellow signaled Fields with a flick of a wrist to occupy their interlocutor. As partners in a crisis in some way manage to communicate complex strategy with the slightest gesture, Fields enacted a diversion for their old friend, draping his arm loosely around his shoulders. “You see, Greene, there are several developments in the field of publishing since the end of the war . . .”

  Longfellow pulled H
oughton aside and spoke under his breath. “I’m afraid we shall have to postpone our dinner for another time. A horsecar should be leaving for Back Bay in ten minutes. I beg you to walk Mr. Greene there. Put him aboard, and don’t leave till the car starts. Watch that he doesn’t get off,” Longfellow said with a slight lifting of the eyebrows that adequately conveyed his urgency.

  Houghton returned a soldierly nod without appeal for further explanation. Had Henry Longfellow ever asked a personal favor from him, or from anyone that he knew? The Riverside Press owner slipped his arm through Greene’s. “Mr. Greene, shall I accompany you to the horsecars? I believe the next one is leaving shortly, and one should not be standing so long in this November chill.”

  With hasty farewells, Longfellow and Fields waited as two massive omnibuses rumbled down the street, ringing their bells as warning. The two poets started across the street only to notice in unison that the Italian instructor was no longer on the corner. They looked one block ahead and one block behind, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “Where in the devil . . . ?” Fields asked.

  Longfellow pointed and Fields looked in time to see Bachi seated comfortably in the backseat of that very carriage that had been blocking their surveillance. The cab’s horses clopped away, not seeming to share the impatience of their passenger.

  “And not a cab in sight to be hired!” Longfellow said.

  “We may be able to catch him,” said Fields. “Pike the cabman’s livery is a few blocks from here. The rascal asks a quarter for a seat in his carriage, a half-dollar when he feels particularly extortionate. Nobody on the block can suffer him but Holmes, and he suffers no one else but the doctor.”

  Fields and Longfellow, walking briskly, found Pike not at his livery but stationed stubbornly in front of the brick mansion at 21 Charles Street. The duo made a plea for Pike’s services. Fields held up handfuls of cash.

  “I cannot help you gents for all the money in the Commonwealth,” Pike said gruffly. “I’m engaged to drive Dr. Holmes.”

  “Listen to us carefully, Pike.” Fields exaggerated the natural command of his voice. “We are very close associates of Dr. Holmes. He would tell you himself to take us.”

  “You’re friends of the doctor’s?” Pike asked.

  “Yes!” Fields cried with relief.

  “Then as friends you ain’t likely to take his cab away. I’m engaged to Dr. Holmes,” Pike repeated blandly, and sat back to whittle the remains of an ivory toothpick with his teeth.

  “Well!” Oliver Wendell Holmes beamed, strutting out onto his front step holding a handbag and dressed in a dark worsted suit with a white silk neck cloth done up nicely in a cravat, finished with a beautiful white rose in his buttonhole. “Fields. Longfellow. So you’ve come to hear about allopathy after all!”

  Pike’s horses whirled down Charles Street into the knotted streets of downtown, grazing lampposts and cutting ahead of irate horsecar drivers. Pike’s was a dilapidated rockaway carriage, with a berth wide enough for four passengers to sit without smashing their knees together. Dr. Holmes had instructed the driver to arrive promptly at a quarter to one in order to drive to the Odeon, but now the destination had been changed, seemingly against the doctor’s will from the perspective of the driver, and the number of passengers had tripled. Pike had a good mind to drive them to the Odeon anyway.

  “What of my lecture?” Holmes asked Fields in the back of the carriage. “It’s sold-out, you know!”

  “Pike can have you there in no time as soon as we find Bachi and ask him a question or two,” Fields said. “And I’ll make certain the papers don’t report that you were late. If only I had not sent my carriage away for Annie, we would not have fallen behind!”

  “But whatever do you imagine you’ll accomplish if we do find him?” Holmes asked.

  Longfellow explained. “Clearly, Bachi is anxious today. If we speak to him away from his home—and his drink—he may be less resistant. If Greene had not happened upon us, we likely would have caught Ser Bachi without such haste. I half wish we could simply tell poor Greene all that has happened, but the truth would be a shock to such a weak constitution. He has had all calamities and believes the world is against him. Nothing remains for him but to be struck by lightning.”

  “There it is!” Fields cried. He pointed to a carriage some fifty rods ahead of them. “Longfellow, isn’t that it?”

  Longfellow extended his neck out the side, feeling the wind catch his beard, and signaled his assent.

  “Cabby, steer right on!” Fields called out.

  Pike snapped the reins, careening down the street at a pace far beyond the speed limit—which the Boston Board of Safety had recently set at a “moderate trot.” “We’re going quite far east!” Pike shouted over the cobbled hoof-falls. “Quite a ways from the Odeon, you know, Dr. Holmes!”

  Fields asked Longfellow, “Why did we have to hide Bachi from Greene? I didn’t think they’d be acquainted.”

  “Long ago.” Longfellow nodded. “Mr. Greene met Bachi in Rome, before the worst of his maladies showed themselves. I was afraid that if we had approached Bachi with Greene present, Greene would have spoken too much of our Dante project—as he is wont to do with any who will suffer it!—and that would interfere with Bachi’s willingness to talk, making him feel only more wretched in his position.”

  Pike lost sight of their object several times, but through quick turns, remarkably timed gallops, and patient slowdowns, he regained an advantage. The other cabdriver seemed in a hurry, too, but fully oblivious of the chase. Near the narrowing roads of the harbor area, their prey slipped away again. Then it reappeared, causing Pike to curse God’s name, then apologize for it, then stop short, sending Holmes flying across the carriage onto Longfellow’s lap.

  “There she goes!” Pike called out as his counterpart drove his coach toward them, away from the harbor. But its passenger seat had been vacated.

  “He must have gone to the harbor!” Fields said.

  Pike picked up the pace once more and ousted his passengers. The trio pushed against the grain of cheerers and wavers, who were watching various ships disappear into the fog while Godspeeding with waving handkerchiefs.

  “Most of the ships this time of day are toward Long Wharf,” said Longfellow. In earlier years, he had frequently walked to the wharves to see the grand vessels coming in from Germany or Spain and to hear the men and women speak their native tongues. There was in Boston no greater Babylon of languages and skin tones than the wharves.

  Fields had trouble keeping up. “Wendell?”

  “Up here, Fields!” Holmes cried from inside a throng of people.

  Holmes found Longfellow describing Bachi to a black stevedore who was loading barrels.

  Fields decided to question passengers in the other direction, but soon stopped to rest on the edge of a pier.

  “You there in the fancy suit.” A bulky pier master with a greasy beard grabbed Fields’s arm roughly and pushed him away. “Stand aside from these comin’ on board if you hain’t got a ticket.”

  “Good sir,” Fields said. “I am in need of immediate assistance. A small man in a rumpled blue frock coat, with bloodshot eyes—have you seen him?”

  The pier master ignored him, occupied with organizing the line of passengers by class and compartment. Fields watched as the man removed his cap (too small for his mammoth head) and twirled a sharp hand through his tangled hair.

  Fields closed his eyes as though entranced, listening to the man’s strange, excitable commands. Into his mind came a dim room with a little taper of restless energy burning on a mantel. “Hawthorne,” Fields gasped, almost involuntarily.

  The pier master paused and turned to Fields. “What?”

  “Hawthorne.” Fields smiled, knowing he was right. “You are an avid admirer of Mr. Hawthorne’s novels.”

  “Well, I say . . .” The pier master prayed or swore under his breath. “How did you know that? Tell me at once!”

  The passenger
s he was organizing into categories stopped to listen, too.

  “No matter.” Fields felt a rush of elation that he had retained his skills of reading people that had profited him so many years earlier as a young bookseller’s clerk. “Write your address on this slip of paper and I shall send you the new Blue and Gold collection of all Hawthorne’s great works, authorized by his widow.” Fields held out the paper, then withdrew it into his palm. “If you assist me today, sir.”

  The man, suddenly superstitious of Fields’s powers, complied.

  Fields propped himself on his toes and spotted Longfellow and Holmes coming in his direction. He called out. “Check that pier!”

  Holmes and Longfellow flagged down a harbormaster. They described Bachi.

  “And who might you be?”

  “We’re good friends of his,” Holmes cried. “Pray tell us, where has he gone to?” Fields now caught up with them.

  “Well, I seen him coming into the harbor,” the man answered with a frustratingly meandering tempo. “I believe he ran aboard there, as anxious as could be,” he said, pointing to a small boat at sea that could not have held more than five passengers.

  “Good, that little bark can’t be going very far. Where is it headed?” Fields asked.

  “That? That’s just a water transport, sir. The Anonimo is too big to fit in this pier. So it’s waiting all the way out downstream. You see?”

  Its outline was barely visible in the fog, disappearing and then reappearing, but it was as gigantic a steamer as they had ever seen.

  “Oh, your friend was quite eager to get on, I guess. That little boat he’s on is just taking the last shipment of passengers who were late coming. Then it’s off.”

  “Off to where?” Fields asked, his heart sinking.

  “Why, across the Atlantic, sir.” The harbormaster glanced at his slate. “A stop at Marseilles, and, ah, here we are, then on to Italy!”