The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  Osgood busied himself over the next week helping draw up details for Fields's trip to London. The senior partner would leave as soon as he'd settled some pressing affairs of the firm.

  Not long after Dickens's death, Officer Carlton had delivered the shocking news about Daniel. Osgood had sent him to the docks to retrieve those three latest installments sent from England in response to Osgood's cable. It was yet another test to prevent emotion from becoming paralyzing.

  Daniel Sand's senseless accident caused Osgood to feel a sadness of heart more intimate and stranger than that brought on by Dickens's death. The loss of Dickens was shared by millions around the world as though a personal blow to every home and hearth. Stores were closed the day of the news, flags flown low. But poor Daniel? Who would mourn? Osgood, certainly, and naturally Daniel's sister, Rebecca, Osgood's bookkeeper. Otherwise, it was an invisible death. How much more real this seemed, in a way, than Dickens's apotheosis.

  When Daniel died, Osgood expected Rebecca to stop coming to work for a period. But she did not. She was as stoic as ever in her black crepe and muslin, and she did not miss one workday.

  The police had left it to Osgood to inform Rebecca about Daniel. As he told her, she began to tidy her surroundings, as if too busy, with no time to listen. Her teeth clenched as a struggle brewed behind her steady face. Wide eyes closed, her thin mouth cracked, and soon the battle was lost as she fell back into her chair, head in hands.

  “Are there relatives I may send for?” Osgood had asked. “Your parents?”

  She shook her head and accepted a handkerchief. “No one. Did Daniel suffer greatly?”

  Osgood paused. He had not told her about the police suspicions of opium use, about the telltale puncture marks on Daniel's arm. He decided at that moment not to tell her. His sympathy for Rebecca was too strong, the details of Daniel's death too painful to utter. It would be a blessing for them both to hide it from her.

  “I do not think he did,” Osgood said gently.

  She looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “Would you tell me one thing more, please, Mr. Osgood? Where was he coming from?” she asked, and gave him her full attention.

  “From the harbor, we believe, as it happened in Dock Square. He was to pick up some papers at the docks before… before the accident.”

  Her lips pursed and her eyes filled before he could say more. Though he would not have judged any kind of reaction on her part, he admired how Rebecca had neither attempted to put her grief on display nor to hide it. Without thinking, he had taken her hand and held it in his. It was a touch of competence and comfort. It had been the first time he had touched his bookkeeper-any physical contact between men and women being against firm rules. He held her hand just until she had seemed calmer, then let go.

  After a week passed and she had continued to come to work without any time off, Osgood invited her into his office, the door left open for decorum's sake. “You know it would be seen as acceptable if you'd take time to grieve for Daniel.”

  “I will stop wearing mourning dress to the offices if I am a distraction, Mr. Osgood,” she said. “But I will not leave, if you please.”

  “Upon my soul, Rebecca-do not always wear such a brave face,” said Osgood.

  “I do not want to disappoint you or Mr. Fields by staying away, Mr. Osgood.”

  Osgood knew Rebecca's work meant much more to her than many girls. Some who applied for positions with eager pronouncements counted the days on their desk registers until they could find a man to marry, though since the war women far outnumbered men in the city and the search for suitors could be protracted. He also knew Rebecca was concerned that she show no weakness to Fields, even under the circumstances. The idea of young working women in the office was one thing for the liberal-minded senior partner. Divorced women was another.

  “I shall respect your wishes,” Osgood had said, upon which she returned to the tasks waiting at her desk.

  The end of Rebecca's marriage had first brought her from the country to the city, with her younger brother accompanying her as both her ward and guardian. Osgood had needed two and a half days to persuade Fields how impressive and prepared she had been in their first meeting, though Osgood would never mention that private campaigning to Rebecca after she was hired. He did not see her divorce as a liability nor did he wish to suggest anyone would. “You say we need employees here willing to fight,” Osgood had told Fields at the time, “and Miss Sand has had to endure the meanest treatment imaginable for a young woman.”

  Osgood thought about Daniel's mission that day at the harbor. He was to meet the ship from London, where a messenger would hand him-and only him-the advance sheets for the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Fields, Osgood & Co. was publishing the only authorized American edition of the serial novel in one of its periodicals, Every Saturday. Readers would find the new parts of Drood there first, set from the “advance sheets furnished us by the author.” This fact they proudly announced in each issue, as well as the fact that their publication was the only one for which Charles Dickens received any compensation. Other American magazines-including Harper's-could obviously make no such claims; nor would theirs appear until several weeks later.

  For this reason, because of this competition, Daniel Sand's missions to the harbor had been kept quiet. Sending a young clerk would be far less conspicuous than sending a well-known partner like Osgood. Pirates from other publishing houses would loiter at the piers to try to intercept popular manuscripts coming from England before they were claimed by the authorized publisher. This breed of fiend called themselves Bookaneers and had vulgar names: Kitten, Molasses, Esquire, Baby. They sold their services to publishers in New York and Philadelphia or local Boston firms, and Osgood himself had been approached by some of them over the years, though he'd adamantly refused to engage in such techniques.

  Daniel had known how important it was to secure the next installments and deposit it into the Fields, Osgood & Co. vault. That is why Osgood had asked Officer Carlton whether any papers had been found on Daniel-and was astounded to learn none had.

  Could Daniel have been deliberately forced into the street by one of those Bookaneers attempting to take the papers? Osgood dismissed the idea from his mind as soon as he had thought it. Publishing had known some shady practices in the art of procuring a manuscript-bribery, theft, spying-but not physical assault nor, even by the shadiest Bookaneer, murder! The installments lost to Daniel's accident could be replaced from London-that was not what kept Osgood awake. But he did not want to admit that the police and coroner were right about his clerk and the opium. This boy was one of the fallen, they'd said. Had he forsaken Osgood, the firm, his own sister?

  A few days later, Rebecca paused before Osgood's office door before leaving for the day. She was still wearing black-even the little jewelry she wore had been dyed black, as was custom-but she no longer wore the crepe over her dress. “Mr. Osgood,” she said, her dark hair straying from under a bonnet. As she fixed it, a ragged scar from years before was visible on the back of her right ear. “I need to thank you,” she said, and nodded knowingly.

  Osgood, caught off guard, nodded and smiled back. Only after she walked away did he realize he did not know what it was she thanked him for. Was she referring to some business matter that had occurred during the day, for having given Daniel a position there years before, for holding her hand when she had cried, even though it broke the rules? Of course, it was too late now to ask her. He could not stop her the next morning and say, suavely, after giving instructions for letters and memorandum for the day, Oh, and what was it you wished to thank me for yesterday, my dear? Osgood was kicking himself for his slow brain, when a less welcome face appeared in the same place in the doorway

  “Ah, Mr. Osgood, still here? No rich dinner parties tonight with the literary sort? No ‘swarry,’ as they're called?” This was Montague Midges, the circulation clerk for their magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and Every Saturday. He wa
s an unctuous and grimly talkative little man but efficient. He was there to deliver the latest accounting numbers for the Atlantic. “I see sturdy Miss Sand is still in mourning,” he added with a sidelong glance out the door.

  “Midges?”

  “Your girl-keeper.” This was Midges's name for the firm's female bookkeepers. “Oh, I won't cry when Miss Two Shoes finally folds the mourning garb back in her drawer. The black makes their ankles look big, don't you think?”

  “Mr. Midges, I'd prefer…”

  Midges broke into whistling, as he often did in the midst of another person's sentence. “Guess she'll be breaking down without her brother in Boston, poor wretch. Ten to one she wishes now she hadn't given that husband of hers the mitten. Good night, sir!”

  At that, Osgood had sprung up from his chair, but he knew if he defended Rebecca in hearing of the other female bookkeepers in the office, whispers would fly. It would only make things worse for her at a bad time. Sitting back, Osgood wondered if Midges had recognized the reality of Rebecca's situation better than he had. The palms of his hands began to sweat. Did the terrible loss of Daniel for Rebecca also mean the loss of Rebecca for Osgood?

  REBECCA DIDN'T WANT to move to a new room, but the landlady insisted. With Daniel gone, she was to take her belongings to a smaller one at the top of the narrow stairs of the second-class boardinghouse for which she'd pay an additional one dollar per month.

  Rebecca didn't argue-she wouldn't dare. Many boardinghouses did not take single women not living with relatives, especially divorced women, or charged them much higher rates than men. Those houses with too many needle girls from the factories feared being mistaken for brothels, and the landladies always preferred newlywed couples and male clerks when they had a choice. Rebecca's landlady, Mrs. Lepsin, made it clear that she originally had taken Rebecca in for two reasons: because she was not a shiftless Irish girl and because she was sharing the room with her brother. Now, though still not Irish, the other reason was dead, and it was clear Lepsin would prefer Rebecca gone.

  Rebecca packed her clothes and her belongings by the light of a solitary candle. There were no closets in the room, so some of her clothes were already folded and the rest hanging by rusted nails on the wall. As she did, she ate a small cake of chocolate she kept with some red and white peppermint sticks inside a glove box for what she called emergencies. Like when she was hungry before bed after a meal downstairs of cold vegetables and watery rice pudding at the crowded table. Or when having to suddenly dismantle one's whole room in a matter of hours, or be put on the street!

  The five-dollar monthly rent for the smaller room was more than Rebecca could possibly pay without Daniel's help, even with whatever reductions she'd find to make in her expenses. Savings accounted for, she would be able to pay two more months. If the firm's partners achieved their plan to defeat the pirates and profit as they deserved from The Mystery of Edwin Drood, it was widely expected that they would raise the bookkeepers’ salaries by seventy-five cents. If the pirates triumphed, the financial worries in the back offices of their building would worsen; salaries might even be reduced by twenty-five cents. The raise in salary had been a given before Dickens's death, but now it-and Rebecca's prospects to remain in the city-hung in the balance. When Rebecca had lived out in the country, with her carpenter husband, his income had been sufficient to keep up with the needs of a comfortable home with room to spare for young Daniel. He'd come to live with her and Ambrose on the death of their mother.

  Then the war came and Ambrose left with the army. In the brutal battle of Stones River, Ambrose had been captured by the Confederates and kept as a prisoner in Danville. By the time he returned two years later, he was a skeleton of himself, debilitated and withdrawn. His temper had grown worse; he beat her regularly on the head and arms and hit Daniel whenever he intervened. The triangle of beatings and retaliation became a pattern that seemed to be the only way to keep up Ambrose's spirits. Rebecca had done her best to steer Ambrose away from his violence, but when it proved impossible to protect herself and her brother she gathered her courage and left. She'd taken Daniel away to Boston, where she had heard there were new positions opening in offices for young women in what the newspapers proclaimed the postwar economy.

  That had been more than three years ago now. When she was able to afford the fees, and after a long process in the courts, she had secured a divorce from her husband. Ambrose, once notified by a country lawyer, did not object, remarking through a letter to the Boston judge that Rebecca's slender body had refused him any sons, anyway, and that her meddling brother was a worthless pest.

  Under the standards of Massachusetts law, it was two years before the divorce would be final and she could remarry. Until then she was legally barred from entering any romantic relationship with a man. During that waiting period-of which there was another year remaining-any violation, or even any appearance of violation, would nullify her divorce immediately and she would not be allowed to marry again.

  Being a wife was not foremost on her mind as she readied for the move upstairs. The other bookkeepers could talk all they wanted about weddings and where they would meet the coming mythical husband and how the latest ladies’ magazine advised that shaving one's entire head would lead to more lustrous hair once it grew back. All that wasn't her. Rebecca, despite everything, felt fortunate about her present situation. She had experienced marriage, and it had brought her only distress. Her post at the firm was different. True, she and the other girls at the office were “bookkeepers,” not clerks, and were paid a quarter of that paid to most of the male workers at Fields, Osgood & Co.-just as at all the other companies. But she relished her work and it supported her in a city full of young women waiting to snap up both her job and room. For that, and for the trust Osgood put in her to take care of herself, she had spontaneously thanked him before leaving the office.

  It may have been a strange thing to feel relief at trading a house and a husband for a shrinking boarding room and office work all day, but that's how she felt. She thought of the words of Mrs. Gamp, Dickens's garrulous character: “It is little she needs, and that little she don't get.” The little Rebecca needed, she got.

  Books, especially. When she lived as a young girl with her family on the farm, the books were her companions, sustenance feeding her mind. They had received a boxed-up library from an elderly man a few houses away who had died without family. She would stay up late with her candle adventuring with Robinson Crusoe and Dr. Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist. Living in the city, she found Bostonians particular and critical about their reading material, for she had never thought about books being judged rather than devoured. She felt that working in a publishing firm, she might learn to have a more discerning eye for books’ moral and literary merits. And if she were to be called a book keeper for the rest of her days, should she object?

  It was when she had to pack Daniel's side of the room that she began to feel exhausted. Her momentum broke. Before their move to Boston, Daniel used to talk about going to sea. When Rebecca had escaped Ambrose and sought a divorce, Daniel never spoke of those seafaring dreams again, never used them as an excuse to abandon her after she ran from her husband. He quietly had taken to building model ships in small glass bottles. Sometimes she liked to watch him as he worked nimbly and think how one day in the future she would insist on Daniel's taking a two year's voyage before the mast on a merchant passage. He'd finally break out of their bottled lives. These objects she now carefully wrapped in paper, watching that not one tear would spot the glass.

  A part of her tried to pretend that Daniel had not died, that he was only on that ship on some far-off commercial adventure to the Orient or Africa. As she closed her eyes and opened them again on his amazing creations, she saw herself on the ships inside those bottles, surviving his dreams. An uncommon thought for a young woman whose whole life was now about survival and isolation, the opposite dream of every other girl she knew, of every ribbon in their hair and feat
her in their hats.

  When the Sand siblings had first arrived in Boston, Daniel had become companions with a distant cousin of theirs, an indolent and hypocritical older boy. Together Daniel and his cousin drank and it became a matter of chronic intoxication. At one point, he fell off a horse they had stolen from a stable and nearly broke his neck. She alone nursed him through it, and when fourteen-year-old Daniel vowed he was through with his vice, she believed him wholeheartedly and brought him to Fields, Osgood & Co. seeking a position as shop boy.

  It was the first thing she had thought of when Osgood told her about Daniel's accident. Had he returned to his old state of habitual drunkenness? Had he been coming from one of the crumbling taverns that studded the wharfside? Then she thought about it and realized… Impossible. It was impossible! She would have known. She'd lived with this. She knew the signs-she would have known.

  She had seen him working the very day before his death with a steady hand on the painstaking arrangements of the battlements with the tiny pliers inside the spout of the bottle. That was the pursuit of the very sober.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, J. T Fields appeared in Osgood's office to commiserate. He had been reading the remaining chapters of The Mystery of Edwin Drood that had arrived after being resent from London. Fields took Osgood's arm and led the way downstairs.

  Sitting in the firm's employee dining room, Osgood studied the newly arrived packet of pages and listened to his partner's ideas. Fields ate cold tongue and a salad, wiping food from his chin whenever he paused to speak. “A mysterious and marvelous story. So the young man, Edwin Drood, disappears and his uncle John Jasper is suspected not only of having done some foul thing but also of desiring Drood's young fiancée. So an investigation begins, led by some mysterious newcomer called Dick Datchery. But we cannot know from these pages how Edwin Drood was meant to come back and enact his revenge.”