“Pardon?”
“His death, Mr. Osgood. It was precisely five years after the railway accident at Staplehurst. When he fell ill, I wandered to his calendar and I could not help think to myself, an ill wind that blows nobody good.”
As Henry bowed to depart, Osgood pleaded that he stay. “Mr. Scott, what can you tell me about what happened in the chalet yesterday with that man?”
“I am mightily sorry again for that,” Henry said adding another and lower bow. “I suppose a mad beast must have a sober driver, as the saying is. Why, if the poor Chief were present in spirit or in body, or in some middle way, he would not have his guests so harassed. And if there is one man clever enough to come to us in spirit, it is the Chief! Don't you think so, Miss Sand?”
Rebecca had an unwavering air about her that made every man seek her approbation for their ideas.
“I was just looking at his reading into spiritual topics, in fact, Mr. Scott,” said Rebecca.
“I'm curious what troubled that man,” Osgood interrupted.
“Ah, you might name anything and that likely qualifies as troubling that beastly sun-scorched loafer!” Henry explained that Dickens sometimes ministered mesmerism as therapy to troubled or sick individuals. He would lie them down on the floor or the couch and place them in a magnetic slumber until he woke them trembling and cold. There was a blind lady who credited Dickens's use of a magnetic treatment on her with regaining her sight. “This man, though, he was a special case,” noted Henry.
The man, a poor farmer, had been told by London doctors months earlier that he had an incurable illness. Having heard about Dickens's special skills he begged at the novelist's doorstep for treatment through spiritual and moral mesmerism. Dickens had been less active with his mesmeric power in recent years but relented and began the magnetic therapy for the man.
“Had it worked, Mr. Scott?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, perhaps it did work on him, Miss Sand-but the wrong way,” said Henry.
“What do you mean?” asked Osgood.
“One of the cooks told me that the farmer's illness was better, but his mental condition had become feeble during those mesmerism sessions. Now the poor tramp still lurks around, just like those dumb dogs out in the stables, as if the Chief is hiding in the woods somewhere with Falstaff's thieves and Chaucer's pilgrims, waiting to come back.” This Henry said in a tone more unconsciously sympathetic to the tramp than he knew.
WITH EYES RED from reading and copying, Osgood and Rebecca decided to return to the inn at the end of the day. Forster was waiting on the Gad's porch.
“Will there be more of your expedition in the morning?” asked the executor, as if genuinely interested, instead of just groping for information.
“After three days, we can find little in the way of clues other than a list of titles, some scribbled notes on the book, and some rejected pages, Mr. Forster,” Osgood admitted. “I fear we've exhausted your materials here.”
Forster nodded with barely concealed satisfaction, then hastily forged an expression of disappointment. “I suppose you shall return to Boston.”
“Not yet,” Osgood answered.
“Oh?” Forster said.
“If there is nothing to find inside Dickens's rooms, perhaps there is some clue outside them-somewhere.”
Forster's pupils dilated with interest, and he picked up a pen and a slip of paper. “You are an enterprising American, and I well know enterprising Americans detest wasting their time. Your search, I am afraid, Mr. Osgood, can merely be that: a waste. This address is where you can find me when I'm back in London, where I serve as lunacy commissioner, should you need me. Mr. Dickens was too good a man to attempt to mislead readers who trusted him: The end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood would have been just as it appears-a devious, jealous man who meant to snuff out an innocent youth and did-there is nothing more. Any other idea on the matter is pure stuff!”
Chapter 17
I emphatically direct that I be buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner, that no public announcement be made of the time or place of my burial, that at the utmost not more than three plain mourning coaches be employed, and that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long hatband, or other such revolting absurdity. I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb without the addition of “Mr.” or “Esquire.” I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works, and to the remembrance of my friends upon their experience of me; in addition thereto I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Osgood reviewed the will's language with Georgina Hogarth at the Falstaff Inn coffee room and offered opinions about her obligations in relation to Forster. The document created an admirably complicated distribution of responsibilities and burdens. Forster controlled all the manuscripts of Dickens's published works. But to Georgy, the document bequeathed all the private papers in the house as well as all decisions related to jewelry and the familiar objects from Dickens's writing desk, like the quill pen temporarily pocketed by Forster.
“Mr. Forster,” Georgy said to Osgood, “sees his duty as reminding the world that Charles should be worshipped. That is why Charles is buried in the Poets’ Corner rather than in our humble village, as he would have wished. If Mr. Forster could have moved Dickens's pen for him over the lines of this will, he would have.”
That afternoon, following the one-hour train ride from Higham to London, Osgood and Rebecca entered the most awe-inducing man-made spot in England, the Westminster Abbey. Both Osgood and his bookkeeper automatically leaned their heads back to the remarkable ceiling far above, where the expanse of pillars crossed like the tips of forest trees meeting each other in the morning sky. The light streaming into the Abbey was stained red from the ornamented rose-colored glass windows surrounding them.
In the south transept, the American visitors found the marble slab that covered the coffin of Charles Dickens. The grand monument at the Poets’ Corner inside the famous cathedral was surrounded by the tombs of the greatest writers. Dickens's itself was overlooked by statues of Addison and Shakespeare and a bust of Thackeray. Though little else from his instructions had been followed, the inlaid words on the tomb read as Dickens's will had requested.
Charles Dickens
Born 7 th February 1812,
Died 9 th June 1870
Hordes of people filed in to leave verses and flowers over the novelist's slab, and the remains of yesterday's offerings had begun to wither in the warm air of the Abbey.
As they stood there, a flower was tossed past Osgood and Rebecca onto the Dickens grave. The bloom had large, extensive petals of a wild purple hue. The publisher looked over his shoulder and saw a man in a wide-brimmed hat shading most of an angular, red face turning to leave.
“Did you see that man?” Osgood asked Rebecca.
“Who?” she replied.
Osgood had seen the face before. “I believe it was the man from the chalet-that queer mesmerism patient.”
Just then, a caravan of other Dickens mourners had appeared in the Abbey. They had come all the way from Dublin to see Dickens's final resting place, they explained to Osgood enthusiastically, as if he were the keeper. They crowded the Poets’ Corner, pushing Osgood to one side, and the mesmerism patient, in the meantime, had vanished.
Not sure where to turn next, Osgood and Rebecca walked the streets of London.
There was already a line of dead ends besides their search through Gadshill. They had heard there was a London resident named Emma James who claimed to have the entire manuscript of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. James turned out to be a spiritual medium who was dictating the final six installments of The Mystery of Edwin Drood from the “spirit-pen” of Charles Dickens and was soon to begin Dickens's next ghostly novel, titled The Life and Adventures of Bockley Wickleh
eap. Other rumors-for example, that Wilkie Collins, Dickens's fellow popular novelist and occasional collaborator, had been hired to complete his friend's work-quickly proved just as fruitless. They had also heard that at an audience with the royal court a few months before his death, Dickens had offered to tell Queen Victoria the ending.
“Mr. Osgood?” Rebecca said. “You seem ill at ease.”
“Perhaps I am somewhat overheated today. Let us pay a call on Mr. Forster at his office, he may know something about Dickens and the queen.”
Osgood did not want to be discouraging to Rebecca by saying more. He dreaded the possibility of returning to Boston to tell J. T Fields that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was never to be unraveled-that Drood was to remain lost in every way. That Fields, Osgood & Co., bearing the financial loss, could soon follow.
Protect our authors: Fields's mandate above all else. That is what Osgood thought about as they walked. His efforts in England were not only for the financial life of the company and all its employees, it was for the authors, too-Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Stowe, Emerson, and others. If the publishing house plummeted from its current financial precipice, how would the orphaned authors fare? Yes, those writers were beloved, but would the breed of publisher represented by Major Harper care about that? Without Fields and Osgood to protect them, would they be buried by obscurity, like Edgar Poe or the once promising Herman Melville? The true future of publishing was not publishers as manufacturers, as Harper foresaw, but publishers as the authors’ partners-the joining of the upper and lower half of the title page.
Osgood thought about all this responsibility that had landed on his shoulders. He actually had wanted to be a poet at one time: to think of it made him laugh inside! A young Osgood, top student, reciting the class poem at Standish Academy. He'd watched a dozen of his classmates leave to chase gold in California that October, but it was the quiet halls of college instead of the wild hills of California for him. Phi Beta Kappa at Bowdoin, class secretary, member of the Pecunian club, but friends with the rival Athenians. He had always been expected to be successful by everyone around him. It had been a worthy sacrifice of his own artistic ambitions to take up the cause of those artists and geniuses who otherwise might flounder.
With these thoughts pressing him down, they arrived at the government building that housed the Lunacy Commission, where Forster held a post. Osgood and Rebecca were greeted by a government assistant. Osgood explained that they wished to speak with Mr. Forster.
“Are you from America?” asked the assistant, brows raised with interest.
“Yes, we are,” Osgood said.
“Americans!” The assistant smiled. “Well,” he said with renewed seriousness, “I am afraid we do not have any spittoons in the anteroom.”
“That is well enough,” Osgood said politely, “as we do not have any tobacco.”
“No?” the assistant asked, surprised, then looked at Rebecca's mouth to confirm that she, too, was not currently masticating tobacco. “If you can wait for a moment?” The assistant returned with an address written down on a piece of paper. “Mr. Forster left the office some hours ago. I believe you can find him here. I have written detailed directions, for Americans never can find their way around London.”
“Thank you, we shall look there,” Osgood said.
The summer day had grown hotter and sloppier. London with its pavement and crowds of holiday strollers and industrious businessmen was less comfortable than Gadshill with its sloping fields and generous overhangs of vegetation.
After going in what seemed to be a few circles, Osgood looked at the street sign at the corner and compared it with the paper written by the assistant. “Blackfriar's Road, west side of St. George's Circus- this is where he told us to find Mr. Forster.” They were at a massive pentagon-shaped building that shaded the entire street. Osgood leaned against a stone pillar at the portico to pat his forehead and neck with his handkerchief. As he did, they could hear a loud exchange of words floating their way as if through a trumpet:
“It is quite a phenomenon in the history of friendships, that of this uncle and nephew.”
The man's voice was followed by a feminine one, which said, “Uncle and nephew?”
“Yes, that is the relationship,” answered the man. “But they never refer to it. Mr. Jasper will never hear of ‘uncle’ or ‘nephew.’ It is always Jack and Ned, I believe.”
Responded the woman, “Yes, and while nobody else in the world, I fancy, would dare to call Mr. Jasper ‘Jack,’ nobody but Mr. Jasper ever calls Edwin Drood ‘Ned.’
Osgood and Rebecca stood listening in disbelief.
“There,” Rebecca pointed excitedly.
Osgood wheeled around with a start. A placard along the side of the massive theater building heralded its upcoming productions for the Surrey Theatre season: Up in the World, The Ticket of Leave Man, and… The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens's play adapted by Mr. Walter Stephens and boasting, on its poster, “New and Elaborate Scenery!” and “a Powerful and unprecedented cast of characters that will hold the audience in thrilling excitement!” with “Charles Dickens's last book! Now complete!”
“Now complete,” Osgood and Rebecca read out loud.
After entering the lobby and climbing an enormous staircase, they found themselves inside a more massive auditorium than ever seen in Boston or New York. It was constructed in the shape of a horseshoe. Fifty feet skyward, an astonishing gold dome ornamented with delicate designs covered the whole space. At the base of the dome were Venetian red panels with the names of the nation's great dramatists: Shakespeare, Jonson, Goldsmith, Byron, Jerrold…
A confusion of people on the stage pulled away Osgood's attentions. The actors and actresses of this production of Drood were now shifting from rehearsing Septimus Crisparkle's conversation with the newcomer to the village, Helena Landless, to a different scene occurring in an opium room. But apparently they could not locate the actor playing the part of the Chinese opium purveyor.
Behind the stage, Osgood found a man who was standing dramatically still while a young woman was adjusting a garish cravat around his neck. As she worked on him, he studied the inside of his mouth and shook out his long dark hair in an oversize mirror. He had a large head, something of a phrenological masterpiece, with a delicate body that seemed to strain to support its upper portion. When the man stopped mouthing as and os, Osgood presented himself and asked for the person in charge.
“You mean the executor of Mr. Dickens, do you?” said the man. “He was here to peep and eavesdrop at rehearsal but already flew away, I believe, like a giant very fat eagle.”
“John Forster authorized this play, then,” Osgood said softly. “And are you an actor, sir?”
The man opened and closed his strong jaw several times in an attempt to overcome his amazement at the question. “Am I an… Arthur Grunwald, sir,” he said, extending a proud hand. “Gr oon-woul-d, sir” he corrected him with a French enunciation before Osgood could say it.
“Armand Duval in Dumas’ Dame aux Camélias at the St. James last season,” the girl fixing his cravat said discreetly while Grunwald pretended he could not hear his list of accomplishments. “Falstaff at the Lyceum's Henry IV. And you must have seen Mr. Gr oon-woul-d's engagement as Hamlet at the Princess. Her Majesty attended four times.”
“I am afraid I am not in London quite as often as the queen,” Osgood said.
“Well, sir!” said Grunwald. “I see what you are thinking- Gr oon-woul-d is a sight too slender and handsome to play the goodly portly knight with any manner of realism. Not so! I was praised for my Falstaff to the sky. I possess the role of Edwin Drood in this drama. Your friend Forster thinks because he authorized our production, he may oversee me, too! Tell me, where is Stephens?”
“Who?”
“Our playwright! Walter Stephens! Did you not say you were his publisher, hardly a minute ago? Have you forgotten, is your mind even as dull as that? Or are you an impostor, a dealer seeking my autogra
phs to sell?”
Osgood explained that he was the publisher of the late Charles Dickens rather than of the writer adapting the novel for the stage. Grunwald calmed himself again.
“All of Dickens's fame.” Grunwald lamented this into the mirror. On close examination, the actor was ten years too old to play Drood, though his skin had an aging artist's artificial glow of youth and romance to it. “So much fame, and it goes for nothing since he had not the most important thing.”
“What's that?” Osgood asked.
“To be happy in your children. Now, have you brought another wishful actress to us? I'm afraid she won't do. Next!”
“Beg your pardon,” said Osgood, “this is my bookkeeper, Miss Rebecca Sand.” Rebecca stepped forward and curtsied to the actor.
“Good thing. You would not get many roles, my dear, by walking around in all black as if you were in mourning, not without a more buxom upper form.”
“Thank you for the advice,” said Rebecca sharply, “but I am in mourning.”
“Grunwald, there you are,” said Walter Stephens, coming over from behind the stage in long strides. “I'm sorry, I do not think I've been acquainted with your friends,” he said indicating Osgood.
“Not my friend, Stephens. He was your publisher, until a moment ago.”
Stephens confusedly looked Osgood up and down, just as Grunwald was called to the stage to perform a scene. It was one in which he (as Edwin Drood) and Rosa, the beautiful young woman to whom he was betrothed, amicably discuss secretly abandoning their unwanted union. Jasper, the opium fiend who loves Rosa, meanwhile stands plotting on the other side of the stage the removal of his nephew Drood.
Osgood introduced himself to Stephens the playwright, who took the publisher's arm and led him toward the stage. Rebecca followed, staring excitedly at the complex machinery behind the scenes of the theater.
The Last Dickens Page 17
