The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  I shook hands with Macready, who, in the exuberation of the moment, engaged me in some uncharacteristic raillery. “Young Wilkie,” he said knitting those burly brows in mock sternness, “when will you be presenting us with a play that we can perform?” I must smile as I think of it now, because five years later, after the first public performance of The Frozen Deep, Macready, in retirement then, would be the first to congratulate me with the gruff admission that “a modern part like that could tempt me to take the stage once again.”

  When my attention returned to detached observation of the festivities, I noticed that Paroissien, the stage manager, had disappeared, and that Dickens had broken off his jovial conversation with Macduff and Banquo, and was standing by himself, indecisively, as if momentarily suspended on the brink of some precipitous act. He was gazing across the room at the young woman in the serving girl’s blouse. Even as he stared at her from that distance, her face came up and their eyes met. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, and then Dickens moved decisively.

  For some inexplicable reason, I felt compelled to follow. I joined the two of them in time to overhear their fateful introductions.

  “My name is Charles Dickens.”

  There was a slight flutter in his voice as he said it.

  Her eyes were wide with excitement as she looked up into his.

  “I am Ellen Ternan.”*

  * * *

  *There is some confusion amongst Dickens scholars as to the appearance in Dickens’s life of Miss Ellen Ternan. According to the researches of Ada Nisbet and Edgar Johnson, Dickens did not meet Miss Ternan until five years later, in 1856. Professor Robert Altman, however, in his monograph, The Mystery of Ellen Ternan, asserts that Dickens met Miss Ternan as much as five years earlier, and supports that contention by comparing the stage productions in which Mrs. Ternan and her daughter appeared between 1852 and 1856 with the plays which Dickens himself attended during those years. Professor Altman’s comparisons show that during that time period Dickens never missed a theatrical production in which Miss Ternan performed. In fact, during that period Dickens developed the habit of returning to see some of these performances two, three, and, in the instance of the 1854 George Barnwell at the Covent Garden theatre, four documented times. It is, therefore, quite possible that the romantic backstage meeting of Dickens and Miss Ternan in 1856 was staged for the purpose of intentionally starting a string of events which would eventually thrust their long-standing relationship out into the open, thus giving Dickens the seeming motivation to separate from his afflicted wife, Kate. In other words, when Dickens finally decided that he wanted to go public with his affair with Miss Ternan, he re-orchestrated their dramatic meeting of five years earlier.

  Further, Dickens scholars disagree as to whether Ellen Ternan was nineteen or twenty years old when she and Dickens allegedly first met in 1856. However, Stanford Whitmore, who agrees with Altman that Dickens met the young actress much earlier, argues that she was only sixteen years old in 1852 when Dickens had developed a correspondence with her family employing a code name.

  Collins’s manuscript supports that theory that Dickens met her in her fifteenth year, served as her guardian for almost five years, and then, when she was of age, allowed her to surface and their connection to become public when he could no longer tolerate life with his wife. This scenario, for example, explains the episode of the bracelet in 1857 which precipitated the separation of Charles and Kate Dickens. Scholars have always taken this episode on face value, yet it is too obvious a blunder, especially for a man of the meticulous attention to detail and obsession for organization of Charles Dickens. How then did it happen? If Dickens had maintained a relationship, of whatever nature, with the girl for five years prior to the bracelet episode in 1857, then perhaps he intentionally orchestrated that episode to bring the situation out into the open. He wanted Kate to cut the cord of marriage.

  Finally, the obviousness and the attention-drawing quality of the oft-documented public displays associated with the Ellen Ternan legend of 1856-57—the backstage meeting, the bracelet episode, the notice in the Times, the highly publicized feud with Thackeray—can all be read as an elaborate smokescreen thrown up by Dickens the novelist to camouflage Ellen’s past, her residence in Miss Coutts’s Urania Cottage. Thackeray may very well have been a part of the whole plot with Dickens and Collins since he certainly, as evidenced by his feelings for Jane Brookfield, would be sympathetic to such an extramarital relationship. This Collins manuscript proves the capability of Dickens to turn his own life into an elaborate fiction, to plot and structure his and Ellen’s real life as if it were one of his novels: life (1851) becomes art (1856-57) to serve life.

  Inspector Field, Playwright, or, “Baiting the Trap”

  May 4, 1851—evening

  Following that evening of Macbeth at Covent Garden, where so much had transpired both on and off the case, Dickens seemed to rally and return to his vocations and avocations with a renewed enthusiasm. Before the sudden death of little Dora, Dickens had been tyrannically rehearsing his amateur troupe for a benefit performance of Bulwar Lytton’s new comedy, Not So Bad As We Seem. The Duke of Devonshire had graciously offered his residence, Devonshire House, in Picadilly, as the site of its opening benefit performance before Her Majesty and the Court. Rehearsals had only commenced, when first Dickens’s father, and then his younger child, had died so suddenly. With Dickens unable to continue, the date for the performance before the Queen had been tentatively reset for May twenty-second in hopes that, after a time of mourning, Dickens might feel inclined to take up the reins, and resume his seat on the box as both manager and actor. Now, to the joy and relief of all, that seemed to be exactly his intention.

  He ordered rehearsals to resume on May third in Devonshire House (the Duke having hospitably offered his manse, not only for the benefit performance itself, but for the getting up of the whole production). I had a small part in the piece, that of valet to Lord Wilmot, which was Charles’s lead role. Douglas Jerrold had another of the major roles, as did Augustus Egg. Wills had declined a part, in fact the part which was given to me, because he felt it might distract him from his duties at the Household Words office. Forster, in a masterful bit of casting, played a dour and inflexible Magistrate. Though much caught up in the rush of the rehearsals, neither Dickens nor myself had forgotten about Inspector Field’s murder investigation, which we had left backstage at Covent Garden Theatre. I was sure that the murder case was not all that Dickens had left backstage at Covent Garden.

  Three full days passed before Field once again summoned us. It was early evening, and rehearsal was drawing to a close at Devonshire House, when the taciturn Rogers materialized in the doorway. He saluted Dickens respectfully, and delivered Field’s summons to Bow Street Station. Dickens drew that rehearsal to a precipitate close, and we soon joined Field in the bullpen.

  First off, Inspector Field sat us down before the fire to give us a full report. Teasing, he began: “I’ve been keepin’ an eye on you two, I ’ave” (eyes a-twinkle) “and Rogers tells me you’ve been rehearsin’ a play the last two nights. Well, I’m proud to say, I’ve been workin’ on my own little play these three days past, since our night at Covent Garden.”

  But Field did not choose to elaborate on his theatrical metaphor. Instead, he announced the results of our little Covent Garden fishing expedition. “Meggy spotted all three of ’em, she did. Your Mister Paroissien, the stage manager, was the primary object, to be sure. With absolute certainty, ’ee is the man who stabbed Solicitor Partlow. The gatherin’ of the proper evidence is all that delays ’is takin’ up.”

  “What evidence need be gathered?” I pressed him. “Isn’t Irish Meg’s identification enough?”

  Field turned to me with the look one would give a small child who doesn’t understand the intricacies of an adult game. “Lincoln’s Inn lawyers make a ’abit of destroyin’ the testimonies of girls like Meggy.” Field spoke slowly. “She is not a person i
n a court of law. She is not ’ooman. She ’as no moral right to testify. For the lawyers and the ’onorable judges, she does not exist. She is no more than a low-class common criminal, a piece of garbage off the streets, a perversion of ’oomanity who sells ’erself every night to whoever can pay ’er modest price. No, we cannot take your Mister Paroissien to the dock on Meggy’s word alone. We need corroboration from some more ‘respectable’ members of society.” Field delivered this speech with a moral indignation and contempt for “Lincoln’s Inn lawyers” that bespoke a strong sympathy for Meg and those women like her, and indeed all members, whether male or female, of her disenfranchised class of the streets.

  “‘Respectable’?” Dickens echoed.

  “Yes,” Field grinned evilly at us, “from the two respectable gentlemen who helped Paroissien murder the esteemed ’oremongerin’ Solicitor Partlow.”

  For some reason, my pulse began to race, and the firelit world of the stationhouse began to blur and waver crazily before my eyes, as Field spoke of Irish Meg. My blood was up in indignation, but I held my tongue, not wishing to reveal my weakness for the woman to Dickens and Field. I could no more deny her identity as a human being than I could ignore that devil inside myself which longed desperately to see her again.

  “She picked out the other two as well,” Field said, continuing with his report. “Banquo and Macduff,” he laughed, using their character names. “Minor actors whom Partlow seems to ’ave regularly patronized. Banquo is a Mister Kenley Jones Fielding, and Macduff answers to the name of Martin Price. Both are middle-aged drunkards and ’orechasers whose propensities for the seekin’ out of every possible vice match up well with our reports of Solicitor Partlow. Meggy and I ’ad to wait until they removed their wigs, but then she was quite positive in ’er identification.”

  “But how do you propose to entice or force these two to offer evidence against Paroissien, to confess to their part in the murder?” Dickens asked.

  “Ah,” Field said, “why ‘the play’s the thing.’”

  Dickens looked at me: What ho! A detective who quotes Shakespeare?

  Inspector Field was a natural storyteller.

  “That night, after leavin’ Covent Garden Theatre, after payin’ Meggy for ’er trouble, Rogers and myself retired to our usual place down the ’all in The Lord Gordon Arms.

  “‘Mister Rogers,’ says I after we’re comfortably seated with our steamin’ cups of burnt gin, ‘we’ve got to draw ’em out. We’ve got to trap ’em before we can properly threaten ’em.’

  “‘Yessir,’ says he (and Field nods to Rogers who has joined us), ‘draw ’em out we must. Meggy is the ticket,’ says he after some consideration, ‘she’s the only witness, the only one who can put a scare into ’em.’

  “‘Very good, Mister Rogers,’ says I, ‘very good. But two of ’em are a bit much, even for an old trooper like Meggy Sheehey, to ’andle.’”

  “‘Two indeed might be too much,’ says ’ee.

  “And then it was that the idea came to me,” Field continued. “‘The play’s the thing,’ says I, ‘the play’s the thing!’”

  Dickens was quicker than I in intuiting Inspector Field’s meaning.

  “So you organized your own little play within the play, I take it,” Dickens spoke up.

  “There you are,” Field answered, “there you are!” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Right there in The Lord Gordon’s back room, Rogers and I put together our own little actin’ troupe, composed the parts they were to play. Subtle stuff it ’ad to be. We didn’t want to spook our Mister Paroissien.” He reined in, took a sip of his gin, then galloped on.

  “Rogers and I decided that we would work on our two corroboratin’ witnesses independently. We decided on someone on the inside and someone on the outside. Meggy would be our outside bait. But who for Mister Inside?

  “‘I think I’ve got just the man,’ finally says I.

  “‘And who might that be sir?’ says ’ee.

  “‘Why none other than our old and dear friend Mister Tally Ho Thompson,’ says I, waitin’ to see if Mister Rogers is goin’ to burst into volleys of laughter. There was, indeed, a long interval of quite contemplative silence as Rogers gave the depths of ’is gin glass ’is fullest attention.

  “‘No better choice in the city of London,’ finally says ’ee.”

  I could tell that Dickens was not only engaged, but fully entertained by Field’s playful narrative. “Man’s got an extraordinary gift for dialogue,” Dickens said later.

  “Well,” Field went on, “that settled, we ’ad our actors. All we ’ad left was to figure out what to do with ’em. It took another round of burnt gin to write our script.”

  “How did you know that Thompson and Irish Meg would consent to act in your little play?” Dickens interrupted.

  Field’s eyes narrowed somewhat as if he was trying to decide just how he was going to answer. When he did answer, he was brutal in his straightforwardness (and reinstated our view of the hardness of the man which had been temporarily softened by his playful narrative).

  “No choice for ’em. I own ’em and they know it. They play my game by my rules, or I put ’em where they can’t play any games at all.” He punctuated his cold statement of underworld reality with a brisk tap of his heretofore passive forefinger upon the wooden arm of his easy chair. For someone who had shown such indignation toward “Lincoln’s Inn lawyers,” he showed his own utterly pragmatic and ruthless side as well. In those days, there always seemed to be two sides to everything and everyone.

  “I take it then that this Thompson and our friend Irish Meg readily agreed to take their parts in your play,” Dickens pursued.

  “Oh, not at all,” Field grinned. “They fought like cornered rats to escape the ignominy of workin’, for a change, on my side of the law. Thompson pleaded professional ethics. Said a gentleman of ’is profession could not afford such an unsavory association. ‘Why, if it ever got out,’ ’ee said, ‘worse than peachin’.’ Meggy just whined and cursed and spat to the end of drivin’ up the price. Shrewd businesswoman of the Moll Flanders school that Meggy.”

  “But in the end, they went along, became your actors?” Dickens was thoroughly enjoying gathering this underworld material. I fully expected to encounter a highwayman-turned-actor in his next novel. I also wondered if a harlot working for the police would be the subject of my first.

  “Indeed they did. Once they saw the light, they fell into the project with ’eye enthusiasm, and with a talent which surprised even Sergeant Rogers and myself. It took me all of the next mornin’ to extract Tally Ho from Newgate. The man ’as a worldly sort of ’onor about ’im. I knew ’ee’d do the job because ’ee knew that doin’ the job would get ’im a clean slate. Rogers already ’ad Meggy waitin’ at Bow Street when I arrived with Thompson. They waited there for me while I negotiated with your friend Mister Macready the final detail of our little play within a play.”

  Once again, Dickens’s raised eyebrows betrayed his surprise.

  “I used your name. ’Ope you don’t mind?” Field said, countering Dickens’s eyebrows with a slight bending forward and a quick tap of his forefinger to Dickens’s left knee. “Soon as I mentioned you were on the case, Macready gave me ’is full attention. Needless to say, ’ee was a bit skeptical, but after I assured ’im that Thompson was a born actor and an excellent swordsman, ’ee took ’im on. ‘’Ee shall be one of the murderers in Act Three,’ ’ee said, and that was that. Inspired bit of type castin’, wouldn’t you say? I, of course, ’ad no proof whatsoever upon which to base my claims for Thompson’s talents, yet two night’s performances ’ave proven me a prophet. In fact, your friend Macready is so pleased with Tally Ho’s antics that ’ee ’as actually asked ’im to stay on in the role.”

  Dickens chuckled, and shook his head at Field’s inventiveness. “Thompson’s part in my play was to ingratiate ’imself with Fielding who is well known for ’is ’abit of drinkin’ in late-hours clubs.
Price was to be Meggy’s lookout. ’Ee is known to ’ave an eye for ladies of the professional sort. Neither of my actors seem to be ’avin’ any trouble in the playin’ of their roles. Last night Thompson drank late at The Blue Welkin Club with Fielding, and Meggy and Price retired to a backstairs room at The ’Addon Inn.” Field was pleased with his actors. I could not share his enthusiasm for Irish Meg’s part in his little play. Field was using her as a paid sexual performer. Perhaps he felt that her getting paid twice for a single performance justified her role. “She is a sharp businesswoman,” Field assured us.

  “It is interesting, is it not Inspector Field? You’ve brought the worlds of St. Giles rookery and Covent Garden together on the same stage.” Dickens was setting off on one of his philosophical flights, and I was just not in the mood for it. All I could imagine was Meg Sheehey seducing some stranger capable of strangling her. “A world of thieves and whores and highwaymen intermingling with the rich, supposedly civilized world of artists, lawyers, and even titled gentlemen. What no one realizes is that they are both the same world. The same fog blankets both. The same mud coats the boots of the gentleman, the actor, and the thief.”

  “Quite so. Quite so,” agreed Field. Dickens’s sociological ramble seemed to be working as a powerful soporific upon Inspector Field who was compelled to snap himself back to alertness. “Yes. Well. The curtain on Macbeth will be comin’ down, and the curtain on Field’s Folly or St. Giles Meets the West End or Rookeries and Kings, what you wish, will be goin’ up quite soon. Would you and Mister Collins wish to join Rogers and me in the stalls? Tonight we plan to tighten the noose a bit around both of ’em.”

  Field’s police carriage set us down a short distance from Covent Garden. The four of us, in a tight phalanx, found a sheltered point of vantage in the dark mouth of a narrow alley opposite the stage entrance. Field’s timing was precise. Within minutes after taking up our concealed position, Macbeth let out, and the streets were flooded with theatre-goers. The flood soon slowed to a mere trickle and Field turned to us: “Our actors shall be emergin’ soon. Look alive. There’s Meggy.”