Oliver Twist Investigates

by G. M. Best

  ‘Most of my fellow students took comfort in possessing pets in the form of red-polls, linnets, canaries, and, the favourite of all, white mice. They trained their mice far better than the teachers trained us. I recall one white mouse, who lived in the covers of a Latin dictionary and who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, and turned wheels. He might have achieved greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession, when he fell into a deep inkstand, was dyed black and drowned. Amid such scenes of boyish fun, I was very conscious of having passed through scenes of which my classmates could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age and appearance. There were times when I felt it was an imposture to go there as an ordinary schoolboy. Nevertheless, I won prizes and great fame and I was assured that I was a clever boy.

  ‘Two years later my father’s continued inability to control the family’s finances forced me to leave. I took up a post as a junior clerk in the office of Ellis and Blackmore in Holborn Court. There I worked for eighteen months, using every moment of my limited spare time to learn shorthand so that I could become a reporter both of court proceedings and parliamentary debates. I was determined to have a job in which I was my own master, even if it meant struggling to make ends meet. Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried to do well. Believe me, Mr Twist, there is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent and sincere determination combined with hard work. I did not allow my resolution to cool. It was one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at with a perseverance I may honestly admire.

  ‘I became a reporter for the Mirror of Parliament, a newspaper run by one of my uncles. Most of the time the debates I listened to in the Commons and Lords were excruciatingly boring, a mixture of noise and confusion and pointless point-scoring. I used to observe the Members of Parliament going out and coming in, all talking, laughing, lounging, coughing, questioning, or groaning. They presented a conglomeration of confusion and conflict to be met with nowhere else, not even excepting Smithfield on a market day, or a cockpit in its glory. Night after night I recorded predictions that never came to pass, professions of action that were never fulfilled, explanations that were only meant to mystify rather than to clarify. I wallowed in nothing but words, working incredibly long hours. I drank coffee by the gallon to keep myself awake. With all the determination and energy of an eighteen-year-old, I was determined to make this just the step to a better career.

  ‘It was at this demanding time of my budding career that I found the romance which my brief and humiliating sexual contact with Nancy had so patently lacked. I fell desperately in love with the dark-eyed daughter of a banker. Her name was Maria Beadnell. If I say she was a picture of sweet loveliness, I do a disservice to her manifold charms. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love for her. Though I often was exhausted from my reporting, I would still walk in the early hours of the morning from the House of Commons to Lombard Street just to look at the house in which she slept. Oh, what fools love makes of us! For three years I swore every possible form of blind devotion and redoubled my efforts to achieve a career worthy of her. I loved her with the most extraordinary earnestness and I held volumes of imaginary conversations with her mother on the subject of our union. Believe me, you cannot overrate the strength of my feeling at that time. I would have died for her with the greatest alacrity! There never was such a poor and devoted fellow as I was.

  ‘Unfortunately her parents remained unimpressed by either my prospects or my efforts. Although I rose to become a reporter for the more prestigious Morning Chronicle, they ensured that the courtship ended in failure. Now that I am so successful, Mr Twist, I suspect they have lived to regret their actions. If so, I am pleased, because at the time no parents seemed crueller. My immediate response to their hostility and Maria’s rejection of my suit was to seek oblivion in drink but that only made me more wretched. So I plunged myself into new challenges, writing not only reports for the Morning Chronicle but also stories and articles for an offshoot paper, the unimaginatively named Evening Chronicle. Thus I moved seamlessly from reporter to writer and I assumed in the latter role the pen name of “Boz”, which was the nickname of one of my younger brothers. Looking back, my early stories were crude and ill considered, and they bear obvious marks of haste and inexperience, but at the time I was delighted because they were very leniently and favourably received on their first appearance.

  ‘I soon found myself moving in new circles and, in particular, I became a regular visitor to the home of my newspaper boss, George Hogarth, who had been one of the most eminent among the literati of Edinburgh and an intimate companion of Sir Walter Scott. I basked in the attention of his four pretty daughters, Catherine, Mary, Georgina, and Helen. The society of young girls is a very delightful thing and I gave myself freely to their entertainment and they to mine. I came to see in the eldest, Catherine, every quality that Maria had lacked. Although outwardly not as pretty as my former love, Catherine had every inward virtue that Maria had failed to possess. She was amiable and unassuming, generous and eager to please. She won my affection and I offered to marry her. She accepted and my writing proved as successful as my engagement. The public had taken Sketches by Boz to their hearts so I was asked to produce a more ambitious set of stories. At the very end of March in the year 1836 the first episode of my Pickwick Papers appeared in print. My powers of invention seemed to know no bounds. Do you know, Mr Twist, that, over the course of the next eighteen months or so, I created no less than eight hundred and sixty-five characters around Pickwick and set his adventures in almost one hundred and seventy different places?’

  I nodded. “It is, indeed, a vastly entertaining book, sir, and one I have read with pleasure more than once.”

  Dickens acknowledged my praise with a smile. ‘Yes, indeed, I was convinced I had freed myself from the past and all its heartaches and that my good fortune was secured. I obtained a special marriage licence in order to marry Catherine, even though she was still a minor. We set up our first home in a small three-roomed flat at Furnival’s Inn, and shortly afterwards Catherine announced I would become a father. My joy seemed complete. I shall never be so happy again as I was in those chambers. Though they were only three storeys high, I felt I had ascended to the entrance to Heaven itself. However, I did not realize that a serpent had already entered my Garden of Eden. Unbeknown to me, Nancy had come back into my life and she was about to make her presence felt again.

  ‘The previous autumn I had been writing some stories on prison life and, as part of my research, I had gone to Newgate Prison. I detest this gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London. Its rough heavy walls, small grated windows, and low massive doors look as if they were made for the express purpose of letting people in and never letting them out again. The throngs of wretched inmates, bound and helpless, know that within a few yards of their dismal cells the outside world passes them by, one perpetual stream of life and bustle. Those condemned to die are endlessly tortured by having to listen hour by hour and day by day to the light laugh and merry whistle of those who are free.

  ‘I delivered my credentials to the slovenly servant who answered my knock at the governor’s house. I was ushered into a little office, which had two windows that both looked into the Old Bailey. It was fitted up like an ordinary attorney’s office and contained a wainscoted partition, a shelf or two, an almanac, a clock, and a couple of stools on which perched a pair of clerks, dressed all in black. After a slight delay my guide arrived, a respectable looking man in his early fifties. He was also dressed entirely in black and he wore a broad-brimmed hat, which obscured much of his face. He led me through a couple of rooms to a door which opened on to a square, which itself led off into several paved yards. In these unhappy places the prisoners take such air and exercise as is permitted to them. After passing through what seemed an endless number of gates, each of which had to be unlocked and then relocked, we came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which wer
e discernible, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women. Most, as soon as they were aware of my presence, retreated to their cells. I discovered that one side of the yard was railed off into a kind of iron cage, less than six feet high and roofed at the top. Only within its confines were female prisoners permitted to communicate with any visitor.

  ‘Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating, conversing with family or friends, although a very large proportion of the prisoners appeared to have no one at all. Some inmates and visitors were prepared to speak about their lives to me. The others’ stories I surmised. I particularly remember one visitor – a yellow, haggard, decrepit old woman, dressed in a tattered gown which had once been a wholesome red but was now terribly faded and begrimed with indescribable filth. She clutched in her hands the remains of an old straw bonnet, with the remnants of a red ribbon. The personification of misery and destitution, she pleaded with a good-looking, robust female inmate, whose most prominent feature was her profusion of golden hair, which shook gently in the wind. This daughter, for such I took her to be, was unmoved by her mother’s entreaties. She appeared hardened beyond all hope of redemption and only showed interest when given the few halfpence, which her miserable parent had brought, ill though she could afford them.

  ‘Whilst I observed this scene and others I was, unbeknown to me, also being watched. I had been seen and recognized by Nancy, who happened to be visiting one of Newgate’s inmates. Nancy never forgot a face and she quickly recognized in me the naïve boy whom she had seduced, though at first she could not remember my name. She asked her associate if she knew who I was. She was told my name and that I was a respected writer and reporter for the press. However, she chose not to make herself known to me at the time and so I passed on to see more of the prison, including a similar yard for men, completely oblivious of what momentous events would stem from her having seen me. Looking back, I suspect she wanted time to investigate my career before speaking to me. I think it highly likely that she planned to try her hand at a little blackmail when the opportunity arose. If that was the case, your arrival at Fagin’s a year later put other ideas into her head about the use she could make of me.

  ‘One night towards the end of November 1836 I was making my way to the Hogarth’s house when Nancy approached me and begged for my assistance. I have to confess my immediate horror at seeing her again soon turned to fascination. She was, as you know, bewitchingly beautiful and her lively mind and infectious wit set her far above most of her peers. I was looking for a new idea for my next book because even my invention for fresh adventures about Pickwick was beginning to dry up. Nancy acted the role of Scheherazade to my need for a good story. She informed me she had a tale that would make people sit up and listen and she began to unfold the misadventures of a workhouse orphan called Oliver Twist and the terrible life he had led. I was immediately hooked. I sensed the potential in her account, and she knew it. The government had recently introduced significant changes in the Poor Law and the nature of life in the workhouse was a very topical issue.

  ‘Telling me more of your story became Nancy’s perfect excuse for securing further meetings with me, during which she exerted all her not inconsiderable charm. I foolishly did not see the dangers into which this would lead me. At that time fiction frequently pretended that the criminal was a kind of hero. Highwaymen, for example, were depicted as seductive fellows, amiable for the most part, faultless in dress, plump in pocket, choice in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry. They were fit companions for the bravest. I had no desire to write of such romantic highwaymen or moonlit heaths with merry-making in the snuggest of taverns. Instead I wanted to depict the cold, wet, shelterless midnight streets of London and the foul and frowsty dens in which hunger and disease dwell as the handmaids of crime and the destroyers of innocence. I wanted to portray thieves as they really are in the world which Nancy and I knew. I wanted to describe Fagin and his gang in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives, forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life.

  ‘I readily agreed to become a participant in your rescue from the clutches of those who had abused my own innocence and who were abusing yours. You know the details of how this was achieved. I then embarked on the serialization of your story in the February of 1837. By then my meetings with Nancy were becoming more difficult, despite the fact we had managed to remove you from Fagin’s control. I made the mistake of telling her how happy my life had become and, for reasons that I failed to understand, she became increasingly jealous of my relationship with my wife once Catherine gave birth to our first son, whom we christened Charles. She seemed to think that you, Oliver, united her and me in a way that was deeper and more significant than anything I shared with Catherine.

  ‘I soon realized that she thought any child born to me would somehow rebound upon my willingness to continue helping you. My defence of my wife – and I confess I foolishly compared her virtue with Nancy’s fallen state – seemed to send Nancy into a paroxysm of fury. She launched into such an obscene vocal attack on her that even now I cannot bring myself to repeat a word of it. She vowed to make Catherine pay for casting such a spell over me. To my undying regret I naïvely laughed at her curses and ignored her threats.

  ‘On the evening of 6 May, a date engraven forever on my memory, I went to the St James’s Theatre with my wife and her younger sister, Mary. She was staying with us in order to help Catherine following the birth of our son. The performance was a farce called Is She His Wife? which I had written. I was understandably very excited at the prospect of seeing my own writing, whatever its imperfections, being performed because I had long had a fascination with matters theatrical. Even as a child I used to go alone to see shows and, if challenged, I would pretend to look for somebody as if I had been inadvertently separated from the adult who had brought me. The theatre offered a different reality from the one I knew and I welcomed all its sham.

  ‘Imagine my horror, then, when Nancy intercepted us just as we were about to enter the theatre. She was acting as if she was a street-seller and was offering for sale some brandy-balls made of sugar, water, peppermint, and a little cinnamon. Knowing that the sale of sweets was far from her normal occupation, I was understandably suspicious of her motives. I tried to get Catherine and Mary to ignore her but my kind-hearted wife and sister-in-law would have none of my interference. Beguiled by her charm, they determined to buy some of her sweets and they criticized me for my unkindness to a poor woman who was simply trying to make an honest living. I managed to draw Catherine away but Mary talked further with Nancy and, to my frustration, I could not hear what was whispered between them because of the noise of the crowd around us. To my relief Nancy seemed content with the snatched conversation and did not press herself any further on our company. Mary also appeared untroubled by whatever had been said and we all enjoyed the show.

  ‘I thought no more of the matter until our return home at about one in the morning. My sister-in-law went to her room but, before she could undress, she gave a heart-rending cry and collapsed. We hurriedly called a doctor. He declared it was a problem with Mary’s heart. We applied every remedy that his skill and our anxiety could suggest. She seemed eventually to rally after a bout of being repeatedly sick and she managed to swallow a little brandy from my hand. She then entered into a calm and gentle sleep as I held her in my arms and I thought the crisis was past. It was some time before I realized that the body I held so lovingly had – without my being aware – breathed its last. I was merely holding her lifeless form whilst her soul had fled to Heaven. It pains me still that the very last words she whispered were of the love she felt for her sister and me.

  ‘Everyone who knew Mary loved her. She was one of God’s angels both in her looks and in her temperament. From the day of our marriage the dear girl had been the grace and life of our home, our constant companion, and the sharer of all our little pleasures. Her death tore
my newfound happiness apart. I was so shaken and unnerved by the loss of this dear girl that I was compelled for once to give up all idea of monthly work and to seek rest and quiet. As if being deprived of her sunshine was insufficient punishment, other calamities followed. First, my mother-in-law collapsed. Then, far worse, my wife, who had become pregnant again, suffered a miscarriage. And, through all this I hid from the world my conviction that Nancy had murdered my sister-in-law. I was sure the sweets had been poisoned and that their intended victim had been Catherine, but I had no proof – the remaining sweets had been thrown away before we left the theatre – and I was ashamed of owning up to my acquaintance with a whore.

  ‘People say I was overwhelmed with grief at Mary’s death to an unhealthy extent, but now you know the true reason for my despair. I had unwittingly brought a mild, gentle, and beautiful seventeen-year-old innocent into fatal contact with a woman drawn from one of the darkest hellholes in London. I could hardly sleep because Mary haunted my dreams, sometimes bearing in her arms the bloody corpse of my wife’s aborted child. I vowed vengeance on Nancy and I knew how to wreak it. It was a simple matter to let Fagin know of all the secrets she had betrayed. I knew I could count on him to see she was dealt with. You know the outcome. He told Bill Sikes, who was never a man to tolerate such an act of duplicity. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Bill battered her to death. I was responsible for the murder of a whore and a murderess and, may God forgive me, I still rejoice in her death and the manner of it. In my imaginings I sometimes feel that I am Sikes, that it is my hands that wield the repeated blows on her skull. And I tell you, Mr Twist, each hammer blow is my revenge for Mary’s untimely death.