Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

Hearing this grim scenario, the passengers exhaled their excitement and by the time they returned to their staterooms were bored again. After a few days, thoughts of soon reaching England erased those of the escaped prisoner. Passengers packed up the contents of their staterooms into a few small valises and settled up surprisingly high wine bills with the stewards. Osgood likewise attempted to suppress the questions in his mind. Not Rebecca, though.

“It doesn't make sense, Mr. Osgood,” she insisted one afternoon in the library, tapping her fingers busily on the tabletop.

“What doesn't, Miss Sand?”

“The disappearance of the thief!”

Osgood, one hand locked behind his neck in his usual pose of concentration, looked up from his ledger abruptly but quickly resumed his preoccupied pose facing the window. “You mustn't think too much on that subject, Miss Sand. You heard the captain say that the man perished. If we believed otherwise, we might as well believe in sea serpents. And surely they would have devoured the thief, if we believed in them!”

“What kind of a man drowns himself to escape charges of petty theft? What if…?” Rebecca's voice trailed off there, replaced by her tapping fingers.

A few hours later, Osgood could be found pacing the deck alone as he had done the morning of Herman's trap. As they had sailed closer to England, he looked dreamily at the distant vessels with unknown destinies that sat high against the horizon. Osgood thought about the anxiety on Rebecca's face and knew what she had wanted to say earlier in the library: What if Herman were still alive, what if he comes back for you? He did his best to eject these thoughts by imagining what Fields would reply, holding his head erect and his beard thrust forward. Remember the reason for this trip. It is to end Dickens's mystery, not to create your own. Otherwise, our enterprises can become helter-skelter, our lives out of our control.

Two and a half years earlier: Boston, November 19, 1867

WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT TICKETS FOR THE FIRST OF the novelist's public readings would be sold the next morning, a queue started to form at the street door of the publishing firm. James Osgood ordered Daniel Sand to carry out straw mattresses and blankets for those spending the night in the cold, windy street. Fields had interjected that if they really wanted a happy crowd, the shop boy ought to bring down beer.

By dawn the morning of the sale, the mass of people outside stretched a mile and a half along Tremont Street. Some had brought their own armchairs to sleep in.

The two partners, Fields and Osgood, were watching from a window that had been hastily barred for fear people might climb in for the tickets. They were astounded to see that not only were aristocratic gentlemen shoulder to shoulder with Irish workmen but also that several Negroes could be seen amid the throng… and that three women had taken places in the rowdy line! This last fact was considered so touching by the men waiting in the arctic cold that after a vote, the first of the women was invited to take a position at the head. In honor of the rather English theme of the gathering, tea was brought out-though some of it was mixed with the contents of small black bottles.

In the line there were also the ticket speculators who would buy up seats and resell them at a profit. They had been expected, these enterprising vultures that populated America, but not so many. One speculator, among the most aggressive about obtaining and hoarding tickets, was dressed like George Washington, complete with the wig and hat.

As the sale progressed, big bald-headed George Dolby, shuttling back and forth along the crowd, was handed a telegram. “Sent from port at Halifax,” Mr. Dolby had said after first reading it silently. “Announcing the Cuba. Dickens en route to Boston right now! The Chief will be on American soil before nightfall!” The last words were drowned by cheers.

That was hours ago. It was pitch black by now at the harbor, bitterly cold, and no sign of the Cuba yet. What a crowd! Pressmen roamed the wharves in packs, ready to describe the novelist's first steps back on American soil for the morning editions. The customs officer lent Fields the steamer Hamblin to search the bay farther out. He and Osgood were joined on the steamer by Dolby, who had come from London early along with several assistants. The Englishmen wrapped their coats tightly against the frigid air.

“ Cuba in sight!” the lookout man barked.

They steamed ahead until they were alongside the larger ship. As they got close, they could see that it had become grounded by a mud bank. The party signaled for the gangway plank to be lowered between the ships. Bright rockets were bursting through the dark sky behind them in a grand display of welcome for the novelist.

The lookout, squinting, grumbled at Dolby, “That don't look like no author at all. That looks like an old gentleman pirate!”

High above them, Charles Dickens himself stood on the deck of the steamer, his flashy vest and gold watch chains illuminated in the halo of the fiery display in the sky. Lithe and standing tall, looking taller from such a height than his five feet eight inches, he peered down with arms outstretched.

The Americans on the smaller ship could not help showing surprise to see that Dickens's head was uncovered. After shouting back and forth with the crew of the Cuba , they helped Dickens across the plank into the smaller boat where he grabbed two hands at a time in his greetings.

The author seemed equally pleased and discomfited to hear about the waiting crowd at the wharf. “I see,” Dickens said, scratching at his grizzled imperial beard. “So I'm to face the public right away?”

“Your ship's accident with the mud bank, my dear Dickens, may work to our advantage,” said Fields. “We have chartered two carriages now waiting at the Long Wharf to take us directly to the hotel. As long as all eyes remain waiting for signs of the Cuba , you will arrive unnoticed and in peace at your hotel, with ample time for a light supper.”

But-as it happens when enough people are interested in a secret-the public picked up the trick. At the Parker House, the arriving party had to struggle through a waiting throng that had them cornered. “Hats off in front!” yelled the ones in the back of the crowd.

It was not until the party had been brought inside the Parker House and sat down for supper that the atmosphere began to relax. Then Dickens noticed. He did not say anything, but his plate of mongrel goose scraped against the table as he pushed it away. The waiter had left the door to the private dining room open slightly in order to allow the public a peek at the famous man.

“Branagan!” Dolby whispered urgently to the young porter he'd brought from England, who got up, crossed the room, and slammed the door. He then gave a hard stare to the offending waiter and whispered to him. The waiter nodded nervously, in apology-or perhaps fear, for this Branagan was hale and strong.

Later that evening, Dickens was slouched in the sitting room of 338 as his bathtub filled. “These people have not in the least changed in the last five and twenty years,” he was saying, falling fast into a somber attitude. “They are doing already what they were doing all those years ago, making me some object of novelty to gaze upon! Dolby, I should have kept my word.”