Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

Dickens had not been shy swatting aside this point. “Expenses in my life are so enormous,” he'd say, “that I feel myself drawn toward America like the Loadstone rock, as Darnay in the Tale of Two Cities is to Paris. America is the golden campaigning ground.”

Forster knit his brow and kept it knit. What profits could be made in America, land of paupers and thieves? Even if there were money to be made, the Irish would find a way to steal the money right out of the American banks. If the bank managed to somehow keep the money, the bank would surely fail, like all American banks! “Dickens should not go to America!” said Forster in a half shout. “I am opposed to the alpha and omega of the idea as an unacceptable breach of dignity and wish to hear no more about it. In tol -er-able!”

When Forster was told about the subordinates chosen to travel with the novelist, he was further appalled an Irishman was among them. What if the seemingly harmless Paddy were a Fenian himself with a secret plan to attack? Neither Dickens nor Dolby could exactly prove Forster wrong about Tom Branagan but managed to convince him that Tom was more ordinary porter than revolutionary.

Tom, for his part, found it interesting to observe that it was the members of the public who loved Dickens that caused the most concern. Tom had helped keep the onlookers away when Dickens had arrived at the Parker House; he was not surprised by their presence but by their persistence. A young woman yanked out a piece of fringe from Dickens's heavy gray and black shawl; a man excited to touch the novelist took the opportunity to pull a clump of fur from his coat. A lady energetically jumped up and down and waved a few pages of her manuscript, which she pleaded with Dickens to read. Tom looked into their faces. Did each think that Dickens would turn around and walk home with them arm in arm?

Tom knew one thing. He had never before in his life met a man to whom women would offer their seats in a public vehicle or anteroom-until he had met Charles Dickens.

On the second morning after Dickens's arrival to the Parker House there was an uproar on the third floor of the hotel where Dickens and his staff had their rooms. At first, Tom had only noticed that Henry Scott, his roommate, was leaning his head against the wall and crying.

“All right, Mr. Scott?” Tom asked, concerned.

Henry looked right at Tom, thankful to find a witness. He dropped his usual reticence and slumped into one of the plush armchairs. “Baggage handlers? Baggage smashers! ”

The trunks of Dickens's clothing from the Cuba had been delivered to the hotel crushed and dented. Tom sat down on the rug and helped Henry reorganize the clothes.

“Thank you, Tom Branagan,” Henry said, embarrassed. “It's more outrageous than a man could bear when one's work is treated like this. Beastly country!”

As soon as the two men had restored sufficient order to the wardrobe, there was another disturbance from across the hall. George Dolby was braying and shouting. He stood with Dickens and the others in the hallway of the hotel passing around a copy of Harper's Weekly. Tom asked if they were all right.

“See for yourself, Branagan,” said Dolby, pronouncing his name with a most stately explosion of the tongue that conveyed a measure of censure. “All right? Certainly not!”

In the magazine was a cartoon showing in grotesque caricature the figures of Dickens and Dolby barring the door of a room labeled “Parker House” against hordes of Americans on the other side. The cowardly Mr. Dickens was crying out, “Not at home!”

“I don't suppose this artist was actually present here,” Tom said after a moment of deliberation. “This drawing shows Mr. Dickens hiding in his room from the onlookers, which was not the case.”

“Of course he wasn't hiding!” said Dolby, aghast.

Dickens stroked the slight iron gray streak in his beard and, punching his cheek out with his tongue as he did at uncomfortable times, looked up wearily from the cartoon. “Weren't we? Didn't I come here to do just that: hide, then sneak out from my hole long enough to collect my profit?” The novelist sighed and limped into the room on his lame right leg, an old injury reawakened by the sea travel.

THAT NIGHT TOM woke up in the small hours. His eyes danced in the darkness of the hotel room to the mantel clock.

“Did you hear that, Scott?” he whispered across the room to Henry.

Henry Scott stirred in his bed.

“A noise,” Tom explained. “Did you hear a noise?”

Henry's face was in his pillow. “Go to sleep, Tom Branagan.”

Tom had been having trouble sleeping in the Parker House-there was something about its opulence that disoriented him. Tom was not certain he had actually heard a noise-or at least not a noise different from the usual ones from the busy streets of Boston outside-but he was glad to justify his uneasy wakefulness. The clock's ticking teased him out of bed.

He took a candle into the hallway, wearing a pilot coat over his long white flannels. Passing Dickens's rooms, he noticed that the door to the novelist's bedroom was open.

It looked like it had been kicked open. The inside latch broken.

“Mr. Dickens?” Tom knocked.

Tom went inside. For a moment, a strange thought flashed through him: how wrong it would be for anyone to ever see Charles Dickens sleeping. But the bed was in disarray and empty, and the novelist nowhere in sight.

Tom ran through the novelist's parlor glancing around for other signs of struggle and pounded with his fist on the door that adjoined with Dolby's rooms. As he entered, Dolby was pulling his dressing gown around himself. “What is it, Branagan? You'll wake the Chief!”

“Mr. Dolby,” Tom said, pointing. “Dickens is missing.”

“What? Heavens,” Dolby began to stammer, barely able to order to send for the “p-p-pol-l-lice!”

Just then Dickens himself strode in. “What is going on in here?” he asked, alarmed. He'd entered from the back staircase that connected by the private door to his room.

“Chief!” Dolby cried, rushing over to the novelist at full speed and embracing him. “Thank heavens! Is everything all right?”

“Surely, my good Dolby.” Dickens explained that thinking about the awful Harper's cartoon-and the shooting pain in his foot-had disrupted his sleep and he had decided to take a breather outside.

Dolby, tying the cord waist of his gown in a dignified fashion, turned to his assistant. “You see, Branagan, all is quite well in here. The Chief went down the back!”

“But it is the front door that was forced open, and the latch broken,” Tom said.

Dickens suddenly looked concerned as they confirmed this by examining the door. “Dolby, ring for a hotel clerk. No, don't! I don't want the whole staff to hear the bell. Fetch someone quietly.” Dickens hastily went to his desk and checked the center drawer. He appeared relieved at finding it locked.

“Do you think someone has been in here, Mr. Branagan?” Dickens asked.

“Sir, I feel it is very likely.” After a few moments of examining the room, Tom noticed a scrap of paper on the bed.

Dolby returned to the room. “I've sent Kelly downstairs. Is anything missing, Chief?”

Dickens had been surveying his belongings. “Nothing of consequence. Except…”

“What is it?” Dolby asked.

“Well, strange to say, isn't it, you'll likely laugh. But I notice there is a pillow taken from my bed, Dolby.”

“ A pillow , Chief?” Dolby asked. “Branagan, what have you found?”

“A letter, sir. It is difficult to read the hand.”

I am your utmost favorite reader in all of these vulgar American states. I anticipate with delicious fervor holding your next book in my hands. Your next book will be your utmost best, I know without qualification, because you are…