Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

Tom had not told Dolby what he now believed about the hotel invader: that he had stood face to face with the culprit in Brooklyn, that it was a woman, and that he had spoken with her. That all but certainly it was the same woman who committed the bizarre assault in the hall of the Westminster Hotel on the poor widow. Not only that, but Tom now remembered where he had seen her before-it had been the night of Dickens's arrival to America, in the dense crowd in front of Parker's, waving some papers she was demanding the novelist read. Tom knew his evidence would hardly be convincing, and could imagine Dolby's response: You think this lady, a lady you never saw in your life but once, followed us all the way to New York from Boston and back, and you think it because of her notebook? Could there not be another woman interested in Dickens's readings with a notebook that size, could there not be hundreds of people with hundreds of notebooks?

The woman had been dressed like a gypsy the night of Dickens's arrival to the Parker House, with a bandanna handkerchief tied around her neck and a too-small blue jacket. In Brooklyn, she wore a fine silk dress, sash, and shawl like an aristocrat. But what stuck out most in Tom's mind was the word she had called herself. An incubus. He had heard the fairy tales when he was a child from the other servants’ children in the underground kitchen of Dolby's estate-incubus and succubus, the demon visitors and tormentors of unsuspecting mortals. But it was succubus that was the female class and incubus the male. What had she meant?

Plenty of speculators and reporters had been following them from city to city but with naked motivation. It was the element of the unknown about this woman that began to disturb and preoccupy Tom. That image: a line for tickets, people who wanted nothing more than to see Dickens, and a woman standing outside of it, looking on jealously at the people she did not feel were worthy to see the Master. There was a dazzling, enthralling, unwanted air about her.

TWO MINOR EMERGENCIES occurred for their party back in Boston. First, the Chief could not find his pocket diary. The staff looked everywhere and could not turn it up. Dickens thought the last time he saw it was in New York in his hotel room. He insisted it didn't matter, since it was a record for 1867 and the year was about to end. He burned them at the end of each year, and this saved him the trouble.

Can she have taken it? Tom thought. Is that what she was doing lurking around the halls at the Westminster?

George Allison was the second emergency. He had fallen ill twice in the course of several days. It was discovered by the doctor at the Parker House that both times were preceded by a meal of bad partridge, who were often poisoned in the winter by berries when the bird's usual food supply was buried by snow. The substitute gasman, a nervous Bostonian, spent the afternoon of December 24, alongside the regular staff preparing the theater for that evening. He had received elaborate instructions at George's bedside, as though George were conveying his dying wishes. The newcomer was so eager to please Dickens he sprained his leg running up the stairs of the theater.

This provided an illustration of Charles Dickens taking charge of an emergency, which he did in high spirits and with relish. He walked the injured man with Tom to a druggist, where he ordered a particular type of mountain tobacco.

“Why, Mr. Dickens, you are like a doctor yourself!” the gasman exclaimed his appreciation, his cheeks aglow that he had been blessed enough to sprain his leg in such company.

“When you travel as often as I do, my boy, with as many men, you haven't much choice. Why, you should see the variety of blue and black phials and liquids waiting in my medicine chest. Laudanum, ether, sal volatile, Dover's powders, Dr. Brinton's pills. Trust your Chief. We live among miracles. This will heal you, body and spirit.”

That evening, when doors opened for the Christmas Eve reading, the galleries seemed to fill all at once. The two thousand went after their places so voraciously that the attendants and police at the doors scarcely had a hat or coat in place, and the decorative hollies and festoons had their red berries shaken loose and squashed underfoot.

“That's something!” one of the policemen said to Tom as they tried to keep some order. “Has it been like this for all the readings, or is this special for Christmas?”

“I suppose both,” Tom said.

“You're a Dubliner, aren't you?”

“My family is of Irish blood,” Tom agreed. “But I am English.”

“I can tell by your accent you're a Dubliner. Not that I pay any mind to it, you know. We have nearly forty of them on our force, you know. Say,” said the officer knowingly, “you weren't that same Paddy who started the riot at Dickens's ticket sale in Brooklyn as I read about?”

“You've read the wrong papers,” Tom said.

“No hard feelings, friend. Making conversation. Now, my wife, she adores your Mr. Dickens. I say, ‘Spend hard-earned money on something useful, just what we need another book in the house to sit on the shelf and take up space and be feasted on by the rats.’ She don't listen, says what do I know, only book I've read is the Good Book. ‘Tis true. 'Tis the best book there is. You a married fellow?”

As Tom turned around to answer, his eyes passing over a group of people walking by, he blinked in surprise: the same woman he had chased in New York. The incubus, this time, garbed once again in the clothes of a beggar.

“Don't know if you're married or not, fellow?” the policeman demanded. Then he laughed to himself. “But I understand Mr. Dickens doesn't know if he is, either. The man should be ashamed, if you ask me-I read he carried on with his own wife's sister. Shame!”

“Did you see that lady just now?” Tom asked.

“Lady?” the policeman responded. “There are a thousand people that just rambled in!”

The man was right-Tom had lost her in the surging mass. But he also knew this-she was in the theater, and he would have an hour to find her before the doors opened at intermission.

TOM BEGAN TO STALK through the sloping aisles as the audience members climbed over one another into their seats. He was stopped by someone grabbing his arm-Dolby. The manager was standing with a short, well-dressed man surveying up and down the theater. Tom had to think quickly. He did not want to lie, but he knew Dolby would not accept the truth; he'd probably give Tom his walking papers on the spot.

“The police are watching the doors, Mr. Dolby. I thought I should look for some of the known pirates we've seen here before.”

Dolby nodded his encouragement. “Well-done, Branagan. After the New Year, Mr. Osgood says the new condensed editions will put the freebooters out of business.”

Tom wished to be free of the manager, but Dolby didn't move. Instead, he took Tom's arm with one hand and the other man's arm with the other.

“Why, gentlemen, Mr. Aldrich was telling Osgood and myself the other day, the great Mr. Dickens, he was saying, the great Dickens has eyes when he is on the stage that are unlike any before in his experience, swift and kind, seeing what the Lord has done and what he intends. Eyes like exclamation points. This, you see, Mr. Leypoldt,” he said to the other man, “this is why we work so hard. You may explain this to your readers who have admired the performances. Because of the advances in transportation over the last years, the reading public has been allowed to know Dickens not only as an author but as a man with a voice, mannerisms, facial expressions. They have been able to come to know him as a person as had never happened before in the history of literature. We do our work for this !”