Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“Mr. Osgood?” Rebecca said. “You seem ill at ease.”

“Perhaps I am somewhat overheated today. Let us pay a call on Mr. Forster at his office, he may know something about Dickens and the queen.”

Osgood did not want to be discouraging to Rebecca by saying more. He dreaded the possibility of returning to Boston to tell J. T Fields that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was never to be unraveled-that Drood was to remain lost in every way. That Fields, Osgood & Co., bearing the financial loss, could soon follow.

Protect our authors: Fields's mandate above all else. That is what Osgood thought about as they walked. His efforts in England were not only for the financial life of the company and all its employees, it was for the authors, too-Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Stowe, Emerson, and others. If the publishing house plummeted from its current financial precipice, how would the orphaned authors fare? Yes, those writers were beloved, but would the breed of publisher represented by Major Harper care about that? Without Fields and Osgood to protect them, would they be buried by obscurity, like Edgar Poe or the once promising Herman Melville? The true future of publishing was not publishers as manufacturers, as Harper foresaw, but publishers as the authors’ partners-the joining of the upper and lower half of the title page.

Osgood thought about all this responsibility that had landed on his shoulders. He actually had wanted to be a poet at one time: to think of it made him laugh inside! A young Osgood, top student, reciting the class poem at Standish Academy. He'd watched a dozen of his classmates leave to chase gold in California that October, but it was the quiet halls of college instead of the wild hills of California for him. Phi Beta Kappa at Bowdoin, class secretary, member of the Pecunian club, but friends with the rival Athenians. He had always been expected to be successful by everyone around him. It had been a worthy sacrifice of his own artistic ambitions to take up the cause of those artists and geniuses who otherwise might flounder.

With these thoughts pressing him down, they arrived at the government building that housed the Lunacy Commission, where Forster held a post. Osgood and Rebecca were greeted by a government assistant. Osgood explained that they wished to speak with Mr. Forster.

“Are you from America?” asked the assistant, brows raised with interest.

“Yes, we are,” Osgood said.

“Americans!” The assistant smiled. “Well,” he said with renewed seriousness, “I am afraid we do not have any spittoons in the anteroom.”

“That is well enough,” Osgood said politely, “as we do not have any tobacco.”

“No?” the assistant asked, surprised, then looked at Rebecca's mouth to confirm that she, too, was not currently masticating tobacco. “If you can wait for a moment?” The assistant returned with an address written down on a piece of paper. “Mr. Forster left the office some hours ago. I believe you can find him here. I have written detailed directions, for Americans never can find their way around London.”

“Thank you, we shall look there,” Osgood said.

The summer day had grown hotter and sloppier. London with its pavement and crowds of holiday strollers and industrious businessmen was less comfortable than Gadshill with its sloping fields and generous overhangs of vegetation.

After going in what seemed to be a few circles, Osgood looked at the street sign at the corner and compared it with the paper written by the assistant. “Blackfriar's Road, west side of St. George's Circus- this is where he told us to find Mr. Forster.” They were at a massive pentagon-shaped building that shaded the entire street. Osgood leaned against a stone pillar at the portico to pat his forehead and neck with his handkerchief. As he did, they could hear a loud exchange of words floating their way as if through a trumpet:

“It is quite a phenomenon in the history of friendships, that of this uncle and nephew.”

The man's voice was followed by a feminine one, which said, “Uncle and nephew?”

“Yes, that is the relationship,” answered the man. “But they never refer to it. Mr. Jasper will never hear of ‘uncle’ or ‘nephew.’ It is always Jack and Ned, I believe.”

Responded the woman, “Yes, and while nobody else in the world, I fancy, would dare to call Mr. Jasper ‘Jack,’ nobody but Mr. Jasper ever calls Edwin Drood ‘Ned.’

Osgood and Rebecca stood listening in disbelief.

“There,” Rebecca pointed excitedly.

Osgood wheeled around with a start. A placard along the side of the massive theater building heralded its upcoming productions for the Surrey Theatre season: Up in the World, The Ticket of Leave Man , and… The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens's play adapted by Mr. Walter Stephens and boasting, on its poster, “New and Elaborate Scenery!” and “a Powerful and unprecedented cast of characters that will hold the audience in thrilling excitement!” with “Charles Dickens's last book! Now complete! ”

“Now complete,” Osgood and Rebecca read out loud.

After entering the lobby and climbing an enormous staircase, they found themselves inside a more massive auditorium than ever seen in Boston or New York. It was constructed in the shape of a horseshoe. Fifty feet skyward, an astonishing gold dome ornamented with delicate designs covered the whole space. At the base of the dome were Venetian red panels with the names of the nation's great dramatists: Shakespeare, Jonson, Goldsmith, Byron, Jerrold…

A confusion of people on the stage pulled away Osgood's attentions. The actors and actresses of this production of Drood were now shifting from rehearsing Septimus Crisparkle's conversation with the newcomer to the village, Helena Landless, to a different scene occurring in an opium room. But apparently they could not locate the actor playing the part of the Chinese opium purveyor.

Behind the stage, Osgood found a man who was standing dramatically still while a young woman was adjusting a garish cravat around his neck. As she worked on him, he studied the inside of his mouth and shook out his long dark hair in an oversize mirror. He had a large head, something of a phrenological masterpiece, with a delicate body that seemed to strain to support its upper portion. When the man stopped mouthing a s and o s, Osgood presented himself and asked for the person in charge.

“You mean the executor of Mr. Dickens, do you?” said the man. “He was here to peep and eavesdrop at rehearsal but already flew away, I believe, like a giant very fat eagle.”

“John Forster authorized this play, then,” Osgood said softly. “And are you an actor, sir?”

The man opened and closed his strong jaw several times in an attempt to overcome his amazement at the question. “Am I an… Arthur Grunwald, sir,” he said, extending a proud hand. “Gr oo n- wo ul-d, sir” he corrected him with a French enunciation before Osgood could say it.

“Armand Duval in Dumas’ Dame aux Camélias at the St. James last season,” the girl fixing his cravat said discreetly while Grunwald pretended he could not hear his list of accomplishments. “Falstaff at the Lyceum's Henry IV. And you must have seen Mr. Gr oo n- wo ul-d's engagement as Hamlet at the Princess. Her Majesty attended four times.”

“I am afraid I am not in London quite as often as the queen,” Osgood said.

“Well, sir!” said Grunwald. “I see what you are thinking- Gr oo n- wo ul-d is a sight too slender and handsome to play the goodly portly knight with any manner of realism. Not so! I was praised for my Falstaff to the sky. I possess the role of Edwin Drood in this drama. Your friend Forster thinks because he authorized our production, he may oversee me, too! Tell me, where is Stephens?”