Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“Who?”

“Our playwright! Walter Stephens! Did you not say you were his publisher, hardly a minute ago? Have you forgotten, is your mind even as dull as that? Or are you an impostor, a dealer seeking my autographs to sell?”

Osgood explained that he was the publisher of the late Charles Dickens rather than of the writer adapting the novel for the stage. Grunwald calmed himself again.

“All of Dickens's fame.” Grunwald lamented this into the mirror. On close examination, the actor was ten years too old to play Drood, though his skin had an aging artist's artificial glow of youth and romance to it. “So much fame, and it goes for nothing since he had not the most important thing.”

“What's that?” Osgood asked.

“To be happy in your children. Now, have you brought another wishful actress to us? I'm afraid she won't do. Next!”

“Beg your pardon,” said Osgood, “this is my bookkeeper, Miss Rebecca Sand.” Rebecca stepped forward and curtsied to the actor.

“Good thing. You would not get many roles, my dear, by walking around in all black as if you were in mourning, not without a more buxom upper form.”

“Thank you for the advice,” said Rebecca sharply, “but I am in mourning.”

“Grunwald, there you are,” said Walter Stephens, coming over from behind the stage in long strides. “I'm sorry, I do not think I've been acquainted with your friends,” he said indicating Osgood.

“Not my friend, Stephens. He was your publisher, until a moment ago.”

Stephens confusedly looked Osgood up and down, just as Grunwald was called to the stage to perform a scene. It was one in which he (as Edwin Drood) and Rosa, the beautiful young woman to whom he was betrothed, amicably discuss secretly abandoning their unwanted union. Jasper, the opium fiend who loves Rosa, meanwhile stands plotting on the other side of the stage the removal of his nephew Drood.

Osgood introduced himself to Stephens the playwright, who took the publisher's arm and led him toward the stage. Rebecca followed, staring excitedly at the complex machinery behind the scenes of the theater.

“What brings the two of you to England?” Stephens asked.

“Actually, the same Mystery of Edwin Drood that has consumed your own attentions of late, Mr. Stephens.”

“We were quite robbed of its progress by the death of Mr. Dickens.”

“Then, I hope I may take the liberty of asking, how shall you convert it into a complete drama, without the ending?”

Stephens smiled. “You see, I have written an ending myself, Mr. Osgood! Yes, the life of the drama writer is not as luxurious as that of the novelists you publish. We must work with what is before us with great respect, but never so much respect that we fail to fulfill our task of pleasing an audience. When we read, we use our brains, but when we watch a performance, we use our eyes-much more trivial organs.

“Now, I fear I must attend to many matters at the moment. Shall you and your companion do us the honor of being our guests in our nicest box?” asked Stephens.

Osgood and Rebecca sat in on the day's rehearsal. They were of course particularly interested to see Stephens's original ending for the story. Dickens, in his final installments, had introduced the mysterious Dick Datchery, a visitor to the fictional village of Cloisterham, who acts as investigator in the case of the young Drood's disappearance after others have pointed an accusing finger at Neville Landless, Edwin Drood's rival. Datchery has other suspicions. But in Stephens's rendition, Datchery-with his flowing white hair covering his face-was revealed to be the feisty young Neville himself in disguise. Neville was to use his disguise as Datchery to confront John Jasper, Drood's uncle, with evidence that would cause the guilt-ridden Jasper to take his own life with an overdose of opium.

Osgood and Rebecca prepared to leave during the fourth attempt at staging this scene when Grunwald interrupted the other players.

“Where is Stephens? Ah, Stephens, what is this? What of the revised version of this act?”

“This is the revised version, Grunwald. Now, if you'd please remember you are too dead and your body incinerated by this point in the story to have such a corporeal presence on stage.”

Grunwald threw his manuscript pages into the air. “The hell with it! Hang the whole lot of you and dash your brains out! Perhaps you ought to find a different damned Edwin Drood!”

Stephens screamed back. “There are ladies present, sir, and Americans, who should not appreciate the vulgarity of your tongue!”

“Vulgar?” This Grunwald asked before he flew at Stephens with his fists up. Stephens pulled the actor's thick hair.

The manager ushered off the playwright and actor and instructed them to finish murdering each other away from the stage.

Osgood noticed two workmen walking toward the stairs to smoke. “I see Mr. Grunwald and Mr. Stephens were having words,” Osgood said to them.

“Aye, gov'n'r?”

“Do you know the meaning of it?” asked the publisher.

One of the workmen laughed at the foolishness of the question. “We should. They have the same ticklish row every day. Art Grunwald thinks it as clear as the blue sky above that Charles Dickens meant Edwin Drood to survive and come back at the end of the story to seek revenge on the man what tried to kill him. Mister Stephens thinks it most obvious Drood is dead and rotting in the quicklime.”

“What do you think?” asked Osgood.

“I think Grunwald thinks he's too good an actor to stay out of sight in the scene docks for the final act. I wish Dickens didn't die, I vow it deeply ‘fore God-then we wouldn't have to hear their bickering.”

OSGOOD WAS PACING BACK AND FORTH IN THE PARLOR AT THE Falstaff. Rebecca had just moments before read him a note from one of the queen's ministers informing them that Her Majesty had not pursued Dickens's offer to tell her the ending of Drood , thinking it more proper for her to be as surprised as her subjects by the installments.

“I half wish I could believe in the medium who keeps company with Dickens's ghost,” Osgood remarked.

“Perhaps Mr. Dickens himself may have believed,” Rebecca replied with a smile. “It seems he was taken with spiritualism. I wonder if we ought not study it for ourselves.”

“Surely you don't think highly of such practices, Miss Sand?”

“We might find a window into his private mind when writing the novel.”

Osgood sat in a chair and rested his head in his hands. “If a medium can inform us right now how to make a quarter of a million dollars in a quarter of a year, I shall become the most enthusiastic of her devotees. We cannot afford to waste any more time.”

“You are a born skeptic,” Rebecca said, dropping the topic but clearly hurt that Osgood dismissed her suggestion so quickly.

“I should think so. I have no fondness for phenomena, Miss Sand. I very much dislike the trouble of wondering. Forget the mesmerism, but think of the mesmerism patient. Do you remember what Henry Scott said about him?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Rebecca. “That he was a farmer who sought Dickens's help.”

“Scott said that the man was a regular visitor to Gadshill during the last months of Dickens's life to receive those ‘spiritual’ sessions. If this poor fellow was such a frequent visitor to Dickens's study,” Os-good continued, “might he have heard clues as to the novelist's plan for the end of the book?”

“Mr. Osgood, you'd be placing credence in the words of a man with a shattered constitution,” Rebecca pointed out. “You saw how he behaved at the chalet.”