Dan Simmons - Drood

I felt almost certain now that Dickens was attempting suicide by reading tour, but my earlier anger at the idea had faded somewhat. Yes, this would leave Dickens with his fame and with his burial in Westminster Abbey, argued one part of my mind, but at least the man would be dead. But some suicides fail, I reminded myself with satisfaction. The ball rattles around in the skull, carving tunnels through the brain, but the would-be suicide does not die, merely remains a drooling idiot the rest of his life. Or the woman hangs herself, but the rope does not break her neck and someone cuts her down, but too late to prevent all that loss of circulation of blood to her brain. For the rest of her life she has a scar on her throat, an ugly twist to her neck, and a vacant stare.

Suicide by reading tour, I told myself, might misfire in the same delightful way.

I had arrived earlier and taken a room, so Dickens was surprised and pleased to see me waiting at the station.

“You look well, my dear Wilkie,” he cried. “Healthy. Have you been out on one of your rented yachts in a late-February gale?”

“You look wonderful yourself, Charles,” I said.

Dickens looked terrible—much older and greyer, the hair all but gone from the top of his head, the few greying strands combed over, and even his beard appeared sparse and ill-kempt. His eyes were red-rimmed and there were purple hollows beneath them. His cheeks were gaunt. His breath was rank. He limped like a Crimean war veteran with a wooden leg.

I knew that I looked little better. Frank Beard had been forced to increase the number of morphia injections—always administered precisely at ten PM—from two or three a week to nightly. He had taught me how to fill the syringe and how to inject myself (not so difficult or onerous a project as it sounds) and had left a huge bottle of morphine for me. I doubled the nightly dose at the same time I was doubling the amount of laudanum I was taking during the day.

This led to increased productivity both day and night. When Dickens asked what I was working on, I told him truthfully that Fechter had all but moved in with me at Number 90 Gloucester Place and we were working long hours each day on our play, Black and White. I told him that I had an idea for another novel, one based on certain odd aspects of English marriage laws, that I would almost certainly commence work upon once the play premiered in late March.

Dickens clapped me on the back and promised to be at the premiere with his entire family. I wondered then if he would be alive a month from then, in late March.

What I did not tell Dickens was that each night now, after a brief morphine sleep, I awoke by one or two AM and dictated my dreams to the Other Wilkie. Our collaborative book on Ancient Egyptian Ritual of the Gods of the Black Lands now boasted more than a thousand handwritten pages.

That night in Edinburgh, Dickens performed the Murder brilliantly. I admit to having chills myself. The room was not overheated, as it may have been in Clifton, but still a dozen or so women fainted.

Afterwards, Dickens spent some time with members of the audience before staggering off to his dressing room, and once there he told Dolby and me again that he had noticed that people were strangely reluctant to come up and speak to him or stand in his presence after the performance. “They sense my murderous instincts,” he said with a rueful laugh.

It was here that Dickens handed Dolby a list of the remaining readings and Dolby made the nearly fatal (in terms of employment) mistake of politely suggesting that the Murder might be left off the programme for the smaller towns, merely reserved for major cities.

“Look, Chief—look carefully through the towns you have given me and see if you note anything peculiar about them.”

“No. What?”

“Well, out of four readings a week you have put down three Murders.”

“What of it?” snapped Dickens. “What on earth is your point?” I believe he had forgotten that I was in the room. As the ancient Macready had, I stood straight and silent with a glass of warming champagne in my hand.

“Simply this, Chief,” Dolby said softly. “The success of your farewell tour is certain, assured in every way, so far as human probability is concerned… no matter which selections you choose to read from. It therefore does not make a bit of difference which of the works you read from. This Sikes and Nancy reading is taking a terrible toll on you, Chief. I can see it. Others can see it. You yourself can see it and feel it. Why not save it for the big cities—or set it aside altogether for the rest of the tour?”

Dickens swivelled in his chair, away from the mirror in which he had been removing the modest amount of makeup he wore during readings. The only time I had ever seen his expression this furious was when he was play-acting at being Bill Sikes. “Have you finished, sir?”

“I have said all I felt on that matter,” Dolby said flatly but firmly.

Dickens leapt up, taking the plate that had held a few oysters and slamming down the handle of his knife upon it. It shattered into half a dozen pieces. “Dolby! D— n you! Your d— ned infernal caution will be your ruin—and mine! — one of these days!”

“Perhaps so, Chief,” said Dolby. The bear of a man was flushing bright red and I could swear I saw tears in his eyes. But his voice remained soft and firm. “In this case, though, I hope you will do me the justice to say that the infernal caution is being exercised in your own interest.”

Stunned, still holding my glass of champagne, I realised that this was the only time in my long association with Charles Dickens that I had ever heard him raise his voice to another man (other than in playacting). Even when he had so hurt my feelings that night at Vérey’s, his voice was always soft, almost gentle. The effect of Dickens visibly and audibly angry, in reality rather than performance, was more terrible than I could have imagined.

Dickens stood in silence. I remained frozen at the back of the room, forgotten by both principals in this unique dialogue. Dolby went to put the tour list on his writing case, turning away as if sparing his Chief his injured countenance. When he turned back, he saw what I had been seeing.

Dickens was weeping silently.

Dolby froze and before he could move a muscle, Dickens had—inevitably, characteristically—moved forward to embrace the bigger man with what appeared to be absolute affection. “Forgive me, Dolby,” he choked out. “I did not mean it. I am tired. We are all tired. And I know you are right. We will discuss this calmly in the morning.”

But in the morning—I was there at breakfast—Dickens left the Murder in all three readings and added one.

By the time I returned to London, I had observed or heard all of the following facts:

Dickens had been discharging blood, blaming his old problem of piles, but Dolby was less certain that this was the only reason for constant bloody diarrhoea.

The Inimitable’s left foot and leg were swollen again to the point that he needed to be helped to the cab and then into the railway carriage. The only time he appeared to walk normally was when he was going onto or off the stage.

He was melancholy, he admitted, beyond all words to describe it.

In Chester, Dickens was dizzy and confessed that he was suffering a mild paralysis. When a doctor was summoned, he told the man that he was “giddy, with a tendency to go backwards and to turn around.” Dolby later told me that when Dickens had tried to place a small object on a table, he had ended up awkwardly pushing the entire small table forward, almost toppling it.

Dickens told of a strangeness in his left hand and arm and explained that to use that hand—say, to set down an object or to pick it up—he had to look at it carefully and actively will it to do as he wished.