entering the fray on Forster’s side.
“It was a bad joke, nothing more,” I said, scoffing at their old-maid superstition. But things were connecting in my mind. On the night the child died, Dickens had paced the room expressing his own guilt and seeing Dora’s death as a punishment inflicted upon him by a literary God, who did not like the way he treated his characters. Indeed, maybe that was a sign of insanity, mixing up real people with fictional characters. If it was, however, then all of us—Dickens, Thackeray, even myself—belonged in Bedlam, rather than out walking the streets, sharpening our pens.
Within four days of that concerned dinner, Dickens was back in London. The house in Devonshire Terrace held such painful recent memories that from the evening of his return he took up permanent bachelor residence at the Household Words offices in Wellington Street. To my great surprise, when I entered the offices the next morning, he was sitting at his desk.
“Wilkie,” he said, rising and shaking my hand enthusiastically, “you and Wills have kept the ship from sinking, held her steady while the Captain was indisposed.” Quite pleased with his sailing metaphor, he beamed and shook my hand some more. Yet, as the day went on, I could not help but observe the very inconsistency which Forster had described. He would work with great intensity for a time, but then he would simply stop and sit looking off into space. By the middle of the afternoon, I had come to the conclusion that Forster’s theories carried more weight than I had allotted them. Dickens was, indeed, not himself. He was a man struggling against the spectres haunting his mind. Something new was needed to distract him from this now restless, now lethargic state of mental anguish. As if by a miracle, that something walked in the door at precisely five o’clock on the afternoon of April thirty-first. To our surprise, it was none other than Inspector Field of Bow Street Station.
“Mister Dickens, sir. And Mister Collins, sir.” Field stepped out of the stairwell. “Please forgive this sudden intrusion. Doubtless, I am the person you least expected to see disruptin’ the center of your lit’rary offices. Yet ’ere I am, and, believe it or not, I’m ’ere on business.” He punctuated his last assertion with a sharp tap of his demonstrative forefinger on Dickens’s desk.
“Inspector Field, what a pleasant surprise,” Dickens was veritably beaming as he leapt up from his chair.
I too rose and circumnavigated my desk to greet and shake hands with Field. It was only then that I noticed the everpresent Rogers lurking at the top of the stairwell.
Field was substantially encouraged by the heartiness of Dickens’s greeting. He scratched the side of his mouth with his crook’d forefinger, thus summoning a sly grin of renewed conspiracy. Dickens quickly pulled two wooden chairs up between our two desks and all four of us took our seats in a rough circle. Inspector Field’s momentary grin of conspiracy was replaced by an intense gravity, out of which the personal condolences of the man, and of the whole force of the Metropolitan Protectives were tendered. Dickens accepted his condolences with a sad up-and-down nodding of the head, a ritual gesture I had already seen him perform a number of times. I was beginning to recognize it as a piece of stage business, which Dickens-the-actor had improvised and polished as a stock reaction to this particular scene.
“You said that you’re here on business?” Dickens said, breaking the silence.
“I am indeed.”
“It couldn’t involve our mutual acquaintance, Lawyer Partlow, so recently encountered on the peaceful banks of the Thames, could it?”
“It could indeed.” Field took up his coy game.
How Field knew that Dickens had returned to London, I do not venture to guess. He seemed to know everything.
“I’m intrigued. What is it?”
“I want you and Mister Collins to become spies in my
“It was a bad joke, nothing more,” I said, scoffing at their old-maid superstition. But things were connecting in my mind. On the night the child died, Dickens had paced the room expressing his own guilt and seeing Dora’s death as a punishment inflicted upon him by a literary God, who did not like the way he treated his characters. Indeed, maybe that was a sign of insanity, mixing up real people with fictional characters. If it was, however, then all of us—Dickens, Thackeray, even myself—belonged in Bedlam, rather than out walking the streets, sharpening our pens.
Within four days of that concerned dinner, Dickens was back in London. The house in Devonshire Terrace held such painful recent memories that from the evening of his return he took up permanent bachelor residence at the Household Words offices in Wellington Street. To my great surprise, when I entered the offices the next morning, he was sitting at his desk.
“Wilkie,” he said, rising and shaking my hand enthusiastically, “you and Wills have kept the ship from sinking, held her steady while the Captain was indisposed.” Quite pleased with his sailing metaphor, he beamed and shook my hand some more. Yet, as the day went on, I could not help but observe the very inconsistency which Forster had described. He would work with great intensity for a time, but then he would simply stop and sit looking off into space. By the middle of the afternoon, I had come to the conclusion that Forster’s theories carried more weight than I had allotted them. Dickens was, indeed, not himself. He was a man struggling against the spectres haunting his mind. Something new was needed to distract him from this now restless, now lethargic state of mental anguish. As if by a miracle, that something walked in the door at precisely five o’clock on the afternoon of April thirty-first. To our surprise, it was none other than Inspector Field of Bow Street Station.
“Mister Dickens, sir. And Mister Collins, sir.” Field stepped out of the stairwell. “Please forgive this sudden intrusion. Doubtless, I am the person you least expected to see disruptin’ the center of your lit’rary offices. Yet ’ere I am, and, believe it or not, I’m ’ere on business.” He punctuated his last assertion with a sharp tap of his demonstrative forefinger on Dickens’s desk.
“Inspector Field, what a pleasant surprise,” Dickens was veritably beaming as he leapt up from his chair.
I too rose and circumnavigated my desk to greet and shake hands with Field. It was only then that I noticed the everpresent Rogers lurking at the top of the stairwell.
Field was substantially encouraged by the heartiness of Dickens’s greeting. He scratched the side of his mouth with his crook’d forefinger, thus summoning a sly grin of renewed conspiracy. Dickens quickly pulled two wooden chairs up between our two desks and all four of us took our seats in a rough circle. Inspector Field’s momentary grin of conspiracy was replaced by an intense gravity, out of which the personal condolences of the man, and of the whole force of the Metropolitan Protectives were tendered. Dickens accepted his condolences with a sad up-and-down nodding of the head, a ritual gesture I had already seen him perform a number of times. I was beginning to recognize it as a piece of stage business, which Dickens-the-actor had improvised and polished as a stock reaction to this particular scene.
“You said that you’re here on business?” Dickens said, breaking the silence.
“I am indeed.”
“It couldn’t involve our mutual acquaintance, Lawyer Partlow, so recently encountered on the peaceful banks of the Thames, could it?”
“It could indeed.” Field took up his coy game.
How Field knew that Dickens had returned to London, I do not venture to guess. He seemed to know everything.
“I’m intrigued. What is it?”
“I want you and Mister Collins to become spies in my
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