I also wrote “partial story of my book” advisedly, since Dickens wanted to hear my general outline of two-thirds of the novel even though I had not decided the particulars of the specific ending. That longer reading-aloud, we had decided, would happen in June, when Dickens would make the final decision on whether my Eye of the Serpent (or perhaps The Serpent’s Eye) would appear in his magazine All the Year Round.
So on this beautiful late-May day in 1867, I spent an hour reading and telling the story of my novel to Charles Dickens, who—to his credit—was fully attentive, not even interrupting to ask questions. Other than my voice, the only sounds were the occasional waggon going by on the road below, the soft wind rustling leaves and branches in the trees on either side of the chalet, and the occasional humming of bees.
When I was finished I set the manuscript notes aside and took a long drink of water from the chilled carafe that Dickens kept in his writing space.
After a few seconds of silence, Dickens literally leaped out of his chair and cried, “My dear Wilkie! That is a wonderful tale! Wild and yet domestic! Filled with excellent characters and carrying a great mystery! And the surprise near the part where you leave off—well, it was an absolute surprise to me, my dear Wilkie, and it is hard to surprise an old writer warhorse such as myself!”
“Indeed,” I murmured shyly. I always craved praise from Charles Dickens, and now the pleasure from his words spread through me rather like the warm glow from my daily medicine.
“We shall definitely want this book for the magazine!” continued Dickens. “My prediction is that it shall outshine anything we have serialised to date, including your marvellous Woman in White!”
“We can hope,” I said modestly. “But would you not prefer to hear the outline of the last fourth of the book—when I decide how to tie up the obvious loose ends, such as the reenactment of the crime—rather than commit to purchasing it now?”
“Not in the least!” said Dickens. “However much I look forward to hearing you tell me the true ending in a week or two, I have heard enough to know what a splendid story it is. And that plot surprise! To have the very narrator not know of his own culpability! Wonderful, my dear Wilkie, absolutely wonderful. As I say, I have rarely been so taken by surprise by another writer’s dexterous plotting!”
“Thank you, Charles,” I said.
“May I pose a few questions or make a few minor suggestions?” asked Dickens as he paced back and forth in front of the open windows.
“Of course! Of course!” I said. “Besides being my editor at All the Year Round, you have been my collaborator and fellow-plotter for too many years for me to not benefit from the sagacity of your advice at this stage, Charles.”
“Well then,” he said, “about the crucial plot twist. Is it at all possible that having our hero, Franklin Blake, perform the robbery of the diamond under the influence both of laudanum—however surreptitiously administered—and the mesmeric control of the Hindoo jugglers, too much of a coincidence? What I mean is, the Hindoos he encountered on the lawn could not have known that our Mr… what was his name?”
“Who?” I asked. I had taken out my pencil and was hurrying to make notes on the back of my manuscript page.
“The medic who died with a scrambled memory.”
“Mr Candy,” I said.
“Of course!” said Dickens. “Well, my only point is that the Hindoos encountered randomly on the estate’s grounds that night could hardly have known that Mr Candy would have put opium in Franklin Blake’s wine as a sort of prank. Could they?”
“No…” I said. “I suppose not. No, they could not have.”
“So, in truth, the dual revelations of secretly administered laudanum and the mesmeric magnetism of the Hindoo mystics on the lawn may be redundant, no?”
“Redundant?”
“I mean, my dear Wilkie, it would only take the coincidence of one or the other to allow Franklin Blake to carry out his somnambulistic thievery, isn’t that so?”
“I think… yes… it is,” I said, making a few notes.
“And how richer it is for the reader’s imagination that poor Mr Franklin Blake steals the diamond from his beloved’s bureau drawer in an attempt to protect it, not under the evil influence of the Hindoos, don’t you think?”
“Hmmm,” I said. This reduced my Huge Surprise to a sort of odd coincidence. But it might work.
Before I could comment, Dickens had gone on. “And the odd, lame servant—I apologise; what was her name?”
“Rosanna Spearman.”
“Yes, lovely name for that odd and disturbed character— Rosanna Spearman. You say, early on, that she is a product of— that is, that Lady Verinder had hired her from, I believe—a Reformatory?”
“Precisely,” I said. “I rather imagined that Rosanna had come from some institution very similar to your Urania Cottage.”
“Ahh, which I set up some twenty years ago with Miss Burdett-Coutts’s help,” said Dickens, still smiling and pacing. “So I thought, my dear Wilkie. But I’ve taken you to Urania Cottage. You’re quite aware that all of the women there are Fallen Women, being given another chance.”
“As was Rosanna Spearman,” I said.
“Indeed. But it’s simply unthinkable that Lady Verinder or anyone of her obvious calibre would hire Rosanna if the lady knew that she had been a… a woman of the streets.”
“Hmmm,” I said. Having Rosanna being a reformed woman of the streets had been, precisely, my goal. It explained both her doomed infatuation with Mr Franklin Blake and the erotic subtext to that infatuation. But it was difficult to argue that anyone so refined as my fictional—and equally as doomed as Rosanna Spearman—Lady Verinder would have hired a prostitute, however reformed. I made a note on my page.
“A thief,” Dickens said with that ring of certainty that was so common to him. “You can make the poor Rosanna a former thief—then Sergeant Cuff shall still be able to recognise her, but as someone who came through his jail rather than a woman on the street.”
“Is thievery so much less evil than being a woman of the street?” I asked.
“It is, Wilkie, it is indeed. Make her a woman of the streets, no matter how well reformed, and Lady Verinder’s home has been contaminated. Make her a former thief, and the reader shall see the magnanimity of Lady Verinder’s spirit in her attempt to help her through honest employment.”
“A point,” I said. “A palpable point. I shall make a note to review Rosanna’s background.”
“And then there is the problem of Reverend Godfrey Ablewhite,” went on Dickens.
“I wasn’t aware that there was a problem with Reverend Ablewhite, Charles. During the reading you laughed and interjected that you loved the exposure of such a hypocrite.”
“And so I do, Wilkie! So I do! And so shall your readers. The problem is not with the character—whom you have admirably drawn as the hypocrite, social climber, and would-be pilferer of a lady’s fortune—but with his title.”
“Reverend?”
“Precisely. I am pleased that you see the problem, my dear Wilkie.”
“I am not sure that I do, Charles. Certainly the accusations of hypocrite and liar are all the more meaningful if it’s a man of the cloth who…”
“Of course you are right!” said Dickens. “We have all known such sanctimonious men of the clergy—men who wish all to see them as doing good, even while they are secretly striving mightily to be doing well—but the charge is no less effective if we soften the indictment to a Mr Godfrey Ablewhite.”
I started jotting the note but then stopped and rubbed my head. “It seems so… lessened, diluted, pared down. How is it that Reverend Godfrey is the chairman of so many Ladies Charities if he is not clergy? And what would such a change do to the wonderful line I had already set in my outline—‘He was a clergyman by profession; a ladies’ man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice.’ You yourself laughed aloud when I recited that to you not an hour ago.”
“So I
did, Wilkie. But it shall work just as well if you substitute… say… ‘barrister’ for clergyman. And we shall have saved the sensibilities of many, perhaps many thousands, of our readers from offence when none need be given in service of your admirable plot.”
“I am not sure…” I began.
“Make a note, Wilkie. And merely promise me that you will consider this change during the composition. It is, of course, the kind of thing that any diligent editor of any general magazine such as ours would be remiss not to bring up with the author. Indeed, if you were editing another’s manuscript, I am sure you would have raised the issue of demoting Reverend Godfrey Ablewhite to Mr Godfrey Ablewhite.…”
“I am not sure…” I began again.
“And finally, my dear Wilkie, there is the matter of the title.…” continued Dickens.
“Ahh,” I said, with some eagerness this time. “Which do you prefer, Charles? The Eye of the Serpent or The Serpent’s Eye?”
“Neither, actually,” said Dickens. “I have been giving the titles some thought, my dear friend, and I confess that I find both a bit diabolical and perhaps a trifle wanting from the commercial point of view.”
“Diabolical?”
“Well, the eye of the serpent. It does have Biblical connotations, Wilkie.”
“It has heathen Hindoo connotations as well, my dear Dickens. I have done a tremendous amount of research into various cults in India.…”
“And do any of them worship a serpent?”
“Not that I have discovered to date, but Hindoos worship… everything. They have monkey gods, rat gods, cow gods.…”
“And undoubtedly serpent gods as well, I agree,” Dickens said soothingly. “But the title still hints of the Garden and the serpent therein… that is to say, the Devil. And the obvious connection with the Koh-i-noor diamond makes any such connection absolutely unacceptable.”
I was totally at a loss. I had no idea what Dickens was talking about. Rather than splutter, however, I carefully poured myself more water, sipped it, and eventually said, “Unacceptable in what way, my dear Dickens?”
“Your gem, diamond, whatever you end up calling it, is so very obviously connected with the Koh-i-noor.…”
“Yes?” I said. “Perhaps. So?”
“You remember certainly, my dear Wilkie, or I am certain that your research has reminded you, that the original Koh-i-noor came from the region of India called, I believe, the Mountains of Light, and there was a persistent rumour, even before the diamond arrived on these shores, that the Mountains of Light had bad luck attached to every artefact from that area.”
“Yes?” I said again. “Such a deeply buried mental association will be perfect for The Eye of the Serpent… or perhaps The Serpent’s Eye.”
Dickens stopped pacing and slowly shook his head. “Not if our readers associate such bad luck with the Royal Family,” he said softly.
“Ahhh,” I said. I had meant the syllable to be mildly and noncommittally ruminative, but it sounded, even to me, as if there were a chicken bone stuck in my throat.
“And I am sure you remember, Wilkie, what happened two days after that stone arrived in England and six days before it was to be presented to Her Majesty.”
“Not precisely.”
“Well, you were young at the time,” said Dickens. “A fellow named Robert Pate, a retired lieutenant in the hussars, physically attacked the Queen.”
“Good heavens.”
“Precisely. Her Majesty was not harmed, but the public immediately connected the near-tragedy to the gift of the stone to the Royal Family. The Governer General of India himself felt he had to write an open letter to the Times explaining that such superstitions were absurd.”
“Yes,” I said, still jotting notes, “I have been researching Lord Dalhousie quite a bit in the Athenaeum library.”
“I am sure you have,” said Dickens in what I might have interpreted as an especially dry tone if I had been more critical. “And then there was the other terrible event associated with the Koh-i-noor… the death of Prince Albert.”
I quit writing notes. “What? That was just six years ago, more than eleven years after the stone arrived in England and was displayed at the Great Exhibition. The Koh-i-noor had been broken up into smaller stones in Amsterdam long before Albert died. What possible connection could there be between the two events?”
“You forget, my dear Wilkie, that the consort had been the designer and chief sponsor of the Great Exhibition. It was he who suggested putting the Koh-i-noor in the odd place of honour it held in the Great Hall. Her Majesty, of course, is still in mourning black, and some close to her say that at times, in the depths of her mourning, she blames the Indian stone for her beloved’s death. So you see, we must be careful in any names we give the book and any subtle references that might connect the Koh-i-noor and its effect on the beloved Royal Family with our fictional tale.”
I had not missed the use of “we” and “our tale.” Keeping my own tone dry, I said, “If not The Eye of the Serpent… or The Serpent’s Eye… what title do you imagine might apply to the tale of a diamond that had been set in the eye of a Hindoo statue to a serpent god?”
“Oh,” Dickens said airily, perching on the edge of his writing desk and grinning his editor’s grin, “I think we can dispense with the serpent god and the eye altogether. What about a title that avoids the sensational and invites the young female readers into the novel a bit more enthusiastically?”
“My books do wonderfully well with women readers,” I said stiffly.
“And so they do, my dear Wilkie!” cried Dickens, clapping his hands. “No one knows that more than I after your absolute triumph with The Woman in White. Why, there were a hundred eager readers for each instalment of that for every one reader who looked forward to my much more modestly selling Our Mutual Friend.”
“Oh, I would hardly say that…”
“What about… The Moonstone?” interrupted Dickens.
“Moonstone?” I said stupidly. “Do you suggest I have the stone brought back from the moon rather than from India?”
Dickens laughed easily in that loud, boyish laugh of his. “A marvellous jest, my dear Wilkie. But seriously… something like The Moonstone would interest the potential lady readers—or certainly not alienate them—and it has an aura of mystery and romance about it, without any hint of the profane or diabolical.”
“The Moonstone,” I muttered, just to hear the sound of it from my own lips. It sounded terribly flat and colourless after The Serpent’s Eye (or possibly The Eye of the Serpent).
“Wonderful,” cried Dickens, rising again. “We shall have Wills draw up a draft of the agreement with that as the proposed title. I tell you again that your outline was as exciting as reading the finished—or almost-finished—work itself will surely be. A marvellous tale filled with marvellous and delightful surprises. Your twist of the opium-induced sleepwalking where the hero himself steals the stone without remembering he did so is a stroke of genius, Wilkie, sheer genius.”
“Thank you, Charles,” I said again, rising and putting away my pencil. My tone held a tad less enthusiasm than it had earlier.
“It’s time to walk, my dear Wilkie,” cried Dickens, going to the corner to take up his stick and to pull down his hat from a peg. “I thought perhaps all the way to Rochester and back this beautiful May day. You are looking fit and ruddy these days, my friend. Are you game?”
“I am game for the first half to Rochester, where I shall catch the afternoon train back to London,” I said. “Caroline and Carrie expect me home for dinner this night.”
This last was a tiny fib; Carrie was visiting relatives in the country and Caroline thought I was spending the night at Gad’s Hill. But someone expected me for dinner that night.
“A half walk with a full friend is better than none,” said Dickens, setting his own manuscripts away in a valise and striding quickly to the door. “Let us away before the roads and pathways get dusty and the day gets
a minute older.”
IT WAS THE EVENING OF THURSDAY the sixth of June, and I was indulging in a minor pleasure I had cultivated since the early spring—that is, taking the mountainous mass of Detective Inspector Hibbert Aloysius Hatchery out for a pint and a snack at a local public house before turning myself over to his guardianship and then descending into the dockside slums and the even darker world beneath Ghastly Grim’s Cemetery in order to partake of what I had come to think of as King Lazaree’s Emporium of Subterranean Delights.
As I’d gotten to know Detective Hatchery better during our Thursday-night public-house stops, I had been surprised by some of the revelations from this huge man whom I had considered from our first meeting to be little more than a comic figure. It seemed he lived in a decent Dorset Square neighbourhood near my own home at Melcombe Place, and although his wife had died some years earlier, he had three grown daughters whom he doted on and a son who had just entered Cambridge. Most surprising, Hatchery himself read widely, and some of his favourite books, it turned out, were of my creation. The Woman in White was foremost amongst these, although he had only been able to afford reading it during its serialisation in All the Year Round some years before. I had brought a copy of the bound book this very night and was in the process of autographing it for my sometimes guardian when someone stopped at our table.
I recognised the brown tweed suit first, then the compact but heavy body poured into it. The man had removed his hat, and I noticed that his curly grey hair seemed longer than it had in Birmingham—but it had been wet then.
“Mr Collins,” he said, two fingers flicking towards his brow as if touching the brim of a hat that was no longer there, “Reginald Barris at your service, sir.”
I grunted a reply. I did not wish to see Detective Reginald Barris. Not that night, not any night. The memory of those terrible few seconds of violence in that Birmingham alley was just beginning to fade.
But Barris greeted Hatchery, who nodded back even as he was accepting the gift of my autographed The Woman in White—a conjunction of events that I found, unreasonably perhaps, treacherous—and Barris joined us at the table without even asking permission, boldly pulling up a chair and seating himself backwards on it, straddling it, his powerful forearms set atop the chair’s back. Aghast at his bad manners, I wondered for a moment if Barris—despite his Cambridge accent—was an American.