It is somewhat more difficult for me to entertain at home since Mrs Caroline G—— left my home and service, but I still hope that you will be my guest at No. 90 Gloucester Place before too much more of the year passes. Also, as I am sure you have noticed despite your business with All the Year Round in our poor friend Wills’s absence, our wonderful success, No Thoroughfare, has finally closed at the Adelphi Theatre. I confess to have begun making rough notes about another play—I believe I shall call it Black and White, since it may be about a French nobleman who, for one reason or another, finds himself on the auction in Jamaica, being sold as a slave. Our dear mutual friend Fechter suggested the general idea some months ago—I plan to speak to him about it in detail in October or November—and Fechter would love to play the lead. In preparing this work I would be most grateful if I could avail myself of your advice and criticism so that I might avoid the more egregious errors so plentiful in my contributions to No Thoroughfare. In any case, I would consider it an honour if you and your entire family would be my guests at premiere night at the Adelphi should this modest effort ever succeed in being staged.
With final and abject apologies and most sincere wishes for a mending of this unforeseen and unwanted breach in the constant history of our cordial relationships, I remain . . .
Affectionately and Loyally Yours,
W. C. Collins
I looked this note over for some time, making small changes here and there, always in the direction of the contrite and servile. I had no fear whatsoever that this missive would someday come to light after Dickens’s sudden and mysterious death and cause curiosity in the biographer who read it. Dickens was still in the habit of annually burning every letter he received. (He would have burned every letter he sent as well, if he could have, but most of us who corresponded with the famous man did not share his pyromaniacal tendencies when it came to communications.)
Then I had George send it off by post and I went out to buy a bottle of good brandy and a puppy.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON I carried the brandy, a copy of this week’s All the Year Round, and the unnamed puppy with me as I took the train to Rochester and hired a carriage to take me to the cathedral.
I left the puppy in the carriage but took the brandy and paper as I walked through the graveyard to the back of the high, hulking cathedral. Rochester had always been a coastal city of narrow streets and redbrick buildings, which made this colossus of an ancient grey stone cathedral seem all the more impressive and oppressive.
This was the very landscape of Charles Dickens’s childhood. It was the presence of this very cathedral that had caused him to say to me years ago that Rochester reflected, for him, “universal gravity, mystery, decay, and silence.”
There was silence enough this hot, humid July day. And I could smell the stench of decay from the nearby tidal flats. Even with what Dickens had once called “the splash and flop of the tide” geographically nearby, there was no splashing audible this day, precious little flop, and absolutely no breeze. The full weight of the sun lay on the baking old headstones and browning grass like an incongruous gold blanket.
Even the shade of the cathedral tower gave little relief. I leaned back and stared up at that grey tower and remembered Dickens’s comment about how it had affected him when he was a tiny boy—“. . . what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, my dear Wilkie, in comparison with its solidity, stature, strength, and length of life.”
Well, Dear Reader, if I had my way—and I fully intended to—the cathedral might go on for centuries or millennia more, but the length of life for that little-boy-turned-old-man-writer was all but at its end.
At the far end of the graveyard, beyond the headstones, with only the slightest path leading to it, I found the quick-lime pit still open, still full, and as foul as ever. My eyes watered as I walked back through the graveyard, passing by the very stones and wall and flat headstone-table where Dickens, Ellen Ternan, Ellen’s mother, and I had shared that macabre luncheon so long ago.
I followed the soft TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP around the cathedral, past the rectory, and into a courtyard on the far side. Between the stone wall and a low hovel of stones and thatch, Mr Dradles and an idiot-looking young assistant were working on a headstone taller than either of them. Only the name and the dates—GILES BRENDLE GYMBY, 1789–1866—had been chiselled out of the marble.
When Mr Dradles turned to me, I saw that his face, under a layer of stone dust rivuleted with tracks of his perspiration, was red to the point of bursting. He mopped his forehead as I came closer.
“You probably do not remember me, Mr Dradles,” I began. “But I came here some time ago in the company of…”
“Dradles remembers ’ee, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins, named after a Sirred house painter or some’at,” rasped the red-faced figure. “You was here with Mr Charles D., of all them books an’ such, who was interested in the ol’ ’uns in their dark beds.”
“Exactly,” I said. “But I felt that you and I got off on the wrong foot.”
Dradles looked down at his worn, holed boots, which, I noted, were not “differentiated.” That is, there was no left or right to them, as had been the custom decades ago. “Dradles’s feet are the only ’uns Dradles has,” he said. “The can’t be no wrong ’un.”
I smiled. “True, true. But I felt that I may have left the wrong impression. I brought you this…” I handed him the bottle of fine brandy.
Dradles looked at it, mopped his face and neck again, uncorked the bottle, sniffed it, swigged it, squinted at me, and said, “This ’ere is better drink ’an Dradles is used to at the Thatched an’ Twopenny or anywheres else.” He drank again. His assistant, whose face was as red from the heat and labour as Dradles’s, stared stupidly but did not ask for a drink.
“Speaking of the Thatched and Twopenny,” I said conversationally, “I do not see your rock-hurling young devil around. What did you call him? Deputy? Is it too early in the day for him to be pelting you homeward?”
“That d—— ned boy is dead,” said Dradles. He saw my expression and chuckled. “Oh, Dradles di’n’t kill ’im, though Dradles thought to more ’an a time. No, the pox killed ’im and the pox be welcome to ’im.” He took another deep drink and squinted at me. “No gen’lman, not even Mr D., come up from London to bring Dradles ’spensive drink for no reason, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins. Mr D. wanted me to open doors for ’im with me many keys and tap-tap out the where’bouts of the ol’ ’uns in their hollers. What is that Mr Billy W. C. wants from old Dradles this hot day?”
“You may remember that I am an author also,” I said. I handed the stonemason and crypt-cathedral caretaker the copy of All the Year Round. “This, as you see, was last Friday’s number carrying the concluding chapters of my novel The Moonstone.” I opened the periodical to the proper page.
Dradles stared at the mass of type but only grunted. I had no idea whether the man could read. My guess was that he could not.
“It has come to pass,” I said, “that I also am doing some literary research involving a great cathedral such as this. A great cathedral and its attendant crypts.”
“’E wants the keys, Dradles thinks,” said Dradles. “’E wants the keys to the old ’uns’ dark places.” It would have seemed that he was addressing his idiot lop-eared assistant with the haircut that seemed to have been applied with sheep shears, but the boy appeared to be deaf and dumb.
“Not at all,” I said with an easy laugh. “The keys are your responsibility and must remain such. I would merely like to visit from time to time and perhaps avail myself of your expertise in tapping out the hollow places. I certainly would never come empty-handed.”
Dradles took another swig. The bottle was already more than half empty and the filthy mason’s face, even under the Marley-was-dead coating of dust, was redder than ever (if such a thing was possible).
“Dradles does an ’onest day’s work for ’is occasional tipple,” he said thickly.
“As do I,” I said with an e
asy laugh.
He nodded then and turned back to his carving—or, rather, to supervising the idiot boy in his carving. Evidently the interview was over and the contract had been consummated.
Mopping my own face from the heat, I walked slowly back to the carriage. The puppy—an ungainly but enthusiastic thing with long legs, a short tail, and spots—was leaping with joy on the cushioned seat at the sight of me.
“It will be just another minute, driver,” I said. The old man, half-dozing, grunted and let his chin fall back to his liveried chest.
I carried the puppy back through the graveyard, past our picnic site. Remembering how Dickens had made us all laugh when he put a towel over his arm and perfectly mimicked the behaviour of an efficient but officious waiter, carrying our dishes from the wall to the table-headstone, expertly pouring wine for us all, I walked on with a smile. The puppy had settled in the crook of my arm, its tail still trying to wag from time to time, and its large eyes looking up adoringly at me. Caroline, Carrie, and I had owned several dogs in the past decade and more. Our last beloved pet had died only months earlier.
A gnarled old tree near the rear boundary of the cathedral yard had dropped a branch about four feet long. Still carrying the puppy in my left arm, rubbing the back of its head and neck absently with my thumb as I held it, I picked up the branch, kicked away its small protuberances, and used it as a sort of walking stick.
In the weeds beyond the cemetery, I paused and looked around. The carriage and road were out of sight. Nothing and no one moved in the churchyard proper. From far beyond the cathedral came the TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP of Dradles’s—or, rather, Dradles’s apprentice’s—hot and careful work. The only other sound was the buzz and chitter of insects here in the weeds and high grass that led east to the tidal flats. Even the sea and its attending river were silent in this glare of sunlight.
With one smooth motion, I wrung the puppy’s neck. The snap was audible but not loud. The small body went limp in my arms.
I glanced around again and then dropped the puppy’s carcass into the lime pit. There was no dramatic hiss or bubbling. The little black-and-white-spotted form just lay there, a bit more than half submerged in the thick grey gruel of quick-lime. Bending and using the branch, I carefully prodded the puppy’s ribs and head and hindquarters until the tiny form was just beneath the surface. Then I tossed the branch into the high grass and marked the spot where it landed.
Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? I decided to give it seventy-two hours—and a little more, since I planned to wait until dusk—before coming back to use the same branch to poke out and analyse the results.
Softly whistling a tune that had become popular in the music halls that summer, I strolled back through the graveyard to the waiting carriage.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Three days later I received a pleasant note from Dickens thanking me for my letter, implicitly accepting my apologies, and inviting me out to Gad’s Hill Place at my earliest convenience. He also graciously suggested that I might want to visit my brother there, as Charley remained too ill to return to London.
I accepted the invitation and left for Gad’s Hill the same day. It was excellent timing, since I wanted to go to the Rochester graveyard lime pit that evening in any event.
Katey Dickens met me on the front lawn as she had some years earlier. The day was warm, but there was a pleasant breeze that brought the healthy smell of the surrounding fields. The carefully tended shrubs, trees, and red geraniums all stirred to that breeze, as did Kate’s long, gauzy summer dress. Her hair, I noticed, was pinned on the sides but down in the back: an unusual and not-unpleasant look for her.
“Charles is sleeping,” she said. “He had a terrible night and although I know you wish to see him, I think it better if he were not disturbed.”
I knew she was talking about my brother, not her father. I nodded. “I need to head back before supper, but perhaps Charley will wake before then.”
“Perhaps,” said Katey, but her expression suggested otherwise. She slipped her arm in mine. “Father is working in the chalet. I’ll walk you through the tunnel.”
My eyebrows rose. “Working in the chalet? I was under the impression that he was not writing fiction at the present time.”
“He’s not, Wilkie. He’s busy working on that terrible new murder-reading of his.”
“Ahh.” We strolled across the manicured lawn and down into the tunnel. As was almost always the case in summer, the cool air in the long, dark passageway was a relief from the humidity above.
“Wilkie, do you ever wonder about whether Father is right?”
No, I thought. Never. I said, “About what, my dear?”
“About your brother.”
I felt some alarm course through me. “About the seriousness of his illness, you mean?”
“About everything.”
I could not believe that she was asking me this. Rumours that Kate and Charley had never consummated their marriage continued, fueled by Charles Dickens’s malicious comments. If her father’s insinuations were to be believed, my brother was either a closet sodomite or impotent or both.
This line of questioning certainly would not do.
I patted her hand. “Your father hated losing you above all things, Katey. You have always been the closest to him. Any suitor or husband would have fallen under his wrath.”
“Yes,” agreed Katey. Modesty was never one of her more salient charms. “But Charley and I spend so much time here at Gad’s Hill Place that it is almost as if I never left home.”
I had nothing to say to that. Especially since everyone knew that it was her choice to live here when Charley was so ill—which was almost all of the time now.
“Do you ever wonder, Wilkie, what it would be like if you and I had married rather than your brother and me?”
I almost stopped walking. My heart, already accelerated by my mid-day liberal application of laudanum, began pounding against my ribs.
There was a time when I had considered courting the young Kate Dickens. During what everyone but the Dickenses thought of as “the divorce”—the terrible and permanent separation when Charles Dickens effectively sent his wife, Catherine, into permanent exile—young Kate, of all the children, seemed the most hurt and disoriented by the sudden dissolution of what most had thought of as the perfect English family. She was eighteen when all of the confusion and dislocation was going on—she became engaged to my brother when she was twenty—and I admitted to finding her attractive in some subtle way. Even then I sensed that she would not, as would her sister Mamie, put on the plumpness and matronly aspect of her mother.
But before I could even explore my interest in Katey, she had fallen in love—or at least become smitten—with Dickens’s and my friend Percy Fitzgerald. When Fitzgerald rather coldly rejected her maidenly advances, Katey had suddenly turned to my brother, Dickens’s illustrator and a frequent visitor to Gad’s Hill at the time.
I may have mentioned previously, Dear Reader, that this romantic interest on Kate’s part astounded all of us. Charley had only moved away from our mother’s home some weeks earlier and had never shown any serious interest in girls or courting.
Now this. It did not escape my awareness there in that concealing tunnel that Katey must have known, if only via her father’s love of gossip, that I had sent Caroline G—— away from my home and was now (to their knowledge) a prosperous and somewhat famous bachelor living alone with my servants and sometimes “niece” Carrie.
I smiled to show that I knew Kate was jesting and said, “It would have been a most interesting partnership, I am sure, my dear. Between your inimitable will and my unceasing intransigence, our quarrels would have been legendary.”
Katey did not smile. The end of the tunnel was an arc of light when she stopped and looked at me. “I sometimes believe that we all end up with the wrong people in our lives—Father and Mother, Charles and me, you and… that woman—perhaps everyone but Percy Fitzgerald and that simpe
ring lady of his.”
“And William Charles Macready,” I said in a pleasant, teasing tone. “We must not forget the ancient thespian’s second wife. It truly seems a marriage made in heaven.”
Katey laughed. “One woman who found happiness,” she said and took my arm and led me out into the light and let me go.
MY DEAR WILKIE! How wonderful of you to come!” cried Dickens as I came up into the chalet’s airy first storey. He leaped to his feet, came around his simple desk, and clasped my hand in both of his. I half-recoiled in terrible anticipation of a hug. It was as if our night at Vérey’s a month and some ago had never happened.
The Inimitable’s chalet summer workroom was as pleasant as ever, especially with this breeze blowing in from the distant sea and rustling all of the two cedar trees’ branches outside the open windows. Dickens had added a bent-back cane chair on the opposite side of his desk and now he waved me to it as he went back to his comfortable-looking heavy writing chair. He waved to boxes and a carafe on his desk. “Cigar? Some iced water?”
“No, thank you, Charles.”
“I cannot tell you how glad I am that all is forgiven and forgotten,” he said warmly. He did not specify who had had to do the forgiving and forgetting.
“I feel the same way.”
I glanced at the stacks of pages on his desktop. Dickens saw my glance and handed me several of them. I had seen this method before. He had torn pages out of one of his books—in this case, Oliver Twist—mounted the pages on stiff pasteboard, and was busy scrawling changes, additions, deletions, and marginal comments. He would then send these to his printers and have a final version printed up—three lines of white space between the oversized text, wide margins in which to add more stage and reading comments, and notes in very large script. This would be his reading text for the coming tour.