Drood (97 page)

I
WAS NOT
invited to Gad’s Hill Place for Christmas.

My brother went down with Kate, but Charley was in even worse favour than usual with the Inimitable, and they came back to London shortly after Christmas Day. Dickens had finished the second instalment of
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by the end of November and was trying to hurry the artwork for the cover and early interior illustrations, but after sketching that cover based on Dickens’s sometimes vague outline of the shape of the tale, Charley decided in December that he could not draw at such a rate without further harming his health. Showing his impatience—and perhaps even disgust—Dickens hurried up to London and conferred with his publisher Frederick Chapman, and they decided as a replacement on a young man new to illustration, a certain Luke Fildes.

Actually, as was almost always the case, it was Dickens who decided, this time based upon the advice of painter John Everett Millais, who had been staying at Gad’s Hill Place and who showed the Inimitable a Fildes illustration in the first issue of a magazine called
The Graphic.
When Fildes interviewed with Dickens at the offices of Frederick Chapman, the young upstart actually had the audacity to say that he was “of a serious nature” and thus would be best at illustrating (unlike Charley and so many of Dickens’s previous illustrators such as “Phiz,” who best loved the comic scenes) the graver aspects of the Inimitable’s novels. Dickens agreed—actually he loved both Fildes’s more modern style and more serious approach—and thus my brother, after only a final cover sketch and two interior drawings, was finished forever as Charles Dickens’s illustrator.

But Charley, who was in his own hell of battling his constant gastric problems, did not seem to mind (except for the loss of income, which was shattering to the couple’s plans).

Nor did I mind Dickens’s not inviting me to Gad’s Hill for Christmas after so many years of a pleasantly contrary tradition.

Word came from my brother and others that Dickens’s left foot had become so swollen that he spent much of Christmas Day in the library having it poulticed and sat at the dining table that evening with the swollen and bandaged limb propped on a chair. He was able—with help—to hobble into the drawing room after dinner for the usual Dickens-family games, although his contribution uncharacteristically (for Dickens did love his games) was to lie on the sofa and watch the others compete.

For New Year’s Eve, Dickens accepted an invitation to spend that Friday and Saturday (for New Year’s Eve fell on a Friday that year) at Forster’s luxurious digs, but according to Percy Fitzgerald, who heard it from Wills, who heard it from Forster himself, Dickens’s left foot (still poulticed) and left hand were still giving him much pain. However, he made fun of the discomfort and read the second instalment of
Edwin Drood
with such spirit and obvious good humour that the self-serious new illustrator, Fildes, would have almost certainly been at a loss to find a scene to illustrate if “grave” were his only criterion.

With his usual precision, Dickens timed the triumphant conclusion of his reading to the assembled party to finish exactly at the stroke of midnight. Thus 1870 began for Charles Dickens as it would continue until his end—with a mixture of extreme pain and loud applause.

I had considered giving another New Year’s Eve dinner party at Number 90 Gloucester Place, but I remembered that it had not gone so swimmingly the year before. Also, because the Lehmanns and Beards were some of my favourite guests—and since their children were angry at me for telling the truth about sports athletes (and since I still felt a tad uncomfortable in purely social settings around Frank since he had delivered Martha R——’s baby the previous summer)—I decided to spend the evening with my brother and his wife.

T
HE EVENING WAS QUIET
—one could hear their two loudest clocks ticking—and Charley began feeling unwell and had to excuse himself halfway through dinner so that he could go upstairs and lie down. He promised to try to waken and join us by midnight, but judging from the lines of pain etched on his face, I doubted if that would happen.

I also stood and suggested that I go (since there were no other guests), but Kate all but ordered me to stay. Normally this would have seemed natural—when I lived with Caroline, as I believe I may have already mentioned, I would often go to the theatre or somewhere and leave her with our male guests and think nothing of it—but things had been strained between Kate and me since the day of Caroline’s wedding more than a year earlier.

Also, Kate had been drinking much wine before dinner, during dinner, and now brought out brandy after dinner as we adjourned to the parlour, where the clock ticking was at its loudest. She was not slurring her words (Katey was a mistress of self-control), but I could tell from her rigid posture and the loss of plasticity in her expression that drink was affecting her. The girl I had known so long as Katey Dickens was—at almost thirty years of age—on the verge of becoming an old and bitter woman.

“Wilkie,” she said suddenly, her voice almost shockingly loud in the draped dimness of the little room, “do you know why Father invited you to Gad’s Hill last October?”

In truth, the question hurt my feelings. I had hitherto never required a
reason
to be invited to Gad’s Hill Place. Sniffing my brandy to cover my discomfort, I smiled and said, “Perhaps because your father wanted me to hear the opening of his new book.”

Kate waved her hand in a rather crudely dismissive manner. “Not at all, Wilkie. I happen to know that Father had reserved that honour for his dear friend Mr Fields, and that he—Father—was shocked when you came down to the library with him. But he could hardly tell you that it was a closed reading, as it was meant to be.”

Now I
was
hurt. I tried to make allowances for the fact that Kate was clearly inebriated. Still trying to sound pleasant, even slightly amused, I said, “Well, why then did he invite me for that weekend, Katey?”

“Because Charles—your brother, my husband—has been deeply upset in the estrangement between you and Father,” she said briskly. “Father believed that a weekend at Gad’s Hill would quell some of the rumours of that estrangement and cheer Charles up a bit. Alas, it did neither.”

“There has been no estrangement, Katey.”

“Oh, posh!” she said, waving her fingers again. “Do you think
I
do not see the truth, Wilkie? Your friendship with Father has all but ended, and no one, in or out of the family, is quite sure why.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I sipped my brandy and said nothing. The minute hand on the loudly ticking clock on the mantel crept far too slowly towards midnight.

I almost jumped when Katey suddenly said, “You have heard the rumours, I am sure, that I have taken lovers?”

“I certainly have
not!
” I said. But, of course, I had—in my club and elsewhere.

“The rumours are true,” said Katey. “I have
tried
to take lovers… even Percy Fitzgerald before he married that simpering little charmer of his, all dimples and bosoms and no brains.”

I stood and set down my glass. “Mrs Collins,” I said formally, wondering at how strange it was that another woman now took my mother’s name and title, “we have both, perhaps, celebrated with this wonderful wine and brandy a bit too much. As Charles’s brother—and I love him very much—there are things I should not hear.”

She laughed and waved her fingers again. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wilkie, sit down. Sit down! That’s a good boy. You look so silly when you play at being outraged. Charles knows that I have taken lovers and he knows
why
. Do
you?
”

I considered leaving without a word but instead sat down miserably. She had tried once before at Gad’s Hill, you might remember, to bring up this rumour that my brother had never consummated their marriage. I had changed the subject then. Now all I could do was look away from her.

She patted my hands as they sat folded on my lap. “Poor dear,” she said. I thought she was speaking of me, but she was not. “It is not Charley’s fault. Not really. Charles is weak in many ways. My father… well, you know Father. Even while dying—and he
is
dying, Wilkie, of some affliction none of us can understand, not even Dr Beard—but even while dying, he remains strong. For himself. For everyone. It is why he cannot abide the sight of your brother at his breakfast or dining table. Father has always abhorred weakness. This is why I did not allow you to finish that pitiful proposal of marriage, to become effective only after Charles is dead, of course, which you made on the night of… that woman in your life’s… marriage.”

I stood again. “I really must go, Kate. And you should go up and look in on your husband before midnight. He may need your help. I wish both of you the best of new years.”

She stood but did not move from the parlour as I went into the foyer and put on my coat and hat and muffler and found my stick. Their only servant had left after making dinner.

I went to the parlour doorway, touched the brim of my hat, and said, “Goodnight, Mrs Collins. I thank you for a lovely dinner and the excellent brandy.”

Katey’s eyes were closed and her long fingers were touching the arm of the sofa to keep her steady as she said, “You’ll be back, Wilkie Collins. I know you. When Charley’s in his grave, you’ll be back before his corpse is cold. You’ll be back like a hound—like Father’s old Irish bloodhound, Sultan—baying after me as if I were a bitch in heat.”

I touched my hat brim again and stumbled in my rush to escape out into the night.

It was very cold but there were no clouds. The stars were terribly bright. My polished boots sounded very loud as they crunched on the remainder of the week’s snow on pavement and cobblestones. I decided to walk all the way home.

The bells at midnight surprised me. All over London, the church bells and city bells were ringing in the New Year. I heard a few distant voices crying out in drunken celebration and somewhere, far away towards the river, something that sounded like a musket being fired.

My face suddenly felt cold despite the muffler and when I raised my gloved hands to my cheek, I was astonished to find that I had been weeping.

D
ICKENS’S FIRST READING
in his new and final series of London readings was at St James’s Hall on the evening of 11 January. The plan for the rest of that month was for him to read twice a week—on Tuesdays and Fridays—and then once a week after that until the series was to be completed on 15 March.

Frank Beard and his other physicians were totally opposed to these readings, of course, and even more opposed to Dickens’s making the frequent voyages into town by rail. To appease them, Dickens rented the Miller Gibson house at 5 Hyde Park Place (just opposite the Marble Arch) from January to the first of June, although he again told everyone he had done this so that his daughter Mary would have a local place to stay, as she became busier in society that winter and spring.

With Dickens in London most of the time, one would think that he and I would have crossed paths frequently as in the old days, but when he was not reading he was working on his book, and I continued working on mine.

Frank Beard had asked me if I might join Charley Dickens and him on nightly attendance at the Inimitable’s readings, but I declined for reasons of both work and my own health. Beard was there every night in case of emergency and he admitted to me that he was actively worried that Dickens might die on stage. That night of the first performance, Frank had said to Charley, “I have had some steps put up at the side of the platform. You must be there every night, and if you see your father falter in the least, you must run and catch him and bring him off to me, or, by Heaven, he’ll die before them all.”

Dickens did not die that first night.

He read from
David Copperfield
and the ever-popular Trial from
Pickwick,
and the evening, according to his own later accounts, “went with the greatest brilliancy.” But afterwards, with the Inimitable collapsed on his sofa in his dressing room, Beard found that Dickens’s pulse had gone from its normal 72 to 95.

And it continued to rise during and after each subsequent performance.

Dickens had scheduled two of his performances for afternoons and even one in the morning after a request for that hour from actors and actresses who wished to see him read but who could not come later in the day or evening. It was at this unusual morning reading on 21 January, with the seats filled with tittering and chattering young actresses, that Dickens first did the Murder reading again. Several of the periwinkles fainted, more had to be helped out, and even some of the actors in the audience cried out in alarm.

Dickens was too exhausted afterwards to show his usual delight at such a response. Beard later told me that the author’s pulse that morning, in mere anticipation of Nancy’s Murder, had risen to 90 and after the performance, with Dickens prostrated on the sofa and unable to get his breath back—“He was panting like a dying man” were Beard’s precise words to me—the Inimitable’s pulse was at 112 and even fifteen minutes later had dropped only to 100.

Within two days—he was meeting Carlyle for the last time— Dickens’s arm was in a sling.

Still he went on, continuing the reading series as planned. His pulse rose to 114—then 118—then 124.

At each intermission, Beard had two strong men ready to half-carry Dickens to his dressing room, where the Inimitable would lie panting, too breathless to speak except for meaningless syllables or incoherent sounds, for at least a full ten minutes before the author of so many long books could speak a single coherent sentence. Then Beard or Dolby would help Dickens take a few swallows of weak brandy mixed with water and Dickens would rise, put a fresh flower in his lapel, and rush back onto the platform.

His pulse rate continued to rise at each performance.

On the first evening of March 1870, Dickens performed his final reading from his beloved
David Copperfield.