The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens Read online

  Catherine was amiable, sweet natured, and kind. Also short, plump, and awkward in movement. It was a time in my life when I wanted a family and to be the master of my own home. I greatly admired her father, and he saw me as a young man of promise. The relationship also offered me a passageway to a more secure position in society.

  There is an adage that advises, “A man should select for his wife only such a woman as he would select for a friend were she a man.”

  By that measure, I chose unwisely. In May 1835, I proposed marriage to Catherine, and she accepted without pause.

  Better had she not. There is no disparity in marriage more troublesome than unsuitability of mind. Catherine had no interest in the world beyond her family and no experience with it either. She was of a social class above me but made a poor lion’s mate.

  At the time, I did not understand.

  Meanwhile, I continued to write. Sketches by Boz grew more popular. In autumn of 1835, a publisher named John Marone offered me one hundred pounds for their copyright with the intention of publishing them with illustrations in two volumes the following year.

  That brings my narrative to 27 January 1836, when George Hogarth invited me to dine with him at the Garrick Club. The club had been founded five years earlier for the purpose of bringing together patrons and practitioners of drama, so that actors and others of the theatre might meet on equal terms with men of education and wealth.

  The day was clad in one of the least engaging of the three hundred and sixty-five dresses in the wardrobe of the year. It was raw, damp, and dismal. In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of life. In the city, it had a foul stale smell and was a dirt-stained addition to the gutters.

  We dined in a large room with richly paneled walls before retiring to the club library. A gentleman with a hook attached to his right wrist approached another man who was standing by the fireplace.

  The man by the fireplace was in his mid-thirties with a sharp nose and prominent chin. He was elegantly dressed in a brown suit with a shirt of the finest linen, rich in pattern and scrupulously white. He seemed a bit haughty, as though requiring everyone who wished conversation to come to him. And come they did, each visitor enjoying an audience for so long as he politely allowed.

  Think for a moment of a long chain woven around a man that has a hold upon his thoughts for the rest of life. A chain of iron or thorns or flowers or gold. That chain would not exist to bind him but for the formation of the first link on the first day.

  For everything that followed in my life, this was that day.

  As a writer of fiction, I have been privileged to come and go as I please, to enter through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome all obstacles of distance, time, and place. But the recitation contained in the following pages is truth in its most absolute form. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies were within me, whatever might have been done differently and better, this is as I acted and as it all happened to me.

  CHAPTER 2

  The man standing by the fireplace in the library of the Garrick Club was not handsome. But he had the carriage of a handsome man and an aura about him that demanded attention. He stood with his arms folded for greater impressiveness of bearing. Everyone in the room was aware of his presence. I watched as he talked with those who ventured to his side and observed how readily they responded to him.

  “That’s Geoffrey Wingate,” George Hogarth told me. “He’s an ingenious man.”

  I knew of Wingate by reputation. Gentlemen on the street raised a forefinger to the brim of their hat as he passed by. He was a man of business who invested with great success on behalf of his clients, who were drawn from the ruling class. His money and the money he had made for them had caused him to be courted and admired.

  “I met him at a dinner not long ago,” Hogarth confided. “I think he will remember me. Would you like an introduction?”

  I thought that would be interesting, and Hogarth clearly wanted to remake Wingate’s acquaintance. So we crossed the room to the fireplace.

  Wingate acknowledged our approach. “Mr. Hogarth. It is a pleasure to see you again.”

  His voice was deep and rich. It seemed incongruous that a man of ordinary stature should have such a large voice, almost intimidating in the manner of physical bulk.

  Hogarth introduced me as “the young man who is betrothed to my lovely daughter, Catherine.”

  Wingate said that he was pleased to meet me, but there was no overdoing of it. He was pleased to meet me in a well-bred, mannered way. Then Hogarth added that I was “better known as Boz,” and Wingate’s demeanor changed.

  “Very impressive,” he noted. “You are such a young man. You must tell me how your writing began.”

  I was brief in my recitation. Then, to my surprise, Wingate handed me his card with the instruction, “We must talk further soon.”

  “I know how precious your time is,” I said deferentially.

  “Nonsense.”

  “A sketch by Boz in The Evening Chronicle would interest our readers,” Hogarth offered. “And nicely done, it could advance Mr. Wingate’s business interests.”

  “Precisely,” Wingate responded. “Mr. Dickens and I must set up a time to talk. I conduct business from my home. Would Monday next at two o’clock in the afternoon be convenient for you?”

  I said that it was.

  “I will see you then. For now, let me leave you with the thought that every man should live as comfortably as he can. My advice to you, sir, is, ‘Be as rich as possible. Be as rich as you honestly can.’”

  Wingate lived in a large house on a genteel street near Grosvenor Square. I arrived for my appointment a few minutes before the appointed hour. A brass knocker shaped like the head of a ferocious lion glared at me from the front door. I wiped my boots and was admitted by a servant.

  The house was spacious and grandly furnished with rich sofas, handsome mirrors, and high-backed damask-covered chairs. A second servant led me through several rooms and knocked on a closed oak door. Wingate’s voice sounded loud and clear, instructing me to enter. I did, and he rose from his desk to greet me.

  The room was magnificently furnished with formidable easy chairs, thick carpet, and cabinets inlaid with precious wood. A window behind an imposing leather-topped desk looked out on a plot of land cultivated as a garden. It was not the best time of year for a garden, but I could see that the space was beautifully kept. There were clusters of bushes and trellises on which flowers would bloom in the growing season.

  A large oil painting facing the window depicted a naval engagement with two warships firing cannonry at each other while several more vessels were blowing up in the distance.

  Wingate and I shook hands, and he gestured for me to sit opposite the desk. Then he took a seat. A thick green ledger with a red leather spine lay open before him.

  “I took the liberty of making some inquiries about your past,” Wingate said, beginning the conversation. “I am sure that, as a reporter, you will do the same of me if you have not already done so. Frankness is part of my character, so let me be direct and honest with you.”

  “I was not born in the front rank. I have no trophies of birth. It was not preordained that I should be a gentleman. Like you, I was forced by circumstances to make my own way in the world. I am what you aspire to be. If a man is born in possession of a silver spoon, it is not very difficult to keep the spoon polished. But if he is born in possession of a wooden ladle, the process of transmuting it to silver can be discouraging. I am thirty-six years old and a rich man now. Not so rich as some suppose, but wealthy. I have fought against the inequities of the world, and I have won.”

  “My business involves the combination of financial judgment and capital. Others supply the capital. I put in my ability and knowledge. I arrange investments, annuities, insurance, and other business ventures on the most favourable terms possible for my clien
ts in exchange for a small commission. The dividends on most of the investments that I arrange begin immediately and are substantial. I am a bold speculator but not a reckless one. I know what to invest in and how to back out quietly at the right time as well as any man alive. There is strict integrity in all of my transactions. There must be absolute honour among men of business, or business cannot be successfully carried on.”

  Wingate reached for the ledger on his desk and took a sheaf of documents from one of the cabinets. Books, papers, statements, and calculations were soon spread out before me. The entries were written in his own hand in a neat and precise manner.

  “Examine the affairs of my business for yourself so that you completely understand them,” he told me. “Then, write what you will. And if you feel comfortable with the idea, I would welcome your participation.”

  “I have no money to invest.”

  “That is not what I had in mind,” Wingate said with a benign smile. “In your work, you encounter many people. Most of them have no money to invest, but some do. For any new investors that you bring to the company, I would pay you a small commission. It would take little effort or time on your part.”

  “I would have to know more before committing myself to your cause.”

  “Study my business. Look into anything and everything as you choose. Pursue a situation with me, and it will make your fortune.”

  Wingate stood up and moved away from his desk, a sign that our meeting was over. He walked me to the door of his office . . . opened it . . . and I heard music.

  “Amanda is playing,” he told me. “Come, you must meet my wife.”

  He led me through the house to a room off the parlour. A woman sitting in a chair was running her fingers along the column strings of a Celtic harp. She was my age, possibly a year or two younger.

  I had never seen a woman so beautiful before. I am quite certain of that. Even in my imagination, it would have been difficult to create such beauty. Her face was magnificent, every feature clearly defined. Her cheekbones were high, her nose perfectly formed, her complexion fair. I wondered what colour her eyes were when, at that moment, she turned to face me.

  Hazel.

  “Allow me to introduce my wife,” Wingate said. “Mr. Dickens, this is Amanda. Amanda, this is Mr. Charles Dickens. He intends to write about my business.”

  Amanda Wingate rose and offered her hand. She was almost as tall as I was, exquisitely shaped with a full bust and slender waist. Her chestnut-coloured hair fell in waves below her shoulders. Nature had given her the carriage of a lady. There was majesty in her eye.

  “I hope that I am not the cause of your ceasing to play such beautiful music,” I offered.

  “My goodness, no.”

  “Why did you not go on then?”

  “I left off as I began, of my own fancy.”

  The light of the late-afternoon sun danced on the floor, filtering through the colours of a small stained-glass window.

  First impressions last for a long time. This one would last forever.

  No further words were spoken other than the pleasantries of parting.

  Geoffrey Wingate walked me to the front door. “You may be perfectly certain of one thing,” he said as I took my leave. “I am an honest man. Truth is a friend to those who are good.”

  There was a great deal to do in the aftermath of my meeting with Wingate. Fourteen months earlier, my brother Frederick and I had moved into chambers at Furnival’s Inn. We had three small rooms, none of which were big enough to swing a cat in. I had not wanted to swing a cat, so that was of no concern to me. But now, in preparation for my marriage to Catherine, I signed a lease on larger accommodations in the same dwelling.

  On the eighth day of February, one day after my twenty-fourth birthday, Sketches by Boz was published in two volumes. Meanwhile, I had been approached by another publisher and asked to write a series of adventures about a gentlemen’s sporting club with characters who come and go like the men and women we encounter in the real world. It was intended that the series, entitled The Pickwick Papers, be published in monthly serial numbers of twenty-four pages each, a form known to me only by recollection of a class of novels carried about the country by peddlers. I agreed to the undertaking because I was to be paid fourteen pounds, three shillings for each serial part.

  I also decided that I should make further inquiry into Geoffrey Wingate’s business before I wrote about him. In essence, he sold pieces of paper bearing a pledge to pay substantial sums in return. Then he invested his client’s money in the stock of public companies; commodities such as wine, silver, and coal; annuities; insurance; and other business ventures. My time in the courts had given me a rudimentary understanding of financial institutions. But I found it difficult to get a firm grasp on his business dealings.

  I went first to the stock market. The trading of shares in public corporations had begun in London in the late seventeenth century with the need to finance two ocean voyages. The Muscovy Company had been seeking trade with China. The East India Company had its eye fixed on India. The owners of the companies required capital beyond private financing to undertake the voyages, so they sold shares to merchant investors in exchange for a portion of their profits. The idea spread as an innovative form of business. By the end of the seventeenth century, there were one hundred and fifty public stock companies in London. Shares were bought and sold in two coffee shops near Change Alley. Then Parliament enacted laws requiring that all sellers of stock be licensed. In the mid-eighteenth century, these sellers opened a club known as The Stock Exchange in a building on Sheeting’s Alley. In 1801, the club was made subject to official regulation as the London Stock Exchange.

  It followed as a natural consequence of things that, when I went to the stock exchange to inquire about Geoffrey Wingate, the man I wanted to see was not in his office, and no one knew where he was or when he would return. I went back for a second visit with similar success, only this time, I was criticised by a clerk for meddling in the affairs of the upper class.

  A review of public records was similarly unenlightening. On the sixteenth of February, I visited the office of the clerk at Doctors’ Commons in the hope that someone there could tell me something of value.

  It was a reunion of sorts with old acquaintances. We talked about days gone by and my new life.

  There was a young man I did not know, one of several whose job it was to keep the building clean. He stopped his sweeping and listened as I talked with the others.

  “Geoffrey Wingate,” he said in a manner that drew my attention.

  “Yes?”

  “He killed a man, you know.”

  There were utterances of surprise from around the room. Then silence.

  “I did not know,” I responded. “Tell me more.”

  “The story is not mine. It belongs to a friend.”

  “Can I speak with him?”

  The request was met with a reluctant look.

  “I will ask if that is possible.”

  On the next day and the day after, I returned to Doctors’ Commons with increasing curiosity. The sweeper was nowhere to be found. When I arrived on the third day, he was standing outside the main entrance to the building.

  “Tomorrow at eleven o’clock in the morning,” he instructed. “Be here. My friend will find you. It would be best if you dressed with no sign of wealth so as not to attract attention of the wrong kind.”

  Well before the appointed hour on the following day, I was outside Doctors’ Commons. My dress was shabby, which ran counter to my preferred appearance.

  A clock in the tower of a nearby church struck eleven times. A man about my age moved to my side.

  “Mr. Dickens?”

  He was of average height, with long hair, intelligent eyes, and a nose that had been broken several times. His shoulders were broad. The coat he wore had once been a smart dress garment, but at that long-ago time it had adorned a smaller man. The soiled and faded sleeves were short on his arms.
His trousers were patched in a manner that spoke of long service. His shoes were mended. He had the look of a labourer.

  “My name is Christopher Spriggs. I have come to guide you and ensure your safe passage.”

  “I am told that Geoffrey Wingate killed a man.”

  “And worse.”

  “Come, now, what could be worse than killing a man?”

  “I will show you.”

  Our journey began.

  There are places that one who holds a certain station in life does not go. Christopher Spriggs took me to them. We walked through the civilised part of London and several miles beyond into a world where poverty, ignorance, and disease are as certain as death.

  The streets were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched. The air was impregnated with filthy odours. The roughest and poorest of people thronged the streets. Hunger was everywhere. It oozed out of doors and stared down from smokeless chimneys. It was in the faces of children, sickened from want and cold, existing upon the smallest portion of the weakest food necessary to keep them alive.

  Christopher Spriggs walked with a brisk, purposeful stride. There was little conversation between us. When he spoke, his voice was soft but clear. A dozen children dressed in rags surrounded us like a pack of feral dogs. Christopher raised his hand as if to strike, and they retreated. A deformed boy watched from nearby.

  “It is a sad thing,” Christopher said, “to see a crippled child apart from the others. When they are active and merry, he sits alone, watching the games that he cannot share in.”

  We continued past tottering housefronts, half-crushed chimneys, and windows guarded by rusty iron bars. Narrow alleys branched off onto passageways that were more remote and less frequented than those we travelled. Unemployed labourers and brazen women called out from the rutted dirt in front of homes that were one step removed from rubbish. Lofty church steeples rose proudly to mock it all.