The Last Dickens

examined the papers the dead man clutched, while others stood by dumbfounded by what to do, and found them to be the latest episode of Mr. Dickens's current (and, alas, final) novel.

The company present at the scene of the accident had been split between those most fascinated by a dead man and those most fascinated by the mysterious pages.

Among the latter, each pleaded his and her case to Bendall-who held the papers like the auctioneer holds his hammer-as to who was most deserving of a sheet or two from the packet. A poetic brick-maker noted that he had attended all of Dickens's public readings at the Tremont Temple in Boston two and a half years earlier, waiting in line when it was so cold the mercury was clean out of sight. Another man, rosy and cheerful, had kept his own ticket stubs in his family Bible and vowed that if he did not truly love the genius of the great novelist more than anyone else did, then he would wish Dickens never born. A buxom lady listed a series of household pets-two cats, a yellow dog, a bird-that she had named for Dickens characters (Pip and Nell, Rose, Oliver); a mechanic perched near the corpse announced he had read Dickens's David Copperfield four times, but this was eclipsed by six! eight! and nine! from others. One old man began to cry and it seemed to be for the accident victim's sad fate, until he whispered, “Poor dear old Dickens, noble Dickens.”

As the bystanders quibbled with one another over the pages, Bendall silently made a bold decision: he himself would be the treasure's custodian. Folding the pages up, he quietly made his exit, pausing only to leave his name with the driver of the “Alice Gray,” should he happen to be arrested for mowing down the lad.

“Sylvanus Bendall,” he said to the nervous omnibus driver, “two words to remember, and you shall not have reason to fear Boston justice!”

Sylvanus Bendall. His name itself sounded far more like the name of an adventurer than an attorney-at-law for the indigent and unfortunate classes of Boston. It was the name of one who had penetrated deep into the New Land. His friends from Beacon Hill may have put up their handkerchiefs at the smell of the nearby marshes and the dust of construction, but Bendall inflated his nostrils each morning like a war horse.

Not to say that the Back Bay was an Eden; there were problems and he faced those with a manly demeanor. In fact, there was one waiting for him on this day when he returned to his house.

The plate-glass window at the side of his porch was shattered into pieces. Bendall walked quietly to the street door and took the latch in his hand. Inside, he faced a mess: desks and secretaries overturned; up a flight of stairs, holding tightly to the oak balustrade, coming upon dishes and china shattered; up another flight, shelves emptied of books. He heard a shuffle and a sudden noise from another room. The thieves at large! He grabbed a walking stick and an umbrella and raised them together like a Japanese samurai. “I shall knock your head clear off!” he shouted as fair warning.

A small, white-haired woman cried out, “Mr. Bendall!” His housekeeper, who had arrived to prepare supper shortly before him, now stood dead still with a look of terror.

“Don't be afraid, my dear Mary, you will be safe now with me,” Bendall said.

It did not seem that any objects of value were missing. His much-prized pages were undoubtedly safe, for he had been keeping them on his own person, in his waistcoat.

“Should I send a boy for the police?” asked Mary.

“No, no,” he said dismissively.

“But they must be on alert!” the housemaid protested.

“Pooh, Mary!” said Bendall. “You read too many sensation novels. Police are of an old mind-set and know nothing of the Back Bay. I shall root out the source of this evil myself.” There, once more, a bold and undoubtable decision by Sylvanus Bendall.

Chapter 5

DANIEL SAND'S DEATH WAS YET ANOTHER CRISIS AT THE BUSTLING 124, Tremont Street office building of Fields, Osgood & Co. It was the nature of the publishing trade to shift from crisis to optimism back to crisis, and the master of those rhythms was James Osgood. It had been back in March, three months before Daniel Sand fell lifelessly in the street, when the senior partner, J. T. Fields, stopped Osgood on the stairs. Fields's long, stiff, graying beard and a rumbling undercurrent in his voice lent him an inflated gravity at all times.

“Mr. Osgood, a word please.”

A word never failed to add a burden to Osgood's shoulders. He knew Fields's troubled expressions like he knew the halls of the publishing firm and could guess the sort of business emergency at a glance. Osgood had been in this man's employment for fifteen years since he had written him that first letter praising Walden with the vivid enthusiasm of a neophyte. It had been five years since Osgood introduced bright color binding to replace the drab maroon covers they had formerly favored. And it had been almost two years since his own name was added to the stationery-transforming Ticknor, Fields & Co. as though by magic fulfillment of his once dreamlike ambitions into Fields, Osgood & Co.

But there was no shortage of problems. Their neighbors, the shrewdly evangelical Hurd & Houghton, with their young lieutenant George Mifflin, had transformed from their reliable printer into a competing publisher. And their chief rival in New York more than ever was Harper & Brothers.

“It is Harper this time!” Fields cried out to Osgood when they were alone. He leaned his elbows over a pulpitlike standing desk in the corner of the room, where there always sat open his massive appointment book. “It's Harper, Osgood. He's plotting.”

“Plotting what?”

“Plotting. I don't know what yet,” Fields admitted, the last word coming with a stinging warning as though the chief partner of Harper & Brothers, Major Harper, was looking down from the chandelier. “He is filled with rancor and spite against our house.” Fields stabbed a pen in ink and wrote in an appointment. “Fletcher Harper is coming from New York soon to recruit more Boston authors-to poach more from us, let us be blunt-and has requested an interview here. You ought to be the one to meet with him. Blasted hand! I will have to call one of the girls in to write.” Fields opened and shut his hand, which suffered from painful cramps. “I daresay I haven't written a letter in my own hand in a year, except those to Mr. Dickens, of course. My other correspondents must think I have grown womanly with age.”

Osgood was still surprised at Fields's instruction about Harper. With a casual downcast glare, as though checking the shine of his left boot, the younger man commented, “I would expect that Major Harper will prefer the interview be with you, my dear Mr. Fields.”

Fields became silent. His recent tendency to fall entirely quiet had struck Osgood as worrisome. The senior publisher stepped out from behind the high desk and began a slow breathing exercise. Finally, he responded in a softer tone. “Everyone likes you, Osgood. It is an advantage I hope you keep long after I am quietly laid away in some uneditorial corner far from this business. Why, it is something to say of a publisher, that everyone likes him! We are like lawyers, except instead of being blamed for the loss of a mortgage, we are blamed for lost dreams.”

When Osgood looked up he was startled to find Fields with his fists posed in a fighting position.

“You've boxed, eh?” Fields asked.

Osgood shook his head confusedly and replied, “At Bowdoin, I fenced.”

“I had my first boxing lessons from an old pugilist when I lived in Suffolk Place as a lad running errands under Bill Ticknor. I paid the fellow in books Ticknor threw out! Could have been a prizefighter if I kept at it. Start with a jab. This,” Fields said as he pantomimed an exchange of severe blows and quick escapes, “is how you stand up to a Harper brother! There is only one thing worse than the coming war with the Harpers, Osgood: and that is being afraid of it.”

OSGOOD HAD BEEN CORRECT in his prediction: when the appointed day came later in March for Fletcher Harper's interview and Osgood greeted him in his best suit and with the offer of a brandy, the New York visitor peered around impatiently through his wire-framed eyeglasses.