The Last Dickens

way out, “Forty miles, you said so!”

“I did indeed,” Osgood replied with a patient kindness.

It had been March 1868, near the end of Dickens's visit to Boston, at dinner at the Fieldses on Charles Street. The talk had somehow turned, in the way such things happened at the Fields dinner table, to calculating how far all of Charles Dickens's manuscripts would extend in a single line if the pages were laid end to end.

“Forty miles,” Osgood had said after careful mental calculation of the number of novels and stories and a quick census of their average length.

“No, Osgood,” Fields had called out. “A hundred thousand miles!”

“Thank you, my dear Fields,” Charles Dickens had said, as though conferring knighthood on him, then turned to Osgood with a stern countenance, his large blue-gray eyes seeming to burrow deep into the young publisher's soul, and his eyebrows darting far up. “Mr. Fields, I am inclined to be down on your young associate here until he rather changes his calculation of how many words I have surrendered in my day. More than forty miles, surely!”

There were Fields and Osgood in a nutshell: the younger man sought the correct answer, the older gave the answer one wanted to hear.

“Does it not give you a weird sensation, Mr. Dickens?” said beautiful Annie Fields, laughing at her husband and his partner. “How could words with so much value cover so light a portion of the earth?”

The writer put up his large hands in an expressive gesture that pulled all attention to him. He had an ever- changing face that could not really be seen properly unless he was caught sleeping. “Mrs. Fields, you do understand my odd lot. Once I publish, my words are mangled, pounded, and robbed on both sides of the ocean. I have many readers and booksellers in league with me: and yet I stand alone. I suppose I am fated to be a Quixote without a Sancho. That is how my fellow authors fall as this life fight of ours progresses. There is nothing to do but close up the ranks, march on, and fight it out.”

Osgood felt a confusion and diminishment come over him at the memory now as he followed Fields into the corridor and his office. The senior officer sat and slumped over on his manuscript-filled window seat, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the window until it fogged over from his breath.

Osgood felt if he could make a strategy for business instead of sinking into depression, Fields would be grateful. He would earn the faith placed in him with this partnership. He could hear Major Harper's voice in his ear from three months earlier speaking of junior partner, yes, and then Drood. I cannot wait to see for myself.

“Mr. Fields,” Osgood said, “I am concerned now more than ever about the Harpers.”

“Yes, yes,” Fields replied languidly. He was lost to grief. “What? I cannot understand it, Osgood. How could you think of Harper?”

“When the Major hears the new novel was only half finished-and Dickens dead-well, Mr. Fields, Harper will claim no trade courtesy even applies for anything unfinished. He will try to rush out and publish Drood right under our noses without hindrance or disguise.”

Fields snapped to attention. “Harpy Brothers, Lord! A deadly stab. Osgood, our house cannot survive it!” He moaned in a voice of surrender and rolled himself across the room in his desk chair. “No man can see the end of this. The business world now is depressed and wavering. Major Harper was right about what he told you of New York, you know. It will be over for us.”

“Do not say that, my friend,” said Osgood.

Fields's energy had seemed to expire as he sat with his limbs hanging flaccidly from the chair. “New England has been a brilliant school of literature. But it has the feature of a single generation, not destined to be succeeded by another. Edinburgh gave away its publishing over to London, and so we will be bought and swallowed by New York. Dash it all! We might as well just hawk books of quotations and law textbooks, like poor Little and Brown, God rest their souls. Why undergo the pain of literature?” Fields's mind suddenly wandered. “Say, you have a taste for salt at the moment, as I do, Osgood? I would run a mile for it. I want you to go to the stand on the corner and get a quart of peanuts. Yes, something salty.”

Osgood sighed, feeling suddenly like a junior clerk again-and feeling the solid forms around him were ready to disappear. Then he tossed his hat on the chair and turned back to his senior partner. “We must not sit by,” Osgood said. “Perhaps nothing can be done, but we must try. We will publish it and publish it well. Before Major Harper does. Half a Dickens novel is half more than any other novel on the shelves!”

“Bah! What good is a mystery novel without the ending? We become invested in the story of young Edwin Drood and then… nothing!” Fields cried out. But he started to pace up and down the room, with a reassuring clarity kindling in his eye. He blew out a long sigh as if expelling the old despair. Suddenly he was Osgood's Fields again, the invincible businessman. “You are in part right, Osgood. Half right, I should say. Yet we mustn't be content with half of the thing at all, Osgood!”

“What choice do we have? That is all he left.”

“The man just died-all is in disarray and grief in England, I am sure. We need to discover everything we can about how Dickens intended to finish the book. If we can reveal exclusively in our edition alone how it was meant to conclude, we shall defeat all the stealthy literary pirates.”

“How shall we do it, Mr. Fields?” asked Osgood, increasingly excited.

“Courage. I shall go to London and use my knowledge of its literary circles to investigate what was in Dickens's mind. Perhaps he even wrote more before his death that he did not have the chance to hand over to his publisher-it may be sitting in some locked drawer while his family is crying out their eyes and putting on mourning clothes. I must go about coolly until I find at least a hint of what he intended. Yes, yes. Take it quietly, tell no one outside these walls our plan.”

“Our plan,” Osgood echoed.

“Yes. I will find the end to Dickens's mystery!”

ON THAT DAY in June, Osgood went from quietly mourning the death of Charles Dickens to plunging neck and heels into spinning out their practical plans. He asked Rebecca to cable John Forster, Dickens's executor, with an important message: Urgent. Send on all there is of Drood to Boston at once. They had the first three installments and needed to receive the fourth, fifth, and that sixth installment that the news papers had reported he'd been finishing when he died. Osgood ordered the printer to begin setting the existing copy of The Mystery of Edwin Drood immediately from the advance sheets they already had. In this way they'd be ready to add in whatever could be gleaned of the end and go to press immediately.

Osgood busied himself over the next week helping draw up details for Fields's trip to London. The senior partner would leave as soon as he'd settled some pressing affairs of the firm.

Not long after Dickens's death, Officer Carlton had delivered the shocking news about Daniel. Osgood had sent him to the docks to retrieve those three latest installments sent from England in response to Osgood's cable. It was yet another test to prevent emotion from becoming paralyzing.

Daniel Sand's senseless accident caused Osgood to feel a sadness of heart more intimate and stranger than that brought on by Dickens's death. The loss of Dickens was shared by millions around the world as though a personal blow to every home and hearth. Stores were closed the day of the news, flags flown low. But poor Daniel? Who would mourn? Osgood, certainly, and naturally Daniel's sister, Rebecca, Osgood's bookkeeper. Otherwise, it was an invisible death. How much more real this seemed, in a way, than Dickens's apotheosis.

When Daniel died, Osgood expected Rebecca to stop coming to work for a period. But she did not. She was as stoic as ever in her black crepe and muslin, and she did not miss one workday.

The police had left it to Osgood to inform Rebecca about Daniel. As he told her, she began to tidy her surroundings, as if too busy, with no time to listen. Her teeth clenched as a struggle brewed behind her steady face. Wide eyes closed, her thin mouth cracked, and soon the battle was lost as she fell back into her chair, head in hands.

“Are there relatives I may send for?” Osgood had asked. “Your parents?”

She shook her head and accepted a handkerchief. “No one. Did Daniel suffer greatly?”

Osgood paused. He had not told her about the police suspicions of opium use, about the telltale puncture marks on Daniel's arm. He decided at that moment not to tell her. His sympathy for Rebecca was too strong, the details of Daniel's death too painful to utter. It would be a blessing for them both to hide it from her.

“I do not think he did,” Osgood said gently.