The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens Read online

  The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

  An Account of the Strange Events of the Medusa Murders

  A Secret Victorian Journal

  Attributed to Wilkie Collins

  Discovered and Edited by

  William J. Palmer

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1992 by William J. Palmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition April 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-733-3

  Also by William J. Palmer

  The Detective and Mr. Dickens

  The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens

  The Dons and Mr. Dickens

  This book is dedicated to Nancy

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Professor S. F. D. Hughes.

  Editor’s Note

  Even before the publication of Wilkie Collins’s first commonplace book account of the meeting and subsequent adventures of Charles Dickens and Inspector William Field of the Metropolitan Protectives, Bow Street Station (in 1990, under the novelistic title The Detective and Mr. Dickens),* which I had the privilege and profit of editing, I wondered could there be any other lost or hitherto suppressed Collins manuscripts, perhaps detailing subsequent meetings or collaborations between Dickens and Inspector Field. Little did I know how soon and in what abundance those wishfully imagined secret journals would surface out of one hundred years of suppression.*

  In January of 1991, two months after the initial publication of the first Collins journal, I received a phone call from Mr. Allerdyce Clive, the Special Collections Curator of the library of the University of North Anglia. “Professor Palmer,” his voice crackled from across the ocean, “we received four more boxes of papers as part of the Warrington bequest and I have only now been able to open and begin inventorying them. You are going to be quite interested in what I have found.” I knew immediately that he had discovered more Collins papers. I hoped beyond hope that there might be another complete commonplace book continuing the story begun in that first secret journal.

  “You’ve found another Collins manuscript?” I asked.

  “No, sir,” Mr. Clive answered, and I slumped in my chair. “I’ve found five more full volumes. I think you’d better come and look at them.”

  It was an incredible literary discovery. I was on the next plane to England.

  This memoir, which, consistent with the first, I have titled The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens, is the earliest in date of composition of those five commonplace books discovered in the late additions to the Warrington collection. It seems that the original collection, which I had explored during the editing of that first Collins journal, had come from the country home of George Warrington. These new papers, however, had arrived later due to a delay in selling the deceased’s London flat, and the neglect in packing and transporting the furnishings and papers therein.

  George Warrington’s estate bequeathed the papers of his great-grandfather, Sir William Warrington, the renowned Lincoln’s Inn solicitor and personal counselor to Wilkie Collins (as well as Queen Victoria), to the University of North Anglia. This new discovery consisted of five full commonplace books, all covered in the best leather, and written in the same crabbed hand with which I became so familiar while editing that first journal. Upon arrival in England, and after the examination and authentication of these manuscripts, I was invited by Mr. Clive and the Regent General of the university to undertake their editing for a wider publication.

  This memoir of Dickens, Inspector Field, and himself, written (as was the first) in the style of a novel as befits its author, begins with a brief preface in which Collins testifies as to why he writes these private journals, which were not intended for publication until long after the deaths of the principals. Following that brief statement of motive, this journal launches itself rather indecorously (for a Victorian writer) into its narrative. What this rather sexually charged opening indicates is that, in the interim since writing the first secret journal, Wilkie Collins became much more honest and more uninhibited.*

  Once again, however, Dickens is the central focus and driving force of the events of these journal pages. His relationship with Inspector Field is one of those felicitous pairings of history from which myths are born. Whereas the first commonplace book of Wilkie Collins presented a driven, tortured Dickens, this new discovery presents a fiercely loyal Dickens, a man determined to pursue the responsibilities of friendship to the furthest limits of personal risk. And always, above it all, looms Field, the master magician of this violent London world.

  —William J. Palmer

  * * *

  *That first commonplace book chronicled the meeting and collaboration of Dickens and Field on the bizarre affair of what the Grub Street tabloids of Dickens’s and Collins’s time termed the Macbeth Murders. That initial commonplace book discovery also introduced a rogue’s gallery of denizens of both the Victorian underworld and the upper crust, including Irish Meg Sheehey, Scarlet Bess, Serjeant Rogers, and especially one Tally Ho Thompson, a highwayman turned actor.

  *These newly discovered commonplace books were composed between the time of Dickens’s funeral in 1870 and Collins’s death in 1889. From the internal evidence of Collins’s own description of their composition (see his opening Prefatories to this commonplace book), they provided him with a vehicle for memory and the loyal fulfillment of his debt of friendship which he felt he owed his mentor, greatest benefactor, and closest friend, Charles Dickens.

  *By closest estimate, this second commonplace book was begun in October 1870, some five months after Charles Dickens’s death and approximately six weeks after the completion of the first commonplace book published under my title, The Detective and Mr. Dickens. As the first journal was begun under the impetus of a chance meeting with Field at Dickens’s funeral in Westminster Abbey, this second memoir is also begun, as Collins explains in his “Prefatories,” under the impetus of another chance meeting, with Forster, Dickens’s authorized biographer.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Prefatories

  October 25, 1870

  It is staggering how memory, once set in motion, races along at the pace of the night mail. The memory of Charles’s ceremonious funeral in the Abbey continues to rest heavy upon my mind, but my meeting with Inspector Field on that sad occasion seems to have propelled not only my memory but also my pen on a breakneck dash, as if whipped by De Quincey’s mad coachman. In the weeks following that meeting at the funeral, I managed to fill a complete leather book with the narrative of Dickens’s and my first collaboration with Inspector Field. And now, after a needed hiatus during which I took an invigorating walking tour of the Scottish hills, lo, memory draws down on me again, orders “Stand and deliver,” and I find myself emptying the contents of my past into another journal that I will never publish and perhaps the world will never see until we all have joined Dickens in a much larger novel written by a much more inventive and ruthless novelist than I.

  I must confess, however, that this writing down of Dickens’s and my adventures with Field, Rogers, and the rest has proven quite a satisfying diversion, given me a sense that I
am, at least, chronicling some unknown biographical facts in the life of a great man. I see no reason to cease the recording of these memoirs, and I see excellent reason to go on. First, I owe it to Charles. He was my patron, my mentor; he made me the novelist I became, staked me to the small corner of recognition and reputation that I ultimately gained. But there is a better reason for continuing.

  I encountered Forster—that pretentious boor!—in the foyer of the British Museum this morning. He loftily informed me that he was one hundred pages into a biography of Charles. That dire announcement merely stiffened my resolve to press on with the private memoirs that I have begun.* Immediately upon leaving Forster and the museum, I ducked into Lett’s Apothecary and Sundries and impulsively bought myself a fresh leather book. I cannot deny that writing down these memories entertains my bachelor nights, and I truly intend for only my heirs to see this record of our underworld adventures. Nonetheless it gives me solace to know that Forster’s crabbed and proper version of Dickens’s life will not be the only one extant.

  But there lies one other satisfaction, which would be hypocritical of me not to acknowledge. These memoirs are not only biographical, but autobiographical as well. When, some five months ago, I first sat down to write about Dickens and Field, I never imagined how much of myself would intrude into their story. Writing about myself as if I were a character in a novel was a strange experience indeed, yet a rather exhilarating and informative one. Writing about Meggy helped me to understand how much force for change that extraordinary woman exerted upon my life. I have always perceived the social and personal irrationality of my obsessive attraction to Irish Meg, but it was not until I wrote my feelings and dealings with her down (more than twenty years later), that I began to understand why I fell in love with her. Her spontaneity and sexuality completely opened up my life; she liberated me from the prisonhouse of my repressive society, and also from the accepted language of my novel-writing art. These journals tell the truth in ways that my fellow Victorian writers, including Dickens, never dared to attempt. Meg instructed me in the ways of love (in fact, addicted me to them), and gave me a new voice that only now have I found the temerity to employ.

  Mister Dickens’s “faithful bulldog” is how I described myself in that first journal recounting Charles’s and my adventures in the world of Inspector Field. And his faithful bulldog I remained for all of his life. If, indeed, these memoirs are any indication, his faithful bulldog I continue even now that he is gone. Inspector Field’s dogged Serjeant Rogers is certainly my counterpart, for he has faithfully followed his master through life as I did mine.

  Ah, twenty years of memories, of Dickens, of Field, of Rogers, of all the others. These private memoirs are my way of paying my debt to the past, of erecting the only sort of memorial that I, a writer of novels, can dedicate to my lifelong friends.

  Perhaps that is why I have become so obsessed with chronicling Dickens’s and my adventures on duty with Inspector Field. Perhaps as one approaches the end of one’s life, especially a life that has been immersed in fictions, one longs to tell the truth of one’s experience in hopes that the future will judge one’s existence kindly. Perhaps it is not so important that the truth be told about one Wilkie Collins or one William Field, but generations to come will clutch for the truth about our “Inimitable” and perhaps my memories will help them to understand him.

  * * *

  *Collins’s biographers note this rivalry between Collins and Forster for Dickens’s favor both before and after “the Inimitable’s” death. Kenneth Robinson in Wilkie Collins: A Biography (1951) writes: “The references to Collins in Forster’s Life are deliberately reduced to a minimum and pay scant justice to the part he played in the last twenty years of Dickens’s life. It is difficult to attribute such omission to any other motive than jealousy. Later biographers of Dickens have taken their cue from Forster and are content to deplore instead of trying to explain the undoubted influence of Collins on the other novelist…but there is little doubt that in Collins’s company he spent some of the happiest periods of his life” (p. 63). Nual Pharr Davis in The Life of Wilkie Collins (1956) also writes: “Wilkie had an inner callousness, a cool skepticism toward Victorian proprieties that made him good company for Dickens…the association with Dickens, disposed in his restless mood to long talks and unconventional meetings, was fruitful. Dickens confirmed the still-vague theories Wilkie had begun to form on what fields of experience were the proper subject of art” (pp. 98–99).

  An Inconvenient Knock

  January 9, 1852—early evening

  Our second adventure on duty with Inspector Field began one evening (not too late, half past eight or so) with an inconvenient knock on the door of my new lodgings in Soho.

  I had taken these new rooms for clandestine, even sinister, reasons that I could never discuss anywhere but in this secret journal. Since beginning these journals under the ghostly inspiration of “the Inimitable” on the day of his great funeral in the Abbey, I have found a new freedom of expression never before attempted in my writing, whether journalism, conversational essays, or my fictions. As for my sinister reasons, only my own guilt makes them so.

  That timid knock on my new door was indeed inconvenient. When it came, Irish Meg had, only moments before, mounted me and was riding to the finish like some wild-eyed, red-maned prancer in the Ascot Derby. You see, Meggy and all of her attractions were the sum of my dark motives for letting more spacious bohemian lodgings, and we had been together nearly eight months, since the Ashbee affair.*

  I had changed lodgings in early September so that she could become my private secretary. The Soho rooms consisted of two flats, a larger set of four rooms including a small kitchen, and a pair of smaller rooms across the hallway that Meg occupied. To public scrutiny, I was not keeping her; she was not living in my household. At first, I was a picture of guilt when, in September, we moved into this utterly transparent (it seemed to my prudish mind) love nest. In Soho, however—as Meg had predicted—no one paid us any attention. The landlord was ecstatic to have a gentleman tenant, and, over time, I grew accustomed to the idea of our licence.

  Our domestic arrangements proved more than satisfactory. In return for her bed and board, Meggy had taken to learning secretarial skills. She handled my correspondence by slow dictation and even helped me in some of my researches. She had eagerly given off whoring—well, not completely, as at moments like this when she gloried in playing the whore. She took great pleasure in tweaking my gentleman’s discomfiture at her outrageous behaviour and fanning the flames of my ungentlemanly desire. In my earlier memoir, I described Irish Meg Sheehey as “the fire-woman” upon first meeting her as she sat drinking gin before the hearth at Bow Street Station, her red hair blazing in the firelight. Since then, touching her fire had become as obsessive for me as was Ashbee’s opium addiction or Dickens’s attraction to his childlike Ellen. Irish Meg knew that I wanted her to continue to play the part of the whore for me (even though she had abandoned the role for others), and she played it to perfection. She had divined my voyeuristic appetites that night we were thrown together after the Queen’s performance of our amateur play, Not So Bad As We Seem, at Devonshire House. That night, Dickens had dressed her in elegant clothes like an Irish lady to surprise me and to reward her. But after all the festivities were over, and the door of my bachelor rooms closed behind us, Meg slowly shed her royal guise and seized her whore’s role once again. She spoke to me coarsely and provocatively as her satiny dress slid down her body to the floor, revealing her secret things. Meg saw in my eyes that night their joy in watching her undress, how they feasted upon her body while the rest of my being stood paralysed in her spell. All novelists must be voyeurs, elst how would they ever find the material of reality out of which to stitch the garment of their fiction?

  I swear that Meg was like no other woman of our age. She revelled in exploring the depths of her sexual eccentricity. She insisted that love was to be made either in the flickering li
ght of candles—“the romantick glow o’ first love,” she called it—or in the livid glow of blazing gaslamps—“wanton fucking,” her term. “Myking luv, at’s a gift for all the senses,” she insisted that seductive night when I asked if she wished me to trim the lamps. “These Victorian ‘lye-dees,’ these respectable tarts oo’ calls themselfes ‘wives,’ who turns all the lamps off an’ won’t drop their dresses ’til the whole nyebor’ood, inside an’ outsyde, all the way ta the bloomin’ river, is black as pitch, they only myke love ta the touch, tykes all the fun out o’ bein’ a ’ore, which they is no matter what’s adornin’ their finger.

  “But rel love (an’ wanton fuckin’) is myde ta all the senses,” she whispered. “Yew needs to taste an’ smell an’ touch an’ ’ear an’ especially see yer lover, look into yer lover’s secret places, the seein’…’at’s all the fun.”

  In those first idyllic months of our life together in that Soho retreat, Meggy insisted that our sex was an exploration, a journey into the senses. She was an explorer, like Stanley in Africa. No, rather like Burton and Speke questing for the source of the Nile among the mountains of the moon. Ah, the moon, age-old symbol of imagination! It controls sexuality just as it controls the tides. Irish Meg knew this well. “Yew wish ta watch me strip myself for yew, do yew not?” she would taunt me. “Yew wish ta see me touch and caress myself for yew, do yew not?” It is said that Burton always explored every inch of the bodies of his nubian concubines with a candle before enjoying them. Meggy, too, was an explorer into countries where my fellow Victorians feared to go. Ah, but I romanticise! Yet, as I get older and more realistic, and my age more rigid and utilitarian, that romanticism, whereby the imagination turns our mundane reality into myth, seems so much more real and necessary.