Chapter 17
I emphatically direct that I be buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner, that no public announcement be made of the time or place of my burial, that at the utmost not more than three plain mourning coaches be employed, and that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long hatband, or other such revolting absurdity. I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb without the addition of “Mr.” or “Esquire.” I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works, and to the remembrance of my friends upon their experience of me; in addition thereto I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Osgood reviewed the will's language with Georgina Hogarth at the Falstaff Inn coffee room and offered opinions about her obligations in relation to Forster. The document created an admirably complicated distribution of responsibilities and burdens. Forster controlled all the manuscripts of Dickens's published works. But to Georgy, the document bequeathed all the private papers in the house as well as all decisions related to jewelry and the familiar objects from Dickens's writing desk, like the quill pen temporarily pocketed by Forster.
“Mr. Forster,” Georgy said to Osgood, “sees his duty as reminding the world that Charles should be worshipped. That is why Charles is buried in the Poets’ Corner rather than in our humble village, as he would have wished. If Mr. Forster could have moved Dickens's pen for him over the lines of this will, he would have.”
That afternoon, following the one-hour train ride from Higham to London, Osgood and Rebecca entered the most awe-inducing man-made spot in England, the Westminster Abbey. Both Osgood and his bookkeeper automatically leaned their heads back to the remarkable ceiling far above, where the expanse of pillars crossed like the tips of forest trees meeting each other in the morning sky. The light streaming into the Abbey was stained red from the ornamented rose-colored glass windows surrounding them.
In the south transept, the American visitors found the marble slab that covered the coffin of Charles Dickens. The grand monument at the Poets’ Corner inside the famous cathedral was surrounded by the tombs of the greatest writers. Dickens's itself was overlooked by statues of Addison and Shakespeare and a bust of Thackeray. Though little else from his instructions had been followed, the inlaid words on the tomb read as Dickens's will had requested.
Charles Dickens
Born 7 th February 1812,
Died 9 th June 1870
Hordes of people filed in to leave verses and flowers over the novelist's slab, and the remains of yesterday's offerings had begun to wither in the warm air of the Abbey.
As they stood there, a flower was tossed past Osgood and Rebecca onto the Dickens grave. The bloom had large, extensive petals of a wild purple hue. The publisher looked over his shoulder and saw a man in a wide-brimmed hat shading most of an angular, red face turning to leave.
“Did you see that man?” Osgood asked Rebecca.
“Who?” she replied.
Osgood had seen the face before. “I believe it was the man from the chalet-that queer mesmerism patient.”
Just then, a caravan of other Dickens mourners had appeared in the Abbey. They had come all the way from Dublin to see Dickens's final resting place, they explained to Osgood enthusiastically, as if he were the keeper. They crowded the Poets’ Corner, pushing Osgood to one side, and the mesmerism patient, in the meantime, had vanished.
Not sure where to turn next, Osgood and Rebecca walked the streets of London.
There was already a line of dead ends besides their search through Gadshill. They had heard there was a London resident named Emma James who claimed to have the entire manuscript of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. James turned out to be a spiritual medium who was dictating the final six installments of The Mystery of Edwin Drood from the “spirit-pen” of Charles Dickens and was soon to begin Dickens's next ghostly novel, titled The Life and Adventures of Bockley Wickleheap. Other rumors-for example, that Wilkie Collins, Dickens's fellow popular novelist and occasional collaborator, had been hired to complete his friend's work-quickly proved just as fruitless. They had also heard that at an audience with the royal court a few months before his death, Dickens had offered to tell Queen Victoria the ending.
“Mr. Osgood?” Rebecca said. “You seem ill at ease.”
“Perhaps I am somewhat overheated today. Let us pay a call on Mr. Forster at his office, he may know something about Dickens and the queen.”
Osgood did not want to be discouraging to Rebecca by saying more. He dreaded the possibility of returning to Boston to tell J. T Fields that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was never to be unraveled-that Drood was to remain lost in every way. That Fields, Osgood & Co., bearing the financial loss, could soon follow.
Protect our authors: Fields's mandate above all else. That is what Osgood thought about as they walked. His efforts in England were not only for the financial life of the company and all its employees, it was for the authors, too-Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Stowe, Emerson, and others. If the publishing house plummeted from its current financial precipice, how would the orphaned authors fare? Yes, those writers were beloved, but would the breed of publisher represented by Major Harper care about that? Without Fields and Osgood to protect them, would they be buried by obscurity, like Edgar Poe or the once promising Herman Melville? The true future of publishing was not publishers as manufacturers, as Harper foresaw, but publishers as the authors’ partners-the joining of the upper and lower half of the title page.
Osgood thought about all this responsibility that had landed on his shoulders. He actually had wanted to be a poet at one time: to think of it made him laugh inside! A young Osgood, top student, reciting the class poem at Standish Academy. He'd watched a dozen of his classmates leave to chase gold in California that October, but it was the quiet halls of college instead of the wild hills of California for him. Phi Beta Kappa at Bowdoin, class secretary, member of the Pecunian club, but friends with the rival Athenians. He had always been expected to be successful by everyone around him. It had been a worthy sacrifice of his own artistic ambitions to take up the cause of those artists and geniuses who otherwise might flounder.
With these thoughts pressing him down, they arrived at the government building that housed the Lunacy Commission, where Forster held a post. Osgood and Rebecca were greeted by a government assistant. Osgood explained that they wished to speak with Mr. Forster.
“Are you from America?” asked the assistant, brows raised with interest.
“Yes, we are,” Osgood said.
“Americans!” The assistant smiled. “Well,” he said with renewed seriousness, “I am afraid we do not have any spittoons in the anteroom.”
“That is well enough,” Osgood said politely, “as we do not have any tobacco.”