The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens (4 page)

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.

Several hours after our journey began, we came to a particularly wretched hovel. Christopher motioned for me to go inside. I lowered my head at the door and entered.

The room had a flavour of rats sleeping close together in dark holes. Spiders had built webs in the angles of the ceiling and walls. Four rough beds made of tattered sacks lay on the floor. There was a low cinder fire in an unfixed rusty grate, a rickety wood chair, and an old stained table with several plates and cups on top. Heaps of rags and small bundles lay in corners of the room. Those were the only possessions I saw.

I could imagine no gaiety of heart in this home, only life on the lowest terms that could sustain it. Everything was black with age and dirt. Hell was breeding there.

An infant lay sleeping in an old egg crate. A woman, presumably the child's mother, sat beside her. She was in profile to me, plainly dressed with a look of beauty about her.

“This is the gentleman I spoke of,” Christopher Spriggs told the woman. “He would like to know of Geoffrey Wingate.”

There was no response.

“Mr. Dickens, this is my sister, Florence.”

Florence Spriggs turned to face me. And I recoiled in horror.

CHAPTER 3

Florence Spriggs could trace her genealogy all the way back to her mother. She also knew that she had a brother, Christopher, who came into the world one year before she did. She had no knowledge of where she was born, only that the event occurred in 1812. The identity of her father was unknown.

Florence's earliest memory dated to the age of four on the night when her mother died. There was neither fire nor candle. She died in the dark. Florence and Christopher could not see her face, though they heard her gasping out their names.