CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

That same summer of 1867 came close to seeing Caroline, Carrie, our three servants (George, Besse, and Agnes), and me without a home. We were almost turned out onto the street.

We had known that the lease on 9 Melcombe Place was expiring, of course, but I had been confident that the terms of the lease could be and would be renewed for another year or two, at the very least, despite my frequent quarrels with the landlord there. My confidence turned out to have been misplaced. So July was given to much rushing around London trying to find a place to live.

It hardly bears saying that I was so busy with The Moonstone up through June—I had the first three numbers written to show Dickens by then—and so busy after June with another project that Dickens had brought to me, that it was Caroline who had to do the rushing about.

While she rushed, I retired to the peace of my club to complete work on the first three numbers of The Moonstone.

On the last two days of June, I spent the weekend at Gad’s Hill and read the completed chapters to Dickens, who was so delighted with what he heard that he agreed on the spot to pay about £750 so that All the Year Round would have the rights, with publication of the first number slated for 15 December. I immediately used this news to get the Harper brothers in the United States to match that amount for serial rights there.

When I returned to London on 1 July, Caroline was buzzing around my head like a hungry fly, asking me to go see various possible homes that she had found for lease or sale. I did so and all were obviously a waste of my time except for the possibility of one place on Cornwall Terrace. I chastised Caroline for looking at places outside of Marylebone, since I had grown fond of that neighbourhood. (Also, of course, I needed any new residence with Caroline and Carrie to remain within easy distance of Bolsover Street, where “Mrs Dawson” had all but taken up permanent residence.)

My quarrelsome landlord at Melcombe Place now insisted that we have the house there vacated by the first of August—a demand that I met with equanimity and was willing to ignore when the time came, but one which gave Caroline severe headaches and provoked days of even more frenzied searching and long evenings of voluble complaining.

In May, Dickens had invited me to collaborate with him on a long tale for the Christmas 1867 issue of All the Year Round and I had agreed, but only after long and sometimes almost comically bitter negotiations on payment with Wills at the magazine (Dickens, prudently, avoided all financial negotiations with me). I had demanded the very high rate of £400 for my half of the tale, although I confess to you, Dear Reader, that this sum had come to mind only because it was precisely ten times what I had been paid for my first successful submission to Dickens’s magazine—a story called “Sister Rose”—in 1855. I finally agreed to £300 not out of weakness or failure of nerve, but because I wanted to associate myself publicly with Dickens again and, in private, bind up any minor wounds that might have been inflicted over the Drood affair that month.

Dickens was, throughout that summer, in the best of spirits. I was ready to return to work on The Moonstone for the rest of July, but during my weekend at Gad’s Hill Dickens convinced me that we should begin the collaboration on the Christmas tale immediately. He had suggested a story based upon our journey across the Alps in 1853—happier times for both of us in many ways—and had contributed the title, No Thoroughfare.

Caroline was delighted to hear that I was putting The Moonstone on the shelf for a while; she was furious to hear that I would be spending much of the next several months at Gad’s Hill.

That same Monday upon my return from Gad’s Hill—with Caroline locked in her room crying and snivelling accusations about my abandoning her to find a home for us with no help from me—I received a note from Dickens, who had come into town to work at his offices at the magazine:

This is to certify that I, the undersigned, was (for the time being) a drivelling ass when I declared the Christmas Number to be composed of Thirty-two pages. And I do hereby declare that the said Christmas Number is composed of Forty-eight pages, and long and heavy pages too, as I have heretofore proved and demonstrated with the sweat of my brow.

This then was the bantering mood that Charles Dickens was in that July of 1867.

Martha R— was in a much better mood than Caroline G— that summer, and most days, after I finished my work at the Athenaeum Club, I found myself heading to Bolsover Street to dinner and to spend the night. Since I did keep a room at my club from time to time and since I was also frequently taking the train out to Gad’s Hill to confer with Dickens on No Thoroughfare and would sometimes spend the night there as well, Caroline asked no questions.

Then one evening, just as I was finishing an early dinner at my club, I looked up to see Inspector Charles Frederick Field striding across the dining room. Without asking permission, he pulled a chair up to my solitary table and sat down.

My first temptation was to say, “Only gentlemen are allowed in this club, I fear, Inspector,” but seeing his visage creased by a very uncommon smile, I merely dabbed a napkin at my lips, raised an eyebrow in interrogation, and waited.

“Good news, my dear Mr Collins, and I wanted to be the first to tell you.”

“You caught…” I looked around at the few other diners in the large room. “… the subterranean gentleman?”

“Not yet, sir. Not yet. But soon enough! No, this concerns your current problem of acquiring new lodgings.”

I had not told Inspector Field about our losing our lease, but I was far beyond being surprised at any information the man might have in his possession. I continued waiting.

“You remember the obstacle that Mrs Shernwold was presenting,” he said softly, glancing around as if we were two conspirators.

“Of course.”

“Well, sir, the obstacle is no more.”

I was truly surprised at this. “The lady has changed her mind?” I said.

“The lady,” said Inspector Field, “is dead.”

I blinked several times and leaned forward myself, whispering even more conspiratorially than had the inspector. “How?” Mrs Shernwold was one of those skinny, crotchety crones in her sixties who showed every sign of living into her skinnier, even more crotchety nineties.

“She had the good grace to fall down a flight of stairs and break her neck, Mr Collins.”

“Shocking!” I said. “Where?”

“Well, in the house at Number Ninety Gloucester Place, it is true, but on the servants’ stairway. No place you would have to be reminded of her misfortune should you move there.”

“The servants’ stairway,” I repeated, thinking of my lady of the green skin and ivory tusks. “What on earth was Mrs Shernwold doing on the servants’ stairs?”

“We shall never know,” cackled the inspector. “But the timing could not be more fortuitous, could it, Mr Collins? Nothing stands in the way of you making an offer for the house now.”

“The missionary son,” I said. “Surely he will return from Africa or wherever he is and…”

Inspector Field waved this consideration away with one calloused hand. “It turns out that the mortgage on Number Ninety Gloucester Place was never paid off by poor Mrs Shernwold. The house was never hers to give away, sir.”

“Who has the paper on it, then?”

“Lord Portman. It turns out that the house was always under the control of Lord Portman.”

“I have met Lord Portman!” I cried, loudly enough that several of the diners turned to stare. In a much lower voice, I said, “I know him, Inspector. A reasonable man. I believe that he owns much of the property there around Portman Square… on Baker Street as well as Gloucester Place.”