CHARLES DICKENS excerpt

Chapter 15 Excerpt – Charles Dickens

Mary met Charles Dickens the next day, Wednesday afternoon, at 11:00 in the morning, keeping an appointment made by letter the previous week. According to his letter, he lived about an hour’s travel by rail to the east, near the city of Gravesend on the southern bank of the Thames, but came in two or three days a week to work in a small office just off fashionable Regent Street in Central London. There he put together the newspaper-like weekly magazine All the Year Round.

The building containing the office was one of a row of four-story buildings, built wall-against-wall so that they looked like one building except for their varied fronts. She went to the one with a newly painted dark-red front, but inside it was apparent that the money for this paint was the only money spent in the last decade to keep up the old building, which smelled faintly of water-damaged wood, stone, and people.

There was no lift as in newer office buildings, so Mary had to walk up three flights of stairs to get to the hall leading to the office where Dickens’ magazine was edited. The stairs creaked under her footsteps; she weighed more than half again her apparent weight.  This was because of all the highly compressed fat that she kept evenly distributed on her body as reserves of instant energy and body modification. It also acted as body armor.

She knocked on the jamb of the open doorway and two men in the middle of the room looked up from a table over which they had been leaning.

"Yes, Miss?" said one of the men. This was Dickens. She recognized him from the portrait in the front of one of his books. He was of medium height, a bit overweight, and stood very upright when he straightened, like an actor about to declaim. His voice matched his actorly appearance, very resonant and well-modulated, as if he could speak clearly to the back seats of a theatre. He had a narrow handsome face adorned by a mustache and long straggly beard. His wavy brown hair had receded from his forehead and, as if to make up for this lack, puffed out to the sides and back. He was dressed in cream-colored pants and shirt covered by a dark-blue vest and cinched up at the neck with a blue silk tie.

"I’m Mary McCarthy. We have an appointment at 11:00."

He stared at her a moment, said, "Is it 11:00 already?" He took a watch from the watch pocket of his pants and looked at it.

"Oh, yes it is. And you are exactly on time." He returned his watch to his pocket and limped to a nearby chair and donned a dark-blue coat hanging on the chair.

"I really must apologize, Mistress McCarthy. My associate and I were debating something and I lost track of time."

He came forward and took her proffered hand in both his, raising it to kiss the back in proper European fashion, just a bare dry touch.

Mary probed his body. It was a mess; he exercised little and ate poorly, with lots of fatty red meat. That would predispose him to strokes, and to the gout that she sensed in his left leg.  She gave his immune system an instruction to improve itself and gave him a mild aversion to fatty foods. He had a pinched nerve in his forehead that would cause him pain when he was under stress. She cut the nerve; she hadn’t the time to do much more because she felt him about to let go of her hand. Lastly€”she tightened her grip on one of his hands€”she added a command to his body that would gradually clear his badly hardened arteries of fatty deposits and the uric-acid crystals that caused the gout symptoms.

"No apology is necessary, Mr. Dickens. I’m also prone to getting lost in my work and am myself in much need of forgiveness in that respect."

She noticed with amusement that Dickens had interpreted her retention of his hand as possible flirtation. She would have to be careful lest his supposition harden into certainty€”though he did not seem to be reacting very much to her sexually, suggesting that he had a lover to which he was very attracted.

"That is very kind of you. Let me introduce you to my associate." He turned to his companion, a sandy-haired man taller and with more meat on his bones, dressed similarly to Dickens but with browns and golds rather than blues.

"Mistress, may I present William Henry Wills, my co-editor and part owner of our magazine. Will, this is Mistress Mary McCarthy, the lady I told you about."

Wills and she exchanged greetings and he gave Mary a brusque handshake and a smile. He was slightly embarrassed at touching her. This was likely because her beauty was arousing him slightly. She could feel his elevated hormone levels and heart rate as she gave his body an instant esoteric probe. He also had health problems but overall was much healthier than Dickens. She gave his immune system a work-better command anyway. He was obviously a capable aide to Dickens, and she wanted Dickens around for many years giving her what she wanted from him.  She was not sure yet just what that was but it would surely come clear to her eventually.

Dickens led her to a corner of the room that he had partially walled off with a desk and seated her in a straight-back chair across from his desk, Wills having been left to continue bending over the table and finishing up whatever work Mary had interrupted.  Dickens settled into a more spacious chair with armrests and a curved back and seat cushion. He tilted the chair back, hands clasped comfortable over his belly.

"Did you have a pleasant trip from, ah, CorkCity, was it?"

"Yes. Thank you. It’s been a very pleasant trip so far, my first to London."

"No seasickness, then?"

"None. I never get sick."

Dickens sighed. "I wish I could say the same. Now, tell me more about the publishing venture you represent."

Mary did so, repeating and expanding on the information she had sent him in her first letter weeks ago. Dickens nodded understanding occasionally.

"So," he said, "you will publish a mix of popular and serious writing. Which is mine?" He smiled.

Mary laughed. "Both, of course. But your works will go out in the quality format."

They discussed payment, doing a bit of genteel haggling. Dickens had been in the writing business for decades and evidently was quite capable of handling the business of selling his works and enjoyed doing it. They finally reached amicable agreement and Dickens said that he would have his attorney contact her publishing firm "instanter" to take care of the legal paperwork.

That business done Mary leaned forward and put a hand on the edge of his desk.

"I hope you will forgive me this familiarity, Mr. Dickens. But I could not fail to notice that your left foot seems to pain you."

He blinked at her. People in polite society did not discuss their health with strangers. Courtesy, or possibly the self-interest of a writer faced with a publisher, won out.

"I have the gout, I’m afraid."

"Do you know what causes it?"

"That has been known for centuries, red meat, fat, too much drink." He smiled. "I confess to such indulgence."

"Also shellfish and scallops. I understand you live in Gravesend, on the ocean. Do you eat a lot of seafood?"

He seemed surprised, perhaps at a woman displaying such knowledge. "Beyond Gravesend, almost to Rochester. But yes, I do."

"And peas, lentils, beans?"

He nodded, gracious before such impolite intrusion.

"Perhaps you could decrease them all, Mr. Dickens, and see if that helps. Also, abandon red wine for white. Or better yet beer."

"My dear Mistress McCarthy, I do not want to cause offense, but my diet and my health are my business."  Dickens was not smiling now.

But Mary was. "Of course. I apologize. I am a doctor in addition to my other vocations, and my medical habits sometimes overcome my discretion." With his new aversion to food she considered bad for him he would be inclined to follow her advice even if she had not spoken, but now he would remember her words and would be less likely to give in to his old dietary habits€”once he forgot that a woman had given him dietary advice.

He leaned forward, his pique apparently forgotten. "A doctor? How did that come about? Do you have a practice?"

"It is more an honorary term than anything else. Indeed, it started out being just honorary.

"You see," she smiled again, "as part of my duties as Dame Edith’s assistant, I give out money to the Queen’s College in CorkCity for studies of interest to Dame Edith. And the professors in the medical school, wanting more money and having the impression that I had influence in the getting of it, decided to give me an honorary degree."

"And were they correct in their assumptions of your influence?"

"In some small degree. But I felt guilty accepting a degree and doing nothing for it. So I told them that I would only do it if they allowed me to take the tests and only if I passed them. I thought that would cause them to abandon their offer. Instead they agreed, no doubt intending to pass me without regard to my actual results."

She laughed her tinkling laugh.  "Imagine their surprise when I passed their tests with the highest scores ever. Including those on the cadaver dissection."

Dickens had sat back in his chair and did not look altogether happy.

She shrugged. "So I thought, well, why not apply to the Munster Medical Board. Ah, you know that Ireland has four provinces? North, east, west, and south, south being Munster?  Imagine MY surprise when my application was approved."

Of course it had been no surprise.  She had friends on the board, including Bridget’s husband, one of the three young men she sometimes thought of as her sons. Also "Dame Edith" had contributed much to medical causes€”via Mary. And Mary had ordered the Organization to apply a bit of discreet bribery and blackmail to any holdouts.

"So now once a month I spend a day in giving free medical service in the poorest parts of town. And occasionally the hospitals request me to do an especially difficult surgery."  Logically she might believe that the many people she had killed deserved it, but sometimes her conscience still bothered her over it. The overt and covert health services she provided helped temper those twinges.

She frowned. "The first few cases I think were given to me because they were hopeless. Perhaps to discredit me. But I’ve not lost a patient yet."

She held up her slender hands with their long fingers, apparently delicate but actually strong enough to crush a man’s skull as easily as an eggshell. "Women’s hands are smaller and often more deft. I think that’s part of it."

The rest of it was that Mary could place at the edge of a scalpel an esoteric cutting edge sharp enough to slice steel, could "see" inside the patient, and could almost magically manipulate a body’s healing abilities.

"Fascinating." Though he sounded more than a bit skeptical. "You should come with me this Saturday night to George Eliot’s dinner party.  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell will be there.  She is also a physician, in America, and she is raising money to start a medical college for women."

"I would feel awkward coming with you. It would not do your reputation any good to be seen with me, a single woman without a chaperon. But I could come separately. Ah, perhaps you could tell me. Does she prefer to be known by her pen-name, or as Marian Evans?"

"She styles herself Mrs. Lewes."

Mary remembered that George Henry Lewes was the man with whom George Eliot lived. His wife had left him years ago for another man but a divorce was almost possible to get, so to many Eliot was living in sin. That could not be easy.

"Thank you," she said.  "Now tell me more about your magazine. I confess that I’ve only read a few copies."

Dickens stood up to show her around the office.

"We style ourselves a literary magazine, but we also have articles on current events and issues. And from time to time I like to include articles on current science. Here is one of which I am particularly proud."

Dickens reached into a glass-fronted book case and pulled out a yellowing copy of his magazine. It was folded open to an article on photography. It was in the form of a story, of a visit by two writers for the magazine visiting a famed creator of daguerreotypes, and included a very clear description of the photographic process and the chemical nature of photo development.

Mary read the article with her usual reading speed, so fast that Dickens no doubt thought her merely paging through the article. Yet for fifteen minutes or so after reading it she could quote the entire article verbatim. After that, unless she decided otherwise, the article disappeared from her short-term memory as it would anyone else’s. Mary liked that. She had long ago discovered that a perfect unselective memory was a severe disadvantage.

"Fascinating. Perhaps you would like to include an article on the telephone in a future issue."

Dickens had only heard of the telephone in passing, so Mary briefly filled him in on it, not mentioning that she was the inventor and patent-holder. Nor did she tell him that the Telaudion Company had been owned by her until it went public and that she still had effective control of it.

 

Later, in her hotel, Mary considered Dicken’s suggestion that she write an article on the telephone. …

 

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