The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens Read Free Page B

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.”
    â€œI have no money to invest.”
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œI would have to know more before committing myself to your cause.”
    â€œStudy 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.
    â€œAmanda 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 herfingers 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.
    â€œAllow 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.
    â€œI hope that I am not the cause of your ceasing to play such beautiful music,” I offered.
    â€œMy goodness, no.”
    â€œWhy did you not go on then?”
    â€œI 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 tookmy 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