Woodsburner (12 page)

William Davis Ticknor unexpectedly turned his attention to literature and began publishing poetry and novels, respected works by masters and new works by famous Americans. Next to the latest editions of
Collins's Treatise on Midwifery, Lisfranc's Diseases of the Uterus, Bigelow's Manual of Orthopedic Surgery
, and
Tuson's Dissector's Guide
, Ticknor crammed his shelves with handsome fifty-cent editions of Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Words worth, Leigh Hunt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bronson Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The writers whom Eliot once imagined would gather at
his
store—to discuss their work, to weigh the merits of the newest author venturing into print, or to hear Eliot himself read from his latest play—flocked instead to the Old Corner Bookstore.

The injustice was made complete when Ticknor promoted Eliot's former assistant to full partner in the new company; James Thomas Fields, a mere junior clerk at Carter, Hendee & Co., had shown the sheepish foresight to stay on after Eliot departed. And, if all
that
were not intolerable enough, Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Fields, like a pair of insufferable schoolboys on holiday, began to fancy themselves poets. Poets! The audacious booksellers even held readings of their own work in their shop. It is all too much for Eliot to bear, to think that these men stood between him and financial liberty.

There was a time, Eliot reminds himself, when money was something that he had neither sought nor possessed in any
significant quantity. In his youth, wealth held no communion with his literary ambitions. Yet now he often lies awake at night, wondering if the next day's business will be slow enough to allow him a few moments alone to work on the next scene of
The House of Many Windows
. During busy hours he hopes for such moments, though he knows that he will not actually use the time to write; he will sit hunched over his unfinished play worrying about the day's receipts and hoping that an increase in business the next day will compensate for the deficiency. That is the paradox of the modern age: a man needs to make a healthy sum of money in order to pretend that money does not matter to him. Some nights it surprises Eliot that his wife, sound asleep in the bedroom next to his, cannot hear the loud worries buzzing through his head. He knows it is foolish to suppose that anyone might remain unaltered by the passage of years, but he wonders if Margaret can detect the slow changes that he daily identifies with staggering disappointment.

The first time he saw her was in the old Federal Street Theater, a year before it was sold as a meeting hall to the Baptist Church. Margaret Mahoney was a dark-haired beauty then, slender and fairskinned, a warm and breathing portrait of the kind of woman Eliot thought only inhabited sonnets. He had followed her through the lobby, thinking she was an actress until he saw her take a seat in the box to the right of the stage, next to an older man with a pointed nose similar to her own. Although the stage was only partially visible from where Eliot sat, his view of the beautiful woman was unobstructed, and the flickering lamps on the stage cast enough light to illuminate her face, which shone with the spectral beauty that drove men to do ridiculous things. She did not cast her eyes about the audience like so many of the other women, looking for familiar faces in less expensive seats or checking to make sure that her dress was of the latest fashion. Her eyes, remarkably enough, remained fixed on the stage throughout
the entire performance, as if she were truly engaged in the unfolding drama.

Eliot watched the forgettable play from his usual twenty-five-cent place in the gallery. He saw no need to spend more. He had learned from the example of his father's strict household economy, and he budgeted his own meager income carefully. His father was a tutor of classical languages, and though Ambrose Calvert enjoyed no small degree of respect in the community, that respect stopped short of providing him with the financial means to participate in the city's more refined pursuits. It had angered Eliot to think that his father, who spent his days deciphering the subtleties of classical drama to the dull sons of moneyed Bostonians, could ill afford to attend the theater packed with the tea merchants and bankers and other men of business whose broad backsides barely fit into the seats.

Eliot remembers the relief that he was certain he saw flit across his father's brow when he explained that he had taken employment as a typesetter's assistant at Carter, Hendee & Co., where he intended to earn a living until his talents as a dramatist delivered him to fame's doorstep. Eliot wanted a job that left his imagination untapped for his own use. Setting type and inking plates required a good deal more effort than Eliot had at first estimated, but he managed to keep his wit untaxed, and he lost himself in the romance of assembling other men's ideas with his hands. When he returned at night to his shoddy room near Mount Vernon, his hands and face stained with ink, his clothes reeking of chemicals, he was overjoyed with the image that he cast: the struggling artist, stained with the ink of other men's writings, laboring by lamplight over the manuscript of his own unrecognized masterpiece.

At the time, his modest income more than met his needs. His lodgings were simple, as were his clothes. He kept only one good waistcoat and jacket for attending the theater, and he sat in the
least expensive seats so that he might attend as many performances of as many plays as possible. When a performance enjoyed an extended run, he went to the same play several times to study how the same lines could be delivered with a different emphasis every night.

Working by candlelight late into the night, he finished his first play,
The Forgotten Brother; or The Search for Light
. He felt allied with his main character, Horatio Standforth, a writer whose genius went unappreciated by a callous world. Eliot was particularly proud of the play's opening speech.

Horatio died spectacularly, leaping from a cliff at the drama's end, but when Eliot performed all parts of the play for himself in his room he judged its theme too solemn for the stage. He determined that his second play would not rely so heavily upon soliloquies three and four pages in duration. His next effort,
The Rebirth of Europa; or America Found
, proved too large a theme, and he put the half-finished first act aside to begin a third play, a farce about ill-suited lovers. He thought
Am I Your Husband?
held great promise at first, but then he seemed to run out of things for his characters to do and say.

At Carter, Hendee & Co., he was promoted from his position as a typesetter's assistant and was no longer required to clean the
type in the large vats of concentrated urine that fouled the air on the second floor. He continued working among the ink and chemicals for several months more before Mr. Hendee himself decided that his skills were put to better use behind a desk as an editor's assistant. An increase in pay came with this, but Eliot kept to his simple tastes, afraid that an improvement in the comfort of his circumstances would distract him from his mission. He bought a new suit and a box of fine writing paper, but he remained in the same lodgings, frequented the same taverns, and still bought only the cheapest tickets to the theater.

And then he met Margaret Mary Mahoney.

Eliot knows it is foolish for him to revisit his past as often as he does, rooting out mistakes and regrets that cannot be edited away. He can only assume that it is in his nature as a writer to think of his life as a story that might be endlessly revised, but today he is determined to concentrate on his future. He paces the length of the vacant shop, listening to the echo of his steps, trying to picture the quiet space crammed with books and, more important, customers. A single, feathery cobweb hangs slack from the center of the ceiling to a crooked shelf at the back. Eliot tests it with his finger and the strand drifts lazily down along the length of his arm. Yellowed slips of paper, old bills and receipts that once composed the daily details of the previous owner's life, lie curled in corners, swept into piles by fastidious drafts.

The edge of a warped floorboard catches Eliot's foot, and he prods the offending surface with his toe, adding its repair to the list of expenses he silently tallies. Eliot fumbles at his waistcoat pocket and yanks out his watch by its chain. He thinks of the book-shaped fob he spied in the shop window earlier that morning. There was at least one practical purpose that a fob would serve: it would give
his blunt fingers something to grasp so that he might retrieve his timepiece more gracefully. Eliot checks the time and frowns. He slips the watch back into his pocket, rubs the smooth gold chain between his fingers, then pulls a card from his breast pocket and checks the date and time written on its obverse. He wonders if anyone in Concord knows Seymour Twine, the man he is to meet today. He would prefer that his dealings be kept discreet. Truth be told, he would rather avoid this sort of man altogether, but just such a man had provided wares that proved to be the salvation of his Boston business. Eliot can see no other way to guarantee his speedy success in Concord.

Eliot walks back outside and again tries to picture his sign hanging above the storefront. He thinks he might have the sign cut in the shape of a stack of books, a giant version of the fob in the jeweler's window. For the second time today, Eliot examines his reflection, this time in the dirty windows of his own shop. He retrieves his spectacles and taps them, folded, against his lips. He likes what he sees—the profile of a man pondering days yet to be. He stares at his contemplative twin until they are both startled by a loud voice in the street.

“Can't get your boots mended there!”

The voice belongs to a short bald man in an unbuttoned vest. His tiny eyes are set close in his round head, and his mottled skin and rumpled clothes give him the appearance of having recently been boiled. He carries a broom and points its bristles at Eliot's shop. Although this man is not quite what he had pictured, Eliot is nonetheless relieved that he has finally arrived.

The boiled man keeps talking as he approaches, sweeping the air with the broom, and as he gets closer Eliot notices a pattern in the mottled red patches covering his bald head, shapes reminiscent of a flock of birds, or perhaps a large bat.

“Dropped dead where he stood,” the man says. “Mr. Saintsbury,
hammer in one hand, lady's boot in the other. They say he had his hand deep down inside it, the boot. Had a time getting it off on account of the stiffness having already set in. She won't wear those boots anymore, Mrs. Mullins, and I can't say I blame her.”

Eliot resents the fact that his livelihood seems tied to such men as this, and he is pleased to see that, if nothing else, this man is not quite so odious in appearance as he had reason to expect. In fact, he looks as ordinary as an honest shopkeeper. Eliot waits until the boiled man comes closer, and then says quietly, “I am pleased to see you are a punctual man.”

“Eh?” The boiled man smiles broadly, revealing crooked yellow teeth, widely spaced. It is what Eliot has come to expect from such men.

“We are to meet at noon,” Eliot says, checking his watch. “You are right on time.”

The man's yellow smile shrinks. “I'm afraid you've mistaken me, sir. You are new to Concord?”

“Indeed, I am,” Eliot says, chagrined that his usually impeccable judgment of character seems to have failed him. He slips his watch back into his waistcoat.

“I'm Otis Dickerson,” the man says. “Sole proprietor of Dickerson and Hapgood Dry Goods and Hardware.”

Eliot nods, enough to take the place of a bow. “Eliot Calvert— I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. I will no doubt come calling on Dickerson and Hapgood's once I've inventoried the necessary repairs here.”

“Of course, there's no Hapgood now,” Dickerson says with a note of apology. “And you'll find I stock more hardware than dry goods these days. But I try to sell what people need, and their needs are mighty changeable.”

“I was just entertaining that very thought, Mr. Dickerson. I have been told that Concord is a hospitable place for business.”

“So it's true, then? You're taking Saintsbury's place?” Dickerson shifts around to the open doorway, inserting his boiled head into the empty shop as if he expected to see the place already transformed. “Are you the new cobbler? These brogans are about to give out. I can practically see my toes.”

“Oh, I don't cobble. I plan to—”

“Not hardware or dry goods you deal in, is it?” Dickerson interrupts. “There was talk of another hardware man coming. Mind you, I'm not afraid of a little competition, but I'd rather know sooner than later.”