Free Oliver Twist Investigates by G. M. Best

immediate response to their hostility and Maria’s rejection of my suit was to seek oblivion in drink but that only made me more wretched. So I plunged myself into new challenges, writing not only reports for the Morning Chronicle but also stories and articles for an offshoot paper, the unimaginatively named Evening Chronicle . Thus I moved seamlessly from reporter to writer and I assumed in the latter role the pen name of “Boz”, which was the nickname of one of my younger brothers. Looking back, my early stories were crude and ill considered, and they bear obvious marks of haste and inexperience, but at the time I was delighted because they were very leniently and favourably received on their first appearance.
    â€˜I soon found myself moving in new circles and, in particular, I became a regular visitor to the home of my newspaper boss, George Hogarth, who had been one of the most eminent among the literati of Edinburgh and an
intimate companion of Sir Walter Scott. I basked in the attention of his four pretty daughters, Catherine, Mary, Georgina, and Helen. The society of young girls is a very delightful thing and I gave myself freely to their entertainment and they to mine. I came to see in the eldest, Catherine, every quality that Maria had lacked. Although outwardly not as pretty as my former love, Catherine had every inward virtue that Maria had failed to possess. She was amiable and unassuming, generous and eager to please. She won my affection and I offered to marry her. She accepted and my writing proved as successful as my engagement. The public had taken Sketches by Boz to their hearts so I was asked to produce a more ambitious set of stories. At the very end of March in the year 1836 the first episode of my Pickwick Papers appeared in print. My powers of invention seemed to know no bounds. Do you know, Mr Twist, that, over the course of the next eighteen months or so, I created no less than eight hundred and sixty-five characters around Pickwick and set his adventures in almost one hundred and seventy different places?’
    I nodded. “It is, indeed, a vastly entertaining book, sir, and one I have read with pleasure more than once.”
    Dickens acknowledged my praise with a smile. ‘Yes, indeed, I was convinced I had freed myself from the past and all its heartaches and that my good fortune was secured. I obtained a special marriage licence in order to marry Catherine, even though she was still a minor. We set up our first home in a small three-roomed flat at Furnival’s Inn, and shortly afterwards Catherine announced I would become a father. My joy seemed complete. I shall never be so happy again as I was in those chambers. Though they were only three storeys high, I felt I had ascended to the entrance to
Heaven itself. However, I did not realize that a serpent had already entered my Garden of Eden. Unbeknown to me, Nancy had come back into my life and she was about to make her presence felt again.
    â€˜The previous autumn I had been writing some stories on prison life and, as part of my research, I had gone to Newgate Prison. I detest this gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London. Its rough heavy walls, small grated windows, and low massive doors look as if they were made for the express purpose of letting people in and never letting them out again. The throngs of wretched inmates, bound and helpless, know that within a few yards of their dismal cells the outside world passes them by, one perpetual stream of life and bustle. Those condemned to die are endlessly tortured by having to listen hour by hour and day by day to the light laugh and merry whistle of those who are free.
    â€˜I delivered my credentials to the slovenly servant who answered my knock at the governor’s house. I was ushered into a little office, which had two windows that both looked into the Old Bailey. It was fitted up like an ordinary attorney’s office and contained a wainscoted