Pugg's Portmanteau

by DM Bryan

  “Mr. Quire does not strike me as a regular churchgoer,” said Gotobed. “Are you certain?”

  Then she told him, I was ill and very likely had the smallpox, and if he had anything for me, he might vouch it her for safekeeping. “Anything at all,” she said. “It will not go astray, sir, should it be worth ever so much.”

  Gotobed commended her generosity, but said, in truth, he had nothing of value to leave with her.

  “Then I do not know him, sir,” said Mother. “I mistook the gentleman’s name. I am truly very sorry.”

  “So he is not upstairs and taken to his bed?”

  “He is not.” And with that Mother took up her quill and blotted the page further, while Gotobed found himself taken by the elbow and led gently from the room by the very person who’d shown him in.

  On the landing, Mr. Gotobed stopped and turned about. He went back into the parlour, where he found Mother waiting for him. Taking another, larger coin from his pocket, he set it over the blot in Mother’s account book, and in this way Mr. Gotobed, at last, found me.

  To me, Gotobed arrived like a ministering angel. He came in, leaving the door open behind him, and whatever remained of the sickroom miasma rushed out. I snatched up my blankets and drew them to my chin, even as he entered and immediately tripped over my discarded coat and breeches.

  “What’s the matter with you, Quire,” he said just as soon as he’d righted himself and his eyes could adjust to the light cast from the few embers of my fire. He hung back from the bed. “Your vile landlady said you are poxed.”

  “Pox? No indeed,” and I turned my head enough to show him my ear. “A man split it with his crutch, and ever since I have been distempered.”

  “I see only a cap, and under it a dirty stocking. Are you sure you have no vesicles. Why do you cover your chest?”

  “I’m cold. Let me show you my injury.” I pulled off my Monmouth, removed the blood-clotted linen, and brought my ear as close to Gotobed’s nose as I dared. Gotobed looked on, but made no move to examine my wound more nearly.

  “Your face is clear enough,” he said at last. “Let me see your hands.” Willingly, I held out my palms, which were clear of blisters and, after my ablutions, almost clean.

  “Well, a mere blow to the head would not distemper me,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “Come, dress yourself, for I have found us an engraver and a printer, and you have wasted too much of my time already.”

  I willingly forgave this boastful way of talking, and I made to examine him on his arrangements. “Have you acquired the right paper?” I asked. “Each sheet must be fine pressed with only a little tooth, and it must be of a size with the plate.”

  “I am a printer’s apprentice,” said Gotobed, rolling his eyes, “I have the paper.”

  “Do you have charcoal?”

  Gotobed said nothing to this but showed me the whites of his eyes again.

  “It should be linden charcoal, for that wood burns the purest. And do you have crayons of white chalk? I must have that. And a camel’s hair pencil? Do you know how to find such a thing? You printers do your reckoning with anything that will make a mark, but that won’t do for me. And also crows-quill pens, well-shaped. You must give me those.”

  “I will give you nothing unless you get out of bed. Your ear is not bleeding and the wound looks dry enough. Here.” He plucked my coat from the floorboards. It no longer dripped with puddle-water, but it still smelled very foul, and no sooner had he lifted the garment than Gotobed dropped it again, stepping back from the noxious bouquet that blossomed at his feet.

  “They put me in a pool of shit at the Smithfield market,” said I.

  “Who did?—but never mind,” said Gotobed, “Do you have any other coat?”

  “Do you?”

  We were at a stalemate.

  In the end, Gotobed sallied forth into the street and bought me an old coat from a stall that sold such things, and when the goodbody who sold it him turned to retrieve the fine stockings that might just do, he stole me a pair of breeches as well. The stockings, he decided, alas, would not do, but he paid the woman with less haggling than was usual with him, which was, he told me, how he squared his conscience in matters like these.

  “Damn your conscience,” I said, “I still have no stockings,” for I was quickly pulling up the breeches, while he illustrated just how the goodbody turned her back. The breeches were too large, but not by much. I stuffed in my shirt and reached for the coat.

  “That shirt is very dirty,” said Gotobed.

  “Did you steal me a clean one?”

  “I did not,” he said, grinning.

  I pulled on the coat, wishing it were not cut in the newer, more open fashion. I said so.

  “Worse and worse,” said Gotobed, “I understand that breeches are worn more tightly this year, while yours are—“

  “Mine are slipping down around my arse.” I gave them a tug. “And I have no waistcoat—you should have bought me a waistcoat.”

  “You did not wear one when we first met.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  Gotobed bowed facetiously, although I meant the compliment. I took up my old stockings and shook them out, examining the extent of the bloodstain on the one I’d used as a bandage. Then I pulled them both on and buttoned my breeches over top. Together, Gotobed and I examined my legs. The stain was extensive and the effect was—as my companion said—more Banquo’s ghost than Sir Fopling Flutter.

  “It matters not,” I said, pulling down my Monmouth over my damaged ear. “When we are rich, I’ll buy ten suits, and everyone will have a vest and a clean set of white stockings to accompany it.”

  “And when we are rich,” said Gotobed, “I’ll return to the goodbody the price of your breeches.”

  This he said with no trace of a smile, and I guessed he had not yet salved his conscience, no matter what he told me. Such qualms seemed too nice in a man so rough, and I stared at him in some surprise. For this, I earned a scowl.

  Shrugging, I dismissed all consideration of his contradictory nature, following him willingly from my bolt-hole and into the street. Finally, we were embarked on our scheme together, Mr. Gotobed and I, and so together we went forth.

  Chapter 14

  The Life and Times of Cass Quire, Gentleman.

  Contains the sequel to Cass’ projection with Mr. Gotobed. Much is written on the nature of engraving and printing. A gentleman mentions Mr. Hogarth’s

  view of pyrates.

  London, 1746.

  The workshop filled the top floor of a ramshackle building very near to St. Bart’s the Greater—that place where Doll sang and Nathaniel vanished. We entered through a door off St. Bartholomew’s Close, making our way up two flights of steps until we emerged in a long, stone chamber that ran the length of the three houses abutting the church. Windows, intermittently placed and made of buckled squares of glass, let in the light, although not for us, for we came as thieves at night. Once, these premises held a respectable printer’s firm begun by Mr. Samuel Palmer, who was reckoned a good man, but Palmer had died a year or so before. Now a pair of letter founders, brothers surnamed James, paid the rates on the building and intended to expand their foundry to fill Palmer’s old premises. But they hadn’t done so yet, and in the meanwhile the presses sat unused and waiting. With nothing but empty floors below, the workshop’s situation could not have been better suited to our purposes.

  Gotobed, as he showed us around, grew expansive, swigging from a bottle and leading us through the long room. To see him, anyone might have thought he had purchased the workshop rather than forced an entry. He set down his candle, wiped dust off the presses, found out the chases, and showed me the ink balls. He’d thought of everything, he told us, while we listened.

  There were two of us dogging Gotobed’s heels that night—myself and the copper-engraver newly
brought into our scheme. On first acquaintance, I cared little for the fellow, and I liked him less with every approving nod he gave to Gotobed’s arrangements. He treated me with blond conviviality and wrung my hand heartily, but cold looks were all I could return. My behaviour distressed Gotobed, and as soon as the subject of my enmity stepped out to take the air, Gotobed demanded that I tell him what I had against Prosper, for such was the fellow’s absurd name.

  Prosper was one of those apprentice engravers who had travelled across the channel with his master to exchange fancy French work for good English money. That exchange I did not like, and I told Gotobed so. “We have English engravers as good as any in France,” I said.

  Gotobed had given me the drawing materials I demanded, and I was now beginning to draw the pictures that were my part in the bargain. In soft lead, I began to outline a dog struggling with a man over a bone. The dog formed a detail in the first of the eight false Hogarths.

  Gotobed shrugged. “The French are our masters in all things pertaining to elegance of line,” he said. “But Quire, in all seriousness, our scheme—we are not working on behalf of English art.”

  “Mr. Hogarth is an Englishman who engraves his own plates.”

  “Prosper says that is not always the case, that Hogarth worked with Monsieur Ravenet on his Marriage a-la mode, and others of his countrymen besides.

  “Prosper is a fool.”

  “Is it his religion you object to? Are you a bigot, Mr. Quire?”

  On my page, the dog began to snarl with a vigour that surprised even me. He looked as though he might tear off the arm of the man grasping the disputed bone.

  “I care no more about his religion than I do his wig.”

  “Prosper does not wear a wig.”

  “Exactly so.” I left off drawing for a moment to think of Prosper’s head, so much did the subject irritate me. I waved my lead in the air, saying, “I do not know which offends me more—that the man pays a barber to shave so much of his hair, or that he pomades what’s left into that pointed beak.”

  “I think his hat shapes it thus,“ said Gotobed, but his heart had gone out of our discussion. I saw him glance at the stairwell, overprinted with shadow. Then he looked at the silent presses filling the workshop.

  In truth, I knew we must have Prosper—or someone exactly like him. Each of the eight drawings I drew required inscribing, in reverse, on its own copperplate. This was Prosper’s task, which he would carry out well enough, if he were the trustworthy member of our party Gotobed believed. If not, he would steal my designs and take them for his own, selling us to the constables in the bargain. Then, my next sketch would be on a cell wall. Or worse, his skill at engraving would disappoint, and he would render my work as stiff and lifeless as Mr. Bickham’s—God save us from that betrayal.

  “He has been a very long time,” I said, setting to work again with my crayon.

  “A man must have his diversions. Not everyone is as well entertained with paper and lead as you.”

  “He must be fully diverted by now.”

  “Honestly, I don’t understand this fit of pique—you were the one on fire to meet an engraver and observe his skill. I must ask you again, my dear Mr. Quire, to set aside whatever differences you have with Prosper and welcome him as a partner in our enterprise.”

  Why, I might have asked, is he already “Prosper” and I still your “dear Mr. Quire?” but instead I said, “What does it matter what I think of him, so long as we both carry out our separate tasks?” Then I renewed my grip on my crayon and began to draw again.

  From under my fingers came a small figure of a girl, her chin lifted and her bonnet set straight. On her apron I drew a parish badge, and in her hand I put a small fluted glass, which a companion was teaching her to lift to her lips. I recognized Doll and saw that already she was drinking gin. The folds of her dress I filled in with lines of an even firmness, pressing hard against a shudder in my hands.

  Gotobed came to stand by my shoulder, leaning down over the small table at which I worked. He’d given up the quarrel and was watching me work. “Really, Quire,” he said, speaking softly, “such a character might be one of Hogarth’s own.”

  I did not—I could not—meet his eye, but laboured over the dress until I had quite ruined the fall of the apron.

  It was while we were thus, silent together and feeling little need for further discourse, that the sound of footfalls on the long wooden staircase announced Prosper’s return. Instinctively, I put a protective arm over my page, although why I did not wish him to see my work I could not have said. When he reached us, he bent forward, placing his hands on his knees. He was breathing hard, panting like a dog. “I had,” he said, his peculiar English made even more incomprehensible by his gasps, “to run very … very quick.”

  Gotobed was all aflutter, patting him on the back as if to ease the passage of English air into those Gallic lungs. As Prosper pulled off his brown greatcoat I continued to draw, filling in a section of house I had roughed out earlier. I knew the details mattered less than the design, but I would not leave even the shape of the stones to another. While I worked, Prosper’s story emerged.

  He had, he said, exited our secret workshop, seeking only a breath of fresh air. As he came into the close, his appearance startled two men lurking in a doorway. Immediately they saw him, they ran, and he—oh, brave soul, French you know—ran after, following them through the close, splashing along New Street and from thence into Aldersgate, where he lost them.

  “What?” said I. “Lost them in Aldersgate? Why the street’s as wide as your mother’s—”

  “Quire,” said Gotobed.

  Prosper said, “They turned, just before an inn. I did not see the sign.”

  St. George’s. No signpost. No need. Everyone knows it—well, almost everyone.

  I said, “Did they turn down Maidenhead? Or did they take to Nettleton’s Court? If it was Nettleton’s, you had them like hens in a bag.”

  Prosper shrugged with unnecessary vigour, so like a Frenchman. His blue waistcoat flashed. I eyed the silver-bullion and tinsel buttons.

  “Quire.” Gotobed watched my face, his own an emblem of warning.

  “Quire,” I mimicked and went back to the facing of my building.

  Gotobed and Prosper put their heads together and discussed what the fleeing men might portend. Prosper fretted and dithered, but Gotobed dismissed his fears. “Beadles and constables,” he said, “never run,” and I thought he had the right of it. Watchmen would have come to the door and rapped smartly with the ends of their cudgels, and when they discovered us inside, they’d have rapped on our heads just as smartly. No, Prosper’s lurkers were doubtless a pair of gin-drinkers finding shelter from the rain. Or perhaps they were the kind of man who preferred the companionship of a fellow in a wet place to the dry bones of a girl in a stew.

  Soon enough, and this usually happens when I draw, I forgot my companions. I forgot the long room, squared with night, and I forgot my complaining belly. I forgot the presses, which were usually unforgettable, dominating the room like ships at sea, rigged with flags of paper. All around that frame, the ghosts of print-men worked like common tars, shifting pages from press bed to the drying racks high overhead. Sometimes those phantom pages stirred, as a breeze from nowhere sent a surf-like whispering along the length of the building. Once, I lifted my head and found myself lost in clear water, gazing up into pale currents, but then the black marks of my crayon anchored me to my drawing again.

  I drew a street, a set of verticals and horizontal strokes. At the top, I drew a banded box—a slice of London, a linear width of weather. Into the white page, I scumbled clouds with my crayon held sideways, rubbing away the smell of the tobacco from Prosper’s thin-stemmed pipe. I saw only my leaden London street, its houses and churches and businesses stacked like empty boxes while its citizens stood framed in doorways: a lord with a
face like a pinch; a drover in a broad-brimmed hat; a lady whose shift hung torn as a wet rose. These figures, I had to my satisfaction.

  In their midst, and at the point to which all the action tended, I drew a Tom Idle to match the one in Mr. Hogarth’s print, only now Tom found himself worse off than before. I drew him searching for a drink in a street lined with geneva-sellers. A smudge encircled Tom’s eyes, and a single curved line traced the sad decline of his ribs to his belly.

  “You tell us a story,” said Prosper in my ear.

  He undid all my forgetting in an instant. “Of course I tell a fucking story,” I said.

  Prosper either didn’t understand or wasn’t offended by the vulgarity of my speech. I prepared to repeat myself for his more complete edification, but he put out his finger and seemed to feel the air above my drawing.

  “Here, don’t touch that page.”

  “I don’t,” said Prosper. “I don’t touch.”

  Gotobed came over from where he’d been sitting, and Prosper told him Tom’s story, pointing out each moment with elaborate care. Prosper said, “I look at this street where he,” pointing at Tom, “looks through the window at the fine silver,” pointing to a tiny, drawn spoon, “and she,” pointing at a fine lady, “sees what’s in his heart, and he,” gesturing at a constable, “observes Tom and the lady.” And so Prosper continued, while I watched.

  That morning, in a street of lifting grays, we parted company but promised to meet again the following evening. My way lay toward Cloth Fair and the market, where I hoped an hour’s picking of pockets would forestall Mother’s imprecations at an empty-handed return. Gotobed and Prosper turned up the close together, walking side-by-side on their long legs like a team of spiders. They intended to break their fast nearby and hole up to sleep, before returning to the workshop. Then, Prosper would begin to engrave my first completed sketch.