by DM Bryan
[
The next night, no one met me at the door of the old printer’s premises, but when I tried, I found it open. At the top of the stairs, the nighttime workroom lay revealed in candle flickers and pools of light. Gotobed was not there, and Prosper worked alone, still graving the first plate. His yellow head bent industriously over the copper, and everything about him shone. Bright streaks of reddish light flickered on his chin and forehead as he glanced up at me. I did not inquire about our absent partner, but Prosper told me regardless. Gotobed, weary of waiting for the plate to be finished, had done as his name promised and gone back to his room for whatever sleep could be found there. He would come again in the morning to see what had been accomplished overnight.
I drew for a while, working on Tom’s mother’s funeral, but I could not find the right picture in my head, and in time I put down my crayon. I wished now I had asked Gotobed to tell me more about his mother, reasoning that a fuller account of his life’s story might help me find a shape for her. I had seen his Grub Street room for myself, and it held no clues to any family life. Gotobed seemed as alone as I.
Lacking inspiration, I put down my lead. For a time, I watched Prosper engraving, but after three day’s repetition, his careful furrowing of the copperplate proved a familiar miracle, and as the workroom grew colder, I pulled my coat around me and curled up under his neatly shod French feet.
The light and the clicking of tools awoke me. Prosper had finished the plate and was gathering up his metal implements for the day, neatly wrapping them in his apron. Gotobed leaned against one of the presses with that tweaking smile upon his lips. I found myself glad to see him, although I said nothing. Indeed, I had nothing to say but only rubbed my face to clear it of possible dirt, for the floor of a print shop can never make a clean bed.
That morning, all three of us went to a low sort of place to break our fast together. We had ale and some stale bread, and a bit of cheese as well, but we were too early and too poor for a better repast. I sat between Gotobed and Prosper, laughing at their jokes, and when we parted ways, I stole a gentleman’s pocket-watch in full good-cheer and took it home to Mother.
[
When Prosper finished the engraving and declared it ready to print, the time came, at last, for Gotobed to shine. For some time, he had been footling with one of the presses, scraping it and cleaning its surfaces. He contrived to fill a tub with water, in which he soaked that folding tray that is the tympan. This, he set into the frame of the press, cushioning it all around with folded cloth. Into the workroom, he brought ink, sealed inside a small stoneware pot. He scraped some of the thick black paste out onto a stone block and used a brayer, a flat metal tool, to pull it across the surface, thinning it repeatedly so that he removed imperfections. His physical energy, a distraction from the beginning, intensified, so that we were all of us in a state of high excitement when Prosper put the finished sheet of shining copper into his eager hands.
I knew the ink must be spread on the plate, but I could not help a little start when Gotobed began to thickly apply the paste to its beautiful surface. He looked at me then and spread the blanket of ink, thicker and blacker. Pressing with a padded piece of wood, he ground the pigment into the incised metal as hard as he could. When he was done, all the golden light was extinguished under a sticky, dirty coat.
Prosper watched these preparations, his elbows folded and a pipe between his teeth. Gotobed gestured at the fellow with his brayer, saying to me, “He knows better than to be bothered by the sight of ink on his beautiful copper plate. Why, he’s the very picture of … of … what the devil are you a picture of, you Frenchman?”
“Insouciance,” said Prosper, speaking around the pipe-stem.
“Exactly that. Now if I was to get a bit of ink on his fine blue waistcoat, he’d lose his studied composure in an instant. Shall I?”
He was asking me, making as if to flip black paste from his metal implement onto Prosper’s coat. Prosper didn’t so much as stir, but Gotobed himself already showed some ink on his sleeves. I wondered that he didn’t wear an apron like Prosper. I said nothing, but Gotobed saw me looking at his soiled ruffles. “Printers are always dirty men,” he said, lowering his brayer, “and women too in some shops.”
“Never,” said I.
“I’ve seen it,” said Gotobed. But now he’d picked up a cloth and had begun to rub the ink off the copper plate.
I leaned forward. “Won’t it all come off,” said I.
“Nay,” said Gotobed, “it’s lodged in the grooves. That’s why I pushed so hard.”
He polished much of the ink off, and then he took up a different, cleaner cloth and polished again. Finally, he rubbed with his hands. “To get the last of the ink,” he said, “you need the grease from your palms.” And he held them up, black and shiny. Glorious.
The rest I knew, for I was a pressboy, when I wasn’t a thief. On those occasions, I had to work at a furious speed, meeting the pace the pressmen set. Compared to that, Gotobed’s pace was serene. He placed the inked plate against the press stone, closed the protective frisket over the soaked page I’d placed on the tympan, and gently set the whole under the platen. He made both pulls himself, accepting help only to shift the carriage, and he rested after each. Prosper and I stood back and watched, for this was Gotobed’s art.
When freed at last from the press, the finished print seemed to me astonishing. Gotobed leaned over its damp, glossy surface, muttering about unevenness of tone, while Prosper took his pipe from his mouth to inspect the quality of his lines. Each declared himself disappointed with his own part, but I could not fault this product of our mutual labours. I kissed it, tasting the wet ink upon my lips and smudging the minute lines of an innocent, cross-hatched cloud. Gotobed slapped me on the back of my head for my importunity, but the blow was not a hard one, and I knew my co-conspirators were as pleased as I.
[
We were in business, but our work had only begun. Gotobed began to circulate around the lower sort of print shops, offering what he hinted was a small run of a new series of modern moral subjects, released before their time by the esteemed Mr. Hogarth to try the market. I do not know if anyone believed Mr. Hogarth’s part in the tale, but when they saw the sample copy they were convinced that Gotobed had prints sufficiently like the artist’s own to merit interest.
As an added inducement, if any were needed, Prosper had added at the bottom of the plate, the man’s own formula: Designed and Engrav’d by W m Hogarth; Published according to Act of Parliament. The words worked like a magician’s enchantment on printsellers, inflaming their desire for our product, and the spell was especially potent over those who had never themselves been able to secure legitimate copies of the artist’s work. And there were many of these, for Mr. Hogarth tightly controlled who might sell his prints. Soon, we were hard pressed to know how we would satisfy demand.
I quickly finished more of the drawing, and begged Prosper to set me to work on some unimportant corner of a copperplate. At first, he only laughed at me, but I practiced with a burin on a scrap of metal until I could produce tolerably straight lines, evenly spaced. Then Gotobed told the Frenchman that he might give me a chance. Better, said Gotobed, I should learn correct technique from Prosper than appear one evening with a burin in my eye. And so, Prosper set me to work on the underside of ceiling beams and empty patches of ground, although we all agreed the quality of the engraving suffered wherever I substituted.
“Never mind, little Quire,” said Prosper. “You will not likely have another chance to make such a mess.” He was speaking kindly, I suppose.
Gotobed no longer worked leisurely but pulled and pulled until his coat came off and his shirt grew as damp as the pages he printed. Prosper protested that eight prints were too many and that the most he might engrave in time was six. Bitterly I complained. Mr. Hogarth’s purloined print contained a small decorative device in its fram
e, clearly intended to include one of the Beatitudes.
“And there are eight of those,” I said.
“I think we might combine a few,” said Gotobed, exhibiting the carelessness in religion typical of an Englishman.
Prosper flipped through my sketches. “I do not like the seventh drawing,” he said. “This thin girl is Tom’s lover? Why does her face look so wet? Is she drunk? I do not understand.”
“Tom makes his peace with her,” I told him, but he did not listen.
“She has no breasts to speak of,” said Gotobed. “And her fanny is flat as a press stone.”
“I think,” said Prosper, “Monsieur Quire knows not very much about women, he draws such an unsatisfying one.”
Gotobed said, “Let us get rid of her and add her verse alongside the design for plate six. That drawing, Tom in Newgate, is much better.”
I did not care for this decision at all, but they overruled me. Then, they further combined the first and second images, Gotobed asking, “If Tom’s mother takes only a single print to pup and die, might it not be considered an economy?” In the end, they reduced the number of images to six.
“Why not four,” said I. “Or two?”
“But I have already engraved three,” said Prosper, having failed to puzzle out the sarcasm. “We are half-way done.”
“There are six Harlots,” said Gotobed, and that settled the matter.
With all six drawings finished, Prosper and I worked together to complete the remaining three plates. Gotobed inked and printed, inked and printed. He pulled like a man in a frenzy, working night after night and forgoing his daytime employment, so that he might have the strength to continue. When we had finished engraving the last plate, Prosper and I set up a second press and began to print also.
Now I could teach the Frenchman something, for he knew even less of printing than I. However, my grasp of the niceties of operating the big press did not satisfy Gotobed, and he lifted a page right off the frame to show me my poor workmanship. He pointed to where the ink was not strong and dark, and where whites looked as grey as Clerkenwell pump water.
I made to discard the disgraced pull.
“What in the devil’s name are you doing?” said Gotobed, stopping me with an inky hand he no longer had time to wipe.
“It’s not good enough,” said I.
“It is good enough,” said Gotobed. “Dry it with the rest.”
And then, one day, we were done. It was bright morning, but we’d long ago forgotten to sneak like thieves in our workroom. The stubs of guttering candles littered every surface, as did cheese rinds and bread crusts. In holes lined with chewed paper nested a generation of rats who’d known us from earliest infancy. We, like they, were established denizens of the place.
In front of us, on my drawing table, was piled a sufficient quantity of the series to take to the printsellers. We were dirty, and exhausted, and poorer than ever.
“How do you know we will not be cheated?” said I, watching Gotobed, who carried a rustling bundle of pages under his arm.
“I will not be cozened,” said Gotobed, and watching his face I believed him.
[
I returned to my bolt-hold and tried to return to my accustomed way of life. Mother, long recovered of her distemper, found me in my little room. She demanded I either return to my former good behaviour or she herself would call the constables on me. I did not doubt her, and I got busy robbing innocent souls in the street. I went from crowded market to busy thoroughfare, helping myself to whatever I could find, and if Mother did not make a handsome profit from all the silk handkerchiefs or fine shagreen cases I brought her, she had only her own lack of ingenuity to fault. Soon enough, I had her meek and mild, and I found myself restored to her questionable favours.
With work in the print shop momentarily halted, I had time on my hands. I spent much of it in my chamber, my secret cupboard open and my drawings spread for review: the stiff Bickham, the half Hogarth, and a little page I’d had since childhood, from whence I took all my infant love of a crayon scrape. How I missed Samuel Palmer’s cast-off workshop and my labours there. I imagined it, equally empty by grey day and indigo night, haunted by three ghosts: the first bent over a page, the second a plate, and the third a press. One evening, I walked as far as the close and tried the door, but I found it still secured with the lock placed by Gotobed. I took this as a surety on our return, and I did not waste my time in waiting. Instead, my wandering took me as far as St. Giles, although I knew the pockets were not so full in that quarter.
We had agreed—Gotobed, Prosper, and I— that after the passage of a week we would do the round of the print shops together. We would collect our earnings in each other’s company, so that each of us could be certain we had our fair share. On the day appointed—a morning when the rain seemed never to stop—I went to meet the other two at the agreed-upon inn. I had not seen Prosper since our last day in the workshop, but Gotobed had come sometimes to visit me in my hidey-hole, where he leaned up against the wall with his arms and his legs crossed, saying very little at all. He’d grown thinner while he’d worked the press, and he seemed oddly breakable as he watched me from his vantage point. Now, as I entered the steaming public room, Gotobed’s was the first face I saw, and catching him fresh in this way, surrounded by strangers and a blur of yeasty warmth, I thought I saw poor Tom standing in his place. In that moment, I thought of the rebus, and I was glad Prosper had not restored the little graffiti to the laneway wall. And then there was Prosper himself, who greeted me with a Gallic salute to both cheeks.
We three shook hands, and ordered ale, and after we drank we went out into the thick October air. Along wet streets we walked, passing wet men in wet coats, all struggling over wet flags, between wet walls. A carriage passed and spattered coins of dirt on everyone alike. As we walked, I began to think the weather worked a change in my two companions. The cool autumn air helped to dissipate the warmth of the workroom, as summer must give way to fall. The last week had only added to Gotobed’s rakish gauntness, and he had added to his equipage with a stout oak staff. He seemed a penknife honed to razor sharp, and I found myself quiet before him.
Our destination was the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s, where Gotobed had left our prints with some of the booksellers and print shops that make that their address. Soon, we came in sight of a set of stalls lining Avemary Lane. Putting out a hand to stop us, Gotobed pointed at a row of people, droop-arsed and ham-hocked, sheltering from the rain beneath the projecting roof of one of the shops. “There,” he said, “you see the good effects of our work.”
“I see the good effects of the rain,” said I. Wet weather didn’t improve a bookseller’s business, but it did contain it under his roof.
Gotobed shook his head. “I have been observing the same thing every day since our prints were hung up to be sold—people are talking. Go closer, if you don’t believe me.”
Prosper and I edged closer, standing next to a small knot of citizens waiting out of the weather. All six of our prints hung at the back of the stall, and it did not take long for us to hear that they were already the subject of conversation. A mackerel-seller, fringe of fish at his waist, was examining one closely. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, nudging his neighbour.
“I’ll be damned,” said the mackerel-seller, pointing at a face in the crowd I’d drawn. “If that ain’t the bastard what short-changed me last week. Why, I recognize his phiz—that Hogarth has netted him exactly.”
His neighbour, who happened to be a Quaker, sober in black, did not appear to welcome the fishy elbow of the mackerel-seller. But, he smiled beatifically and said, “I am sorry to think that perdition may indeed be your lot, for I know that fellow in that picture. He no longer lives in London but has removed himself to Woodford for the betterment of his soul.”
“Betterment of his arse,” said the mackerel-seller. “I say I
know that phiz, and it’s no more in Woodford than I am.”
“Peace be yours, friend,” said the Quaker, “for I have no reason to fight with you. Indeed, I am only sorry that you are so mistaken in your views.”
“Well, ain’t you a canting sort of fellow,” said the mackerel-seller, laying a hand on a fish as another man might reach for his sword.
The printseller, who had been following the dispute with interest, now stepped between the men. “Why, you shall each take the prints home today,” said the printseller. “Why quarrel here when you can be right in the comfort of your own front parlour. I ask only two shillings six for the entire set—a very reasonable price indeed.”
The Quaker pinched his nose. “Two and six?” he said. “What price truth?” And with that, he exited into the rain, brown mud plashing his black costume.
“How about you then?” said the printseller to the mackerel-man. “Two shillings six is a very good price. Will you buy?”
“I might at that,” said the man, “if I sell a few more fish afore they rot in the rain.”
“I’ll buy,” said a tall lady. She wore an old-fashioned headdress that stretched almost to the ceiling of the stall. “Will you deliver me a set in Soho square?”
The printseller agreed, closing the sale and releasing the lady into the rain.
Gotobed joined us, and the print-man, recognizing him at once, took him by the hand and shook it. “These pictures, sir—well, you see how they sell.”
“I am glad to know it,” said Gotobed.
“I could sell as many again, if you have them?”
“Perhaps,” said Gotobed, leaning upon his staff. “But first we must be paid for those you have already sold.”
“Ah,” said the printseller, his face instantly guarded. “As to that, I can pay you what I have, but you see I extend a little credit to gentlewomen and some others with whom I have long done business.”