Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  She walked away, and cuddled her daughter before saying, quietly: ‘I am perfectly happy here. And so are you.’

  ‘Working on a market stall until I am old.’

  ‘It is good, reliable, you do well. You are a furniture maker. What else would you do?’

  ‘I shall keep making furniture. There is a firm in London called Seddon’s. They make furniture. I shall seek work with them in the first place.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of Seddon’s. And I don’t want to.’

  ‘If I got taken on by Seddon’s, if I learnt the London furniture trade, then one day, who knows where I might end up? Your sister had the right idea.’

  ‘Susanna went to London and I chose to stay. So should you.’

  ‘I will go ahead, and establish myself. Living cheaply, sleeping in the cart if I have to. Once I am established, I will come back for you.’

  ‘You won’t come back.’

  ‘What are you saying? Of course I will.’

  ‘What obligations do you have to me? If you are happy to throw up all your connections to where you were born on a whim, you would do the same to me and to our children. How can I trust you now? I do not trust you now.’

  He returned to looking at the fire. At last he said: ‘You might have won me over, Elizabeth. You could probably have talked me round. But not now. Not after saying that. Our next son will be a Londoner.’ He picked up a pitcher of water on the table, and doused the fire.

  *

  When the factory bell struck eight, hundreds of workers spilled on to Aldersgate Street from the six wings of Seddon’s. Many made their way to the local public houses, generally retaining their departmental loyalties as they went.

  Henry Seymour was already waiting in the Castle and Falcon, having made enquiries to establish where the upholsterers drank. His belt buckle shone, he wore a clean red silk neckcloth, and only his boots detracted from his smartness – caked with London mud. But many inside had footwear in the same state, so it made little difference.

  He stood against the wall, opposite a well-lit table, which was empty and reserved, and a barmaid shooed away any customers who decided to drink there. He located himself precisely between two framed coloured prints. One print showed a fat pipe-smoking vicar and his thin lantern-bearing clerk exiting a public house, while the other showed the prime minister at a whipping post. Three young men played cards beside Henry Seymour, and one asked Seymour whether he wanted to make up the table. Seymour politely declined, and saw them immediately take an interest in a badly complexioned youth with a Scottish accent, and he overheard one man whisper, ‘He’ll do.’ With smiles and enthusiastic beckonings, they recruited the youth – or thought they had done so, until a man carrying a Bible tapped the prey on the shoulder and said: ‘I would not, young man, if you want to keep the contents of your purse.’

  Meanwhile, the seats at the well-lit table were occupied. All the table’s men looked cleaner and smarter than the general run of customers, and one confident young man especially stamped himself on Seymour’s attention. This man, who looked about twenty years old, had polished hair, wore a red silk waistcoat with bright buttons, and even his boots – which protruded from the table with some arrogance – while not mudless, showed a distinct ability to place feet in the cleanest spots of a pavement. Suddenly, the young man, aware he was subject to scrutiny, glanced over to Seymour, looked the latter up and down, and said, in the strange accent of certain lower-class Londoners: ‘Vel, I don’t believe I have seen you before. Werry good to see you.’

  ‘Is this where the upholsterers of Seddon’s drink, sir?’

  ‘Zeddon’s zurrr?’ The young man’s imitation of Somerset brought smiles and hoots of appreciation from his mates. ‘Vy – are you lookin’ for verk?’

  ‘I am, sir.’

  ‘Oh you are, zurrr? From Zomerzet eh? Werry good, werry good. I suppose you drink ziderrr, eh?’

  ‘Somerset apples, they say, are the best.’

  ‘Any little ’uns, Zomerzet?’

  ‘Two, back there. One on the way.’

  ‘Oh, a basket maker eh?’

  ‘I am hoping to work in upholstery.’

  They laughed and slapped the table. ‘Verked in upholstery before?’

  ‘For myself.’

  ‘Vel, that’s werry good – only, you’re in the wrong place, Zomerzet. All of us are beds here. Upholsterers drink in the Vite Lyon.’

  ‘The White Lyon? I was definitely told—’

  ‘Ah, there’s allus people who’ll tell you wrong. You go in there and ask for Mr Valker.’

  ‘Is Mr Walker in charge of the upholsterers?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s the man, right enough.’

  But in the White Lyon, when Henry Seymour asked for Mr Walker, he was told by another circle of Seddon’s men, at another brightly lit table, that they were all cabinets there, apart from a kitchen stool who used to be a cabinet, and still liked his old friends. Upholstery, they explained, was in the Cock. They were quite sure of that – the Cock. It was strange then, that in that latter establishment Seymour discovered only chests of drawers and toilet tables – upholstery certainly used to be there, said one toilet table, but upholstery had argued with the landlord about change for a glass of rum, and taken their custom to the Nag’s Head. An argument then ensued, as a chest of drawers insisted that the Mourning Bush was the place for upholstery, while a toilet table said that was quite wrong, as he knew for a fact that the Mourning Bush was Spanish mahogany. As a compromise, it was recommended that Seymour should try the Nag’s Head first, and if not there, the Mourning Bush second. But when, at the Mourning Bush, Henry Seymour was told, with absolute conviction, that the Red Lion was the upholstery drinking hole – he simply said: ‘No.’

  Draining his drink, he strode to the door, when a one-eyed length of Spanish mahogany called him back. ‘You’re right feller, it ain’t the Red Lion. Ve shouldn’t do it, but ve alvays do, ’specially vith country boys or them as looks like scared rabbits, cause everyvun who can saw a plank vants to verk at Seddon’s.’

  ‘Where is Mr Walker, then? Please, the truth.’

  ‘There ain’t no Valker. Upholsterers are in the Castle and Falcon. Go there, put a smile on your chops even if you don’t feel like it, buy ’em a drink, and you’ll get your foot in the door.’

  So Henry Seymour returned to the Castle and Falcon. There were handshakes, backslaps, forced smiles – and glasses raised in a toast to that most excellent fellow, Mr Walker.

  *

  Three days later, Henry Seymour stood in a large and high-ceilinged workshop where there was a constant sound of the tapping of brass nails, as men stretched webbing and damask over chair seats and sofa frames. In front of him was a stern and oily face, the Head of Upholstery, whose leather apron, expanded by a lumpy chest and stomach, suggested that he had dedicated himself so thoroughly to the mysteries of the profession that he had stuffed himself as part of his apprenticeship. He led Seymour down a long corridor, past rooms of seamstresses, and cabinetmakers specialising in exotic timbers, saying as they proceeded: ‘Mr Seddon tells us to do this with every new person who comes here, in every department, no exceptions. I can’t get an assistant to do it, I have to do it myself, or I’m out.’ They passed a small workshop where several men, working on locks, all exhibited a peculiar green tint to the hair at the temples. ‘It’s the brass filings that does that,’ said the Head of Upholstery.

  Finally, they reached a set of offices where Seymour was informed the higher authorities of Seddon’s worked, and came to a halt before a carved plinth where, under a glass dome, there was a twisted mass of metal, recognisable as the blades of melted screwdrivers, coalesced.

  ‘It was found after the last fire,’ said the Head of Upholstery, tapping the dome. ‘Mr Seddon keeps it there as a reminder. So let’s see inside your pockets. Everything – in every pocket.’

  When Seymour pulled out a small clay pipe, the Head of Upholstery plucked it away and hel
d it dangling by the stem.

  ‘You have a choice, Seymour,’ he said. ‘You can ask for this pipe back, and I’ll gladly give it to you, but we’ll say goodbye, and I’ll take you to the gates myself. Or you can tell me to put it in here’ – there was a wooden box beside the plinth filled with broken pipes, cigars and tobacco pouches – ‘and you swear you will never come to Seddon’s with a pipe, or anything to do with smoking again. Choose.’

  Before he could answer, a stooping white-haired old man emerged from one of the offices, nodded to the Head of Upholstery, and walked away down the corridor.

  ‘That’s Mr Seddon,’ said the Head of Upholstery. ‘He’ll go around the factory now, working off his breakfast. He keeps a special eye on upholstery because we use the most valuable materials. So don’t think you can smuggle in a pipe.’

  ‘Snap it in half,’ said Seymour.

  Tossing the broken pipe into the box, the Head of Upholstery said, with an innocent look: ‘Now you won’t be in the workshop straight away. See, I have all the men I need right now, and some to spare. But there’s a place you can do some work for me, a place that’ll keep you nice and busy, just for the time being, and we’re a bit short there, and I can call on you as soon as I do have a need in the workshop.’

  ‘This is work in upholstery, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the upholstery department. It’s this or nothing, until we lose a few more men.’

  They came to a passage with a wide-open window and a closed door. ‘We keep that door shut as much as possible,’ the Head of Upholstery said.

  He pulled back the door and immediately there was a stench similar to burning hair. ‘Keep your mouth shut tight till you get used to it.’ Seymour put his hand over his mouth and they climbed a dark staircase to the top of the building, the odour worsening as they rose.

  Under the roofbeams, men, women and children pulled handfuls of feathers and down from sacks, and stuffed them into mattresses, cushions, pillows and bolsters. The illumination from skylights revealed clouds of feather dust floating in the air, and in the middle of the loft was a stove, the source of the stench. Some workers wore linen strips across the face, but whether this afforded genuine protection was doubtful, given the greater number of workers with a bare face and a manifest cough.

  ‘That’s how we season the feathers,’ said the Head of Upholstery, pointing towards the stove. ‘Just don’t stand too close on your first day.’

  Seymour had covered his nose and mouth with his hands, and was on the verge of vomiting.

  ‘Do you want to stay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Seymour. ‘Yes.’

  ‘One word. Don’t think you can get away with any cabbaging.’

  ‘Cabbaging?’

  ‘Some men think they are very clever, and take a spoonful of feathers a day, hiding it inside their breeches, or in their hats, or in their shirt cuffs, and they reckon that soon they’ll have half a pound they can sell for ninepence. But if we find so much as a scrawny chick’s eyelash missing, we’ll put you in a sack, Seymour. Mr Seddon has eyes everywhere.’

  He turned away and yelled across the loft. ‘Ho! Tom! New man!’ Then the Head of Upholstery headed for the staircase, in a hurry to avoid any contact whatsoever with the Tom he had just addressed.

  A tiny fellow at the far end of the loft, who was bent over with his hand in a cushion, straightened and turned, revealing a head with just a few patches of red hair. He pulled down a greasy vest, and then came towards Seymour, wading through feathers as though they were foam on a shore.

  Immediately this Tom began talking, as if asked to produce a summary account of his life. ‘I started as a poulterer’s lad; then swept the ring at the cockfights; then got my own birds and spurs, fine birds, well worth a bet – that’s until a rival poisoned ’em all; and I came here, to feathers. That was a long time ago. Come with me.’

  He took Seymour – retching, eyes red raw and streaming – to a pile of large, plumped-up sacks stamped ‘Hudson Bay Eiderdown’, next to another pile of red cushion covers. ‘I take twenty-five palms for cushions like those; I feed the cushion till it’s three handfuls shy of bursting.’ He laughed horribly. ‘They said shave your head when I started, but I didn’t and now it’s too late!’ He laughed horribly again.

  Henry Seymour said: ‘I will keep my hair.’

  Tom had either not heard, or, if he had, it made no difference at all.

  *

  It was a grey, wet evening on Aldersgate Street and the dome of St Paul’s loomed in mockery – like a gigantic bolster, it seemed to Henry Seymour – to mark the end of his first day at Seddon’s. He stood under a gutter, washing his hands in rainwater, while his hat brim made another overflowing gutter in front of his eyes. His fingers were encrusted with blood from catching on feather stems, and the down clung to his nails – and yet, when a passing stranger made the remark ‘Foul weather’, Seymour’s mind formed a pun, and he managed a smile.

  That night he slept in an innyard, between the wheels of his cart as the best protection from the weather, his head supported by a thin rolled-up coat, hay and cobbles.

  *

  It was barely a month later, nearly midday, when Elizabeth Bishop, digging in the garden, heard Henry Seymour calling from down the road. The cry seemed more distant than it was, because so pitiful. Seymour was in the cart, but scarcely able to sit upright.

  He had driven through the early hours and could not descend unaided from the driving seat; now he leant upon Elizabeth’s shoulder along the garden path. Whether through exposure, blood poisoning, the conditions of the feather loft or some unknown cause, he was feverish and barely coherent. ‘A change of air – I needed a change of air,’ he said.

  As she took him across the threshold, he also said: ‘I will go back.’

  ‘Soft pillows,’ he whispered in relief, as she put him to bed. ‘Soft pillows,’ he said, but in bitterness, an hour later, as she stood over him. ‘Soft pillows!’ he cried out late at night, for no reason she could understand, his eyes stretching wide in fear.

  Henry Seymour was dead within a week.

  *

  The minuscule midwife carried a bundle of cloth strips, of assorted sizes and soiling, as she fussed around the room, stuffing crevices.

  ‘So many miss the keyhole,’ she said. As her puffy eyes were not far above it, she was unlikely to do so herself.

  Climbing on a chair to reach the higher recesses of the door, she said: ‘I suppose he made this furniture himself?’

  ‘Every stick,’ said Elizabeth Bishop from the bed. ‘I shall have to sell it all when I leave.’

  The midwife climbed down and drew the curtains, cutting out the natural light. She pinned the edges together. When the room was as dark as required, and no fresh air entered, she lit candles and poured hot gin from a teapot beside the bed.

  ‘Here, dearie, it’s pure, and nice and sweet, none of your allnations-drippings that most round here would give you.’ After a little pause she said to Elizabeth Bishop: ‘You did not make a promise to go to London. He might have said things in his fever, and you might have said things back, but you didn’t swear. Though even if you had – would it count? And even if it did count – men make promises, and forget them. You make certain this child never has a single nostrilful of London air.’

  A dipped candle had failed to light and was smouldering beside the bed. Elizabeth leant across, and blew it alight again. ‘If it is a boy, he will grow up in London.’

  *

  Mud, all over the streets, caking Elizabeth Bishop’s boots and the hem of her skirt. Carts and coaches and street-cries, men playing fiddles and bawling out songs.

  *

  On the twenty-fourth day of December 1801, Elizabeth Bishop’s children, now three in number, watched as she hooped a faggot of ashwood with nine bands of the same wood. The family occupied a cramped room in Islington with little in the way of furniture, but there was a fireplace, and coals to go into it.

  ‘Your f
ather would have done this for you,’ she said. ‘So I shall do it for you. Now, each choose a band.’ They did so. ‘I shall have the one at the bottom.’ She placed the faggot on the fire. ‘The last of our bands to crack wins – this!’ She pulled a small orange from a pocket in her skirt.

  All sat on the floor watching, especially the youngest child, Robert. He clenched his fist in intensity of concentration, completely absorbed by his chosen band. Suddenly there was a crack, and he turned and looked in despair at his mother. His widely spaced and sad eyes penetrated her, and he began to sniffle, and then to cry. She comforted him but his entire frame shook with misery. ‘Goodness, Robert – you’d think I had put you on the fire!’

  She lifted him up into her arms and walked over to the window, in the hope that the streets of Islington would be a distraction from tears. They were on the top floor, and looking down, the better-dressed men, almost without exception, exhibited a huge stomach, protruding far beyond the brim of a hat.

  ‘Do you know, until I came to London, I had never seen so many fat men, Robert. Though there are thin ones too.’ She then saw that one of these fat men, with a triangular hat and globular front, had crossed the street to enter the building. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Well, we knew the landlord would come. I don’t know what I will say.’

  They all waited, with identically anxious expressions, for the knock.

  But when it came and she opened the door, Robert wriggled free of her arms and stepped in between his mother and the man demanding rent. Without any warning or prompting, the boy began singing a song in a shrill and unsettling voice, a song which his mother had taught him from a song sheet the day before:

  Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!

  Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,

  Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,