Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  Egan whispered: ‘Up for mischief tonight?’

  ‘Ridiculous they may be, but they do have truncheons,’ he replied.

  ‘But if one were bold and quick,’ said Egan.

  ‘And if the charley were taken by surprise,’ added George Cruikshank.

  ‘I’m game.’ Egan downed his gin.

  ‘I’m game,’ said George Cruikshank as he finished his own.

  ‘All right, I’m game too,’ said Robert Cruikshank, and he swallowed like his friends. Yet, even as he put his glass down, he said, ‘Now who’s she?’ looking towards a pretty woman in a green bonnet who stood outside the shop.

  ‘She’s an out-and-outer, isn’t she?’ said George Cruikshank. ‘Why don’t we put down a deposit on her, and ask her to meet us after we’ve had our fun?’

  ‘There’ll be others,’ said Egan. ‘Let’s find a charley.’

  *

  They all moved forward stealthily, following the course of the moonlit railings, Egan in front. The nightwatchman’s box stood ahead, at the corner of the street.

  ‘As mice?’ said George Cruikshank.

  ‘As ghosts,’ said Robert Cruikshank.

  ‘You do it, George,’ said Egan.

  ‘Robert wanted the mischief,’ he replied.

  ‘You do it, Egan,’ whispered Robert. ‘You started the talk about the charleys.’

  Egan looked round, as though no longer sure the idea was a good one, and he approached the nightwatchman’s box with utmost caution. He hesitated when a few feet away, but suddenly both Cruikshanks pushed him towards the box. Egan stumbled and hit the wooden side, the box rocked, and the man within cried out. All three assailants now joined together to complete the action.

  Egan’s hand struck the watchman in the middle of the chest, so he was pushed back into his own box – the box was then lifted, scooping the watchman up, and also turned in one swift gesture, with the result that the watchman fell forward, and lay imprisoned with his face upon the pavement. The trio cheered their mischief, then they ran away down the street, laughing. Shortly afterwards, in a lamplit alcove of a public house, they toasted each other on the success of the operation.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while,’ said Egan. ‘There will never be a better moment to mention it than now, after what we did to the charley. We have fun, don’t we?’

  ‘We certainly do,’ said Robert Cruikshank, raising his glass.

  ‘Has it ever struck you,’ said Egan, looking across the table, first at one Cruikshank and then the other, ‘that people might find it amusing to hear about our antics?’

  ‘I tell a few friends, and they laugh,’ said George Cruikshank. ‘I can’t believe you keep your mouth shut, Egan.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Egan, ‘that we might publish all the things we get up to.’

  ‘Publish?’ said George.

  ‘Turn them into words and pictures, me doing the words, you two doing the pictures.’

  ‘I think the law would have something to say if we published some of the things we have done,’ said George.

  ‘And if not the law,’ said Robert, ‘I think we might lose a friend or two.’

  ‘I am not so unfurnished in the upper storey as to suggest that we make a confession,’ said Egan. ‘But suppose we had words and pictures about three characters – characters who have more than a dash of ourselves in them.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said George. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Imagine two cousins, one from the city, one from the country. The city man knows what’s o’clock – his cousin is a Johnny Raw. The city cousin shows the country cousin all that London has to offer. All the fun there is of living here. The people to meet. The things to do. What to see. They are joined by a third man – I have in mind an Oxford scholar, who is always up for a lark and a song.’

  ‘And these three do everything we do,’ said George.

  ‘You have got it,’ said Egan.

  ‘Do you think this would sell?’ said Robert.

  ‘I think it would. People would like to see all sides of life in London. What if they could see the city in the safety of their own homes? No pickpockets, no violence, no dirt. So yes, they would buy.’

  ‘The whole of London?’ said George.

  ‘A one-mile radius of Piccadilly forms a complete cyclopedia of the world,’ said Egan. ‘The world that matters, at least. Life, gentlemen, life. People want to see it.’

  *

  I HAVE NOTED ALREADY THE SENSATION of Dr Syntax, and the associated memorabilia which Mr Inbelicate collected. There are also, in this house, items concerning the phenomenon that was Life in London, by which the even greater success of that publication may be gauged. Just as there is a Dr Syntax papier-mâché snuffbox in the library, next to the family Bible, so on a coffee table is a red and black japanned snuffbox depicting a whist-playing scene from a stage adaptation of Life in London, in which a Negro servant in livery brings drinks to the card table. Stuffed in drawers around this house, I have found threadbare handkerchiefs and broken handheld fans showing scenes from Life in London by the brothers Cruikshank.

  Just like Ackermann before – who had judged that the public would love to read about the illustrated exploits of a travelling pedant – so Egan’s instincts had been exactly right regarding the appeal of the illustrated exploits of three men travelling across London in search of ‘fun’.

  Ten theatres in London put on adaptations of Life in London – simultaneously. At the Adelphi, the seats were sold out so many weeks in advance that the exasperated man at the box office had to drawl, time and time again: ‘Do not ask for today, sir. Make it easy for both of us. Ask for next month.’ The price of a seat with a good view, on the night of a performance, purchased from a man in the Cider Cellars who had connections, was five guineas, and that was probably if he liked your face. It was not much cheaper for a seat with a restricted view. And the cheers from the audience at those ten theatres as the charley was knocked over in his box! They were the loudest cheers for a dramatic production that anyone could recall.

  Indeed, one of Mr Inbelicate’s favourite items of memorabilia was a toy theatre version of Life in London which, as he demonstrated to me once on the kitchen table, allowed children, by means of cardboard characters on wires, to enjoy the pleasures of knocking down a nightwatchman’s box in miniature. He said as he staged the attack that his father had spent ages going around dealers in antique toys trying to find a Life in London toy theatre in good condition, and when he found one, it was Mr Inbelicate’s Christmas present one year when he was a small boy, and he loved it then and still loved it. He had previously said virtually nothing about his past to me, and I seized the opportunity to ask him about his father and his family. He merely moved on, dodging the question, and said that it was not surprising that there were many copycat attacks on nightwatchmen – one of which, as we have seen, was attempted by the young Grimaldi, and the charley’s retaliation probably led to the clown’s madness.

  But let me eschew ‘fun’ and be serious. I ask readers to bear with me, I shall be brief.

  It is notable that, as with Dr Syntax, Life in London did not appear all at once. It was issued in twelve monthly parts, with illustrations, and a set of these parts is in the library here. Were you to bind them, they could admittedly look like an illustrated book. But the three pictures sewn into the front of each part were so loosely connected to the words that for the first nine numbers the wrappers had an ‘Explanation of the Plates’, and words and pictures were not always even about the same subject. But in that ninth part, a notice appeared, which I shall give now: ‘To Subscribers, In future, the only opportunity of giving the explanation of the plates will be in the body of the work.’

  Such a terse, dull statement. Yet, how significant, those twenty-two words! Here was the true linking of pictures and text! With those few words, Life in London become an illustrated work of fiction in parts – moreover, not in poetry like Syntax, but in
prose, using the slang of the streets. It was an historic turning point.

  Mr Inbelicate told me that, in his mind’s eye – which was sometimes so vivid one could almost believe he was really there – he would see Robert Seymour caught up in the fever for Life in London, reviving his boyhood memories of Dr Syntax, and that he and Wonk would attend the theatrical adaptations, pushing their way through leaflet distributors from the Methodist Chapels and the Religious Tract Society, who thrust their reading matter into Seymour’s face, urging him to ‘Turn away! Seek Christ!’ But in so doing, demonstrated the truth that, the more that people were told that Life in London was immoral, the more they wanted to see it.

  Mr Inbelicate also showed me a Seymour drawing of a performance of Life in London at Covent Garden, in later years, for the phenomenon lingered for some time. There was Seymour’s portrayal of the Oxford scholar who liked a lark, the bespectacled Bob Logic, being arrested for debt in his well-appointed chambers in the Albany, his arm seized by a bailiff.

  One part of Life in London took the trio of characters to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, and that is a very good place to rejoin Robert Seymour. Because, following all his hard work, the painting on a theme of Tasso was exhibited, two years after Joseph Severn’s Una in the Cave of Despair received the same honour.

  *

  WHEN ST MARTIN’S STRUCK TWELVE on the first Monday in May, the gates of Somerset House opened and Seymour and his mother joined the assembled hundreds who upped the stairs and entered the exhibition. There were over a thousand new works on show, of all kinds – mythological, historical, topographical, anatomical. Pictures from floor to ceiling.

  ‘You see, I am neither decked nor skyed,’ Seymour told his mother as they stood in front of his painting, which was displayed at a very acceptable level.

  There was undeniable pride on his mother’s face as she looked at the large canvas showing the demons and dark shapes of the forest, and men throwing down axes and saws as they fled.

  ‘What do you intend to do next, Robert?’

  ‘There is a gallery I shall visit, not far from Bath,’ he said. ‘I shall spend several weeks studying the pictures. As soon as I have saved the money, I shall go.’

  ‘Must you go?’

  ‘I must, if I am to learn from the masters. The collection of paintings is reputed the second finest in the country – by any standard, whether by number of works, by excellence, or by value. And they are exactly the sort of paintings I should be studying.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s in a very small village – at least that’s where the coaches stop, and the gallery is just a short walk away. You won’t have heard of it, I’m afraid. But it’s known in artistic circles.’

  ‘You never know – I might have heard of it. What is the village called?’

  ‘The village,’ he said, ‘is called Pickwick.’

  ‘I have heard of it,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard the name somewhere.’

  ‘The surname “Pickwick” might be known to you, because you could have seen it on the door of a passing stagecoach. It’s a coach-proprietor’s name.’

  ‘Perhaps I am just thinking of the wicks of candles. Is the coaching proprietor connected to the village, do you think?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  *

  When Seymour went to the booking office at the White Horse Cellar, on a cold morning in the autumn, to reserve an inside place to the village of Pickwick, he discovered the coaching company was indeed operated by one Moses Pickwick. Stranger still, two days before, he had received a reply to his letter requesting accommodation in the village inn, the Hare and Hounds, and this too was signed Moses Pickwick. That he would be travelling to Pickwick, by Pickwick, to stay with Pickwick was a most felicitous coincidence, the like of which he had never encountered in his life – it was as though all the Pickwicks formed an omen of good fortune. So, in a pleasant mood, he boarded the coach with its distinctive livery of chocolate-brown body, custard-yellow wheels, and with the name ‘PICKWICK’ painted in large letters on the doors. The coach set off.

  There were four other passengers, but from the driver’s reading of the waybill aloud as each passenger entered his coach, Seymour was the only one stopping at Pickwick; the others would continue to Bath.

  Three passengers sat opposite Seymour, and each looked in poor health. On the left was a woman in a green bonnet, who would sometimes try to catch Seymour’s eyes with a ‘pity me’ expression, her mouth falling open as if she were too weak to press her lower lip against the upper – but if she did so, Seymour always looked away, refusing to play her game. Then came a gaunt man dressed in black, including black gloves: a glimpse of exposed wrist showed an unpleasant scarlet rash. The third was a man whose eyes carried so many bags of loose skin that when his knuckles rubbed there, it suggested the kneading of dough. When this man was asked in a friendly voice by the coachman, ‘How are you today, sir?’ the man had answered, ‘Oh – not so bad,’ but with a falling intonation, so as to suggest he suffered, how he suffered. It hardly needs to be stated that all sought the help of the famous healing waters of Bath.

  Next to Seymour was a schoolmasterly man with thinning white hair and silver brightly polished spectacles. Though not young, he seemed healthy.

  ‘You are not off to Bath then,’ he said to Seymour, shortly after they started.

  ‘No. Pickwick.’

  ‘I shall be going there myself, on the way back. Bath first.’

  ‘Do you have business in Pickwick?’

  ‘No, just conducting investigations. Family things. What my ancestors got up to. I shall be looking at scrolls about them in Bath. Wouldn’t interest anyone else, but it interests me. Have you ever been on this journey before?’

  ‘Never. Have you?’

  ‘I have, and I can tell you it is a most curious route in places. The things along it may not interest everyone, but they do interest me. There is one spot – one bleak spot – and there is no place colder and no place more lonely.’

  ‘You make it sound like the grave.’

  ‘It fills the mind with strange and unpleasant thoughts, that is true. It is called Shepherd’s Shore. It is a stretch of five miles and when the wind howls and the rain strikes the coach – well, you will experience it yourself, sir, on this very journey, if you are unlucky. Though I would say lucky, for the experience should not be missed.’

  *

  The wind duly howled and the rain duly struck, creating an unsettling atmosphere of an isolated box lit by a swinging lamp within, the only respite from a hostile world beyond. The drumming of the rain against the roof made Seymour shiver, and putting up his lapels, he looked out of the window. Though the rain was driven hard against the glass, he could make out mysterious mounds beside the road, earthworks of ancient peoples, whose purpose could only be guessed at, but they suggested unnatural powers at work, for the grass growing on the bulges was darker than the grass elsewhere.

  It was a joy when the coach stopped to change horses at Beckhampton, at the Waggon and Horses Inn, a limestone building with a thatched roof. The hospitable firelight could be seen glowing through the windows as the passengers emerged from the coach, and a sign at the entrance requested that they leave their boots at the door and put on slippers provided by the inn, which Seymour’s half-frozen toes certainly appreciated. There was time for a hot rum, and an opportunity to warm oneself in front of one of the three fires – though the ‘pity me’ woman made the comment that four fires were needed in a spot as cold as this. Seymour noticed too that the inn was half full of bagmen talking about their travels, and one garrulous ageing man of this sort, whose fox’s head ring flashed in the firelight, was laughing about the ladies whose needs he had supplied over the years, and all over the country. But soon, too soon, the passengers were on the road, and immediately beyond the Waggon and Horses the stretch became bleak again and the ghostly howl of the wind commanded legions of otherworldly rain in a new and streng
thened assault upon the box on wheels with the swinging lamp within.

  *

  Some miles further, after the wind and rain had ceased, the coach negotiated a hill, and a steep, grassy bank appeared – and there was a most peculiar sight, which the schoolmasterly man took great pleasure in mentioning to Seymour before it could be seen: the figure of an enormous white horse, carved into the chalk beneath the bank. It was at least 150 feet from hoof to head, and the huge equine eye stared down upon the road, into the coach.

  ‘Is it ancient?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘No, not at all,’ said the schoolmasterly man. ‘An eccentric doctor carved it, not too many years ago. The idea of the horse jumped into his head and it wouldn’t jump out again. I am not related to the doctor, I hope!’

  They passed through a long street of stone houses; then ascended higher ground, to Chippenham, then descended an exceedingly bumpy stretch, followed by an unremarkable hamlet shaded by trees. At a turning in the road, the guard blew a lusty blast on his bugle, and the coachman called out ‘Pickwick’.

  The schoolmasterly man leant across Seymour, and pulled down the sash. ‘The milestone says it, sir – the village is ninety-nine miles from London.’

  The coach drew up at the Hare and Hounds Inn. It was now nearly six in the evening, so they had made good time. Seymour’s bones ached and he emerged stiffly from the coach, rubbing his back. There was the clanging of steel, presumably from a smithy, beyond the inn.

  Seymour entered a lounge of smoke, wooden benches, oak beams, and exceeding neatness, with yellow ribbons tied around brown curtains, and scrupulously clean tables. A barmaid, who was adjusting a lamp, smiled as he entered. He heard an old man talking to a younger one at the bar, and they both nodded to Seymour, but their conversation continued unabated.

  ‘Now when I was a boy,’ said the old man, ‘merchants used to join in with the squires and nothing was thought of it, because the merchants had been hunting foxes on the outskirts of the towns. But now!’

  ‘I always have a good laugh at the city men who want to join the hunt,’ said the young man.