Death and Mr. Pickwick

  For the boy would not want to be alone in this factory at night, with the rats moving up and down the crumbling stairs, sniffing the air. It was bad enough in the day, when the men threw bottle bungs at the rodents, and occasionally hit one – and when they did, the men gave a horrible laugh. One cask packer developed an extraordinary ear for the rats, and he hurled a bung at the skirting when he heard them run, sometimes sending up splinters of half-rotten wood. Occasionally, the boy caught a glimpse of a rat spotted with blacking, giving its pelt a diseased look; other times he saw a trail of tiny black footprints, from running across spillings. The worst sight of all was a particular rat scuttling beside a wall, the largest of the factory’s pack. It was fat, brown and longer than the supervisor’s foot – the boy was there when a foreman held up a lantern, and the light caught the small, black, shiny eyes. The rat ran away instantly, vanishing into a hole smaller than itself. Once, the boy saw this rat carry away a bone, and although it was probably a chicken leg, the dread thought that it could be part of human anatomy was inescapable.

  This blacking factory was his lot, for ever – that was his thought in moments of despair. His father, he believed, would not leave prison, and the life the boy might have led would happen to someone else. The future was a brown glazed earthenware jar, to be labelled. There was no hope. No one to rescue him. He was to label blacking pots for the rest of his time here on earth, and the smells of blacking would eat away at his brain like a dark quicklime. He might have been a man of distinction, he thought to himself, and worthy of respect. Not now. Soon he would be suited to his employment, and a smile of contentment, unstriving cow-like satisfaction, with a lolling tongue, would come upon him. In the evening he joined the line of men who washed their hands and faces with milk, which counteracted some of the odour on the skin, and the thought of the cow-like future was never more prominent.

  The one time of respite was lunch. Then he often watched the river. He knew exactly those moments when boats made slow progress upstream. He noted the barges taking crates, and the furniture roped together, just as his own family’s possessions had been transported when they came to London. The river resisted the barges as if it too did not want to move the possessions to poorer circumstances, and was trying to turn the barge back to a better, happier place.

  There was another unexpected happiness at lunchtime. One worker, with a kindly face and pink, protruding ears, had acquired a copy of a book, already shabby, by that former resident of Canonbury Tower, Mr Washington Irving, which he read at lunch sitting on a barrel; the worker must have noticed the boy giving jealous and inquisitive stares, and so he summoned the boy over and said: ‘When I have finished this book, it will be yours.’ Oh the pain of the wait for the man to complete! The man had a habit of kicking his heels against the barrel as he read, and the tone altered as the contents gradually emptied – how the boy wished for the tone to reach higher notes! Only to find that his hopes were dashed as the barrel was refilled, and the bass register resumed.

  But eventually the book was his. What a delight! What’s more, he knew places and people described in its pages. There was a tallow-chandler’s widow, whose house had a glass door, and a flower garden about eight feet square. He knew precisely this spot, and he had seen the old woman looking out on to the garden, her eyes full of wisdom. Then he read of the small cemetery adjoining St Michael’s, Crooked Lane – another place he knew! He read of the tombstone there of Robert Preston, a waiter at the nearby Boar’s Head Tavern, who had died a century ago. He knew the very inscription on the stone! And here was a fact he did not know! That, one night, when the wind was howling, a call of ‘Waiter!’ in the tavern was carried all the way to Preston’s grave, whose ghost still felt the call of duty, for Preston arrived in the middle of a crowded gathering to take the order!

  But there came the time the factory moved its premises.

  Now, the table upon which he did his labelling looked directly out upon a busy street; or rather, the busy street could look directly in. A single gaze from a pedestrian could shrivel the boy with embarrassment. His overseer liked to see people looking in at the boy, winding the string deftly, swinging the pasting brush skilfully, stacking up the jars ever higher. ‘You are worth ten printed advertisements,’ he told him.

  Sometimes, if he saw a kindly-looking gentleman in the street, he imagined the gentleman would say to him, ‘Well, you are a bright young lad, as bright and shiny as well-polished boots, and the blacking factory is not for you.’ He imagined that this gentleman would take him away and raise him properly, with care. The boy pledged in his thoughts: how he would show his kindness in return. That gentleman would never be neglected in old age.

  After work, he lodged in a back attic in Lant Street, near Guy’s Hospital. Often, medical students or would-be apothecaries stayed in the other rooms, and he heard their raucous celebrations, knocking back the wares of the wine vaults of Borough High Street.

  His room, the worst in the house, had his bedding on the floor, and he overlooked a timber yard. Sometimes he watched pairs of young men, often the medical students in the house, go in the direction of the Grapes Tavern, but it was usually the case that familiar faces simply vanished – people came and went according to whether they could pay their bills. As a quarter-day approached and rents were due, some would be gone in the night, never to be seen again. So the whole street had a seasonal rhythm, driven by the solar forces of indebtedness. Its other characteristic was the smell of wet or scorched cloth, of washing and ironing, for that was how many women earned their pennies.

  *

  There came the day of his father’s release from prison. There came another day when his father visited the factory. An argument began. His father saying: ‘No son of mine is working for you.’ And his father saying: ‘Get your coat, you are leaving this place, and you are never coming back.’

  The bliss of the walk home with his father! The bliss that his mother shattered.

  ‘We cannot afford to have him out of work!’ she said. ‘You must plead with them to take him back!’ His father standing firm, and drying the boy’s tears. There would be no return to the factory. The boy was to go to school instead. He was to make his future. The boy caught the anger and disgust in his mother’s face.

  *

  He had applied for a Reader’s ticket at the British Museum Library on the day after his eighteenth birthday. He requested the ten-volume edition of Shakespeare: Shakespeare. Dramatic Works by Singer and Life by C. Symmons 10 Vol. Chisw. 1826. He closed a volume when his eyes were tired, and watched a scholar opposite, focused on a page behind his horn spectacles. Then he returned to the Shakespeare and reopened a volume, and as he did so, the title page was the first page he saw – a page whose details would normally be of little interest. Now he saw that Singer’s full name was Samuel Weller Singer.

  He emitted a slight noise, which disturbed the scholar opposite, who gave a ferocious look, as if to say: ‘Is something wrong, young man?’

  He looked down again, as if to say: ‘No, nothing.’

  *

  He returned to his room with a small porcelain pot in his pocket. It was the most expensive he could afford, with a lid showing a muzzled Russian bear linked to a long chain, so long that it had to be draped over the animal’s back. Standing before a mirror, he lifted the lid and the odour of cloves came to him, as well as a thick muskiness. The grease certainly smelled expensive. He took two fingerfuls, massaged them over his hands, and then stroked them through his hair, and applied a comb. He shone! He held up a lighted candle to his head, to affirm a truly magnificent reflection, as close to a halo as the grease of a bear could produce. He was satisfied. He put on a red waistcoat. At a pawnbroker’s he had acquired a gold watch and a chain, rather more magnificent than that worn by the bear. Lastly he put on a long-tailed coat. He was ready.

  Maria!

  Her eyes did not merely sparkle, they were moistened stars. They were eyes inside his head more often than ou
tside. She was a villain too! Only a villain could have such a wicked laugh! And those dimples!

  No one dressed better than Maria. She teased and she persuaded by colour and lace and cotton. Reds and cherry-blossom pinks suited her best, and ribbon trimming was her delight. She knew how to angle her body to just the correct degree, whether standing in a doorway, or bending forward, or inclining her head. The wrist that emerged from her cuff led to the most slender, most shapely hand that an artist could ever paint as a princess’s. When her fingers moved, their elegance was a framing of the air itself. And the voice! No sound more musical, no tones happier, no human lilting more bird-like. And every real bird’s song on a fine day was a manifestation of her. She was the sun, the trees, the fields, she was all that was wonderful on a day in England. What beautiful curls! He was her slave from the first moment of seeing. All relish for food gone, save her. All his future was her. Dwelling, career, possessions, life – all would be devoted to the pleasing of the one, the only. He imagined the furniture in their house, the cutlery, the books on their shelves. He would become someone, do something great and grand, just to win Maria.

  Were he to become an actor, he decided, Maria would be his.

  Now the speeches of Charles Mathews were always on his lips. Whether shut up in his room, or out walking in the fields, he repeated the staccato lines of Cosmogony on the Nile:

  ‘Thousand miles long – swam down it many a time – ate part of a crocodile there that wanted to eat me – saw him cry with vexation as I killed him – tears big as marrowfat peas – bottled one of them for the curiosity of the thing. True tale – pos – I’m not joking!’

  Yet this approach might perhaps not provide a complete and convincing proof of his suitability to Maria’s parents. Her father held a senior position in the bank of Smith, Payne and Smiths, and although it was true the bank was known for convenience as Smith Payne’s, this was about as close as her father moved to the staccato style. Mr Beadnell, her father, like the bank itself, was founded upon practical common sense and financial security. His eyes had bulging pursefuls of skin below, and monumental eyebrows above, befitting a man of status, capital and salary. His side whiskers alone were soundness, his square face probity, and his nose was scepticism itself towards anyone lacking an account of several hundred pounds sterling.

  Still, her family did hold musical evenings. He studied her hands upon the harp. He asked her permission to try. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you do not exactly pluck the string.’ She moved her hand over his. Very gently she rolled the string over the finger. She said: ‘You do not use the little finger. Much too weak. Well, a gentleman might perhaps, if his hands were very strong, and if he did not follow the advice of his tutor.’

  He studied her raspberry dress – it had a collar of black points, each suggestive of a plectrum for an Italian mandolin.

  ‘I should think of King David and the psalms when I play,’ she said, ‘but I am wicked and do not. No, no, too much force.’ She tapped the back of his hand and took control of the harp again. ‘People said I did not have the persistence to learn the harp. I have shown them to be wrong, haven’t I? And if I press my ear against it, the sound goes all the way through from the wood, and that makes me shiver. But a nice shiver. I would play my harp all day if I could.’

  He caught a view of her father and mother in the doorway, holding wine glasses and eyeing this musical lesson with suspicion. If anything, the mother was the more suspicious of the pair – a small woman, with a stern face like a half-wrung dishcloth.

  But he now had the entire performance of Charles Mathews by heart. He recited a section for her as they drank wine. She laughed, with utterly bewitching gaiety, until her eyes lit up anew as another guest, a young man in military uniform, approached her from the side and took her away to meet his friends. The misery on the deserted suitor’s face was inexpressible.

  Later, behind a door, among wine glasses with dregs which had been abandoned on a shelf and forgotten about, he spoke to her. He would be more than he was. He would burst out from current circumstances. She should not dismiss him. She was his determination to do better. She was his passion. She could turn him away, but still he would work for her, still he would strive to make her realise the truth about himself.

  ‘Oh now you have made me knock a wine glass over,’ she said. ‘It is on the carpet. I must fetch someone to clean it up.’

  *

  Sometimes after visiting Maria he would attempt to cheer himself with a trip to the nearby George and Vulture Tavern of George Yard. In the heart of the alleys straddling the parishes of St Michael’s of Cornhill and St Edmund the King, the George and Vulture was rarely found except by those who knew of its existence already. Its exterior brick walls were dull – but inside its food was not. Steaks, pies, chops, sprats and shrimps were consumed with glee at hard, high, pew-like benches, among pine panels, and upon pure white tablecloths.

  The customers of the George and Vulture constituted a varied collection – philosophers, instrument makers, chessplayers and Freemasons, as well as old rakes who practised do-what-thou-wilt – all left their hats on the long line of coat pegs. A newcomer, if he were an observant sort with an eye for the curious, might in the first instance notice the two parish boundary markers fixed inside upon the wall; and then, if he were an inquisitive sort, he might also ask the waiter about the origin of the establishment’s peculiar name.

  ‘Well, sir,’ the centre-parted waiter would say, brushing crumbs and tidying glasses, ‘now there is a story.’

  *

  IN THE 1660S, IN THE alley where the modern tavern now stands, there was a wine merchant, whose name it was unimportant to know – for everyone knew him by his shop sign, a vulture, and this sign was alive. Tethered by the claw to a pole and feeding board, about five feet off the ground, sat the bald-headed bird, acquired from a Spaniard who had nothing more to trade for a bottle of sack.

  The merchant, who was also bald-headed, and thin, gave every indication of loving this bird. He would stroke its neck, and never tired of watching it feed. The bird would live upon dead rats and mice, which the merchant picked up whenever he saw an example in the gutter. He also bought fresh meat for the bird, especially raw ox liver, which the vulture loved – and the merchant equally loved to watch as the bird gorged an entire four pounds of offal in less time than it took a man to count to thirty. Even after such a meal, the vulture would not refuse food and would take a dead mouse, though parts would remain undigested for a while within its beak.

  The vulture disgusted some customers, and frightened others with its rattling screech, but the wine merchant proclaimed that the bird attracted more customers, by virtue of being a curiosity, than it lost. Once, when the merchant articulated this view to a supplier of burgundy, the unfeathered part of the bird’s head flushed, as if in agreement, and the merchant hugged his own hands in glee. So the situation continued – until 1666.

  The bird did not die in the Great Fire of London, for the man took it everywhere, tethered to a handcart. When the flames devoured the alley, the bird was safe, and from a distance, with its master, it watched the city ablaze.

  Further down the alley was an old inn, or rather there had been such an inn, until the fire. This was the George, which had served Londoners since the twelfth century. Chaucer was said to have drunk there; Dick Whittington too. The owners vowed to rebuild the George – they raised the finance, and before long, a tall thin building, a new George, rose in the same spot.

  But the wine merchant could not find the means to rebuild his premises. He scavenged for trade as best as he could, selling wine from his handcart, always with the vulture at his side, going here and there, and doing a good trade at Paternoster Row, where the burnt-out booksellers made their new home. However, his takings were not what they had been, and when the George was rebuilt he approached the landlord and said that he would like to rent a part of it to use for his wine business, and for this would share his profit.

&nb
sp; This proposal was not unwelcome to the George’s landlord, except for one matter: the vulture. Its eating habits turned his stomach. Above all, he hated the way the bird fixed him in its eye. The mess it made on the street was yet another concern. He could not allow the merchant to keep the bird.

  The merchant pleaded that he was known as the Vulture Man, that he would be nothing without his bird, he would lose trade. ‘This bird is my partner,’ he declared.

  ‘You can’t keep it,’ said the landlord.

  ‘This bird is my only friend.’

  ‘You have no friends because of that bird.’

  There seemed no possibility of a solution until the landlord said: ‘I will compromise. I will change the name of my inn to the George and Vulture. I shall be accommodating and even paint a vulture on the sign, provided it’s not too detailed about its eating habits. But take the bird? Never.’

  The wine merchant looked at the vulture, and he said, in the weakest voice he had ever used, ‘So be it.’

  The merchant walked away with the bird on the handcart. He settled down at a green. He fed the vulture a piece of ox liver, watching it take it down. He stroked the bird’s neck. Then he put a small hessian sack over its head, kissed it through the sack, and with one smart movement, he broke the vulture’s neck. He took the carcass to the Thames, threw it in, and watched it sink.