Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  ‘Why should he want to pay me anything at all? He’ll tell me to take the matter up with à Beckett. The sly, sly dog!’

  ‘You cannot just accept this loss!’

  ‘The only hope is that things will be better in the future if I deal with Strange. But I have been beaten by à Beckett. I don’t want to talk about this any more, Jane.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘I do not! That is it, Jane!’

  He retreated to the kitchen, and made himself a cheese sandwich, while his wife stood at the doorway. He gave no response to anything she said. He merely sat and chewed slowly at the table, as though a full mouth were the reason he could not communicate.

  From this point on, Seymour began to eat noticeably more. He asked his wife for larger portions at every meal. Soon, these became double portions. Whenever he sat down to draw, it was never without a sandwich beside his pencil. To his wife’s comments that he was becoming ‘bacon-faced’ he said nothing. It was also at this time that a strange phenomenon appeared in Robert Seymour’s caricatures: the lengthening of the Lord Chancellor Lord Brougham’s nose, to an inhuman proboscis. It first appeared in a drawing in which Brougham’s nose sliced through a scroll in his hand marked ‘Poor Laws Amendment’. The nose was like a trunk, yet sharp, with an upward curve. A few days later he drew the nose as prehensile, and it curled around the handle of a jug, which it crashed down upon a fat man’s head. After another few days, he drew the nose erect and long, and in the same picture, a terrified woman, her arms raised in shock. And one afternoon, towards the end of August 1834, when he sat down to do the drawing for Figaro, no idea would come apart from Lord Brougham’s nose.

  The resulting image was more doodle than caricature, and as he drew he grimaced, and he interrupted the drawing to make another cheese sandwich. Soon, on the paper, there was Brougham in his wig and regalia, but from his face grew the enormous projection, now like a sword. In the same picture, he drew The Times, and in the newspaper’s columns Seymour showed his views of its journalism by adding the words: ‘LIES, LIES’. The newspaper was slashed apart by Brougham’s blade-nose, while emerging from behind the paper were hands carrying quills, apparently the paper’s defenders trying to fight off the attack of Brougham’s nose, but so ambiguously drawn that they might well have been attacking the paper themselves.

  When it was finished, Seymour traced the image on to a woodblock. Without telling his wife, he left the house, and made his way to a narrow court off Drury Lane – so narrow that it could not be negotiated by dog cart – and then into a yard filled with rubbish, and then up a dirty staircase into a house which had been converted into a wood-engraving facility.

  It was now dusk, and at a circular table sat a ring of engravers: a lamp was in the centre, surrounded by a circle of glass water-filled spheres which focused the light on to the blocks being cut. A deaf-and-dumb lad, who was always enthusiastic to see Seymour, took the block, as well as the money for the cutting. Then, after a drink in a public house where he made a sketch, Seymour returned and entered the house smiling.

  He walked into the parlour and before Jane could ask where he had been, he said: ‘I have done my last Figaro drawing. I took it to the woodcutter, and there will be no more. Here – take a look at this.’

  The drawing he had made in the public house was a scene of a windy day. A sticky, pasted poster was gusted from a billsticker’s hands and blown into the face of a passer-by. The billsticker commented in a caption: ‘Oh dear, sir, it vos the vind, to think it should be pasted, too!’ Of more significance, on the brick wall was another poster stating: ‘R. Seymour respectfully informs the public that he has declined all connection with Figaro.’

  ‘I think you have done the right thing,’ she said.

  ‘I know I have. Ideas were revolving in my mind, which would not go away. But now they are no more.’ They embraced.

  *

  When the messenger from the woodcutter delivered the block to the Figaro office the next morning, à Beckett sat back in his chair and, looking at the proof, said to Mayhew, ‘What is this, what on earth is this? How can we possibly publish this drawing, Henry? Not a single reader would understand it, and neither do I.’ He passed the drawing to Mayhew.

  ‘I suppose it is about Lord Brougham’s lack of concern if The Times attacks him,’ said Mayhew. ‘But there is another meaning which is perfectly clear to me. Seymour doesn’t care about us any more. He has had enough.’

  ‘If Seymour thinks he can get back at me by an unpublishable caricature, then he is going to be a more disappointed man than he is already. Do you know what I am going to do, Henry? On Saturday, the main news in Figaro will be about Seymour himself.’

  ‘Whatever you mean by that, I do not like the sound of it.’

  ‘Give me a few minutes, and you’ll see.’ He began to write, occasionally taking a sip from a glass of gin and smiling, looking towards the ceiling, before he applied his pen again. Then he said to Mayhew: ‘Listen to this: “The above caricature is so purely hieroglyphical that we decline any attempt at explaining it. The artist, when he conceived it, must have been under some strange and baneful influence which we cannot possibly attempt either to enter or elucidate. We suspect that he was labouring under some frightful stagnation of his vital functions and the result has been a vivid affair which we can only describe as a pictorial frenzy.”’

  ‘Do not do this, Gilbert.’

  ‘I haven’t finished yet. “The fact is that our caricaturist has been so long and deeply impregnated with the horrible aspect of our political affairs, that his mind has at last become in some degree impressed with a hectic extravaganza that has now vented itself in a caricature which must” – listen to this – “which must take its place by the side of that grand effort when an Italian painter crucified his own servant, that he might the more faithfully represent the agony on the cross. Seymour has, as it were, undergone a sort of mental crucifixion and the result is the awful sketch which heads the present number of our periodical.”’

  ‘Gilbert, you cannot print that.’

  ‘I still haven’t finished! Henry, I am going to offer £100 to any reader who can explain Seymour’s nonsense! And that is just in this issue. We could keep this running. There are plenty more things we can print about him! Do you know what I want to do to Seymour, Henry? When he goes to bed on a Friday night, he is going to be scared about what will appear about himself in the Saturday-morning Figaro. He is not going to be able to sleep.’

  ‘He will never draw for us again.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘This is ludicrous! How can Figaro continue without him?’

  ‘I am going to see Robert Cruikshank, and invite him to draw for us.’

  ‘Even if he agreed, he would not be as popular as Seymour.’

  ‘I have an idea as to what we can do about that. What if we advertise the magazine as “Illustrated by Cruikshank”, without specifying which Cruikshank?’

  ‘The public will see through it. It will undermine us. You wouldn’t listen to me about promoting your theatre – for goodness’ sake, Gilbert, listen to me about this!’

  ‘All right, we will make it clear that Robert Cruikshank is the illustrator – but not straight away. Not in every notice. If enough people believe it is George Cruikshank, it will help us. Even Seymour, if he hears that we have Cruikshank as our illustrator, will wonder – have they got the Cruikshank? He will be afraid and exquisitely stung. He will be reminded of the one artist whose reputation still exceeds his own.’

  ‘The artist that Seymour is poised to overtake.’

  ‘Not when I have finished with him. Henry, I will ruin Seymour.’

  *

  The magazine accordingly published a caricature ‘from the pencil of the renowned Cruikshank’ and, as à Beckett had instructed the new artist that the picture’s subject be Brougham, it showed the Lord Chancellor tossed in a blanket.

  In the following issue, à Beckett inserted a notice:
r />   TO CORRESPONDENTS: Mr Seymour, our ex-artist, is much to be pitied for his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the celebrated Robert Cruikshank for supplying the designs of the caricatures in Figaro. Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner as pointless as it is splenetic and we are sorry for him. He ought however to feel that, notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him forward, which we have done in an eminent degree, we must engage first-rate ability when public patronage is bestowed so liberally, as it now is, upon this periodical. He ought therefore not to be nettled at our having obtained a superior artist. We are sorry for him and regret that a person whom we have so much advanced should have been so ungrateful.

  ‘I will be no part of this campaign,’ said Mayhew when à Beckett read him the notice.

  ‘I have hardly started, Henry.’

  In the next issue, another ‘TO CORRESPONDENTS’ notice appeared, headed ‘Seymour’s Insanity’:

  We have received several letters with the above fearful heading but we see no direct proof of our ex-artist being in the state alluded to. One correspondent calls our attention to Seymour’s bad spelling. Now, we see no proof of insanity in Seymour’s bad spelling because our worthy ex-caricaturist was always remarkable for a high disdain of the very commonplace art of orthography. We really wish people would not run him down so in their letters to us. As we exalted him so can we sufficiently debase him when we feel disposed but we think he is at present humbled sufficiently.

  À Beckett waited to insert his next notice until Mayhew was away for a few days:

  TO CORRESPONDENTS: It is not true that Seymour has gone out of his mind because he never had any to go out of. One correspondent wants to know how it is Seymour can’t write his own name. We reply: upon the same principle that a donkey can’t quote Italian poetry – ignorance, gross and beastly ignorance. We are told that in the year 1815 a subscription was raised among a few friends of civilisation and enemies of idiocy to teach Seymour to spell, but his hard and obstinate bit of brain rebounded from the process in its infancy and the result was he never got beyond words of one syllable. Poor man, now that he is deprived of our benevolent and condescending patronage we understand he is obliged to speculate on his own account in miserable caricatures which don’t sell and which of course are not worth purchasing. The fact is, Seymour never had an idea of his own though he was sometimes happy in the execution. But it is a well-known fact that the ideas for the caricatures in Figaro were always supplied to him by the Editor, Seymour being a perfect dolt except in the mechanical use of his pencil.

  As soon as Mayhew returned on the Tuesday after the last notice appeared, he confronted à Beckett.

  ‘I will not be tainted by association with this poison! I am at the point of resigning. No more of this, Gilbert!’

  ‘Before you get too sympathetic towards Seymour, Henry, you should know I received a letter from him yesterday, threatening action.’

  ‘I am on his side.’

  ‘Hear me out. A few hours later, a messenger brought a second letter, also from Seymour, with more threats, in stronger terms. The man is insane. I was right about him. In any case, I am finding the whole affair tedious in the extreme. So your wish will be granted – there will be no more attacks on Seymour.’

  ‘You give your word?’

  ‘You may be assured, I shall not attack Seymour again.’

  ‘Do you give your word?’

  ‘I shall not attack Seymour again.’

  But in the issue of 29 November, à Beckett did insert a notice which stated: ‘We have received two very dirty, ill-spelt and ungrammatical epistles crammed with threats. They are now doubtless in the hands of the scavenger, having passed over the dust hole to that fittest of personages to have the charge of them.’

  *

  ‘FOUR DRAWINGS,’ SAID MR INBELICATE. ‘Four drawings which tell us of Seymour’s feelings during his public vilification by à Beckett.’

  He spread the drawings on the library table, fanned like playing cards. The first showed an editor, quill behind his ear, wearing a striped coat suggestive of a barber’s shop sign. The editor is horrified to open a letter which says: ‘To the editor of the nastiest thing in London. Dear Sir, You may be damned. Put that in your paper. A real correspondent.’

  ‘One can imagine Seymour having a snigger after that riposte,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘The next picture indicates that the attacks are getting under Seymour’s skin, troubling him far more than the first picture suggests.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not see that,’ I said.

  The picture, from McLean’s Monthly Sheet, showed a fat man patting his stomach, his waistcoat stretched so tight that it pulled the buttons apart. There was also Scottish dialect as its title, incomprehensible to me – The Effects of Unco Gede Living.

  Mr Inbelicate explained this was a representation of a noted Scottish Member of Parliament, Lord Jeffrey, who had a reputation for strict morality, or exceptionally good living, or ‘unco gede living’ in the Scots; but Seymour had interpreted ‘good living’ in another sense, leading to the expansion of the man’s waist. Once explained, I could obviously see the joke, but no relevance to the feud with à Beckett.

  ‘You will note,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘that the picture bears Seymour’s initials. It is the single instance of Seymour taking the credit for a picture in the Monthly Sheet after McLean forced him to work anonymously. Is it a coincidence it was drawn just as the attacks were published in Figaro? Seymour is absolutely determined to assert himself as an artist of great talent, and this very picture is a refutation of à Beckett’s attacks. Note the fine details – the face, the hat, the check trousers, the skilful shading – there is nothing sketchy or dashed off. We can imagine Seymour sitting at his desk as he draws, taking the greatest of pains to prove that à Beckett was wrong. But now comes the third picture.’

  It was a caricature of a terrified Gilbert à Becket, in mitre and robes, recalling the murder of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury – but with the editor described as ‘À Beckett, Archbishop of Cant’. The assassinating sword of a knight hangs over his head and the blade is marked ‘Debts Due’. That a woodcut could be abbreviated to ‘cut’ formed part of à Beckett’s plea for mercy: ‘Pray don’t give me any more cuts, think how many I have had and not paid you for already.’

  ‘It could not be called murderous rage,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘for it is merely murder in a picture. Equally, you could not call suicide in a picture, suicide.’

  The fourth drawing showed a fat man who had unsuccessfully tried to hang himself. He now sits on the ground below a tree, in front of a garden fence. His weight has snapped the rope, and the fat man looks up in resignation. Beside him is a valentine showing a heart pierced by an arrow, but with the addition of the single word, from his sweetheart, of: ‘No!’ The picture was called Better Luck Next Time.

  *

  SEYMOUR WAS AT A CHEST of drawers, hurling objects out.

  ‘In heaven’s name, stop!’ said his wife.

  ‘It’s here somewhere – have you moved it?’

  He found the box of melancholy pistols.

  ‘Jane, do not think I will not!’ He pushed her away, and she tumbled to the floor. She cried out, and he turned for just an instant, but continued his search through the drawers. ‘Powder! Where have you hidden the powder? I will find it, wherever it is!’ He wrenched out the entire drawer and threw it on the carpet, then knelt and in the next drawer rummaged among old clothes, discarded books, souvenirs.

  ‘À Beckett’s too young to know what he’s talking about!’ she cried out. ‘You would kill yourself over him?’

  ‘It has to be here.’ Exasperation overcame urge. He buried his face in his hands. He sobbed.

  *

  Over the next few days he stayed in bed, doing no work, eating soup she brought to the bedside, miserable, but calmer.

  On the fourth afternoon, he heard voices outside the bedroom door – it was his wife talking to a
man. The door opened.

  ‘It is Mr Strange to see you, Robert.’

  He sat up and pushed down the bedclothes, so his chest was exposed. ‘Does Figaro now want to abuse me in my own home?’

  Strange stood, hat in hand, at the bottom of the bed. ‘I called to apologise on behalf of Figaro. Your wife has just told me of your great distress.’

  ‘Show him the street, Jane.’

  ‘Please listen to him, Robert.’

  ‘Mr Seymour, I intend to pay all the money which you believe is owed to you.’

  ‘Believe! So you think I imagined it!’

  ‘Is owed to you, then. But that is not all. I want to invite you back to Figaro.’

  ‘Inconceivable.’

  ‘I also want to invite you to do other work for me.’ He took from his pocket several proof pages of letterpress, and placed them on the bed. ‘This is an edition of a play you could illustrate, Buckstone’s Second Thoughts. I will ensure that we get a good woodcutter like Mr Walker to work on your drawings—’

  ‘Who works for Figaro. Quite a recommendation, sir! As for the play – is it being performed at the Tottenham Street Theatre?’

  ‘Let me be frank. Figaro is selling far fewer copies. You are the artist the public wants, not Robert Cruikshank. The magazine receives letters every day complaining about the attacks upon you. À Beckett knows that he has made an error – a terrible misjudgement.’

  ‘So that’s what he calls his bile.’

  ‘We can publish a statement that the attacks were made with the heaviest of irony. All can be put right.’

  ‘The attacks were not ironical.’

  ‘Then let me be completely unreserved – Figaro will stagger to an early death without your contributions. I implore you, Mr Seymour – come back.’

  ‘Robert,’ said Jane, ‘it is perhaps worth giving the magazine another chance.’

  After silence, in which Seymour looked all around the room – to the ceiling, to the lamp beside the bed, to his own hands – he finally said: ‘On one condition – if à Beckett is dismissed and if Henry Mayhew replaces him as editor.’