Tomorrow was to be a great day in his life, when his mission to see the world would begin.
So, on the morning of the thirteenth day of May, after bidding adieu to his landlady, Mr Pickwick undertook the short walk to the cabstand at St Martin’s-le-Grand, just north of St Paul’s Cathedral. Here, a red-faced waterman, in a doormat-textured suit, stopped filling the horses’ trough and, ascertaining with a glance that Mr Pickwick sought transportation, cried out: ‘Fust cab!’
A cabman emerged from the Raglan Arms who was close kin in redness to the waterman, being especially roseate at the nose. When he discovered that he had relinquished a comfortable position, where he had been smoking his pipe, for a one-shilling journey, it did not induce the best of moods.
Mr Pickwick settled his feet into the cab’s dirty straw, extricating one foot from the strap of a horse’s nosebag which was stowed under the seat. The cab took off, in a rickety way, and its motion swayed driver and passenger together. Mr Pickwick saw the world in motion, both beside him, on the streets, and also underneath, through a chink in the cab’s floor. It truly seemed to him that his mission had already begun – there was a constant succession of people and sights to be recorded and sent as reports to the club. So when Mr Pickwick suddenly took out his notebook, it was understandable that the cabman, who had suffered at the hands of informers, became concerned.
Mr Pickwick’s immediate attention fell upon the horse pulling the cab. The beast was, admittedly, not in the finest condition – its mane thin, its tail frayed, its back all bones – but twelve hours a day in harness would make even a thoroughbred racehorse a worn-out nag. In the interests of scientific investigation, Mr Pickwick asked the driver the simple question: ‘How old is that horse?’
The cabman gave Mr Pickwick a most suspicious sideways look. Was this passenger spying on him? Normally informers went after cabs concerning fares and parliamentary regulations, but he had heard of informers enforcing Martin’s Act, concerning animal cruelty, and perhaps they now targeted horses pulling cabs.
The cabman thought quickly: what if the animal were so old that being in harness was not cruelty but a crutch? Would the passenger swallow that?
In the huskiest voice in London the cabman answered: ‘Forty-two.’
It was for ordinary men to attach disbelief to the extraordinary. It was in Mr Pickwick’s nature to embrace the extraordinary – and, as long as it was not impossible, it was worthy of recording in his notebook.
‘Forty-two?’ he said. This would be something to tell his club! Never had he encountered a horse of so many years!
‘You should ’ave a look in his mouth,’ said the cabman. ‘Teeth as long as coal-chisels.’
‘Does he flag, at his age?’ said Mr Pickwick.
‘Not ’im,’ said the cabman. ‘I take in the rein, and make it werry short, and ’is bones sing in a sqveaky vay vith the pleasure of constriction, and ’is neck’s the most beautiful arch. Then I pull in the girth to the tightest notch, to get ’im all nice and compact – ’e’d fall down in the street othervise. But vunce ’e’s in ’arness, ’e ’as to keep going. Vith those big veels spinning be’ind, ’e can’t ’elp ’imself.’
Now the cabman, from previous experience, knew informers to be talkative types and that their conversations eventually led to a request of: ‘You couldn’t lend us a few shillings until the month is out, could you?’ If a cabman didn’t allow himself to be bled, there would be a summons for breaking regulations within a week.
But this particular passenger – what was he doing? Taking notes. The cabman had never encountered such brazen effrontery! He eyed Mr Pickwick again, in his own special, aslant, way. The cabman did not recognise Mr Pickwick – but then, that made it all the more likely the fellow was an informer, because informers had to keep moving from patch to patch.
And now the informer was actually rubbing his nose with the shilling! The cabman gave a dirty look. Here was a man nosing on him, in every sense of the word. How ripe that nose for a punch!
*
Seymour opened his eyes. He was still in the room at the Bull. He recalled that for Kidd he had produced drawings, as had other artists, for a series of pamphlets forming Kidd’s London Guide. There had been one pamphlet which warned of ‘adventurers’.
‘These are men who live by their wits,’ ran the pamphlet, ‘they leave home, destitute of everything, and yet contrive to live very comfortably. They sponge for their dinner, and lay wagers – taking the money if they win, and making a joke of it if they lose. They lounge about in cigar divans, and may always be found attending to everybody’s business but their own.’
Seymour recalled the guide had warned against taking the slightest notice of strangers, or any individual anxious to enter into conversation.
There could be a stranger, an adventurer of this sort, who intervenes, and saves Mr Pickwick from a beating at the hands of the cabman. A scoundrel, a fortune-hunter. The gullible Mr Pickwick would easily fall for the man’s patter and flannel.
Seymour lay back on the pillow.
A few years earlier, for a publication called The Comic Offering, he had drawn a picture of a fortune-hunter – the sort who preyed upon old women for their money. A handsome and fashionable young man with an old bonneted crone for his wife. As they strolled with three fat, piglet-like dogs, the crone gazed up lovingly at her tall young husband, their arms entwined. Seymour had drawn the young man’s face twisted in embarrassment: when the couple passed a window, they were stared at, with obvious titters, by a fellow of the young man’s own age, who put a monocle to his eye for a better look, while the monocled man’s partner, a pretty woman, was also highly amused by the scene.
He had written below this drawing:
Pity the sorrows of a poor YOUNG man
Whose hobbling wife hath brought him past your door
Her days seem lengthen’d
To cheat the fool who sought her wealthy store!
Seymour breathed deeply. It had been years since he had taught Wonk the original song, that evening in the bedroom at Vaughan’s.
He put the thought aside. What if, he asked himself, an adventurer-cum-fortune-hunter were responsible for landing the sportsman into trouble? What if the adventurer, wearing the club jacket, flirted with a rich old woman at the ball, and offended a rival suitor? A duel could be fought over this woman.
He closed his eyes again.
The adventurer was an anointed scoundrel. A teller of tales. He could spin the rich old woman a yarn. But who would also be interested in such a woman at the ball? Who would be the adventurer’s rival? There would be young military officers at the ball. Typically men of independent means, from wealthy and privileged backgrounds. They would not need the money of an old woman, nor would they find her attractive. But – a middle-aged doctor, perhaps. A doctor in the military. Such a woman would be right for him. Here, thought the doctor to himself, as he eyed the old woman’s jewels, was his pension!
*
The adventurer had to be worked into the story before Mr Pickwick and his companions reached Rochester. At Rochester, Mr Pickwick would want to look around, that would be the main concern, as the first stop in his expedition. So the adventurer had to come before that. He had to be a passenger on the Commodore coach, along with the Pickwickians. But he also had to do some service, which would merit the loan of the club jacket. There was not much a person could do, by way of service, on a coach. Something had to happen before the coach set off. So the adventurer would rescue Mr Pickwick from the cabman.
*
As the cab drew up, Seymour saw the crowds milling around the Golden Cross. There was a dustman, with his distinctive fantail hat. A milkmaid with a yoke. An off-duty soldier. In the pamphlet for Kidd he had drawn a little chimney sweep, whose bag of soot leaked black clouds over a passing man’s white trousers, while the sweep remained oblivious – the sweep was in the crowd too, with his bag of soot, though it would not leak this time. What about an itineran
t hot-pie seller?
He recalled such a pieman, a half-pint-sized man of Spanish descent, who handed out his halfpenny pies in Newgate Street, close to the prison. A strong savoury odour arose from his heating apparatus, a wicker basket on legs with a charcoal burner inside. On the top of this apparatus was a circular wooden dish, very stained and grubby, with a metal arrow, which spun round with a clickety, whirring noise as the pieman called ‘Toss for pi-eees! Toss for pi-eees! Pi-eees all ’ot!’ The toss referred to twelve farthings, hammered into place around the edge, alternating Britannia or monarch’s head uppermost. For, instead of purchasing a pie at a halfpenny, some customers – especially boys – opted to gamble. The pieman would spin the whirligig, and if the arrow stopped opposite the chosen call, the gambler would receive a pie for free; otherwise, the pieman would keep a halfpenny, and retain the pie. Seymour had never seen anyone win.
There were shouts of ‘Give us a pie!’ from behind the prison walls.
In response, the pieman shouted the different sorts he sold: pork, beef, mutton, kidney, rabbit and veal. All anointed with thin, greasy gravy, poured from a can with a long spout. Seymour knew from experience the pies were heavily seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg and mace – and Jane whispered, as they approached, that she had heard rumours that the rabbit in piemen’s pies was really skinned cat, and that you wouldn’t know the difference unless the butcher sold it with the head on. At that moment a customer happened to purchase a rabbit pie, and the Spanish pieman poured gravy with special relish, supplemented with a grin, as if he knew the rumour of the cat to be true. Lifting up his spouted vessel, he said, in a thick accent: ‘I open the gate, and pour leeberallee.’ He finished with an even wider grin.
A pieman would certainly have to be in the crowd at the Golden Cross. Perhaps not this Spaniard, though the whirligig was essential. Perhaps a pieman with a long nose, sinisterly shaded under his hat.
The idea for one other character came to him. A man who looked out of the illustration, his eyes aimed directly at the viewer – a man with a knowing, crafty smile, as if to say, ‘You are like the rest of us, you love to see a fight in the street!’
Into this crowd, the adventurer would make his debut.
*
Never had a shilling provoked such fury – as soon as his palm received the fare, the cabman tossed the coin on the pavement in utter disgust. As Mr Pickwick stood blinking in incomprehension, one hand of the cabman plucked away the novice traveller’s spectacles, and threw them on the pavement too, while the other hand swung upwards and punched precisely on the spot where the coin had previously rubbed – Mr Pickwick’s nose.
Mr Pickwick’s three travelling companions were already waiting at the Golden Cross, and when the cabman saw them approach, he had one response: ‘More informers!’
The cabman, like a proud amateur pugilist eager to show off his fistwork, sparred away, aiming blows at the Pickwickians. The crowd gathered to watch this fun: soldier, milkmaid, chimney sweep, pieman, dustman and all the rest. None were more hated than informers.
‘Go on, upset his apple cart!’ cried a man shinning up a lamppost for a better view, cheering on the cabman’s blows.
‘Put the informers under the pump!’ cried the pieman.
This fate would have befallen the Pickwickians, had not a rescuer arrived.
A stranger appeared from Mr Pickwick’s left, the fortune-hunter, the adventurer, a man thin as the Devil, elbows flailing, clearing a path through the crowd. He led Mr Pickwick and his friends to the safety of the inn.
Seymour stirred, and pictured for himself that place – tall and Gothic, with twin spires, and a cross set into the brickwork, below which was the gateway arch where the terrible accident occurred. He saw pieces of the woman’s face dripping down from the arch. He saw her lips, half-on half-off her mouth, lips that would never eat again.
To thank the stranger, the Pickwickians bought him drinks. He intended travelling to the same destination, to Rochester, so they all boarded the Commodore coach. Noticing the arch as they left, the stranger converted the horrible reality of the woman losing her face into a comic story, a tall tale, of exactly the sort the Daffy Club told. In the stranger’s version, the woman was eating a sandwich when she hit the arch, and instead of losing her face, her head was knocked completely off. It bounced upon the cobbles, while in her hand remained the half-eaten sandwich, still gripped by her fingers, pressed hard at the exact moment her head was lopped, so as to squeeze out mustard on to her thumb, which then mingled with blood from her neck.
Mr Pickwick believed every word!
By the time the Pickwickians reached Rochester, Mr Pickwick’s notebook was filled with the chatter of this adventurer, as though everything that emerged from his mouth was not only of great interest but entirely true.
*
‘THE FIRST NOTEBOOK IN THE world was probably that of the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras in the early fifteenth century,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘But had any more wonderful notebook ever been created than the one filled with the words of the stranger? Anything the stranger said, Mr Pickwick swallowed, and wrote down. Though it has to be said that Mr Pickwick, like many men who keep notebooks and scrapbooks, showed little tendency to be modifed, personally, by the things recorded. The notebook became his memory.’
‘So the stories that Seymour had heard at the Daffy Club,’ I said, ‘could become the stranger’s. Like the tale of the Spanish woman whose stomach was pumped.’
‘Yes indeed. I like to imagine the stranger seated beside Mr Pickwick on the coach’s roof. The stranger has an unnerving nervousness, with all his parts inducted into jerky movement. His hands are never still, always tapping, always ready for a flourish. There is a perpetual scheme in the eyes. His shoulders twitch. The shoulder blades revolve under the coat. The type of man of the Kidd pamphlets, who lives by his wits – seeking fools as his prey. Normally they would be men from the country, ogling the city’s sights. But here was a curiosity to the stranger – Mr Pickwick, a Londoner as green as any country bumpkin!’
‘But in any case, the stranger had done Mr Pickwick a great service,’ I said.
‘Indeed. He had rescued him from the mob. And if the stranger needed to borrow the club jacket, he surely wouldn’t be refused. And he would certainly need to borrow clothing to attend a respectable ball,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘The man of Kidd’s pamphlets is destitute, with little more than the clothes he was wearing. So Mr Pickwick’s third companion, the ogler of women, who wishes to go to the ball, lends the stranger the sportsman’s jacket, without the sportsman being aware.’
‘Because the sportsman is drunk.’
‘Blind drunk.’
Mr Inbelicate and I chatted for a while about forerunners of the ageing Lothario to be found in Seymour’s work. One appeared in Seymour’s illustration of a poem, ‘John Day’, showing a fat and incompetent wooer, a coachman who attempts to win the heart of a barmaid at an inn where he changes horses. Seymour depicted John Day making his approach on his knees, whip sticking up and propped against the counter, side whiskers bending lasciviously towards the maid’s face:
One day, as she was sitting down
Beside a porter pump,
He came and knelt with all his fat
And made an offer plump.
Said she: ‘My taste will never learn
To like so huge a man
So I must beg you will come here
As little as you can.
‘I suppose,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘that nowadays we would call Mr Pickwick’s third companion a dirty old man.’
‘I thought that’s what you were that first night when I saw Mary was your servant.’
‘Ha ha! Well, if that is what people think, then I am in good company. Similar thoughts must have occurred in connection with Lord Melbourne, don’t you think? Mrs Norton was so much younger than he was.’
*
‘IT IS INCONCEIVABLE THAT A man like Melbourne could be Victo
ria’s prime minister,’ said Lord Wynford, the Tory peer. His double chin hung over his desk as he leant towards George Norton. Behind Wynford, against the gloomy panelling, stood two crutches, for Wynford’s gout was so great a trouble he could barely walk. In front of him, propped against an inkwell, in a frame normally reserved for a miniature of a wife or child, was one of Seymour’s Figaro pictures, showing Lord Wynford’s great enthusiasm for capital punishment. Here the punishment was carried out on a defenceless animal: a poor cat was hanging from a gibbet, a weight pulling down the rope to tighten the noose, while Wynford, supporting himself on his crutches, looked on, rubbing his hands with glee.
‘Think of when she becomes queen,’ he said. ‘She – the young, innocent, virtuous female monarch. Now imagine her in a private audience with Melbourne as her prime minister. The door closes on them. He, at his age, with a leer on his face, lusting after the virgin sovereign. It would never be accepted by the country! Sue for adultery, show people what he is like – and Melbourne is finished.’
‘I have not made a final decision yet,’ said Norton.
‘There is only one decision possible. Not only for your country but for yourself. Think of the damages you could make! Perhaps – ten thousand pounds. Besides, if you do this, and Melbourne falls, you will find yourself a seat again. Think of that.’
‘I am thinking of that.’
Wynford scrutinised Norton, as though he could discern some reason for hesitation. ‘You do have good evidence, I presume?’
Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 50