Death and Mr. Pickwick

  ‘I knew someone called Kibble at Vaughan’s. An unpleasant association. Not Hervey’s fault, of course. But I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of the other Kibble.’

  ‘Were you not struck by how strange Hervey looked?’

  ‘Another bad omen which was not his fault. But yes, he was a peculiar-looking fellow. And very sickly.’

  *

  Though it belonged to a poet, the face of Thomas Kibble Hervey lacked all pretensions to poetry, unless a poem were written of a frog in abject ill health. Usually found in his nightshirt, propped up against the pillows of his sickbed, Hervey possessed bulging eyes, a spotted, greasy, bald scalp, and a tiny mouth often employed in a retch if it were not already in the middle of a sneeze. Admittedly there were occasions when Thomas Kibble Hervey was up and about, but so many phenomena then sent him scuttling to his bed he might just as well have stayed under the covers in the first place. It was not unknown, for instance, for a room in which a pipe was alight or a lady wore eau de cologne to be the prelude to the blankets and closed curtains, while if Hervey stayed in a hotel and he saw a maid walking along the corridor, and she brought her feather duster within two feet of his nose, he would gasp with such violence that onlookers feared he would disgorge his lungs on to the carpet. If he merely walked out on a frosty morning, the very air could be his demise. And sometimes simply hearing an amusing tale would make his nostrils itch and his chest constrict, and before long he was under the eiderdown.

  ‘If only my father had not been a dry-salter,’ Hervey usually exclaimed, when he had recovered sufficiently to utter complete words.

  For it was his firm belief that sustained exposure to the dyes, gums and oils in his father’s shop would weaken anyone’s constitution. Certainly, for the first few years of his life Hervey had been in good health – ‘No babe stronger,’ he often said – until one winter’s morning when he ran towards his mother, who stood in the garden feeding the birds. Up and down the young Hervey’s arms went, perfect pistons, but as the cold air entered his lungs, he pulled up.

  ‘My chest felt as chilled as the grave,’ he would say, pulling up the sheets to his chin, recalling that moment.

  The mother had to carry her poor wheezing boy indoors. The next year, as daylight hours shortened, the precocious Hervey looked out of the window with a resigned expression and said: ‘I believe this winter could be my last, Mother.’ He added, ‘Bring on spring, Lord, bring on spring.’ He had never stopped saying the same in any subsequent year, though of course in a deeper voice, and addressed to his wife in more recent times. In summer, he was not troubled as long as he avoided busy streets, and the dust thrown up by carriages. But as autumn came, he was filled with dread anticipation of the season to come, especially as he looked out of the window and a gale whipped up the leaves. Sometimes, the very fear of winter was enough to bring on an attack.

  So, when asked to write the letterpress for a book about Christmas, to accompany the pictures of Mr Seymour, Hervey thought twice before accepting the commission.

  ‘Perhaps the cheerfulness of Christmas will bring its own sort of warmth,’ Hervey said from his sickbed to Spooner, as the latter handed over the thirty-five pictures that Seymour had drawn, tied up with a red ribbon.

  One picture, Enjoying Christmas, immediately caught Hervey’s interest. It showed a fat, bald, bespectacled character who sat by a fire. The figure bore a cheerful expression, and there was a glass of hot brandy and water on a table at his side, while a contented cat occupied a spot on the carpet directly in front of the fire, peering into the coals, where a kettle steamed. By the light of a candle, the fat man read a book – none other than The Book of Christmas itself.

  *

  Mr Pickwick had always loved Christmas, ever since boyhood, and the pictures in the book, by this talented artist, kindled his enthusiasm for the approaching festival. There, before his spectacles, was a simply marvellous drawing of a coach coming up from Norfolk, piled high with turkeys for the Christmas dinner tables of the capital – baskets, boxes and barrels of seasonal fowl were the coach’s entire freight as it arrived in London at night-time, with St Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Most amusing of all, the driver, his companion and the guard had beak-like noses, as though part turkey themselves! Mr Pickwick laughed heartily at that!

  As he turned the pages, here was everything that Christmas might be, in pictorial form. The food market on Christmas Eve, with meat porters bearing joints on their shoulders, and fruits and whole hams on the stalls, and urchins gazing longingly at the vast cakes on sale in a confectioner’s window; a pretty woman led into a room by an army officer, not realising there was a mistletoe bough overhead, and two men lay in wait behind the door; seasonal songs performed on the streets by a family, caterwauling from a song sheet entitled ‘A Christmas Carol’; a pantomime, with clowns on stage, carving up a huge goose pie, from which geese soared – one of the clowns carrying a gigantic knife and fork, kicking up his leg, stepping like a goose himself; and many more scenes, from the telling of ghost stories on Christmas Eve, to a view of a small country church receiving parishioners on a Christmas morn.

  Mr Pickwick examined all these pictures with unflagging delight. One of the drawings even showed The Book of Christmas itself displayed in a pile of Christmas presents, alongside a drum, a fiddle and a skipping rope. He was just about to look at a picture whose caption he glimpsed as Enjoying Christmas when the boiling of the kettle on the coals interrupted his progress through the pages.

  *

  Hervey’s progress in creating letterpress for The Book of Christmas was slow, and by November there was no sign of the completed manuscript. Bouts of illness did not help. He felt an onset of fatigue, too, whenever he saw anything in the slightest degree puzzling in Seymour’s pictures – Hervey would retreat to bed, where he put on a nightcap and tied the strings tightly, as though additional cosiness would incubate his thoughts. Once, after a three-hour session under covers and cap, he rose in the middle of the afternoon to write, concerning the resemblance of the Norfolk coachmen to turkeys, ‘We presume that Mr Seymour must have had in mind and intended to illustrate by “modern instances” that class of “wise saws” such as “birds of a feather flock together” – “tell me the company and I will tell you the man” – and others which tend generally to show that men are apt to catch the hues of surrounding objects and take the features of their associates.’ While late one morning, when he confronted a picture showing a turkey running towards Leadenhall Market, where it would face certain slaughter, the depiction struck Hervey as so odd that he not only adjourned to bed, but also requested the assistance of an extra blanket from his wife. Eventually he rose and wrote, ‘Turkeys are indisputably born to be killed. And such being the destiny of this bird, it may probably be an object of ambition with a respectable turkey to fulfil its fate at the period of this high festival.’ After putting on a second pair of socks, he added: ‘Certain it is that at no other time can it attain to such dignities as belong to the turkey who smokes on the table of a Christmas dinner – the most honoured dish of all the feast.’ He had to throw a shawl over his shoulders before he could add the final explanatory line: ‘Something like an anxiety for this promotion is to be inferred from the breathless haste of the turkey of which our artist has here given us a sketch.’ After which, Hervey felt exhausted, and required another term in bed, until his wife brought in a tray with a bowl of hot soup.

  ‘One of the great problems in composing this manuscript,’ he told his wife as she checked the windows for draughts for the third time that day, ‘is that Mr Seymour and I see Christmas differently. If you will fetch me his drawings, I will demonstrate my point.’

  He showed her a picture of children sitting around a fire in the evening, in an old baronial manor, while a withered crone told a tale. ‘The picture is quite remarkable for the atmosphere it creates. You do not need to be told that she is telling a Christmas ghost story. Look at the way the children turn to
wards the shadows. They are scared there is something lurking. This old woman has terrified the children.’

  Hervey’s wife straightened the nightcap, so that it covered the tops of his ears.

  ‘Good though the picture is as a drawing, I have far higher ideals for Christmas. Now look at this one, my dear.’

  The picture showed musicians – three rubicund fat men and a half-asleep boy – beside a lamppost, playing in the snowy streets at night. The instruments of the men were a trombone, a flute and a cello while the boy played a fiddle, but his eyes drooped as he bowed the strings, for the hour was late – a clock on a facade showed that it was three in the morning, and an angry man leant out of a window protesting at the noise.

  ‘My concern,’ said Hervey, ‘is the poor residents having to put up with this row when they are trying to get some sleep. Surely the musicians should be filled with some feeling for their fellow man at Christmas? And look at all the drink he has shown!’

  A bottle of liquor protruded from the trombonist’s pocket. An inebriated woman danced under a lamppost. A shop sign proclaimed ‘Spirit and Wine’. An advertisement over the shop, illuminated by a lantern, said ‘Dead Fine Gin’.

  ‘Should Christmas really be about selfishness, drunkenness and ghost stories?’ He shook his head in repugnance, and then coughed in a repugnant way. ‘But I must sleep, my dear.’

  She nodded obediently, gathered up the soup bowl, went downstairs, and handed it to the bonneted Irish maid, saying that the master was not to be disturbed. The maid in turn remarked to the cook, when she took the bowl to the kitchen: ‘I don’t think he could even cope with being well again, he couldn’t.’

  Just then, there was a loud knock at the street door.

  The maid adjusted her bonnet and went. Seymour stood on the doorstep.

  ‘I wish to see Mr Hervey.’

  ‘He is in bed, sir. He is not at all well. He is not to be disturbed, he isn’t.’

  Seymour pushed past the maid. He called out: ‘Hervey! Hervey! Where are you? Upstairs is he?’ Seymour climbed the stairs and opened one door after another until he saw the frog-faced nightcapped Hervey with a terrified expression, holding up the sheets to his mouth.’ When will it be done, Hervey? You have had enough time!’

  ‘Mr Seymour – oh Mr Seymour – I am not well. Do not come closer. Please, I beg you. Oh dear, I can smell etching acid!’

  ‘Spooner may be soft on you. I am not.’

  By now, Mrs Hervey had come to the bedroom, with the maid behind her. ‘Who are you, sir? You have no right—’

  ‘Your husband knows me. And I have every right to see that my drawings are treated with respect.’ Seymour stood over the bed. ‘How many weeks are left to us? Don’t you realise how close we are to Christmas?’

  ‘I have been ill, Mr Seymour. Look at me.’ He held up his wrist. ‘I am thin as a barber’s cat.’

  ‘Get this done, Hervey, I am warning you.’

  ‘Warning a sick man?’ Suddenly Hervey’s expression changed. For a supposedly unwell person, his anger was strong and healthy. ‘I shall not keep quiet about this threat. Mr Spooner will hear of it. He is a good friend of mine. I am warning you.’ Then Hervey collapsed into a coughing fit, and his wife massaged his back. ‘You have made me worse, Seymour!’ screamed Hervey. ‘If this is not finished on time, you are to blame!’

  With no more words, Seymour left the room, descended the stairs, and walked into the street, his face a perfect mask of grimacing that took a long session in a public house to slip.

  *

  A week later, the smell of sprats served with caper sauce and lemon wafted on to the streets of London. A calmer Seymour, and his children, had eaten a portion themselves, before joining the crowds to watch the procession on Lord Mayor’s Day. Along came the mounted band of the Household Cavalry, heralds in tabards, and the great gilt coach pulled by six horses, with men in armour riding before, and the sheriffs and the aldermen following. The procession had known better days but, even so, Londoners flocked to see.

  Standing among the terrific currents of applauding hands, Seymour became aware that a person but a few yards away was a former associate – and the former associate became similarly aware. It was Henry Lacey, of the publishing company Knight and Lacey. An awkward expression replaced the enthusiasm on Lacey’s features, for the company had been wound up, bankrupt, with money still owed to the artist. Nonetheless, Lacey extended his hand, and Seymour took it, and introduced his son and daughter, and the four wandered away from the crowds and chatted with a degree of ease.

  ‘Have you heard the rumours of who’ll be in the coach next year?’ said Lacey.

  ‘No – who?’

  ‘Thomas Kelly. He is going to give up the numbers trade.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Apparently so. He’s desperate to be Lord Mayor.’

  ‘I presume he sees it as respectability.’

  Seymour’s children had strayed further away, and once they were out of earshot, Lacey said: ‘I heard an even more peculiar thing about Kelly a little while ago, and it connects to a work you illustrated for me. You remember we did the murder in the red barn?’

  ‘Impossible to forget.’

  ‘You remember that Kelly did it too?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I heard that his murder in the red barn had received a dubious honour. After the murderer was dissected, the numbers of Kelly’s edition were bound together in the murderer’s skin.’

  An extraordinarily specialised look came over Seymour’s face, which led Lacey to say: ‘I think I have shocked you, Mr Seymour. I do apologise.’

  ‘No, I have been feeling a little unwell today. What a strange immortality that grants the work.’

  ‘You sound … almost envious.’

  ‘In a way, I am. It should have been the Knight and Lacey edition that was bound.’

  ‘With your pictures.’

  ‘With my pictures. But – as I said, I am feeling a little unwell, Mr Lacey. It is probably just a cold. Or the sprats. Or perhaps I caught something from someone I met recently. I thought he was a malingerer, but perhaps not. I think I must go home.’ He summoned his children and bade his former publisher farewell.

  *

  In the event, Seymour was confined to bed for three weeks, amid fever and muscular pains. One day, when Jane came to the bedside, he said: ‘I have been lying here, thinking about à Beckett criticising my spelling.’

  ‘Why concern yourself, Robert? À Beckett has gone.’

  ‘I know I cannot spell. Sometimes I just put down what I think. Sometimes I feel confident I can spell a word and minutes later I cannot. My brain is just weak for some reason around spelling.’

  ‘Do not call it weakness. Who has your strength with puns?’ She sat on the eiderdown and stroked his head. ‘You always have me to check the words in your caricatures.’

  ‘The truth is, I have been thinking about the letterpress for my Mr Pickwick drawings. As long as I can describe what is required, I don’t think I need to write it myself.’

  ‘As you wish. But I would check it for spelling for you.’

  ‘It would be page after page of corrections, every one an embarrassment to me. Besides, this illness has left me behind with my other work. I think it’s better if I find someone to write up to my drawings.’

  ‘Perhaps Henry Mayhew?’

  ‘He has crossed my mind. But he is rather a dabbler. My concern is whether he has the power to complete a work on a larger scale without becoming distracted. Besides, he has various schemes of his own which occupy him, not all of which are sensible.’

  ‘Mr McLean may know someone.’

  ‘Too concerned with pictures. I raised it the last time I was at the Haymarket, but I can tell he is not interested. I mentioned it to Spooner some months ago, and it appealed to him. But I am not on the best of terms with Spooner now. He is too friendly with Hervey, and will not push him. There are other writers that occur to me. Hook. Poole.
Moncrieff. Hunt. One of them perhaps. Oh, someone will come along. Someone fast – unlike Hervey.’

  ‘Someone who can keep up with you.’

  *

  ‘You’ll take a rum again, Charles?’

  The landlord at the Grotto public house in Holborn, not far from Furnival’s Inn, poured and handed over the drink to the writer who was among the most dependable of his customers.

  Charles Whitehead leant against the bar with a confident air. Yet, just two glasses ago, when he entered the Grotto, he had the nervous timidity of a parish schoolteacher, and he looked the part, too – dressed all in black, with threadbare elbows and a scholarly stoop. Now he had the easy manner of a gentleman, with a sparkling blue gaze and a pure white smile which he showed often. He had grown younger as well. When the first sip touched his lips, he had looked careworn and in the middle of his forties; but soon he was in his early thirties, which was actually his age. Like himself, the other men at the bar worked in artistic endeavours, for the most part – painters, actors and writers. He felt comfortable in such company, and he exchanged words on various subjects, his gestures becoming larger as the rum took hold, when his worn-out elbows would be on display – but he did not care, for Charles Whitehead was held in high regard in the Grotto. He was ‘Whitehead, the brilliant Whitehead’, the greatest talker in the house, the coiner of the best bon mots. It was still remembered that, after a sixth rum, he had once remarked: ‘You are a man of common sense, sir – by which I mean, the scents which all men produce, in private.’ And after a seventh, when challenged on a point of Latin, he said: ‘You are a dog, sir, and in an establishment called the Grotto, I say – cave canem.’

  When a new fellow came to the Grotto, in the company of a regular, he would always be introduced to Charles Whitehead. Though the newcomer, like the regular, learnt so little of Whitehead himself, beyond wordplay, that they might just as well have read the bon mots as an anonymous contribution to a magazine.

  *

  When Charles Whitehead was barely three years of age, his father took him to the wharf on a summer’s afternoon, to watch the barrels, as they were unloaded from a barge, that were intended for the Whitehead family wine shop. The boy was swept up by a swarthy, laughing, stubbly man, with fine teeth and a peculiar accent. The man sat him on a barrel, metal cups were filled with red wine, and Charles Whitehead’s father and the swarthy man drank a toast to each other in the afternoon sun.