‘Drink when you are happy, not when you are sad, though drink then too if you must!’ said the father.
‘What theenks your leetle boy?’ said the swarthy man. He held the cup to Charles Whitehead’s lips. If it was expected the boy would spit and splutter and pull a face, that did not occur; instead, the boy grabbed the cup with both hands, and drank hard – the vessel had to be prised from his fingers.
There was laughter and when the cups were refilled Whitehead Senior said: ‘The better the wine, the clearer your head the next day.’
By the time he was ten, Charles Whitehead had grown tall, but also spindly, with a sickly pallor to his cheek. He often stood by the Thames in summer, just gazing, in the early evening, because he loved the water under the red sky. He was distressed when a boisterous lad several years older than himself, whom he knew to be a bill-discounter’s boy, threw stones at a gull on a post.
‘Please don’t do that to the poor bird,’ said Charles Whitehead. ‘Look at the sky instead. Look at the Thames. Aren’t they both lovely?’
‘Been in your father’s cellar?’ The boy laughed and ran off, but not before he tossed a stone at Charles Whitehead, which hit the chest; it was not hurled with force, but even so, Charles Whitehead began to cry.
At fourteen, Charles Whitehead worked in his father’s wine shop in St Mary Axe, between Leadenhall Street and Houndsditch, among shipping agents, counting houses and bill-discounting firms, and all of these, employers and employees alike, gave the Whitehead shop their custom.
Charles had little enthusiasm for the affairs of the shop, and most of the customers struck him as being exceedingly dull. Furthermore, he so lacked self-confidence that the mere presence of a new customer in the shop could send him scuttling to the cellar.
If there was no one to serve, he read voraciously, sipping wine as he did so, occasionally with the accompaniment of a forkful of pickled cucumber. He especially enjoyed the words of Richard Steele. Whitehead Senior did attempt to teach his son the mysteries of the trade, but the lack of interest on the young face proved that action was required if the Whitehead wine shop were to continue beyond the current generation. Accordingly, Mr Whitehead packed his son off to Oporto, to take part in the grape harvest at the beginning of October, in the hope it would be the making of the boy.
Charles Whitehead learnt instead the aches and pains of fifty miles on the back of a mule to the wine country. True, there were pleasant moments beside the River Douro, under the vine-covered hills; but he missed the Thames. And the descent in a boat loaded with barrels was terror. Although the boatmen avoided every rock with great ability, Whitehead feared the crack of the hull at any moment. When the boat negotiated a small waterfall, he grabbed the rim of a barrel as though it would save his life.
The result was that Whitehead returned to England with a tanned face, but he was still long and thin and lacking in self-confidence, with a grave and scholarly air, and even a stooping walk, young though he was.
One day, the father asked the son to do stocktaking and the boy got to his feet, ready to do the task, but the father said: ‘Why do I always need to tell you? Why do you not just do it, Charles?’
‘If you set up a diary for me, Father, I would do it, of course.’
‘That is not what I want to hear!’ The father put his hand up to his forehead. When he brought it down, he fixed his son in a hard, uncompromising gaze.
‘You find what I do dull. There is nothing that interests you about it. That is the simple truth, isn’t it?’
‘I am sorry that is so.’
‘Dull. Dull. You will discover true dull, my boy. Dull with no prospects for your future at the end of it.’
Before the week was out, the father had secured employment for his son in a commercial house, as well as lodgings nearby.
So Charles Whitehead became one of a group of five clerks in a cramped and stuffy office. His working day consisted of names, numbers and columns, as well as the writing of commercial letters, provided they were of an elementary standard. On the third day, the heavy-browed manager stood behind him, looking over the new clerk’s shoulder, and said: ‘You have very neat handwriting, Whitehead.’ He picked up the sheet. ‘Look at this, the rest of you. Every comma beautifully placed. I have never seen such precision in the way a clerk forms his words.’
Whitehead looked down in a state of complete embarrassment.
In the break for lunch, he usually consumed a sandwich and an essay by Steele – once, at his desk, he read of how the author invited friends to share a hamper of wine, reviving the spirits of everyone. There was a beautiful virgin whom Steele mentioned, the first to encourage his love, dressed in a gown for a ball, but a week later she was in her shroud – and the wine could chase away even that melancholy.
Then the senior clerk came round with a bottle of Tyzack’s Imperial Jet Black Ink, refilling each inkwell. The lip of the bottle tapped twice on the inkwell’s rim, signifying that lunch was at an end, and Whitehead closed his book with sad resignation. He scraped the back of a quill, slit the nib, and dipped it in that very ink.
His solace in the evening was the public house. He developed two faces. The mournful, scholarly face when there was no liquor within; and the sociable, friendly, loud, passionate, confident face when there was. Whilst this could be expected of any man, it was never so marked as with Charles Whitehead. Drink would chase his shyness away. Puns, wit and wisdom rolled off Whitehead’s lips in effortless succession. Charles Whitehead was at his best when he was drunk.
It was in public houses that Whitehead began to write verse. When he returned to his lodgings and lay on the covers of his bed, he continued composing into the early hours, scarcely concerned that he had to perform clerical duties the next day. His intention was to publish a book of verse, which he would entitle The Solitary. One line he composed mentioned a man buried in unconsecrated ground – ‘For whom no pray’r is read – no passing bell is toll’d!’ – and he showed the line to a drinking companion the next day. ‘I was inspired by the prodigious quantities of liquor consumed by bell-ringers!’ he said. This was followed by a rollicking laugh which his fellow clerks of the commercial office could never have dreamt he was capable of producing.
*
‘THE LIFE AND LITERARY CAREER of Charles Whitehead,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘are of some interest to us, Scripty, though we must deal briefly with many parts.’
Mr Inbelicate told of how Whitehead was dismissed from his position in the commercial house when his manager realised that, no matter how beautiful and precise his employee’s handwriting, a messier clerk was preferable if he arrived on time. Whitehead was not at all distressed, and resolved that he would earn his crust from writing, in prose and in verse. Very often it was a crust.
The precariousness of a writer’s life did not deter a rather fetching young lady, a certain Mary Ann Loomes, from taking an interest in Whitehead. They had met when he was still working in his father’s wine shop. She entered the premises, caught him standing with his arms folded across his chest, looking into the distance, and she asked for his advice on port wine. As this was a subject which he could enliven with daring tales of his use of a paddle down the River Douro in white water, she was smitten. They married in 1833.
‘Charles and Mary Whitehead came to prefer the late night in their marital lodgings, between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.,’ said Mr Inbelicate, as we sat in the parlour before his everlasting fire, ‘because no bailiff knocked during those hours, and they felt safe from their debts.’
They often slept by day, but if awake, they lived a strange life of whispers and of creeping around in stockinged feet. The bailiffs were not fools, of course; one bailiff knocked for an hour, and then stopped, and returned five minutes later, and then ten minutes after that. During this time they could not talk to each other, they could not move, for the sharp ears of a bailiff would detect a page turned, perhaps even a breath. Their hearts scarcely dared to beat during those minutes when t
hey wondered whether their tormentor had really gone or was merely waiting further down the corridor.
‘Like all writers,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘he turned experience to his advantage, and wrote a short story, “Some Passages in the Life of Francis Loosefish, Esq.”, about a persistent debtor. A story which happened to be illustrated by our good friend Robert Seymour, with a woodcut of a stocky bulldog-faced bailiff arriving at the door armed with one of those’ – he pointed up to the display of truncheons above the hearth. ‘But of more interest is: how did this story come to be published?’
*
TWO GOOD FRIENDS WERE OUT walking under the elms in the Terrace Gardens of Richmond in early spring. One was a small, smart and oddly formed man of about thirty years of age, with a prominent nose and short thin legs, as well as long, thick arms which were constantly in motion. He chattered frequently, at speed. The other, a few years younger, was stouter and taller, with ruddy cheeks and a taciturn, meditative manner, who walked with his arms behind his back. The first man was William Hall; his friend was Edward Chapman.
Suddenly Chapman said: ‘How dull do you find newspapers, William?’
‘What a peculiar question! How could I quantify dullness? Though – when I think about it – let us put it in terms of the amount of money one would pay to avoid a minute spent reading a newspaper. It would differ from man to man. From man to woman. From newspaper to newspaper. In principle it could be done.’
‘I meant it as a simple question. Do you not find a great deal of newspapers’ contents completely devoid of interest? Please – a simple answer.’
‘I admit I do find them dull. In places. Why do you ask? And make the answer as complicated as you like.’
‘I was with my brother the other day, and he was reading the newspaper. He sighed and put the paper down and said: “Someone should publish a newspaper with the dull bits removed.” And – how can I put this? It was as though he had opened a door and let in light. Someone should do exactly that. We should do it, William. We simply buy enough publications, fillet them, and use whatever is left – everything interesting, republished as a single newspaper. Now what do you think of that?’
‘Let us buy a paper immediately.’
They sat on a bench on the terrace and Hall went through the paper, running his eyes down the columns, making a clicking noise with his tongue at certain points, as though adding a stroke to a tally in his mind. Chapman meanwhile smoked a cigar, cross-legged and content for his friend to conduct investigations, although he too was at work, writing in pencil in a notebook.
‘Whatever total you come up with for column inches of dullness,’ said Chapman, ‘increase it, because you find things interesting which normal men find dull. Such as the calculations you are doing now.’
‘I have already included a factor for that,’ said Hall, who clicked again, effortlessly able to conduct a conversation without disturbing his mathematical processes. ‘I am doing this, Edward, as though I am you, and increasing the proportion of dullness experienced by twenty per cent.’
‘How kind. I suppose that will do it. Now, how is this for an advertisement? “Those who care for any subject in particular, or for all subjects, would willingly have them divested of what is stale and unprofitable, just as they like to have their lettuces served up without the outer leaves. It will be our business to get rid of the outer leaves of everything and to serve up the heart and soul of it. Nothing will be omitted that is convertible to the reader’s pleasure.” What do you think?’
Hall grunted approval, but looked skyward, apparently having finished his calculation, and now considering production costs.
‘It needs a good quotation to round it off,’ said Chapman. After more thought he added: ‘“If thou dost not take our new paper with thy tea, or thy dessert, or thy cigar, or thy next good resolution, or with the paper which thou takest already, ‘Why,’ as Falstaff says, ‘thou art not the man we took thee for.’”’
Within a short time, they had acquired a lease on premises in the Strand, close to St Clement Danes and the offices of the Morning Chronicle – a narrow but double-fronted establishment, which in the opinion of Edward Chapman gave the impression of being wider than it was and which in the opinion of William Hall would cover its lease because of the great number of prospective customers passing by in a day. Thus the company of Chapman and Hall commenced business as publishers and booksellers – and on 5 June 1830, appeared, price sixpence, the first number of their experiment in the reduction of dullness, Chat of the Week, otherwise known as the Compendium of All Topics of Public Interest.
*
EXTRACT FROM AN ESSAY BY Mr Inbelicate, ‘The Early History of Chapman and Hall:’
Many British publishers during this period learnt that there are times when the world of men is more interesting than the words of men, when customers in coffeeshops and public houses prefer to talk of reality, not books. Who could be captivated by a sentimental novel when the world offered the death of George IV? What was the excitement of a tale of the criminal classes compared to the ravages of cholera? Why read about Irish adventures when riots over reform had set Bristol ablaze?
Hungry printers and ragged publishers showed where world and word stood. If men read at all in these times, it was opinions in pamphlets and reports in newspapers they wanted, not books. By selling magazines and ephemeral fare Chapman and Hall survived when many publishers and booksellers did not.
Thriving in these times, however, was Figaro in London. It had not escaped the mathematical brain of William Hall that a penny journal like Figaro would need a circulation of three to four thousand a week to break even. Many journals – most journals – almost all journals – did not achieve such a circulation, and they died; while Figaro in London was said to sell seventy thousand copies a week.
It was not surprising that attracting Robert Seymour to work for Chapman and Hall was that company’s great aim of 1835. Their bait was a pocket-sized publication to appear at Christmas, called The Squib Annual.
*
‘IF WE MAKE IT MORE political than most annuals,’ said Chapman, ‘Seymour may be ours.’
‘Once we have him, we will be in a position to request more work,’ said Hall.
‘That fellow Whitehead who called the other day,’ said Chapman. ‘I have been thinking we may be able to pair him with Seymour. There’s that story he left about the debtor, Lewdfish or whatever the character was called.’
‘Loosefish.’
‘I know, William. And I knew you would correct me and that is why I said it. But Seymour might illustrate the story.’
‘If we hook him first.’
Thus a letter was sent out, and a few days later a reply was received from the artist, accepting their offer to produce twelve etchings for The Squib Annual.
*
It was late November, and Seymour had just recovered from his illness. He sat in his study, at work on the drawings for another commission, The Midsummer Comic Annual for 1836. For the frontispiece, he had drawn a sinister-looking trio of sportsmen, who asked: ‘Vot! Got no sport?’ The drawings illustrated the months of the year, and he was then at work on April. He sketched three women fishing in a punt, while a mischievous boy peeping through a hole in a fence said, ‘Won’t I give ’em an April shower!’ as he pumped water over the women. It was then that Jane entered, and announced that Mr Chapman was in the parlour.
‘I am not surprised,’ said Seymour. ‘I got a letter from him last week, saying that he would be calling to collect the drawings for The Squib Annual – but he also said he wanted to talk about woodcuts to accompany a publication with stories by a man called Whitehead, and other people. I am not certain I want to take it on.’
‘Would another publication hurt?’
‘It’s the quality of the cutter that concerns me. I kept on thinking of some of my old drawings when I was sick, and not many cutters have shown my work to advantage. And besides’ – he stood and stared out on to the garden
– ‘there are better things I could be doing. I am thinking of taking up the brush once more. And I am determined to get Mr Pickwick under way. I have delayed much too long with it. At the same time, I don’t exactly like to turn Chapman out on his ear.’
‘There is a very easy way of getting rid of him, without causing offence. Ask for a lot more money.’
He turned to face her. ‘You know how asking for money always makes me feel awkward.’
‘Robert, if the aim is to get rid of him, you shouldn’t feel awkward at all. Make a large amount sound like a trifling sum, and he will realise that he cannot afford you.’
‘How believable will it be if I ask for an excessive amount? No, I’d rather not.’
‘Ask three times the normal price.’
‘I can’t, Jane.’
‘Then ask four times the price.’
He smiled at her; she smiled mischievously back.
*
‘I could be perfectly happy in a garden like yours, Mr Seymour,’ said Edward Chapman as he stepped back from the parlour window, ‘just poking about, planting, watching things grow. I would always be looking forward to summer.’
‘Much the sentiments of my wife,’ said Seymour. ‘In fact, we are intending to move soon, to a house with a larger garden.’
‘Are you? That holly bush, by the way – I would be most obliged if you would allow me to cut a few sprigs, and use them to ornament the shop’s windows at Christmas.’
‘I am hoping to decorate the bookshops myself this Christmas, by another means. I have a publication coming out with Mr Spooner.’
‘Never met him, but I know the shop. But – our Christmas production. The pictures for The Squib Annual are finished, I trust?’
Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 53