Seymour handed Chapman the drawings, which the publisher sat and examined with considerable pleasure. After reaching the twelfth drawing, and expressing his delight that an artist of such standing had agreed to work for the firm, Chapman said: ‘I mentioned in my letter our intended Library of Fiction, under the editorship of Mr Charles Whitehead.’
‘I do not know Mr Whitehead.’
‘He is a great undiscovered talent. He was working for the Monthly Magazine before we persuaded him to join us. He intends to use some of the professional contacts he made at the Monthly to recruit writers for the Library of Fiction, and he will also write for the publication himself. As I believe I explained in my letter, the Library will be issued once a month, and we intend that the stories be accompanied by pictures. Mr Hall and I both believe your drawings would be the lustre of its pages.’
‘I thank you for thinking that.’
‘I wonder whether we could talk about that now?’
‘If I were to agree to work for the publication, there would be two conditions. First, the woodcutting must be executed by a competent man. Someone like Jackson or Landells. Not someone who would be better employed chopping firewood.’
‘My partner and I seek the highest standards possible.’
‘Second – my price would be six pounds per drawing.’
‘Six pounds per drawing. I see. That is an expense – but, as I said, we seek the highest standards. But may I ask – are these to be your terms for all work in the future?’
‘No, not in the future. Because I do not intend to do any more woodcuts, unless it is for a few established clients, like Figaro.’
‘Might I enquire – is there a reason for that?’
‘There are several reasons. One reason is a plan I have for a new work. A little pet idea of mine, which I have been mulling over for quite a while.’
‘What sort of idea, Mr Seymour?’
‘A new pictorial scheme. Etchings associated with letterpress.’
‘Might I ask – do you have a publisher for this idea?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Mr Seymour, would it be imposing upon you to tell me something of your idea? You have my word that this will go no further.’
‘It would be a monthly publication. It is partly inspired by a club I encountered in Holborn – superficially, it is a sporting club, but in reality it is a drinking club.’
‘Aren’t they all? But perhaps you have identified a phenomenon which others have missed.’
‘Perhaps.’
There was a hesitancy on Seymour’s part, in which he brushed his arm, and manipulated his tongue around his teeth. Chapman gave the minutest start to his own frame, in which his hands moved apart, his head dipped, and his brows raised, as a nudge to Seymour to say more.
‘I have in mind,’ said Seymour, ‘as the work’s main character, a queer sort of card, a man so gullible he is scarcely aware of falsehood at all. And yet this man sees himself as being on a scientific mission, gathering knowledge to benefit the world.’
‘That sounds interesting. Do tell me more.’
‘It would be easier if I showed you.’ He fetched the work he had done thus far.
‘Here he is – my gullible character, Mr Pickwick.’
Chapman saw for the first time the fat bald figure with spectacles who had founded the Pickwick Club.
‘What a curious character, Mr Seymour. What an odd little man. Or perhaps I should say not so little man,’ he remarked, tapping the pencilled belly.
‘You do not like him?’
‘Quite the reverse. I am instantly taken with him. And others may feel the same. You would remember a character who looked like this.’
‘I am very encouraged by that response.’
‘The circular spectacles certainly make him look a bit of a fool, and yet a scholar too. I can see why this character would suit your purposes. Tell me about his gullibility.’
‘Well, for example – a man tells him an anecdote about an intelligent dog. A dog so intelligent that it can read.’
‘What?’
Seymour brought forth a picture inspired by the fanciful stories of dogs recorded by the very gullible Edward Jesse, showing a poacher who had entered a game enclosure. The poacher held open the gate, and his dog refused to enter. Instead, the dog stood outside, reading a notice which stated: ‘The gamekeeper has orders to shoot all dogs found in this enclosure.’
‘Although this is a marvellous drawing, Mr Seymour, surely nobody would believe a tale like this?’
‘Mr Pickwick would. A man would simply have to say, “I owned this dog once – an extraordinary creature – a most sagacious animal,” and then mention his experience of poaching – and’ – Seymour made the distinctive flourish with his hands that Wonk had noticed, long before – ‘Mr Pickwick would note down every detail, utterly fascinated, and send a scientific report of the dog to his club.’
‘Good Lord, Mr Seymour – good Lord – this character could be – I do believe this character could be – like a portal to the marvellous! What you might do with him!’
Seymour explained other elements of the scheme, including the need for a letterpress writer to explain the circumstances of the drawings, to show how the characters went from one scene to another. Edward Chapman responded with examples of common ground in his own publishing activity. That there would be sport had its counterpart in a light illustrated work on fly fishing published by Chapman and Hall two years before. That the main character was a would-be man of science accorded with the Book of Science of Chapman and Hall. ‘Which was also illustrated,’ he added. That the Pickwickians would travel all over England chimed extraordinarily with Chapman and Hall’s New Topographical Dictionary.
Chapman then looked at another picture, showing Mr Pickwick chasing his hat, which had been carried away by the wind. ‘Perfectly delightful!’ he exclaimed.
‘I always like to set men in motion in pictures,’ said Seymour. ‘But more than that – it is where his hat will land when it comes to a stop.’ He pointed to other characters in the background of the picture, sitting in a stationary vehicle. ‘The simple device of chasing his hat, carried by the wind, will bring him into contact with these people, when it hits a wheel. This is a farmer, and his family, and a servant boy. So Mr Pickwick is suddenly among the characters of the countryside. That will lead to other adventures.’
‘I do like the idea of a man controlled by the actions of his hat. Most amusing. But what’s this sketch?’
It showed a man lying in bed in a squalid room, sweating, undergoing the horrors of a Gothic nightmare. From a cloud emerged suggestions of claws, horns, bat wings, demonic horses and armies of unearthly creatures. ‘I mentioned the poetical companion of Mr Pickwick,’ said Seymour. ‘I was playing around with the idea of his hallucinating through drink. So much liquor is downed in the club that it is an obvious way of introducing supernatural elements. I have always been fascinated by Fuseli’s Nightmare, and that’s an inspiration, if you know that picture.’
‘I know about literary men – and I know how they are drunk and short of money! When was that not the case? Mr Seymour, these pictures will sell the work. I have no doubt of that.’
‘Do you know the plain truth of our age, Mr Chapman?’ He stood up, as though the point were too important to be spoken sitting down, and as though he felt invigorated merely by thinking it. ‘Pictures do sell words. Yet people are either oblivious to the fact, or ashamed of it.’
*
‘TAKE THE CASE OF PIERCE Egan,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘A perfect example. He sets the city aflame with Life in London, which had pictures. Then, on the back of that success, he produces a newspaper, in something of the same spirit, but largely unillustrated. Result – just a modest success. Then one day he decides to include pictures. Result – sales soar. He sells the paper at a huge profit to Robert Bell, who builds on its success by including a series of works by caricaturists such as Robert Seymour.’
*
‘WHY DO PUBLISHERS NOT TAKE full advantage of the power of pictures?’ said Seymour. ‘I see examples of the power all the time.’
*
‘OR TAKE THE CASE OF Sir Walter Scott,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘An illustrated edition of his novels appears. Each novel has just two pictures. Two! And those two are both at the start – a frontispiece and a title page. Yet so powerful are those two pictures in stimulating sales that many people bought the novels because of the pictures. And even then, with that proof, publishers were still not encouraged to greater usage of illustrations. Or take Scott’s poem, The Lady of the Lake. It appears in illustrated form and what happens? It becomes the best-selling poem in history. Vast sales. How much more evidence was needed? And it still did not lead to increased use of illustration.’
*
‘YOU WILL FIND ME SYMPATHETIC,’ said Chapman. ‘Certainly, in the case of your pictures, Mr Seymour.’
‘Here is another strange thing, Mr Chapman. The peculiar reluctance to acknowledge the power of pictures is very similar to the reluctance regarding publication of fiction in parts. If I had to name the most successful publisher of fiction in England I suspect it would be Thomas Kelly.’
‘Ah – Thomas Kelly.’
‘Even in the way you say it, I can hear you don’t like him.’
‘It is Kelly’s methods. He sends his agents around, knocking at doors, disturbing a family’s peace and quiet. No decent publisher would behave in that way.’
‘You could sell the parts through shops and vendors. You don’t have to copy everything he does. But Kelly takes advantage of two obvious facts – we can make paper quickly now, and print on it quickly too. So if Kelly sees one of his works in numbers taking off, he can rapidly increase his production. Yet most publishers seem blind to this. It is as though they are stuck in the last century.’
‘At Chapman and Hall we have dabbled in numbers. We published our Topographical Dictionary in shilling monthly parts.’
‘Not a work that gives direct pleasure, though. I would guess that you have published no long fiction in parts.’
‘You are correct.’
‘And you say you dabbled. Mr Chapman, I used to do drawings for Knight and Lacey, just a few doors away from Kelly in Paternoster Row. I saw the huge quantities of novels in parts that Kelly would shift. Yet, almost all of his novels are sold in provincial areas, particularly the north of England. Why?’
‘There is – I don’t know – Mr Seymour, there are standards.’
‘Are novels in parts not good enough for respectable people in the city?’
‘I cannot give you a reason, except that we work in a certain way.’
‘There is no reason why novels in parts cannot be sold in London. And all over the country. Tremendous profits would result. Yet it doesn’t happen. If by chance it does, it is just a fluke, and is not repeated. Knight and Lacey did a novel in parts about the murder in the red barn, and I did the pictures. What happened? Huge sales again. Was it followed up? No. Like you, they dabbled.’
‘You are making me feel that I am scarcely fit to be in business, Mr Seymour. That I am missing an opportunity right in front of my face.’
‘It is not just you, Mr Chapman. Something peculiar – something ridiculous – something infects our brains. It is as though we are embarrassed to use our eyes. As though we daren’t acknowledge that pictures give us pleasure and only words are thoroughly respectable – so respectable that it is beneath their dignity to be divided and sold in monthly parts. The only dividing we do is to put words in three volumes, when lavish binding is the fig leaf that covers our shame.’
‘Perhaps, Mr Seymour, it is time for Chapman and Hall to do two shameful things together. Parts with pictures.’
‘There has never been a better time. Kelly will be retiring soon.’
‘I have heard something of that. He seeks office as Lord Mayor, I believe.’
‘Once installed, he will be too busy eating at our expense to think about the numbers trade. Do you not think that in his absence there will be an opportunity for another publisher to take his place? Find someone to provide the letterpress for my drawings and Chapman and Hall could step into Kelly’s shoes.’
‘You have convinced me. This is a matter I shall make my immediate concern.’
‘But I need a writer who can work quickly and punctually. I would emphasise that – the writer must be quick and punctual. Someone who can keep up with me. I will not be let down in the supply of the letterpress.’
‘I understand. But if we are to do this, I need to persuade Mr Hall. Do you have a title for this scheme?’
‘Not one that I am firmly set on yet. The work tugs in many directions, which makes it difficult. But I have played with the name Pickwick, and the letter P has such a tendency to repeat itself – I am considering The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. What do you think?’
‘Well, the title can be decided later. Mr Hall must be persuaded first.’
*
The persuasion of William Hall was straightforward, because he did not need to be told the scheme’s advantages. Instead, he told Edward Chapman, virtually as a muttering aloud, as he paced to and fro across a carpet – a carpet originally from a bedroom, which he had worn threadbare in years of previous ponders. Hall said that if the work of fiction were published in twenty monthly parts, they would lay out, for the first part, one twentieth of the total costs; they would receive the proceeds within a month, and these would be reinvested to finance the second part; then the second part would do the same for the third, and so on, until the end of the run. There would be no tying up of funds in large payments to artist and writer before their work was received, no large outlays on the cost of paper, printing and binding; and additional revenue could be earned if the parts, like a magazine, carried advertisements.
‘It makes perfect financial sense, Edward,’ said Hall. ‘We merely need our commodity. So who is going to do the words for Seymour’s pictures?’
*
At a quarter past eight on the following Friday morning, a watery-eyed clerk, sitting at the ledger in the office of Vizetelly, Branston and Co., publishers, greeted a large-framed man, not yet middle-aged, who bent, without even looking, to avoid hitting his head on the lintel.
‘Good morning, Clarke,’ said the clerk, smiling.
‘Good morning, clerk,’ said Mr Clarke, smiling. They had performed the routine on too many Fridays to stop now.
‘Today I have a surprise for you,’ said the clerk, as he unlocked a cash box. ‘You have received a letter.’
‘For me? Are you sure?’
‘Perfectly certain. I have kept it safe in the box.’
He passed the letter over, but Clarke showed no recognition of the writing; he just displayed a protruding lip of momentary puzzlement, before the letter was stuffed into a breast pocket. Then the overlarge hand of William Clarke held itself out, ready to receive cash.
‘Four, five, six pounds,’ said the clerk. The hand closed.
William Clarke left Vizetelly, Branston and Co. and went straight into the nearest hostelry. He bought a glass of Rhenish and stood at the bar, but did not taste the wine for some time; instead, he purchased three cigars from the landlord, and these he smoked before taking so much as a sip.
Clarke smoked like a man who adored tobacco. He knew there was a right way and a wrong way in its appreciation – he moistened the cigar tip delicately with his tongue, then he held the cigar gently, and sucked noisily to open its pores, with nearly two-thirds drawn into his mouth. When, and only when, he was satisfied, he withdrew the cigar, so that an inch was cradled between his lips, and the tobacco burned easily.
As Clarke smoked, a man in a powdered wig entered the house, and ordered a cigar from the landlord, only to place it in an amber tube. The expression of contempt on Clarke’s face was so pronounced that the man caught a glimpse of it himself.
‘Is that look for me, sir?’ said
the man.
‘No, sir, for the tube. A cigar cannot be enjoyed through a tube of any sort, whether it be a straw, a quill or’ – he gave a sickened expression – ‘amber.’
Only after the third cigar was smoked did Clarke turn to the Rhenish. At this time too he took the letter from his pocket.
The letter was from Edward Chapman, a man he did not know, of Chapman and Hall, apparently a publishing company.
Chapman expressed his praise for a work of Mr Clarke’s, Three Courses and a Dessert, which had – and justly, said Chapman – achieved great success with the general public. He noted the presence of rustic scenes and that the work was given additional distinction by the fine illustrations by Mr George Cruikshank. ‘One drawing I especially remember,’ said Chapman, ‘showed a man pursued by a mad bull. As you will yourself know, he climbed a garden gatepost to escape, but there were savage bulldogs on the other side.’
The letter proceeded to say that the spirit of Three Courses and a Dessert was not dissimilar to a work that Chapman and Hall intended to publish, with pictures by the esteemed artist Mr Seymour, and that a writer of letterpress was sought. Terms were proposed, and the hope was expressed that the position might be of interest to Mr Clarke.
William Clarke screwed up his features, and did the same to the letter, and these actions were noticed by a large-nostrilled sleek-haired man a little way down the bar, who normally exchanged a few pleasantries with Clarke, especially after the discovery, six months before, that Clarke was a writer, and generous by disposition, and that Friday was the day he received payment.
‘Bad news?’ said the man.
‘Read it yourself.’ Clarke pushed the crumpled letter down the bar. ‘Can I offer you something short? On me.’
‘You are very kind. A brandy would be welcome.’ The man ran his eyes over the letter’s contents. ‘It seems like a good offer.’
‘If it were an offer I could accept.’
‘Too busy?’
‘No – I mean I cannot accept it. I am contractually bound to my publisher. I am obliged to turn down all other offers of work. Six pounds a week has me in a slave’s chains for ever.’
Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 54