Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  ‘Boz said in the letter that the emolument was too tempting to resist. Are you saying that the next morning he does indeed resist the emolument? If he were to say in a letter “I cannot do it, and even were I to agree to do it, I would take my own way regardless”, then he would be turning the job down. He could have no guarantee that any alternative scheme would be agreed to. Are you saying that overnight the emolument suddenly lost its power? Besides, there is no evidence of such a letter. And there are other reasons for thinking that no such letter was ever sent.’

  Again he opened the file. He showed me a letter Boz had written on the Thursday, to the publisher of Sketches by Boz, John Macrone. He read aloud the lines: ‘“I have been busy with a magazine paper during the last three days. I shall finish it today I hope, and if you are likely to be at home at one o’clock tomorrow I will call on you then.”’

  Mr Inbelicate stared at me, as though I was expected to see some peculiar significance in these lines. In response to my looks of bewilderment, he said: ‘There are two important points to note there, Scripty. One is Boz’s use of the word “hope”. The other is the time he suggests for meeting Macrone – one o’clock.’

  ‘I fail to see—’

  ‘The magazine paper is of course “The Tuggs’s at Ramsgate” which will appear in the monthly Library of Fiction. The story has been a great struggle. He hopes to finish it on Thursday. Which means that he knows he might even be working on it on Friday morning, immediately prior to seeing Chapman and Hall.’

  ‘I still don’t see—’

  ‘Put yourself in Boz’s shoes, Scripty. The story had been murder to write. The previous day, in his letter to his fiancée, he said: “It must be done tomorrow.” And he adds, in explanation, that there are “more important considerations than the mere payment for the story involved, too”. To me that suggests he fears the great emolument could be lost – because in a work demanding punctuality, and the regular submission of letterpress, why should Chapman and Hall take on a man who cannot even finish one short story on time? But now that the Thursday is here, he realises he might not finish until Friday morning. He must be getting anxious. It is very difficult to predict when this story will be done – and so he opts for safety. The time he chooses for his meeting with Macrone is one o’clock. That would be compatible with seeing Chapman and Hall by noon, because Macrone is in business at St James’s Square, and he could see Chapman and Hall, and then make his way to Macrone afterwards.’

  ‘And if he gets to Chapman and Hall by noon,’ I said, ‘even one minute before noon, he has delivered “The Tuggs’s at Ramsgate”, strictly speaking, in the morning. He has proved his punctuality.’

  ‘Yes, but there is more. In the letter Boz wrote to his fiancée, he says something else. Quote: “I hope I shall be able to get out to Brompton to dinner on Friday. I have to see these people” – and by “these people” he means Chapman and Hall – “and then Macrone with whom I shall be detained some time, but I trust I shall be able to manage it. Should I be disappointed (I don’t think I shall be though) of course I shall be out, early on Saturday.” So Boz wants to go to Brompton. The logical thing would be to see Macrone as early as possible in the day, so that it is more likely he can go to Brompton. But instead, he chooses one o’clock.’

  ‘You are saying Boz leaves it that late because he wants to squeeze out every possible minute of writing time, compatible with getting to Chapman and Hall on Friday morning. He is scared, on Thursday, about whether he can finish this difficult story by the deadline.’

  ‘Yes. Now I ask you this, Scripty. If he is this anxious, would he really eat into his limited writing time, to think about some alternative course to Seymour’s, then write a letter setting out his plans, both of which could take some time, and all for something which may be totally unacceptable to Chapman, Hall and Seymour, and could lose him the emolument? If he does have objections, and wishes to suggest an alternative, he would surely be wise to delay thinking about them and writing them down until after the “Tuggs’s” was done. But the “Tuggs’s” is unlikely to be completed before Thursday evening, at the earliest – remember he says he hopes it will be done Thursday, but he realises he could be working on it for several hours on Friday morning, right up to the deadline. And Thursday evening would surely be too late in the day to contact Chapman and Hall. Horns please.’

  ‘There is still Friday. He could raise objections at the meeting with Chapman and Hall. He could have finished his story on Thursday night, had time left over, thought about the alternative plans, and then presented them to Chapman and Hall at the meeting.’

  ‘Well done, Scripty! The trouble is, if he did present alternative plans at the meeting on Friday, Seymour would surely have to be contacted by Chapman and Hall, to get his approval. It would be the crucial point to be resolved – does Mr Seymour agree to the change of plans or not? And unfortunately for the fate of that hypothesis, we have a letter from Chapman and Hall to Boz, written that Friday, confirming the matters agreed at the meeting – and it doesn’t even mention Seymour. If alternative proposals were raised at the meeting, such a letter would surely say: “Mr Seymour is totally in agreement with your proposals.” And the letter says nothing at all about Seymour. Come on, throw some other suggestions.’

  I stood in front of an old sign saying ‘Take Notice: Man Traps and Spring Guns are Set on these Premises’, below which was an example of a ‘spring gun’, a shotgun which was operated by tripwire, used to deter poachers.

  ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘Seymour turned up at Chapman and Hall’s office when Boz called for the meeting – or just happened to drop by – and so could say in person that he agreed with the new plans. Then there would be no need for him to be mentioned in the letter.’

  ‘Oh yes – except that there is Boz’s statement, which we shall discuss in due course, that he met Seymour only once – and it wasn’t in Chapman and Hall’s office. But let us just suppose that Boz’s statement is – I shall be kind – in error. Let me assert that I do think it is in error. I believe Boz and Seymour met more than once. Then I still think it is most unlikely that Seymour would have met Boz at Chapman and Hall’s on the Friday, for the simple reason that it could be a wasted trip: Seymour did not know, for sure, that Boz would have accepted the job. It would be logical for him to see Boz after acceptance, not before, when it was all up in the air.’

  He waited beside a ship in a bottle, which was labelled ‘Heavy Smack’, to see whether I would say anything else. As I did not do so, he continued his argument.

  ‘And if you hypothesise that Seymour just happened to drop by Chapman and Hall’s when Boz was present – well, what would be the point? He would only just have gone there that week, because that is how he acquired Sketches by Boz. Besides, when you come to think about it, Scripty, why would Boz have kept quiet about meeting Seymour at Chapman and Hall’s on the Friday? If Boz put an alternative scheme in person to Seymour, and Seymour agreed, then there was no necessity to hush that up. It would support the idea that Boz had overturned the scheme. No, Seymour and Boz didn’t meet on that Friday.’

  ‘There is something wrong here,’ I said. ‘There must be.’

  ‘I told you that our mission was to correct historical errors. Every moment when I am Inbelicate, and you are Inscriptino, it is a reminder that errors still need to be put right.’

  ‘Very well. Let’s go back to the account of the people gathered to read Sketches by Boz. Perhaps that is the thing that is in error. Or perhaps, despite what we have said, Seymour did agree to a change in the scheme, as soon as he was passed Sketches by Boz, even before he went home.’

  ‘The people gathered in Seymour’s parlour talk of Boz being the right man for Mr Seymour’s scheme. There is no indication in the account of Seymour’s ideas being overturned. Read it yourself.’ He passed the file over to me. ‘And if Seymour’s ideas had been overturned before that gathering – why, Seymour would then have had even less control over his pi
ctures than those he did for Richard Carlile. You wouldn’t then talk of Mr Seymour’s scheme at all, and there would be no cause for celebration. And this clearly was a happy gathering.’

  ‘Boz must have suggested the change of plan after the meeting with Chapman and Hall, then. That has to be it.’

  ‘Boz sent a letter to Chapman and Hall the following Friday, which expresses his concurrence with the terms Chapman and Hall proposed. There is no mention at all of any change of plans, nor any mention of any contact between one Friday and the next. Boz is simply replying to their letter, and their letter arose from the meeting on the Friday.’

  Almost in desperation, I said: ‘Wasn’t Boz said to be a man of iron-hard will? Surely he would get his own way and not do someone else’s bidding?’

  ‘With you, Scripty, it is almost like you check boxes on my list of possible objections.’ With glee, he read to me a statement by an American writer, Nathaniel Parker Willis, who visited Boz one rainy day in November 1835, just two months before the meeting with William Hall. Willis was accompanied by the publisher of Sketches by Boz, and he stated: ‘I was only struck at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening as the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers) – the degree to which the poor author was overpowered with the honour of his publisher’s visit.’ He closed the file and quoted the line again: ‘the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers’.

  Mr Inbelicate walked around, allowing all this to sink into my thoughts. ‘I think you will conclude,’ he said, ‘that there is no evidence for Boz changing Seymour’s plans, and every reason for thinking he did not. Boz signed up completely for Seymour’s scheme. Interesting how innocent letters can say so much, eh? But come, I fear that I have exhausted you. Enough for one day. Even devil’s advocates must take a break from hell.’

  *

  The next morning, over breakfast, Mr Inbelicate said: ‘Today, Scripty, we are going to digress down a curious path. I am going to tell you about Ely Stott and Thomas Clarke.’

  ‘We have already had a Clarke – William Clarke. Any relation?’

  ‘None. But sometimes names reassert themselves.’

  *

  THE EARLIER HISTORY OF ELY Stott is enveloped in clouds of obscurity, though it is known that he was born in 1749. Some authorities speak of Stott’s apprenticeship to an old apothecary in Yorkshire and say that, by dispensing pills, powders and creams across a counter from labelled drawers, his curiosity about medicine was awakened. ‘How many complaints could there possibly be,’ the young Stott perhaps asked himself, ‘and how many the methods of cure?’

  Curiosity in ordinary men often leads to wanderlust; in Ely Stott, curiosity led to study at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. He proved to be a medical student of no common kind.

  Not for Ely Stott the traditional drunkenness and debauched nights of the young physician-to-be; instead, he would sit in his little tidy rented room, by the stub of a candle and, after a long session with his anatomy books, he turned to Holy Scripture. During demonstrations of surgery, he had none of the ghoulish fascination that attended the dissection of executed criminals. He would say ‘Hush!’ if he heard muttering as a chest was scalpelled open. And if students discussed cadavers in the refectory – which they often did to draw attention to themselves, especially if some female guest were at the table – he would say ‘Hush!’ there too. Once, an affable young man had attempted to draw Stott out of his shell, and had said at breakfast: ‘Why not come for a gargle with us tonight, after lectures, Stott?’

  The response was a harsh: ‘No!’

  No, not for Stott the company of those who drank brandy neat. His keenest pleasure in life – the closest he came to an enjoyable diversion from study – was itself an area of study: the medical uses of electricity. When a current was applied to a dead frog and its leg twitched, Ely Stott felt the presence of the Lord. He had since boyhood been in awe of the power of lightning storms, and the first time he saw a spark produced by a Leyden jar, he believed he had witnessed the Godhead’s will, in miniature.

  There formed in Stott’s mind the notion that all human ailments might be cured by the skilful application of electricity. He sketched plans for electrical apparatus, and devised imaginary experiments upon living and dead subjects, both animal and human.

  Though his professors pointed out the speculative nature of his interests, and endeavoured to steer him towards traditional cures, Stott would not listen. He was in the world to do God’s will. He would make the blind see, the deaf hear, and – once, when especially angered by a smirk from a professor – he said he would raise the dead if it were not blasphemy.

  ‘I could make cold lips move and tell the story of their life,’ he remarked.

  After leaving St Thomas’s, Stott established a practice at Bishopsgate Street, in the north-east of the City, where he attracted patients by the novelty of his methods. One of his first was a young woman brought in by an elder brother. She had a desire to eat earth.

  ‘It is hysteria,’ was Stott’s diagnosis. He sat the girl down on a chair with glass legs, and then he touched her with a long metal wire, connected to a Leyden jar. As her hair stood on end, he said: ‘Do you feel warm?’ Sweat came down her face.

  He took her brother aside. ‘Is she cunning?’ he asked.

  ‘Never!’ replied her brother.

  ‘Does she persuade – by a smile – by a sad eye – by little ways? These can be manifestations of hysteria.’

  ‘Last Sunday, she did smile and say the weather was nice for a picnic.’

  ‘And did you go?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Tell me – what did you eat? Be precise, if you can remember.’

  ‘Pigeon pie – lobsters – veal – ham, I think – salad – washed down with wine, plenty of wine.’

  ‘Did she choose the food?’

  ‘The wine was her choice. In the event, she ate little. She said she wanted carp, and lobster was a poor substitute. She asked a gentleman present, who is a keen angler, to catch one for her.’

  ‘Who was this gentleman?’

  ‘A friend of mine.’

  ‘And she was pleasant with him?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Flirtatious?’

  ‘She is quite spirited at times.’

  ‘Spirited!’ He brought the brother closer. ‘Contact me immediately if there are more signs of this nature.’

  A regular caller was the glassblower’s delivery boy, with the latest piece of apparatus, blown according to Stott’s instructions.

  ‘Heh heh,’ said Stott with evident glee as the boy unwrapped, from a piece of baize, a curved glass tube with an exposed copper wire. ‘I bet your master enjoys the challenge of working on my inventions,’ said Stott.

  ‘He says it’s a change from blowing tumblers for lodging houses, sir.’

  ‘Do you know what this is for, my boy?’ said Stott, glorying in the beauties of the tube. ‘Cold sores and cankers will shrivel when it’s applied. It will go right to the heart of an ulcer! Heh heh! Well, we will add it to the cabinet.’

  After the affectionate stroking of the boy’s head, and the passing over of payment, Stott took the tube and opened the doors of a specially made cabinet in which holes held various types of apparatus in upright display. Although it would be an absurdity to make a club out of glass, that was the appearance of many items within – some even bore vicious nodules, like vitreous nail heads, for insertion in orifices – while in the lower section were drawers for miscellaneous items, including a skeletal shoe, enabling a gouty foot to be electrocuted directly at the toe, and reticular bags for shocking a breast or a knee or a chin. There was also a device which Stott regarded as his favourite, intended for the treatment of toothache: it consisted of a small wooden box, which was placed in the mouth, and an adjustable wire which could be touched against the tooth. ‘Go to the barber if you want it pulled, or eat your sandwiches forev
er in pain,’ he told patients as he placed the box in the mouth. ‘But come to me for a cure.’ There was a glorious adaptability to this device, as well. This was demonstrated when a husband once brought in a wife who, he told Stott, chattered too much – to treat this form of hysteria, Stott applied the wire straight to her tongue.

  And if there happened to be some strange medical condition which did not yet have its own specialised piece of medical equipment, there was always Stott’s miraculous electric bandage, a silk sash with a brass knob, which could be tied around the patient. It could even administer the healing spark to the pupil of the eye.

  As more patients received the charges of two huge Leyden jars, Stott naturally accumulated charges for himself, which accrued to his bank account. However, by his appearance, he gave no evidence of his growing wealth, and he usually wore a dusty unfashionable jacket. Such shabbiness was seen as proof of genius. Great men, said one patient, are rarely concerned with matters of dress. But a concern for show did manifest itself in Stott’s work, for he preferred to treat in the dark, so that the sparks were displayed to best effect – a secondary effect being that patients thought they got value for money.

  It was not long before Stott moved to a larger practice in Hart Street, Bloomsbury. Here he built an annexe, with a barrel containing electrified water. The patient, usually female, would sit half-immersed to be treated for haemorrhoids, and many other conditions. Women’s monthly problems were a regular source of income to Stott.

  Yet his relations with women outside his practice remain as obscure as his earlier history, and the details of courtship, and most of the particulars of his married life, are unknown. It appears a certain female entered holy wedlock with Stott not because she consented, but because Stott told her of their imminent marriage, and once that plan was established, she was too scared to object.

  His wife went into labour on a bitterly cold morning in November 1788. Stott came downstairs in a blood-stained shirt, carrying his newborn daughter, whom he had delivered himself. As soon as an excited servant girl came rushing forward to see the babe, he instructed her to fetch a bowl of water from the butt, as the mother needed washing.