Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  ‘There is ice forming on it, sir,’ said the servant.

  ‘Then break the ice.’

  ‘It should be warmed up in a kettle, sir.’

  ‘Under no circumstances do that.’ His eyes narrowed with distrust. ‘I shall rake out the fire,’ he said. Giving the servant another suspicious look, he then took the kettle and locked it in a cupboard.

  ‘This is weather for skating and wrapping up,’ she protested. ‘I will not do it, sir.’

  ‘Then I shall fetch the water myself. She must be cleansed.’

  The mother pleaded with Stott, but insisting all the time she must be cleansed, he forced her to stand, weak as she was, in a tub of icy water as he dowsed her with a flannel. The water was so cold she cried out. She said she feared she was injured, and surely that was more important than washing. Stott’s response was to rub the freezing flannel between her legs, rinse it out in the tub, and squeeze it over her head.

  Later that day, Stott’s wife began to shiver uncontrollably. The servant girl ran downstairs to inform Stott, who sat before the fire with his daughter.

  ‘If my wife is shivering,’ he said, ‘it is because she is vain about her hair, and has a habit of sitting combing it while naked. It is just punishment for vanity.’

  Within a few days his wife was dead.

  Immediately after the funeral, the servant told Stott that she was leaving his employment.

  ‘My wife’s death was no fault of mine,’ he said. ‘It was vanity.’

  ‘God help your daughter if this is the house she must grow up in.’

  *

  The servants who came to know the daughter in her earliest years saw a beautiful child with the most endearing nature. Who would not adore this girl? And, in those earliest years, Ely Stott was a doting father.

  But when the girl was about seven, Stott saw her in a different light. Some said the reason was that she had refused a bowl of porridge. Others that he had noticed how tall she had grown, and visions of womanhood entered Stott’s mind. Still others said that she had been caught giggling while reading the Bible. Whatever the explanation, a seed of hatred grew in Stott’s mind. Before long, an immovable idea took root – that this daughter had no love for her father. She became to him the worst of females.

  As he made her read the Bible aloud, he said to her, full of spite: ‘Thou wicked and slothful servant!’ And: ‘You stubborn heifer!’ And in the sternest voice: ‘Child, obey your father in everything, for this pleases the Lord.’

  Sometimes Ely Stott wept, and he cried out: ‘I am wretched, wretched, wretched to have so depraved a daughter!’

  The effect of this was observed when the girl was of an age to enter employment, and she became her father’s medical assistant. Patients saw her enter the room – subdued, meek and attentive. She stood obediently in the corner, her head held down in a modest pose. If her father asked her to fetch a piece of apparatus, she did so without the merest indication of wilfulness. When she helped with the straps on the apparatus, she made certain each buckle was fastened. Then she worked the cylinder machines which supplied electricity.

  But when Stott sent the girl out of the room on an errand, he would present a very different view of her behaviour to his patients. One patient, a Quaker lady, was sitting in the glass-legged chair while Stott wired her up, and he said: ‘My daughter is not well – and it is a sickness even I cannot cure.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said the lady. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘She has the most depraved mind,’ said Stott. ‘The trouble she causes me, it makes me weep. Yet I love her, no father could be fonder of a daughter. She is ungrateful to the core for everything I have done!’ He shook his head in deep distress. ‘She is a wicked, wicked girl. Violent. Deceitful. Obstinate. She is not fit to be placed in any house where a man resides. She cannot even look at a man without thinking of him between her legs. Wicked creature! She would have been a whore when she was ten years old if I hadn’t stopped her and tried – oh tried! – to teach her God’s will.’

  The Quaker lady was utterly shocked. ‘I have never seen anything to indicate such tendencies.’

  ‘Have you noticed a scar upon her hand?’

  ‘I have. I asked her about it when you were out of the room once. She seemed so meek, and I didn’t know what else to say for conversation. She told me she burnt herself when she was cooking dinner one Sunday.’

  ‘Another lie!’ He looked behind himself to check that his daughter had not returned. ‘It is the scar of Satan. He is her guardian.’

  The Quaker lady looked at Stott in bewilderment. Was this man mad? The electricity tingling her flesh disconcerted her more than usual, and as Stott came close to inspect the wires, she drew back, to avoid close proximity to his flesh. At the end of the session, when Stott asked when she would like her next appointment, she said: ‘I shall let you know, Mr Stott.’

  ‘Do not let my daughter frighten you,’ he replied.

  When the consulting hours were over, Stott summoned his daughter. The tone of his voice alone set her shaking.

  ‘I may have lost a patient today because she does not wish to be associated with such depravity as you exhibit,’ he said. ‘That is not all. In between the second and third patients today, I asked you to clean the floor. You did not clean it fast enough. And this morning, when you were cooking breakfast, you left a window open. Those two things are true, are they not?’

  She lowered her head.

  ‘Do you hesitate to answer straight away, daughter? Is it because the truth is a food that tastes bad in your vile mouth?’

  ‘They are true, Father.’

  ‘So once again I find you have not accommodated yourself to the domestic arrangements I require. And yesterday we had a delivery from the butcher, did we not?’

  ‘We did, Father.’

  ‘Did you weigh the beef?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But did you weigh it as soon as it came into the house?’

  She moved a little on the spot.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘The spirit of idleness entered. Tell me, daughter, did you salt the beef?’

  ‘I did!’

  ‘But it was not as soon as the beef came into the house, was it? Once again you have offended against the domestic arrangements required.’

  She began to whimper, for fear.

  ‘Idle – obstinate – deceitful. Depraved wretch! Base, wicked girl! Trying to pretend, by saying you salted and weighed the beef, that I would not notice that you did not do these when the beef was first delivered to the house! No daughter who loved her father would behave in such a way. You do not love me.’

  ‘I do love you, Father, I do. Believe me, I do.’

  ‘You do not! You do not, in spite of all the kindness and tenderness I bestow. Me – the kindest and tenderest of parents it is possible for a child to have!’

  A rage built up in his entire frame. He slapped the table, and kicked its leg, and raised up the Bible, and held it aloft, and called for the Lord’s help to endure his misery.

  ‘That is not all, daughter. When I went to see the glassblower, you wished that I would never come back.’

  ‘I did not, Father.’

  ‘Do not deny it, vessel of Satan!’ He opened the cupboard and removed a wooden rod from one of the holes, around which was twisted a length of thick copper wire, which he uncoiled. ‘Upstairs!’

  She knew any hesitation would be all the worse for her.

  She went to the bedroom and removed her clothes. She lay upon a glass-footed bed. When her father entered the room, he closed the windows. He looped the straps around her wrists and ankles, and fastened each buckle.

  The rod descended without mercy and the wire struck her thighs, and her stomach, and her upper arms and breasts. He avoided the face and the delicate hands, except that in his fury, a sharp edge of wire accidentally clipped her cheek and drew blood. ‘Vessel of Satan! Your foul master did that!’ His arm descended and blood pou
red down her thighs, and her sides, on to the bed. ‘Unnatural child! Where is your duty? What obedience do you show? And here am I the tenderest, the kindest and – I confess the fault, O Lord – I am your too indulgent father! Do you know how blessed you are to be my child?’

  There was nothing rebellious in her being. She was all forbearance. She did not cry out, she did not beg her father to stop. Not once did she entreat him for mercy.

  For years, she endured. In bed at night, the creak of the staircase would set her trembling, lest her father, taken with some sudden thought of her wickedness, was on his way upstairs. One night he opened the door and said, without any obvious cause: ‘Do you think I am harsh with you, daughter? I am incapable of being harsh!’ Then he burst into tears, staggered into the room and sat on the corner of the bed. For all that he had done to her, she still came forward to comfort him. He allowed her to hold his shoulders as he sobbed upon her, until he abruptly pushed her away. It was then that he screamed: ‘Your vile depravity even leads you to lustful thoughts of me!’

  She put all her hopes into one saviour: time. That, one day, she would leave her father’s house. All means of chronology – whether the seasons of nature, or the wares of clockmakers’ shops – were heralds of that day.

  Eventually, she left when she was twenty years old and found a position as governess with a family called Dew. She not only served the family well, but was wooed by two sons within that family, and agreed to marry one.

  Ely Stott, on learning of the intended wedding, for once did not impute evil to his daughter: it was the Dew family who had plotted, and sought the marriage with the intention of inheriting his fortune. But he would foil their plan! He had never been known for his interest in words – no playful pun had been heard to escape his lips – but in the word ‘Dew’, he found a particular inspiration for his displeasure. ‘Dew? I will give the girl her due!’ He said this to patients, to the glassblower’s boy, and to whomsoever he encountered in the course of a day. He repeated it when he went to a lawyer’s office.

  ‘My dear Mr Stott,’ said the lawyer, behind his desk, the words of the address being said with increasing gravity. ‘I do appreciate the situation is most – most awkward for you. I understand your distress as a father. But we really have no power at all to stop your daughter marrying Mr Dew’s son. All that might be arranged is a compromise.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Stott.

  ‘It would mean some pecuniary loss. We might call it – an inducement.’

  ‘You mean pay Dew’s son not to marry her!’ Stott stood up in red-faced rage. ‘Never!’ He slammed the desk. ‘Do you think I’d let him get his hands on my money now, rather than after I am gone?’

  ‘Then, Mr Stott, there is one other course of action, though it may be too distasteful to contemplate. From a professional point of view, I cannot express an opinion – but from a personal point of view, I confess it would not be to my taste. You could remove your daughter from your will.’

  Stott sat and put his hands to his temples. Eventually, he said: ‘If I were a bad father, she would get nothing. Not one penny. But I am a benevolent father. I will give her – what she is due.’

  He instructed the lawyer to draw up his last will and testament, in which his daughter would be given an annuity of £100. ‘This is what she is due for refusing to accommodate herself to my domestic arrangements,’ he said to the lawyer, ‘and I want you to state those words in the will. She must know that she receives the annuity, and no more, because she has persistently refused to accommodate herself to my domestic arrangements. Put it! Put it so she dwells on it for the rest of her life!’

  There remained the fortune of some £40,000.

  ‘I have two nephews,’ said Stott. ‘Now what are their names? Give me one moment, and I shall recall them. Their Christian names are definitely Thomas and Valentine. Their surname, though. What is that? I believe it is Clark. There may be an “e” on the end of the surname. I am not sure.’

  *

  Ely Stott died in November 1821, at the age of seventy-two. The vast bulk of his fortune was left to his nephews Thomas and Valentine Clarke, who had scarcely had any previous contact with their uncle at all.

  One can imagine the joys of the two Clarkes when their uncle’s will was read and they were suddenly wealthy men. Thomas Clarke, a thin, unassuming clerk, was suddenly freed from the drudgery of his working life, and he delivered his notice to his employer. He did not have extravagant tastes, but he lived a little less modestly than before. He went on long walks in the countryside, he treated himself in tea shops, he bought a second pair of shoes, he developed an interest in bindings for books, and added to a small library for personal use. He then considered the investment of the rest of his inheritance. He rejected the superficial attractions of Brazilian mining stock, and was decidedly in two minds about the fishing fleets of the South Sea. Some of the money, however, he invested in Spanish bonds.

  The happiness of Thomas Clarke might have continued indefinitely. His personal library reflected his interests in the fashionable works of travel literature. He considered that, though many could only read about such adventures, he, in his position, might, one day, do. He began to contemplate the destinations that could lie in his future.

  Except that in April of 1822, Stott’s daughter challenged the validity of the will in the Prerogative Court. The judge gave his verdict – that Ely Stott was insane, or at least had an insane aversion to his daughter. The will was declared invalid.

  Thomas Clarke, though frugal, had spent some of the money from the will. Had he invested better, his dividends might have funded these expenditures; but the certificates for Spanish bonds were now worth little more than their value as waste paper. The upshot was that he could not then, or in the foreseeable future, repay in full the money owed to Ely Stott’s daughter. He was in debt.

  The case was reviewed by the High Court of Delegates; there was an application for a commission of review, but this was refused by the Lord Chancellor.

  Thomas Clarke’s brother Valentine, who had already spent rather a large fraction of the inheritance – he was a handsome fellow, with a confident grin, an eye for the female form, and a love of rolling dice – knew what would follow next. ‘Whatever happens, I will not be taken, Thomas,’ he whispered, in a dark corner of a back-alley public house where he had arranged to meet his brother. He drew from his pocket a knife. ‘This will go in the heart of any bailiff that comes for me.’

  ‘I will trust in the justice of the law,’ said Thomas.

  ‘You are a fool! Come with me,’ said Valentine, ‘while you are still a free man.’

  ‘You go if you must,’ he told his brother. ‘I shall stay.’

  They shook hands and Valentine Clarke caught the first ship leaving England.

  Several Valentine’s Days passed, and naturally on these days Thomas Clarke thought of his brother, who had been born on 14 February. As the great day of love approached, Thomas Clarke saw in the windows of the print shops an assortment of pictures, showing human hearts pierced by an arrow – and from the grim look Thomas Clarke gave, he might have been thinking of the threat his brother made to the life of a bailiff. But he never heard from his brother, and had no idea as to where he had vanished. So Thomas Clarke walked away from the print-shop window with a heavy step.

  He wandered towards Fleet Market, near the debtors’ prison, with its covered double row of butchers and greengrocers. The sun, to a degree, penetrated the skylights of the market, but these had never been cleaned and birds pecked away at mouldering fruits and vegetables thrown there. Rotten greengrocery was also the concern of a woman who had gone to a stall, where she complained that the potatoes she bought last week were bad within.

  ‘Well, then, ma’am,’ said the stallholder, ‘you have deprived the prisoners of their free rations.’ He offered her an apple to make amends. This man Clarke recognised: Clarke had once attended a banquet in connection with his firm, and this ve
ry greengrocer with a round, mischievous face and a bent front tooth had worked as an additional waiter. Clarke lowered his head in shame. Soon a diet of half-rotten vegetables would in all likelihood be his.

  He passed a leech stall where a medical student – he was too young to be a doctor – asked for a jar of nice juicy ones, laughing as he handed over money to the poor but pretty girl serving there; and Thomas Clarke thought to himself that, had his uncle been this sort of student, the debtors’ prison would not be beckoning.

  Alongside the market was a granite wall, and when he emerged into the open, Clarke cast a doleful look at its green lichen and soot smuts. Set into this wall was a grated window with a stone slab above which was inscribed: ‘Please Remember Poor Debtors, Having No Allowance’.

  Clarke peered through the grating into a small, dark room. At a wooden bench, a painfully thin figure sat. There was a small box at the window with a slot for coins, attached to a chain. The beggar croaked an appeal, and Clarke put the contents of his sovereign-case into the box. The beggar eased himself off his bench, approached the window, gave a nod, and drew in the box by the chain. He emptied the contents into his hand, and then put the box out once more. Clarke turned to walk on, and saw a man enter a gateway close by – and on his back he carried a basket, to which market traders had contributed unsaleable food like the half-rotten potatoes the woman had mentioned. On either side of this gateway was a carved numeral: number nine. For this was 9 Fleet Market, the euphemistic address of the Fleet Prison.

  *

  The officer who came to arrest Thomas Clarke was a small ashen-haired man, more friendly than aggressive, with a hint of a Continental accent underneath the London. Clarke invited him into his lodgings, bade him to sit down, and asked whether he would like a cup of tea.

  ‘Do you have green tea?’

  ‘I don’t, I am afraid.’

  ‘Then I vill happily have vot you do have.’