Death and Mr. Pickwick

  She turned and left, and pushed past the private secretary, whom Melbourne immediately summoned. The private secretary was apprised of the facts, and recommended that Melbourne should appoint Sir John Campbell as his counsel for the defence.

  *

  Sir John Campbell, though a strongly built man, habitually allowed his head to droop towards one shoulder, giving the impression that his neck rested on insecure foundations. He closed his eyes, neck inclined, deep in thought behind his desk in his chambers, as Lord Melbourne explained the circumstances of George Norton’s action for damages. When this was done, Melbourne said: ‘Sir John, there is no truth in these allegations. On that I give you my word of honour.’

  Campbell opened his eyes, which were pale, and lacking in confidence. ‘I do believe you,’ he said.

  ‘When I am doubted by so many, your assurance is a ray of light. I thank you.’

  ‘I must also tell you,’ said Campbell, ‘that the case causes me more anxiety than any in which I have been called upon to act as counsel.’

  ‘I do understand,’ said Melbourne. ‘I have considered whether, in the interests of the country, I should resign – but I have been urged that such an act would be interpreted as an admission of guilt. I informed the King that I am ready to leave office. But His Majesty smells a plot. And whatever his feelings about me and the Whigs, and however much he personally wishes me to go, he refuses to discuss a resignation.’

  ‘And you are convinced that Wynford is behind Norton’s action?’

  ‘I am sure of it. Even Tories say it disgraces their party. Wellington has offered me his support.’

  ‘I will ask Serjeant Talfourd to assist me.’

  There was a hint of panic in Melbourne’s eye. ‘Let me repeat, Sir John, that there is no truth whatsoever in these allegations.’

  ‘I have said that I believe you.’

  After the prime minister had left the room, Sir John Campbell breathed deeply and rubbed his eyes, and gave other physical indications of the anxiety he had expressed to Melbourne. Then he opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a slender, green-wrappered publication. His expression changed as soon as he began reading, and he chuckled and laughed heartily as though all concerns were banished from his mind.

  *

  Melbourne poured himself a shot glass of Woodhouse’s Ethereal Essence of Ginger. He swallowed, and in the presence of his private secretary, made an un-prime ministerial sound.

  ‘I don’t know why I take this,’ said Melbourne. ‘It has no effect. My appetite is gone. My damn bowels are not working. My nose runs like a waterfall. I hardly sleep.’

  ‘In my own case, when I am anxious,’ said the private secretary, ‘I sometimes find that it helps to take a small glass of claret.’

  ‘I took a sip of claret last night and it nauseated me. Claret – even one of the finest of pleasures is disgusting to me now!’ Melbourne loosened his collar. ‘I know people look at me with incredulity, but I know I am innocent.’ A pained expression cast an even darker mood upon his face. ‘I admit – I am concerned at the involvement of Serjeant Talfourd on Campbell’s side. Mrs Norton has spoken of meeting him several times. She has encountered him at receptions – and no woman is more flirtatious. If Talfourd has witnessed the way she flirts, and he will have done, and if he tells Campbell – then he may cease to believe in my innocence.’

  ‘Flirtation is but flirtation, Lord Melbourne.’

  ‘Do you believe I am innocent? Answer me truthfully. Tell me what you think. I need to know.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you are innocent. But if I did not know you – if I were on the jury – I confess, Prime Minister, I have very grave concerns about the outcome of the trial.’

  *

  It was ten days after Buss received the letter from Chapman and Hall that his friend Harrison called.

  Mrs Buss showed the visitor to the studio, but whispered in the passage: ‘He has not been in good spirits.’

  Harrison found Buss sitting dishevelled, unshaven and thoroughly miserable at the table. A tankard had been placed directly over the largest acid stain. A pencil lay across an open sketchbook, though nothing but a few zigzag meanderings had been drawn.

  ‘I am sick at heart, Harrison,’ said Buss, after describing Chapman and Hall’s dismissal. ‘I have not worked since I received their letter. I cannot stop thinking what a fool I was. When I promised to do the work for Hall, for me a promise was a promise. There were times when I regretted taking on the work, when I was on the point of throwing it up – but I did not. I kept my promise, and devoted myself to the task.’

  ‘Prove Chapman and Hall wrong. Try to etch again.’

  ‘Never. I put the tools into a sack, threw them in that cupboard, and locked it. And it will stay locked.’

  Harrison took a silver case out of his pocket and placed a card upon the table, directly in front of the artist. It was printed with Buss’s design for the ball.

  ‘Everyone was completely charmed by the card,’ said Harrison. ‘What’s more, there was a publisher at the ball. He wants someone to do etchings for a book about a widow. He was as entranced by the card as everyone else. I promised him I would speak to you. And a promise is a promise.’

  There was a minor grunt from Buss, as though from a man disturbed in his sleep, but no further reaction.

  ‘Strangely enough,’ said Harrison, ‘I overheard a conversation in which the publisher mentioned this Pickwick scribbler.’

  ‘Don’t even mention Pickwick!’ Buss stood up so abruptly that Harrison dropped the silver case on to the table.

  Buss ran his hands through his matted hair, in exasperation. ‘I’m sorry, Harrison. I should not snap at you like that. That was wrong of me. Please accept my apologies.’

  ‘I will accept no apologies until you have another go at etching.’ He reached across for the pencil and wrote on the back of the card, then said, ‘This is the name and address of the publisher. It is up to you.’ He stood, and touched Buss’s shoulder, but did not shake hands before departing.

  Several hours later, Buss found a key in a drawer. He unlocked the cupboard, took out the sack, and when he pulled the neck apart, the smell of beeswax and resin rose from within. One by one, he placed the needles, the handrest and all the other items required for etching upon the table. Some weeks passed, and the bearded man returned to Buss’s studio for a session as King Lear. ‘I saw a good review of a piece of your work the other day, Mr Buss,’ he said, as from an inside pocket he produced a page torn from the Carlton Chronicle. ‘Thought I’d bring it along, in case you missed it.’

  ‘Trying flattery rather than threats of the razor now?’ said Buss, smiling. He took the page.

  It concerned Pickwick. Buss pulled a face, but read on.

  ‘This rising artist,’ said the reviewer, ‘has now indeed so nearly approached the excellence of his predecessor that the interests of the publishers and of the art can suffer but little by the unfortunate and premature termination of Seymour’s career.’

  ‘Well, that’s not too bad,’ said Buss, as he continued through the item.

  ‘We are glad to perceive,’ continued the Chronicle, ‘that the etchings by Mr Buss in the present number of this very spirited and clever publication are considerable improvements upon his first attempts.’

  Buss worse-than-grimaced. The cursory look he had given when first passed the page had led to his missing one pertinent fact: that the review was of Pickwick’s fourth number, not the third.

  ‘The works they are praising are by Hablot Browne, which they mistakenly believe are mine,’ he said, thrusting the page back into the bearded man’s chest.

  Five years earlier

  There were twenty men and youths at two long benches in the tolerably windowed engraving room at Findens. Each pushed the chisel known as a burin across the surface of a metal plate. A new, young curly-haired apprentice had just been brought in by a manager, and he nodded shyly to those at the benches, some of who
m nodded back.

  ‘Well, Mr Browne,’ said the amiable Mr Fennell, rubbing his hands, ‘I hope you will be happy here. You’ll see the engravers all have their specialities, and we’ll certainly find one for you.’

  Browne saw that one short-sighted old engraver, who had the decency to return the nod, was at work on the muscles of an arm, meticulously giving it depth by a succession of close lines – the engraver himself may have looked undernourished, but the biceps on the steel was surely fashioned in the gymnasium. Another engraver, a cloth specialist, used the alternation of closely and widely dispersed lines to indicate the way a cloak hung, while yet another specialised in sky, and was just passing his plate to a specialist in trees. As Fennell led Browne around the perimeter of the benches, the newcomer saw there were specialists in picturesque ruins, weaponry and free-flowing water; but whatever their pictorial concern, all held the burin steady, turning the plate this way and that on a small leather cushion, making their hard-won furrows, building up a picture detail by painstaking detail. This was to the accompaniment of an unsettling noise best described as crinkled, as burins scraped the steel.

  After a complete circuit of the benches, Browne sat beside the man at work on the arm, who proceeded to explain that a lozenge-pattern of shading should not be overused on flesh. ‘Rather too sharp at the corners, that is. It can make it look like your man is behind a garden trellis.’

  ‘So you make them squares then?’ asked Browne.

  ‘Well you can do that, but then it starts to look like your man’s a statue. It’s all about thinking of what the muscles are, and putting the strokes closer together in the shades and wider apart in the lights. You’ll get the hang of it. Sometimes if you make a peck with the graver, that does the job – like this. See? But we need to find out what you’re good at. Look at Tom over there. He’s our hair man. When I’m done with this, I’ll pass it over to him, and you’ll see how he starts off in a lazy sort of manner, to get the right flow of the hair. What sort of speciality do you think you might like?’

  ‘Horses.’

  ‘Well, Joshua in the corner is your man for horses, though Tom does the manes. But Joshua’s some way off retirement yet, so there might not be an opening. We’ll make you into something good, though.’

  One of the youngest men at the benches was called, appropriately, Robert Young. He had not merely nodded, but smiled when Browne entered. It was the case that Young’s thin and intense features usually manifested a state of great concentration above the steel – until the features would break suddenly into the smile again if he caught Browne looking, much to Browne’s embarrassment. Young also suffered from a shrunken leg, with one foot decidedly smaller than the other and with an inward turn, and he walked with the aid of a stick. His disability usually made him the last to leave the office, and at the end of the day he struck up a conversation with the newcomer.

  ‘Why don’t you ask me: “Does your stick bother you?”’ remarked Young.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Browne, ‘if I stared.’

  ‘You didn’t stare, I just knew you would be thinking it. The stick has its uses. I have played a game of billiards with it – and won. Some day I shall bash someone’s brains out with my stick, I am sure.’

  ‘What brought you to Findens?’ asked Browne as the pair walked into the street.

  ‘I proceed slowly. Patience in all things is my motto. Engraving was an obvious path. And you?’

  ‘My uncle believed it would be a good thing for me to take up. He paid for my indentures.’

  *

  Over the coming months, the resistance of the metal to Hablot Browne’s burin might have been his own resistance to the techniques of engraving. If one thing could be learnt quickly at Findens, it was this: engraving was an excruciatingly tedious business, and learning all the traditions of cross-hatching and parallel line, to produce reflections, shimmers and shades, would take years.

  Soon, as a regular occurrence, Browne was twenty minutes late for work in the morning, sometimes thirty-five. The warmth of the blankets at his lodgings was too comfortable to be disturbed by cold, hard, engraving plates. One morning, as he lay in bed, he was vaguely aware of a knocking succeeded by calls of ‘Mr Browne! Mr Browne! Mr Brooowwwne!’ – and with the last call still resonating behind the door, a dream of galloping horses’ hooves and spinning carriage wheels cleared, and Browne sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  ‘John Dubbin, sir.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘John the office boy.’

  He did not need to ask why the boy had turned up. ‘I am on my way.’

  Browne suddenly spurred himself into action. He should have been in work an hour before. Even the panic at being late did not sustain itself. He walked slowly and wearily along the streets. He looked with envy at the cabs, and decided to summon one, an expense he could ill afford: but a trip in a cab was a frivolity to be seized, worth the shilling, before the drudgery began.

  He entered and sat quietly at the bench, apologising profoundly. He looked down at his engraving plate, and rarely spoke that day – but then, he rarely spoke to anyone on any day, except to Young, after work. Sometimes the only sound he made, apart from the apology for late attendance, was a sharp cry of pain when, in a distracted mood, he forgot to remove the burr made by the tool and he cut himself.

  ‘Here, we must put a bandage on that,’ said the muscular specialist once, as blood dripped across the bench.

  ‘I don’t like to cause a fuss,’ said Browne, and he sucked his wounded finger instead.

  In the main, his day consisted of odd jobs which did not fit easily into the specialist pictorial categories occupied by the other engravers. A tiled roof, for instance, or a few small background figures. Occasionally, for speed, some parts of pictures were etched rather than engraved, and these jobs too landed in Browne’s lap – and thus, over time, he acquired the skills of wax, needle and acid. Etching was one of the few activities he enjoyed at Findens: engraving meant pushing hard upon the mushroom-shaped handle of the burin, and exerting just the right pressure on the steel with the palm – but etching was almost as smooth as pencil drawing, with the wax offering so little resistance to the point that it seemed nothing like engraving at all, except that both incised a line.

  The odd job at Findens considered the least prestigious was the taking of plates to the printers to oversee the production of proofs. The task involved hours of tedium at the printing works, sitting among washing lines draped from one side of the room to the other on which were hung moist blankets, among a smell reminiscent of cats, emanating from a pot of linseed oil boiling on a stove, which a man stirred with a ladle, drawing up thick strings. Or rather, the task would have involved sitting in such circumstances, for Browne usually took himself off to the British Museum, where he indulged in the considerably more pleasant pursuit of sketching the antiquities. The lure of the British Museum sometimes overcame the urge to go into work at all.

  One morning, when Browne returned to work, after an absence of several days due to sickness, John Dubbin came to the bench, and whispered to Browne that the two proprietors, the older Mr Finden and the younger Mr Finden, wished to see him in their office. It was unusual to be summoned to see both. The younger Mr Finden, a smiling and energetic man of about forty, would typically stand over an engraver’s shoulder, look at the progress on a plate and say: ‘Keep at it!’ He would always distribute the drawings. The older Mr Finden – older by three or four years – possessed as formidable a grasp of engraving techniques as any man in England, and had too much fascination with grooves in copper and steel to be as warm as his younger brother, to whom he delegated most administrative work.

  When Browne entered their office, the older Mr Finden was already seated behind his desk. The younger Mr Finden stood to one side.

  ‘Please take a seat, Mr Browne,’ said the younger Mr Finden. ‘You are perhaps not fully recovered from your illness.’

  ‘That
is very kind of you, sir,’ said Browne. ‘I am feeling a little unsteady.’

  Then the older Mr Finden said: ‘Your fever confined you to bed, Mr Browne.’

  ‘It did, sir.’

  ‘Do you walk in your sleep, then?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Perhaps your fevered brow needed the cooling of corridors, and proximity to marble. Because your living ghost was seen at the British Museum yesterday, sketching the exhibits.’

  The younger Mr Finden then said: ‘Do you see a future for yourself with us, Mr Browne?’

  *

  ‘The Browne boy, as you call him,’ said John Jackson to Edward Chapman, ‘was awake enough to cancel his indentures at Findens. Some would call it stupidity.’

  ‘Browne told me he was based at Furnival’s Inn,’ said Chapman. ‘That’s quite a coincidence. That’s where Boz is.’

  ‘I believe Browne has set himself up in business with another former Findens apprentice, someone who has a withered leg, and they do whatever artistic jobs they can find. Watercolours, etching, cleaning pictures. If you have any work for them, they’ll appreciate it, I am sure.’

  ‘I have just sent a couple of prospective artists along to Furnival’s to meet Boz. I am going to ask Browne to see him too.’

  *

  An extraordinarily tall and monocled man was one of the applicants for the illustrative work in Pickwick – his very height suggested a dominance that even Seymour had not possessed, and so he walked downstairs at Furnival’s, rejected.

  Another applicant was a bearded man in his early thirties with a powerful frame and a roman nose. His beard was wilder and bushier than Buss’s beard model – and should this artist ever need a beard model himself, a hand mirror would suffice.

  ‘My name is Forrester,’ he told Boz, who smiled at the appropriateness of the name as they shook hands in the doorway, ‘but you may know me better under the name of Crowquill. Other artists may have a nom de plume. My nom de plume is actually the name of a plume!’ He laughed as though it were the funniest joke in the world, and a bubble of saliva appeared among his bristles.