Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  Teeming from the cavern, they clambered to the graveyard above. There was their man – a thin, misanthropic gravedigger, whose enjoyment at Christmas was to shovel soil by lanternlight, rather than dance under a chandelier, who swilled cold rotgut from a bottle as he rested his boot upon a spade, rather than take a ladleload of steaming mulled wine by a glowing hearth among merry, cheering company.

  As the gravedigger drank himself into seasonal oblivion, what horrible visions might he see? Why – goblins! Hordes of goblins, leapfrogging among the tombstones.

  Boz needed a name for this man.

  After a little thought, he had it: Gabriel Grub. Gabriel, from the angel of the Annunciation, who brought the Virgin Mary the good news for mankind, and began Christmas for all, and Grub, for he worked the soil like a loathsome burrowing larva. This Gabriel hated man. He hated woman. He hated, especially, child. He would deliver a glancing blow with his gravedigger’s lantern to the head of a happy boy, just to knock the happiness out. His one solace was drink. Though, unlike Mr Pickwick, who drank in company, Gabriel Grub would only drink alone. It would take supernatural intervention, in the form of the goblins, to make this man change his ways.

  A goblin poked his finger in Gabriel Grub’s eye, and it was so sore it felt as though a blanket had rubbed there, but showing no mercy, another goblin stuck the very tip of his pointed hat into the wounded eye, and bounced away, laughing as he leapt. Another kicked Grub in the small of the back, another on the shoulder, and still others administered all the violence and spite that one saw in the very best of pantomimes, but for real, not in play. Boz himself happened to be afflicted that winter with rheumatic pains and headaches, and every discomfort he felt he transferred straight to Gabriel Grub.

  Then the goblins magically transported Gabriel Grub through the ground, to the cavern below St Mary’s. Here they would teach him to mend his ways. Here they would show him visions.

  Suddenly Boz was back with Mary Weller, watching the magic-lantern show. He smelt the bacony odour of the sperm lamp, and saw the beam across the darkened room. The images on the calico became the visions the goblins showed the gravedigger in the cavern.

  ‘Show the man of misery a few of the pictures from our own great storehouse,’ said a goblin. There was a thick cloud, which billowed in the cavern until it rolled away to reveal a scene of a small bedroom, where a child lay dying.

  As the slide in the magic lantern changed, so the visions changed for Gabriel Grub. A goblin pointed a sharp fingernail in Grub’s direction. ‘Show him some more!’

  The cloud dissipated, and a rich and beautiful landscape appeared to the gravedigger.

  As Boz’s story came to its conclusion, Gabriel Grub awoke beside a grave, an empty bottle at his side. Perhaps the goblins had been a hallucination brought on by alcohol. But whether or not that was so, Gabriel Grub was a changed man.

  *

  The Christmas number of Pickwick was the tenth number, and when Boz had finished the quota of manuscript pages, he wrote a notice, when ten dripping icicles clung to the window in front of his desk, confirming that the work would be issued for another ten months only, and would then be complete. Which is to say: within a year, the club’s papers would be posthumous. Groping for a way to express a lively sense of mortality, he seized upon an event which had recently been reported in the newspapers: the death of John Richardson, of the famous shows at Bartholomew Fair. He recalled the show he had seen as a boy, and in particular his first clown – he thought of the wan head and the blood-coloured lips and the emphasised eyebrows all thrust between the stage curtains. The frantic miscellany of a Richardson show had much in common with Pickwickian fare. So Boz wrote:

  ‘With this short speech, Mr Pickwick’s Stage-Manager makes his most grateful bow, adding, on behalf of himself and publishers, what the late eminent Mr John Richardson of Horsemonger Lane, Southwark and the Yellow Caravan with the Brass Knocker, always said on behalf of himself and company, at the close of every performance – “Ladies and gentlemen, for these marks of your favour, we beg to return you our sincere thanks; and allow us to inform you that we shall keep perpetually going on beginning again, regularly, until the end of the fair.”’

  With the eventual demise of Pickwick now formally announced, demand for the monthly parts surged higher still. The machines of Bradbury and Evans worked day and night to cope, while Mr Aked now headed an entire pool of women who all stabbed the three holes with a needle, pulling through the thread on the monthly parts.

  And Hicks called over the printer’s devil. ‘The etching plates are being worn down with so many copies,’ he said. ‘Look at these.’ He showed the boy the faint and blurred prints of the Christmas illustrations, one showing a goblin sitting on a tombstone, the other showing Mr Pickwick sliding on ice. ‘Go to Browne and tell him to re-etch them immediately.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hicks.’

  ‘Hold your horses, I haven’t finished. It’s not just the latest number – it’s the plates for all the previous numbers that need to be done as well. Tell him to produce an entire duplicate set, right back to the start, Seymour’s pictures included. The reprinting has turned them into absolute skeletons.’

  *

  ‘There is someone you should meet straight away,’ said the party’s expensively cologned host to Boz, ‘because if I don’t introduce you, he’ll make me.’

  The host took Boz to the other side of the room, weaving between the guests and their wine glasses, towards a tall, thickset man of about Boz’s own age.

  The host said: ‘This is—’

  ‘John Forster,’ said the man. ‘The Examiner. Your hand, sir! The very hand that writes Pickwick!’

  He had swollen lips and his hair grew in abundance. Although he could not be described as handsome, his eyes were overwhelmingly charming, softening any resistance, and focused completely on Boz, who felt immediately at ease. The man’s voice was not charming, though – it was loud. There was, in its tone, the suggestion of a commanding officer, or an engineer in charge of a great project of London construction. There was also a hint of a north-eastern accent; as it was only a hint, the voice itself was perhaps a great project of construction.

  ‘Mr Forster,’ said Boz, ‘I have been both stabbed by your pen and stroked by it.’

  ‘Monstrous exaggeration! Monstrous! Just because I wasn’t too keen on that libretto you did.’ His laugh was one of the loudest Boz had heard. ‘Now, sir – I have been told that you have undergone legal training – but even if I hadn’t been told, I would have known it in an instant. My own background, sir.’

  ‘You do not practise?’

  ‘No, it’s intolerable. Here, girl – more wine.’ He ordered over the servant as though she were his own. ‘You are all right for wine, I see. But let her top you up in any case. No, the law’s not for me, and it’s not for you either. We’re not the sort. But I can run an eye over a contract, and know whether it is tight. Now I trust that our host will sit us next to each other at dinner, and if not I shall insist upon it.’

  During dinner, the same girl dropped a spot of gravy between them, but closer to Boz than to Forster. ‘What are you doing, girl? Look at this! Look at this!’ Forster stared across to the host. ‘Are you going to put up with this girl? If she were working for me, she would no longer be working for me.’ The girl shook, and dripped another small spot. ‘Don’t tell me she has done it again!’

  Forster turned towards Boz and with a smile enveloped the author in friendship.

  At the end of the evening, Forster said, ‘If I can ever assist you.’ There was no doubt in Boz’s mind that this man would assist him. Already, it seemed impossible for the situation to be otherwise.

  *

  The twelfth number of Pickwick.

  It was unfortunate that a compositor was doubled up with a coughing fit during the setting of a paragraph in which a small boy attempted to attract the attention of Sam Weller at the bar of the George and Vulture. Although the compositor
recovered after several backslaps from a colleague, the coughs returned spasmodically. This led the compositor to pick up a ‘b’ instead of a ‘d’, and also to set the three letters ‘ion’ as ‘ino’.

  So when Sam Weller inspected a Valentine’s card in a shop window, a pictorial cupid – who should have been described as ‘a decidedly indelicate young gentleman in a pair of wings and nothing else’ – came to be described as a ‘decidedly inbelicate young gentleman’. A few lines later, ‘a written inscription’ in the same shop’s window, testifying to the large assortment of cards within, became ‘a written inscriptino’.

  The watchful eye of Hicks did discover these errors, but not before several cartloads of copies had been sewn and distributed.

  *

  The thirteenth number of Pickwick.

  The number had just appeared when Boz moved to a three-storey house in Doughty Street, set between two of the gates of Bloomsbury. It may not have been a coincidence that the porter who patrolled between the gates wore mulberry livery, just like a character who is worthy of special mention. For if Mr Pickwick could have a companion in the form of Sam Weller, so too could Jingle, who enjoyed an association with the mulberry-wearing Job Trotter. Jingle and Trotter were as much a pair of scoundrels as Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller were good-hearted souls. But the mulberry porter at Doughty Street was anything but a scoundrel. His eminently respectable presence at his lodge seemed to say: this is the street where lives the man who has risen because of Pickwick. The porter’s gold-trimmed hat, and his buttons bearing the crest of the Doughty family, emphasised that Boz was a man with more than theoretical prospects.

  The thirteenth number was also memorable for the visit of Mr Samuel Pickwick to Bath. It was read by Mr Moses Pickwick in the parlour of the Hare and Hounds.

  *

  Moses Pickwick had always suspected it was more than a coincidence.

  The publication was called Pickwick; his own surname was Pickwick. There was an inserted tale about the history of Prince Bladud; Moses Pickwick took a special interest in Prince Bladud. There was a great deal of coaching in the story, and visits to inns; Moses Pickwick ran a coaching company, and also two inns. But Moses Pickwick’s suspicions soared when he read the description of the judge in Mr Samuel Pickwick’s trial for breach of promise:

  ‘Mr Justice Stareleigh was a most particularly short man, and so fat, that he seemed all face and waistcoat. He rolled in, upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the bar, who bobbed gravely to him, put his little legs underneath his table, and his little three-cornered hat upon it; and when Mr Justice Stareleigh had done this, all you could see of him was two queer little eyes, one broad pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very comical-looking wig.’

  He nudged one of his customers. ‘I know this judge.’

  ‘Go to Bath, Moses Pickwick!’

  ‘I am telling the truth.’

  He lowered his squeak to a deep, but scarcely audible bass. ‘Ten years ago, I was taken to court over the loss of a trunk. There was a fat, half-deaf judge who presided over the appeal. It was this judge. Everything is the same. The way he made notes and then struggled to read them back in his summary, because he couldn’t read his own writing – it’s all here! And look at the surname. My judge was Justice Gaselee. This is Justice Stareleigh. Who told the publishers this? Someone has told them about me. Someone who wants the lost trunk remembered.’

  ‘Ah, get away with you, Moses Pickwick. You’ve laughed at Pickwick as much as anyone, and you’re not going to stop laughing now. I’ve even heard you say that if you ever had a son, you’d call him Samuel Pickwick.’

  ‘I had already made up my mind that I would call a son Samuel before this publication ever appeared.’

  ‘I remember different.’

  Moses Pickwick was sullen for most of the day. He looked at Samuel Pickwick’s bald head, and this too seemed a comment on his own lack of hair, which was covered with a wig. From the concerned expressions on Moses Pickwick’s face, from his deep sighs, and from his looks downwards, it was easy to see he was troubled by The Pickwick Papers.

  In the evening, the arrival of a coach from London brought a new batch of travellers into the Hare and Hounds. A confident young man swaggered to the bar clutching a copy of Pickwick. The moment Moses saw the green wrapper, he shouted: ‘I will not be humiliated like this!’

  The Hare and Hounds fell silent. The new arrivals stood in perplexity. As did all but one man among the regulars. ‘It’s one of you, isn’t it?’ said Moses, looking around the room at his regular customers and new arrivals alike. ‘One of you told the publishers!’

  ‘None of us is to blame, Moses,’ said the man who had told him to go to Bath, and was the only person present who knew what Moses Pickwick meant. ‘What about one of your former coachmen? Who have you dismissed?’

  ‘No one has treated drivers better than I!’

  ‘Then it’s a rival coaching operator, most likely. Someone you have ruined.’

  ‘I have competed fairly!’

  ‘Then it’s someone in your family. Someone of Pickwick stock. Your own flesh and blood, Moses – not us.’

  ‘A Pickwick would not betray a Pickwick!’ Even though he made that bold assertion, he leant against the bar afterwards, propping his chin on his knuckles, and the regulars knew he was sifting Pickwicks in his mind, weighing up all the various descendants of the original Moses Pickwick.

  Eventually Moses said: ‘It is my nephew. I am sure of it. He comes here too often. He comes here all smiles. He pumps me for information about coaching. It is him. One thing in particular confirms it. He once left a book behind the bar and said, “Now don’t lose it, Uncle.” I am sure that he was thinking of the trunk I lost.’

  *

  Within the dark, narrow cathedral of his chambers, at the end of the walls of bound statutes, and behind the leather-topped desk, the grey and pebbly eyes of Sir Stephen Gaselee were at a normal height for a seated man. Were a stuffed-to-bursting cushion, then in functional employment, to be removed, it must be said the eyes would be six inches lower – lower than the belt buckle of the amiable clerk who stood before the desk. In short, the judge was short. As he also inclined towards corpulency, his fingers – then splayed in ten directions of bulbosity upon the desk – provided an excellent clue to the bulging of the body, partly concealed under the judge’s robes. That he had not bothered to remove the robes, or even his ceremonial wig, and had summoned the clerk immediately upon returning from court, was itself a proof of Judge Gaselee’s troubled mind.

  ‘For the last ten days,’ he said, when he was ready, ‘I have experienced an unwonted phenomenon. As a single occurrence, it would not be typical; to happen more than once, in a single day, would be strange; to happen again and again, throughout ten consecutive days, is a plague wholly unprecedented in my life. And – I would imagine – in the lives of most men. I have repeatedly observed people giving me sideways glances – and whispering.’

  ‘Whispering,’ said the clerk, who shuffled awkwardly and coughed once.

  ‘It happened again in the corridor, on my way back here – two men were coming in my direction, neither of whom I recognised. There was immediately a whispering between them, and looks in my direction. Both men seemed amused. Can you explain this?’

  The clerk rubbed his nostril. ‘A reputation in the legal profession would surely attract attention from time to time.’

  ‘Am I a man of such renown that even my street door would be a place of pilgrimage?’

  The clerk coughed again.

  ‘On several recent evenings,’ continued the judge, ‘I have seen people in the street pointing towards my house. Last night, I looked out upon two youths from my upstairs window, and they pointed up, and laughed. Why? What sense can you make of this?’

  The clerk took a great interest in his shoes.

  ‘If you know a reason,’ said the judge, ‘do not be afraid to speak.’

  �
�You do not read Pickwick, do you, sir?’

  ‘Pickwick? What is that?’

  The clerk snorted. Few lines within Pickwick itself could match the comic absurdity of such a question.

  ‘Pickwick is – excuse me one moment, sir.’ He recovered his composure. ‘Pickwick is a monthly publication. It is really called The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. But everyone calls it Pickwick.’

  ‘Everyone? Is this Pickwick well known to the public at large?’

  ‘Every number is greeted with such enthusiasm that it is – well – devoured, is the word I would use.’

  ‘Do you include yourself among the “everyone” who reads this publication?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Am I to surmise that I am referred to in its pages?’

  ‘You are not mentioned. It is a work of fiction.’

  ‘Why tell me about it then? Are there allusions to me? Is that it? Does it contain statements which a reasonable man might believe to refer to myself?’

  ‘I would not exactly say so, sir.’

  Judge Gaselee’s grey eyes narrowed. ‘Is there a character with traits recognisably mine?’

  The clerk coughed again. ‘I did see some traits in a character and they reminded me a little of Serjeant Arabin. You may have heard of the occasion when he said an indictment was invalid because it gave a man’s middle name and so must refer to someone else.’

  ‘Do not seek to distract me with talk of Brother Arabin. I wish to see a copy of this Pickwick.’

  ‘That may not be altogether advisable, sir.’

  ‘“That may not be altogether advisable”? That is altogether more reason I should see it! Do you have a copy with you?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Then bring it to me now.’

  *

  A good legal man, even one of great gravitas, will sometimes be heard to laugh. Not Sir Stephen Gaselee. Laughter was alien to his nature. His door stood ajar, and not one murmur of mirth escaped during his examination of Pickwick. The clerk, working in the external office, did at times hear a splutter, which filled him with a concern verging on fear. After several such splutters he was summoned, and once again he stood in front of the desk.