Death and Mr. Pickwick

  ‘What does Dickens think of this idea?’

  ‘I haven’t told him yet. I came here to seek your support first. Do I have it?’

  Chapman stretched, stood and looked out of the window. ‘Do you remember how I told you that Seymour’s wife came here, some years ago, seeking money?’

  ‘Yes, I feared she would.’

  ‘One never knows what sort of trouble a woman like that might cause. It would not be a bad thing if the version of events you are proposing came to be accepted. So – all right – why not? Seymour is dead. He left us in the lurch. Everything that is great about Pickwick is by Dickens. You have my support.’

  ‘And Mr Hall?’

  ‘I shall speak to him. If I know William, he will not object. He’d had his fill of Robert Seymour.’

  *

  ‘I have been evasive about Seymour,’ said Dickens. ‘You are proposing the outright invention of the past. What if the press accuse me of being a liar?’

  ‘There are ways it can be done,’ said Forster, ‘so that even if you were contradicted you would have a reply. I know how to make the scheme congenial to you. Think of it as an audacious conjuring trick, if you like.’

  ‘But a good magician’s secrets are not found out. I am uneasy. Who knows what evidence exists to disprove the claims we would make? Seymour was obviously not quiet about Pickwick – that is how the newspapers know about it.’

  ‘Seymour is already forgotten by most of the public. My concern is your enduring reputation and the way you are perceived. The nature of a work reflects an author’s character, his true essence, not what a few circumstances may have been – circumstances which, if spelled out in full, would detract from understanding.’

  ‘The works since Pickwick are entirely mine, with illustrations made entirely according to my instructions.’

  ‘That may be so. But, as I have told you before, there are those who say your writing style is too influenced by illustration. People say you strive too much for scenes which can be put in pictures. And no matter how much you seem to be in control, some say you are following the agenda of the caricaturists.’

  ‘That is not true.’

  ‘Then prove it. Think of Oliver Goldsmith. Think of Jonathan Swift. Conceive of an author who is unconquered and unconquerable. A man who has nothing in him of the hired scribe to an illustrator.’

  Dickens was silent.

  ‘The problem is exacerbated,’ said Forster, ‘because your work has appeared in serial parts. I know it takes immense ability, I know that it puts an enormous strain upon the creative powers. But others may see it differently. Others may think there is – frankly – something tawdry about producing these parts. A quantity of writing ordered per month is like … is like…’

  ‘Like buying half a pound of sausages. What do you propose, Forster?’

  ‘The trick is to describe the whole by just a part. It is like Sam Weller describing people by their shoes when he first appears. If you describe Seymour’s first idea as being about a sporting club, that is a true statement – as far as it goes. But say it, and you will instantly give the impression that the members of this club were involved only in sport, and you will completely undermine the view that Seymour had other ideas. What you say is true, but nowhere near the whole truth. It isn’t even the largest part of the truth. But that is for one’s opponents to point out – if they can, and if the public listens.’

  ‘Still the lawyer, I see.’

  ‘Listen to me! Seymour envisaged men travelling away from the sporting club in London; well then, give him the club, and you take credit for the travels. Except, don’t give him the club entirely. Call it something other than the Pickwick Club. Something stale. Something used. I have an idea for what you can call it. I remember you told me that Seymour spoke of men who claimed to worship Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, but the god they truly worshipped was Bacchus. So you say that Seymour came up with a Nimrod Club. Nimrod – not only from the mighty hunter in the Bible, but from the sporting journalist, Nimrod. So already it sounds stale. And here is the subtle thing. You say he proposed a Nimrod Club, not the Nimrod Club. So if anyone should come forward and say: “Mr Dickens, Seymour invented the Pickwick Club” – you say, “Oh I do apologise, I was merely trying to suggest the sporting theme by using the word ‘Nimrod’. It was meant as a description, not a name.” I can see you like that.’

  ‘You have obviously given this quite a lot of thought.’

  ‘We don’t stop there. You also say you cannot remember whether the club idea itself came from Seymour or Chapman and Hall. So, at a stroke, even the club concept can be taken away from Seymour.

  ‘Then you say that Seymour did his drawings from the printed proofs of your letterpress. He did his detailed finished etchings after he had seen the proofs of course – but all you do is omit the word “finished”, and you will instantly give the impression that he had no preliminary drawings. Everything will seem to come from you, as though you had never seen his preliminary drawings at all. But once again, if someone should come forward and challenge what you say, you reply, “Oh I do apologise, I meant to say his finished drawings, but I forgot to include that word.” Do you see how easy it is?’

  ‘But why should Seymour have dropped this Nimrod idea, and put me in charge?’

  ‘Simple. Once again, it is playing around with parts and wholes. You say that Seymour wanted to produce a work on cockney sportsmen. That’s partly true. True as far as it goes. Cockney sportsmen aren’t a new idea, are they? So merely say that the idea wasn’t new, that it was stale, and that everyone deferred to your views. Seymour’s influence is gone in a moment.’

  ‘You are the biggest rogue I have ever met, Forster!’

  ‘Do you know what Smollett says about calling someone a rogue? “You dare not call me rogue for I should have a good action against you and recover.” Do you know what comes next?’

  ‘“If I dare not call you rogue, I dare think you one, damme!”’

  *

  ‘SO SEYMOUR’S SCHEME WAS PRESENTED as being about cockney sportsmen and then the cockney sportsmen were dismissed as old hat,’ I said to Mr Inbelicate.

  ‘Old hat! Do you know, Scripty, I have searched and I have never seen a substantial example of prose letterpress linked to cockney sporting pictures prior to Pickwick.’

  ‘What about Jorrocks?’

  ‘Not published with pictures until after Pickwick.’

  ‘What about the work Seymour did with Penn?’

  ‘“Maxims and Hints for an Angler” consisted mainly of illustrated comments – the maxims and the hints. Gillray and others may have drawn a few pictures of cockney sportsmen, but there was no letterpress attached to them. Cruikshank drew some sporting mishaps, but they were accompanied by poetry. The linking of prose letterpress to cockney sporting images was an innovative fusion. And it appals me how this was misrepresented, with this trick of parts and wholes.

  ‘And do you know another misrepresentation, Scripty? The work was briefly described, according to the letter of agreement that Chapman and Hall sent to Dickens, as dealing with manners and life in the country. That is a quote – “Manners and life in the country”. So it wasn’t even really about sport at all! Sport would have been involved, that is absolutely true, because sport occurs in the country. But sport was never the work’s defining principle.’

  *

  IN SEPTEMBER 1847, WHEN DICKENS came to compose a preface for a new edition of Pickwick, he wrote:

  The idea propounded to me was that the monthly something should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr Seymour, and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable humorist, or of my visitor (I forget which) that a ‘Nimrod Club’, the members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means of introducing those.

  He looked at the word ‘humorist’. That could give the public ideas about Se
ymour’s contribution to Pickwick. He changed ‘humorist’ to ‘humorous artist’.

  He described, according to Forster’s formula, Seymour’s ideas, and their supposed unsuitability. After some thought, he concluded the section with the statement: ‘My views being deferred to, I thought of Mr Pickwick and wrote the first number.’ The ambiguity of ‘I thought of Mr Pickwick’ made him smile. Its apparent meaning was that he had created Mr Pickwick, but there was a buried meaning, to be called upon in an emergency, that he had ‘thought of Mr Pickwick’ in the same way as he might have remarked: ‘I thought of my mother’. Even ‘my views being deferred to’ was a nice touch – it did not exactly say that the enterprise was changed in accordance with his views, even though everyone would think so.

  *

  ‘WHAT AN INTRIGUING DOCUMENT THE 1847 preface is, Scripty,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘By the way, by this time William Hall was dead.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Torn to pieces by sparrowhawks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I neither know nor care, Scripty. What does interest me is that Dickens mentions the coincidence of purchasing the Monthly Magazine from Hall. In this magazine was Dickens’s first published story. An anonymous piece, for which he received not a penny in payment.’

  *

  HE WALKED PAST THE PRINT shops near Westminster Hall, clutching the Monthly Magazine of Politics, Literature and the Belles Lettres for December 1833. That moment, that evening, he had a pride so great, a sense of auspicious beginning so profound, that his very eyesight was disrupted. He could not focus. It was too painful to look. He bumped into a man, who shouted obscenities and asked him to mind where he was going. He smiled meekly in return. So disturbed was his normal perception, it recalled the worst headaches, the illuminated migraines that would not go even when the eyelids were closed – a disruption of vision that gave the buckles on horse furniture, and also the buckles on the shoes of passers-by, a new ferocious glow.

  He had to sequester himself.

  He stumbled and turned into Westminster Hall. He leant against the ancient masonry while his eyes recovered. It was cold outside, and stony cool within. There were a few lawyers, here and there, in sombre apparel. He held his head against the wall, and tried to take in the great roof, a masterpiece in carpentry. In the high alcoves were statues of kings, their features partly disfigured by time. Here Edward I had been; here Charles I. The whole sweep of English history and culture for centuries had passed through this hall – Bacon, Burke, Sheridan. Destiny had smiled upon them, and now it smiled upon him. He was in their company in Westminster Hall. The Monthly Magazine might seem so pitiful and so insignificant and yet not. Not now. He turned towards the south memorial window and, though it was a dark evening, he looked at the sunlight through the stained glass.

  *

  ‘I DON’T BELIEVE A WORD ABOUT his vision being disrupted when he purchased the Monthly Magazine,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘Nor do I believe he sought recovery in Westminster Hall. It is such an obvious place of destiny. And even the magical coincidence that the very man who sold him the magazine also brought him the offer to write Pickwick is a very qualified sort of magic, when all the details are spelt out. In reality, Charles Whitehead had worked at the Monthly Magazine, and his proposal to write for the Library of Fiction connected Dickens to Chapman and Hall. And their premises, where the magazine was purchased, was very close to where Dickens worked. But when such mundane details are omitted, the impression created is that, out of all the teeming masses of London, fate has selected this man Hall to go into Furnival’s with the great offer to write the immortal Pickwick.’

  *

  AS DICKENS CONTINUED TO WORK upon the preface, he came to consider the status of Pickwick as a work of literature. What was it? Forster considered it a novel. Chapman was not so sure.

  He could remember thinking, even during the course of Pickwick’s serial run, that another work would be his first novel, but this was before he saw Pickwick published in book form. Yet, even in that form, it was not a novel in the traditional three-volume sense.

  He wrote: ‘If it be objected to The Pickwick Papers, that they are a mere series of adventures in which the scenes are ever changing, and the characters come and go like the men and women we encounter in the real world, he can only content himself with the reflection, that they claim to be nothing else, and the same objection has been made to some of the greatest novelists in the English language.’

  But when the proofs arrived, he changed the word ‘novelists’ to ‘writers’.

  For perhaps The Pickwick Papers was something greater than a novel. Perhaps he should be compared, by producing the work, to the very best writers the entire canon has to offer.

  Although, before publication, he changed ‘writers’ back to ‘novelists’ again.

  Among the revisions to the text was the deletion of a footnote to Seymour’s plate The Sagacious Dog. All mention of Edward Jesse disappeared. No longer could the plate be linked to the artist’s past.

  Summer, 1849

  ‘From the look on your face, the wedding did not go well,’ said Jane when Edward came indoors, as she watched him hang up his jacket in the hall. He had been earning a small fee, playing the church organ.

  ‘The wedding went smoothly.’

  ‘What, then?’

  He unbuckled his music satchel and took out a book.

  ‘What is that, Edward?’

  ‘An edition of Pickwick. It was published a couple of years ago.’

  She flicked her head to one side. ‘There is no reason to bring that home.’

  ‘I think there is,’ he said, gravely.

  They entered the music room, and Holmes stood by the piano, while his sister sat on the stool. ‘There was a guest I knew at the wedding,’ said Holmes, ‘whom I haven’t seen for years. I used to teach his son piano. At the reception, he approached me and said that he had read about Robert the other day in Pickwick.’

  ‘The death notice that was inserted?’

  ‘That’s what I thought he meant at first. It soon became clear that Robert was mentioned in the preface to a recent edition. I was curious. So on the way home, I stopped at a bookseller and inspected the preface. I bought a copy, because I think you should read it.’

  Jane Seymour hesitated, but took the book and put on her glasses.

  ‘I should warn you,’ said Holmes, ‘that there are no pictures – except for a frontispiece. And that is not by Robert.’

  She turned to that picture. It showed Mrs Bardell fainting in Mr Pickwick’s arms, with Mr Pickwick in profile, an angle at which he seemed unfamiliar and, although bald, younger than expected. In the foreground a chair had been overturned, which could not fail to remind the viewer of Mr Pickwick standing on a chair addressing his club, and at the same time suggested that Seymour’s Mr Pickwick had been dethroned, to be replaced by someone else’s interpretation of the character. Jane screwed up her face.

  ‘Do you see the artist’s name?’ said Holmes. ‘It is Charlie Leslie.’

  ‘Charlie Leslie?’

  ‘You remember – that friend of Joseph’s. The one he went to the theatre with. You remember – the night Joseph was almost crushed.’

  ‘Without Robert’s pictures, this book is crushed – or rather, mutilated.’

  Then she read Dickens’s words in the preface:

  In the course of the last dozen years, I have seen various accounts of the origin of these Pickwick Papers; which have, at all events, possessed – for me – the charm of perfect novelty. As I may infer, from the occasional appearance of such histories, that my readers have an interest in the matter, I will relate how they came into existence.

  Holmes watched his sister’s expression change. There were sharp jerks of her neck backwards as she reached certain passages.

  ‘This is wrong,’ she said. ‘There was no Nimrod Club. It was the Pickwick Club, right from the start. So how can there have been a change from Nimrod to
Pickwick? And how can it possibly be true that the illustrations arose from the words? Robert had the drawings for the first two numbers ready four or five months before he was introduced to Dickens. I saw the drawings myself.’

  ‘That is what I thought.’

  ‘I shall write to Dickens. This cannot stand uncorrected.’

  *

  ‘This is all going to come out, Forster,’ said Dickens, striding around the room with a violence. ‘What will this do to me? You were the one who said I shouldn’t help her with that play. I should have done.’

  ‘You gave her five pounds.’

  ‘Five pounds! Five pounds for her children’s education! All people need do is point out the minuscule fraction five pounds is of the earnings I received from Pickwick! If this gets out—’

  ‘Calm yourself,’ said Forster, casting an eye over Mrs Seymour’s letter again. ‘The ambiguities of the preface are our first defence. But we need more defence. We do not concede. What is more – it is morally right we do not. Pickwick is your achievement. Not Seymour’s. Write a letter to Chapman immediately and ask him whether he is as surprised as you are by Mrs Seymour’s letter.’

  ‘But it cannot be a surprise. You have seen the preface. I have said that there have been all sorts of stories about Seymour circulating, and the preface is my reply.’

  ‘Still say it. You need to be as innocent as possible. So innocent that the very suggestion from Mrs Seymour comes as a shock. Ask Chapman whether there is any truth in Mrs Seymour’s letter. He will take the hint and tell you there is none. But in case he doesn’t take the hint, I shall go to see him. In the meantime, let me give some thought to what our response should be.’

  *

  That night, Forster sat alone in his study, his thoughts aided by a glass of claret and a cigar.