Death and Mr. Pickwick

by Stephen Jarvis

  It might be suggested: perhaps the apparent contradiction could be explained by Dickens seeing my father’s drawing, and deciding to amend his text at the proof stage so as to include the details of the description. But if so, what was in the original manuscript? One possibility to consider is that the original text said nothing about Mr Pickwick’s appearance. This is virtually inconceivable. Dickens pays the most meticulous attention to his characters’ descriptions, so he is hardly going to have left his principal character as just a blank. The alternative is that there was another, earlier description of Mr Pickwick, who did not look like the one we know, which Boz dropped in favour of the one portrayed in my father’s picture. But this would imply a complete change of the relationship between author and illustrations. Contrary to what Dickens said, the image of Mr Pickwick would not derive from the manuscript and the proofs, but rather – the corrected proofs would derive from the image.

  So either Dickens … or Chapman … is not telling the truth. Or both are liars, with untruth piled upon untruth.

  The only thing which is consistent with Edward Chapman’s statement is that Dickens’s text does not specifically say that Mr Pickwick was a fat man – a most peculiar omission for Dickens to make, as this was the most important aspect of Mr Pickwick’s appearance. This omission might be expected, however, if Dickens was working from pictures supplied by my father – that is, doing exactly the reverse of what he claimed, and producing letterpress according to the illustrator’s wishes. Then, it would hardly be necessary for Dickens to mention that Mr Pickwick was fat, because my father’s picture was dominated by Mr Pickwick’s enormous belly, drawing the eye of the viewer immediately towards the bulge.

  I suspect that Dickens and Chapman seized upon the omission of the word ‘fat’ as a loophole by which they could work their scheme, and hoped that no one would notice the inconsistencies of the two statements. Well, I notice!

  There is still that friend of Chapman’s, John Foster. I do not know what to make of him. But I am suspicious. One finds characters who look remarkably like Mr Pickwick in the works of my father prior to his involvement with Dickens. In fact, I am more than suspicious. I think it is a lie. And for this reason.

  In his 1847 preface, Boz pretends he does not know who originated the club – was it, he muses, William Hall or my father? In passing, I might note that this isn’t strictly consistent with a later statement, when Dickens claims, in a tone of complete certainty, that my father was responsible only for the sporting tastes of Mr Winkle. But that is an aside. The point I wish to make is that Edward Chapman, in commenting on Dickens’s preface, says: ‘It is so correctly described that I can throw but little additional light on it.’ Well, one bit of additional light Chapman could have thrown was who originated the club concept. Chapman could not have forgotten who originated the club, even if Dickens had. He would know whether it was his partner or not. Yet Chapman chose not to comment – and leaves ambiguous the very bit of the statement which it was so important to clarify! And as for the ‘so correctly described’ – he approved the statement of Dickens’s about Mr Pickwick’s image deriving from the proofs, which cannot be reconciled with his own statement.

  Let me also consider Chapman’s account of meeting my father. Even that arouses my suspicions. This is what he says: ‘In November 1835, we published a little book called The Squib Annual, with plates by Seymour; and it was during my visit to him to see after them, that he said he should like to do a series of cockney-sporting plates of a superior sort to those he had already published. I said I thought they might do, if accompanied by letterpress and published in monthly parts.’ So Chapman claims credit for the idea of letterpress. Now think of what he has said. If my father had envisaged plates of ‘a superior sort’, then would that mean of a superior artistic quality? If so, why would Chapman say that they ‘might do’ if accompanied by letterpress? They would surely not only ‘do’ on their own, they would be better than those already published. An alternative reason for superiority was that my father saw the drawings as improved by being embedded in narrative, rather than standing as illustrations on their own – but then that would imply that my father thought of adding letterpress, not Chapman.

  As I sat in the library and worked all this out over a number of days, I knew that a falsehood had been foisted upon the world by Dickens and Chapman. That whatever the true story of Pickwick’s origin, it was not what we had been told.

  *

  MR INBELICATE, WHO HAD BEEN following my progress through the manuscript, now snatched it away, despite my protests.

  ‘People may doubt the integrity of the Seymour family,’ he said, ‘but here was someone honest enough to suggest that his father modified his plans, in accordance with Dickens’s desires, because of an entry in a workbook. If Seymour’s son had been a complete villain, seeking to enlarge his father’s role, he would never have mentioned that workbook because it would diminish his father’s role.’

  ‘I agree, it is a measure of his honesty that he mentioned it.’

  ‘But we will return to Robert Seymour, son of Robert Seymour, in a little while,’ he said. ‘The time has come for us to talk about that friend of Edward Chapman’s, John Foster.’

  He opened a storage cupboard. He brought out the flip chart I had glimpsed on the very first day I had come to the house – the chart which bore the heading: ‘Where is Chapman’s friend?’

  Mr Inbelicate proceeded to make a statement which was, at every point, supported by the use of notes upon this chart.

  ‘He is a curious man, this John Foster of Richmond in Surrey,’ he began. ‘No one has ever found a trace of evidence for his existence.

  ‘In the Land Tax Assessment for Surrey, there is a Mrs Foster who lived in Richmond around 1788. There is a John Foster of Stoke D’Abernon. There is a Richard Foster, sometimes spelt Forster, who lived at Marshgate Road in Richmond, and who was buried in 1833. But where is John Foster of Richmond?

  ‘A search through the wills held at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury reveals there is indeed one John Foster, of Richmond, whose last will and testament survives – except that he is a John Foster of Richmond, Virginia, USA, whose will received its probate in England. A search through the records of diocesan courts for Surrey reveals no John Foster. There is no John Foster recorded as born in Richmond from 1720 to 1780. There is no record of a John Foster being born or buried in Richmond between 1781 and 1840. There is no mention of John Foster in local rate books. There is no monument to John Foster in the cemetery.

  ‘In the census records, once they began in 1841, there are two records of a John Foster of Richmond, one aged forty, and one aged sixty. Unfortunately the Richmond where these John Fosters lived was Richmond in Yorkshire, not Surrey. There was one John Foster of Richmond, Surrey in that census – but alas, he was born in 1816, much too young to be the original of Mr Pickwick. In the 1851 census, there are actually three John Fosters living in Richmond, Surrey – but all are too young, including one who was just a toddler.

  ‘Going the other way in time, to 1813, twenty-three years before Pickwick, there is a mention of a John Foster among the alleged creditors in a Kew debtor’s schedule, where Mr Foster is described as a brewer of Richmond, Surrey. Alas, not only is there no record of Mr Foster being resident in Richmond during the next twenty-three years, but also brewing records for Richmond mention no one at all called John Foster. And, as records of brewers called John Foster and John Forster do exist for other towns, the obvious inference is that one of these men supplied a batch of beer to the Kew debtor, probably via a Richmond public house. So I am afraid that we are left with no candidates at all for Chapman’s friend.

  ‘Now you, Scripty, might say this proves nothing. John Foster could have died before the 1841 census. And, it is true, in the days before the census, many, many people must have slipped through the net, and left no mark at all upon the world.

  ‘But I am going to ask you this question, Scripty: would the
man who was the original of Mr Pickwick have left no mark? In 1836, Mr Pickwick became the most famous man in the country – on his way to becoming the most famous man in the world – a man whose physical appearance was better known than that of the prime minister himself. I find it almost inconceivable that no one would have made a note of a man in Richmond who looked exactly like Mr Pickwick, and was said to be his inspiration. If the original of Mr Pickwick existed in Richmond, people would have gone on trips to the town to see him walking about the streets!

  ‘Indeed, there were men who, by coincidence, resembled Mr Pickwick – and they, as you would expect, have had their resemblance to the great man recorded. One was a headmaster – Robert Booth Rawes.’

  *

  LIME TREES AND FLOURISHING SHRUBS stood in front of the Rawes Academy in Bromley, Kent, but inside, in an upstairs bedroom, you would find the bald, fat bespectacled Mr Rawes, too ill to supervise his boys that day, which was increasingly the case, as he paid the price for a diet of claret, liver pâté and lobsters. His foot lay upon a gout rest, while his hands – equal in agony to his toes – were splayed and spasming upon his ample thighs. Severely bilious, his head hung poised over a chamber pot, and there were further unceasing pains proceeding from the pit of his stomach. He moaned to his chambermaid, when she knocked, that he was married to his belly, but this wife was a harridan, a shrew, and the kindest thing would be for her to become his widow, and put him out of his misery.

  *

  ‘ROBERT BOOTH RAWES’S PHYSICAL RESEMBLANCE to Mr Pickwick,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘led many to believe that he was the inspiration for the character. He died in 1841. And he was not the only Mr Pickwick lookalike.’ He turned to another page of the flip chart. ‘In the early 1840s, should you go to the tea importers Foord, Smith and Co. of Monument Yard, London Bridge, you would see chests of tea, at a price of four shillings and eightpence a pound, composed of souchong and peckho, promoted as ‘The Best Black Tea Ever Sent to England’. It was called Pickwick Mixture – taking its name from a tea-taster in Macao, because of his resemblance to Mr Pickwick, both physically and mentally.

  ‘And supposed originals for other Pickwick characters were always being found.’ The page turned again. ‘Here, for instance – Alexander Snodgrass, a Scotsman who settled in Bath and became landlord of the Caledonian Tavern. He was regarded by some as the original of Pickwick’s Mr Snodgrass, not only because of his name, but because he composed songs, and on Burns night, shortly after a guest had recited ‘To a Louse’, he would pipe up with a verse of his own.’

  On the chart was written:

  A day among all others in the year

  We meet to celebrate a poet dear

  Do make it convenient if you can

  To spend an hour or two wi’ Burns the man.

  ‘Yet, in all the years since Pickwick was first published,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘no one has ever found a single mention of John Foster.

  ‘And consider this: Chapman has the ladies of Richmond protesting about John Foster’s dress. It implies there is something odd about Foster’s appearance. This is another problem. A huge problem, Scripty. Because it is an anachronism. In 1849, when Chapman explained about John Foster, tights and gaiters would certainly have been weird apparel. They had passed into history. But in the period immediately before Pickwick appeared, older men still wore tights and gaiters. They were going out of fashion, that is true, and would not be worn by a young man, but there would be nothing strange at all about a man of Mr Pickwick’s age wearing tights and gaiters.

  ‘And do you know something else, Scripty? It seems that Chapman was determined to keep up this tale of John Foster even after his death. In the 1880s, a Pickwick enthusiast called Percy Fitzgerald wrote to Chapman’s daughter. Let me show you how she replied.’ He turned the page of the flip chart.

  There was an old family friend living at Richmond, named John Foster, not Forster, who was quite a character, especially in his personal appearance; it occurred to my father to introduce him to Dickens who had just commenced the Pickwick Papers. Accordingly, they were invited to meet one another at dinner, and, from this copy, Dickens turned out Pickwick. I have given these anecdotes as we remember hearing them spoken about in our home.

  ‘So she claimed that her father actually invited Dickens to dinner to meet John Foster! Strange then that Dickens doesn’t mention this at all – and only refers to the man that Chapman used to see!

  ‘And note how she says Foster’s personal appearance made him quite a character. But, as I have explained, a middle-aged man wearing tights and gaiters would not have been that odd. It would be rather like my saying to you, Scripty: “Do you know, there’s a friend of mine who actually wears trousers.” It would be even sillier if I named the friend. “There’s a friend of mine, man by the name of John Foster, who wears trousers. I must introduce you to him, so you can take a look.” Nor would baldness, fatness or spectacles make him an oddity.

  ‘The more you think about it, the more the anomalies mount up. Even the idea of Chapman describing this John Foster to Seymour has something strange about it. Don’t you think it’s peculiar to ask an artist to create a likeness without seeing his subject, but from just a verbal description? Robert Seymour must be the only portraitist in history expected to create likenesses from words. And what is more, it is not just a single pose that he would need to capture for use in the work – a man may look completely different in profile, or three-quarter face, or full face. Was Seymour supposed to capture all these likenesses without actually seeing the man they are supposed to resemble?

  ‘Scripty, even Chapman’s fundamental justification for supposedly getting Seymour to switch to a fat man is dubious. Chapman said that fat men had been associated with humour since Falstaff. Well, true, Falstaff was a fat man – but someone who knew graphic traditions like Seymour would have instantly said: “No, thin men can be associated with humour too.” Just think of Dr Syntax. Fat men were often associated not with humour at all, but with gluttony and wealth. Think of all the excesses of the Prince Regent.

  ‘Nothing adds up here, Scripty. I think all this points to one conclusion. Why don’t you say it?’

  He turned the flip chart one final time, to reveal a single statement, which I read aloud: ‘John Foster did not exist.’

  On Mr Inbelicate’s face, there was an expression of grand triumph.

  After a polite interval of silence, to allow Mr Inbelicate to enjoy the moment, I ventured to say: ‘May we continue with Seymour’s son’s manuscript?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. I wish us to go to 1857, to consider the influence of Pickwick on the student population of Cambridge University.’

  *

  IN THE CAMBRIDGE OF THOSE days, sour-faced evangelical men patrolled the alleys between the colleges, in dress darker than normal black, as dark as the covers of the Bibles they carried. To such as these, amusement was sin: the brightly lit door of a theatre was a passage to the realm of the Devil, while rich food, a high-spirited dance, or an inoffensive joke were short cuts to damnation.

  The response from the undergraduates was the consumption of alcohol – in vatloads.

  There was not a college without its own brewer. Breakfast was beer; bacon and eggs was a mere side dish. All other meals followed a similar pattern.

  Even young men pursuing theological studies joined in the liquid repudiation of the evangelicals. It was not surprising that, in these conditions, The Pickwick Papers became a guide to life.

  *

  ‘Nothing we study is as important as Pickwick,’ said a pie-eyed young man one evening, when sitting in the wainscoted circumstances of Christ’s College Junior Common Room. He raised a tankard of well-matured Audit Ale to his lips.

  ‘An achievement unmatched,’ said an acne-suffering other, showing in his own tankard a preference for the Strong Ale, which was not so mature, but as strong as its name.

  ‘Now you may say Pickwick is merely the comic adventures of
a fat man,’ said the first. ‘But I tell you – The Pickwick Papers is the highest single achievement of the human mind.’

  They collapsed in uncontrollable laughter.

  ‘At times I believe it, though,’ he added.

  ‘So do I. Sometimes I know it is.’

  ‘I suppose you heard about Skeat and Besant?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Someone the other day mentioned a kitten. Skeat leapt into Sam Weller’s tale of kittens being made into pies, and Besant, squinting through his glasses in the way he does, accused him of being not quite right in quoting a line. So Skeat bet Besant a pint that the quote was absolutely correct and he said someone should get a copy of Pickwick to confirm it.’ The Audit was swallowed, as a way of punctuating the tale. ‘Well, Skeat was proved right, much to Besant’s embarrassment.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But Skeat then made a second bet. He challenged Besant to choose any passage of Pickwick – any passage whatsoever – and recite it from memory. Then Skeat said he would recite the same passage, and whoever gave the recital with the most mistakes would buy the other man a drink. So Besant took the challenge, and after wheezing a bit—’

  ‘I can’t stand it when he does that. That and his bad skin. Worse than mine.’

  ‘Anyway, Besant chose Sam’s first scene in the book. “That’s an easy choice,” said Skeat, looking at Besant with utter contempt. They tossed a coin to decide who should start. Besant recited first, Skeat left the room, and in the recital Besant made a few errors. Then Skeat came back, stood up, got on a chair, and word for word he got the speech right. Skeat received a round of applause, and said: “That will be two pints you owe me, Besant.” He drank them down, one after the other, still standing on the chair.’