Death and Mr. Pickwick

  ‘Her death happened three years ago. Even when she lay ill, I admit – I was thinking of the concordance. And I will admit too that at the very end, when I looked down at her silent mouth, on the pillow, I thought of a peculiar clustering of the word “said” within the book – because there is one page of Pickwick in which the word “said” is used seventeen times – seven times in successive remarks.

  ‘I can see you are disturbed by this admission of mine, but we are what we are, sir. I have been haunted, I admit, by my own inadequacy – sometimes I have thought even Pickwick’s punctuation marks should be included in the concordance. You see, the punctuation of Pickwick is most idiosyncratic, sir. The commas are shaken over the paragraphs like – like…’

  ‘Like a man applying pepper to his dinner?’

  ‘Yes, but the wrong shape of granule, sir.’

  ‘So how will you fill your days now?’

  He finished his drink before answering. ‘I confess – as much as I have wanted the work to be finished, I have dreaded the abyss that waits at the end. What do I do? Of course there are still studies I could conduct, like the etymological analysis. But it is not enough. Could I trouble you for another drink, sir?’

  ‘It is no trouble.’

  ‘I have thought of reading every word written about Pickwick – they say more has been written about Pickwick than any other work of fiction. I did read some studies, as recreation, during my fifteen years. That it was some did not satisfy me. To read everything would be pure and unbiased. But I shall not do this. I know I would fall into another sort of abyss. How could I confirm my knowledge was encyclopedic? What if a piece were in German or Japanese, and I could not understand a word?

  ‘I have also thought of compiling a list of allusions to Pickwick. But that would be a gargantuan task! Though its pleasures en route would be considerable. One’s mind would be taken on a journey more exotic than any trip undertaken by the Pickwickians. All sorts of things mention Pickwick in a footnote, or in the main text. There are editions of the Acts of the Apostles – commentaries on Syriac literature – no man could list them all.

  ‘There is one other task. It can be completed part by part, even if not in totality.’

  ‘You have me intrigued,’ I said.

  ‘In her last days, my wife extracted a promise. She said, “Promise me, when I am gone, that you will lay down work on the concordance for one month. Just one month. If I ever meant anything to you, pause, out of respect, when I am gone.” I did not know how to answer. Then she said: “You cannot do it, can you? Not even for a month.” And I said, “I shall, for one month.”

  ‘It was a penance, sir. The days dragged. It must have been far, far worse than the agony of the original readers of Pickwick waiting for the next monthly part – far worse. You may think me a monster – for my wife lay dead. But we cannot help what we are. For a week I walked around, not knowing how to occupy myself. So I went off to Bury St Edmunds.’

  ‘Which is in Pickwick.’

  ‘It is. But also, by coincidence, I lived there some years ago, when I was a very young man. I worked briefly as a clerk in the Angel.’

  ‘The inn where Mr Pickwick stayed.’

  ‘It was. In room eleven. Do you know the Angel?’

  ‘Not as well as you, I am sure.’

  ‘It is old, sir. Huge. But it fascinates. From the outside it is forbidding, in Suffolk brick and ivy. Inside, the floors creak, and the corridors wind around. I wish that Boz had known the stories of the Angel that I have heard, and had put them in Pickwick. You see, the Angel is built upon the site of a much older building of the same name, a building that had crypts and cellars, which are still in existence and which are said to go all the way to the grounds of the ruined abbey, and even further. When I was a young man, I used to look through the Angel’s windows, across to the gateway of the abbey – some say it is picturesque – but it was the dark crypts and cellars that fascinated me most. I would walk around the courtyard at night, and I wondered about the area below the surface. Where did it go? How large was it? What could be found there? I wanted to map that underworld. In my imagination, I saw a place of innumerable caverns and winding passages.’

  ‘You sound like you are quoting something there.’

  ‘If so, I cannot remember where from. I dare say it lingers through some distant connection with Pickwick. I remember I told an old porter how interested I was in the underground of the Angel. And the porter said, “Well don’t get too interested.” He explained that many years ago, there was another young man who was also intrigued by the caverns. This man happened to play the flute. So he went down there, saying that he would play his flute as he went further in, to let people know where he was. Well, he went down, sir – and the flute got fainter and fainter. And then it stopped completely. The young man was never seen again. But on certain days, the porter told me, when the wind howls, people believe they can hear the faint sound of a flute coming from the crypt. Then he grinned, and said, “I have even thought that I can hear it myself.” He was probably teasing me.

  ‘So I never made my subterranean map. And after I arrived at the Angel, all these years later, I thought I would ask the owner for his permission to go down. But when I arrived, my life took another course. There was a middle-aged man in the lobby, crying, being comforted on a lady’s shoulder, I presume his wife. I believe he had suffered a bereavement.’

  ‘As you had.’

  ‘We must all grieve in our own way, sir. Then the man left, with his wife by his side, and I took their seat, and it was warm, and – this is the point, sir – on a table by the sofa were several small volumes by Charles Lamb, De Quincey and other authors. I do not know why they were there. Perhaps the man had forgotten them in his distress. Well, I idly picked up the Lamb – and strange to say – Lamb’s choice of words reminded me of Pickwick. It was very curious. When I first met you, I told you about pickled salmon. Well, I noted how Lamb remarked on salmon fortifying its condition with lobster sauce. It was very curious indeed. Then I noted other similarities. Lamb used many words of a Pickwickian nature. I had taken a notebook with me and could not resist writing them down, and arranging them. I somewhat anticipated that you might ask me about my future plans, and so I have brought the notebook with me.’

  He unlocked his briefcase, took out the notebook, and opened it to a double page headed ‘Lamb’. I saw words, categorised into three kinds, and alphabetically arranged: ‘Names’, ‘Places’ and ‘Others’. Some words, I concede, did have a Pickwickian association, for instance ‘Antiquarian’ in the ‘Others’ category. Yet the lists included words so commonly used that any writer might employ them. Words such as ‘boy’, ‘dog’, ‘Parliament’, ‘Birmingham’, ‘John’, and Mr N’s valiant loser, ‘eye’. But he continued talking, and had obviously not discerned my indigestion of these latter words.

  ‘Out of a spirit of curiosity, I went to a second-hand bookshop where I examined a collection of Lamb’s letters published after 1836 – that is, after Pickwick. My mind crackled when I saw that Talfourd edited them! I could not stop myself purchasing the volume. There were many Pickwickian words. I had to note them down as well.’

  He turned to another page of the notebook for me, and I saw: ‘gaiters’, ‘habeas corpus’, ‘manuscript’, ‘temperance’, ‘muffin’, ‘Bury St Edmunds’, ‘the Fleet’, ‘reptile’ … the list continued.

  Mr N’s discourse was now unstoppable. I merely sat back and listened.

  ‘The words were undeniably there,’ he said. ‘My mind was effervescing. I went back to the bookshop. I became truly adventurous, sir. There was a copy of Virgil. I thought to myself – surely not. There couldn’t be Pickwickian words there. But I could not stop myself – and in this too I noticed phrases of a decidedly Pickwickian turn. It happened again in Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

  ‘I considered this an extraordinary and wonderful phenomenon, sir. It occupied me during the month when I was bound by my wife’s promise.
It may occupy me now the concordance is complete. If I may put it like this: I have come to believe that there is – as it were – a numerical scale – a ranking, if you like – a scale, from one to ten, with decimal fractions between. All works of literature can be assigned a number on this scale, the mark of ten being pure Pickwick, attained only by that great work itself; while other works of literature would be assigned some place down the scale from ten. Some of these works may have played upon the mind of Boz in his youth, and influenced Pickwick; and works published after Pickwick could have some infusion of Pickwickian spirit. But truth be told, sir – I know you are thinking this – perhaps there is no causal connection between these works and Pickwick, except in my mind. Well, so be it. The connection exists for me alone – and it provides me with fascination and sustenance. Do not deny me this pleasure, sir. A pleasure which my rare study has given me. Great judgement and connoisseurship – I might even say science – would be required to assign a work of literature its number on the Pickwickian scale, from one to ten. There might even be irrational numbers, inexpressible as decimals. What a thought, sir. Which work would attain a Pickwickian value of pi?

  ‘I feel sorry for the man who cannot see all books as manifestations of Pickwick. Others may not see this – but I do. I would recommend my life, even if I am the only man privileged to live it.’

  I never saw Mr N again. There was an unhealthy pallor upon his cheeks, so perhaps he died shortly afterwards. The whereabouts of The Pickwick Concordance are unknown.

  *

  I CLOSED THE MANUSCRIPT, AND HANDED it back to Mr Inbelicate.

  ‘He was quite mad, of course.’ I said.

  ‘At the end, yes.’

  ‘But fifteen years!’

  Mr Inbelicate smiled. ‘It is not the longest expanse of time spent by one man on a single Pickwickian pursuit.’

  ‘Someone spent more than fifteen years?’

  ‘Try fifty years. Yes – fifty. Five-oh, fifty.’

  ‘I would say “I do not believe you”, but I know you will immediately prove your point.’

  ‘We have actually encountered the fellow already, in passing.’

  I was required to fetch another manuscript. It was written in the shaky hand of an old man.

  *

  MY LONG LIFE HAS BEEN dominated by one author – specifically, one book by that one author. Men have their varied and different approaches to the immortal Pickwick, but mine has been that of the collector. I have dedicated myself to the search for the perfect Pickwick in parts.

  The scarcity of the earlier numbers is but the rudimentary foundation of my desire. The minor variations in illustrations add seasoning. It is the inserts of the parts that are my keenest pursuit. You may have heard of the Pickwick Advertiser, the booklet of advertisements that Chapman and Hall sewed into Pickwick from Part IV onwards. Those booklets are very rare but fairly common to the seeker of the perfect Pickwick. True rarity begins with the slip advertisements, and the statements issued to readers – items thrown away by most people who bought Pickwick. Items which are now so rare their scarcity achieves an exquisiteness to make a collector tremble with pleasure. Consider for instance the advertisement slip for Phrenology Made Easy in Part VI, or for Gilbert’s maps in Part IV. What is the chance of their surviving? Hardly any at all. That is why I seek them.

  There are those of us who will spend twenty years – thirty years – forty years – aye, the fifty years I have spent – searching, in attics, salerooms, private libraries and second-hand bookshops, all in the hope of attaining a perfect Pickwick in parts. I enjoy saying all those ‘p’s together – a perfect Pickwick in parts. If I hear a rumour of an unscathed part, I will travel far and wide, and the night before inspection, if I sleep at all, the sleep will be dreamless, like a clean margin, as if even my unconscious soul is preoccupied with perfection in Pickwick.

  However, one learns to be suspicious when one sees the part. Sometimes the pages are too clean. I insert my nose, close to the stitches, and sometimes detect the faint chlorine-like whiff of the cleaning agent. They will not fool me.

  My life for these fifty years has been an unending tale of how and where I found the part with a little less foxing – a reduction in damp spots – an absent chip on the wrapper spine. I have spent my time fighting against the very popularity which caused a crease or an oily thumbprint to appear on a page when the part was transferred from hand to hand. I have gradually constructed a set which approximates to perfection, a set which was never offered to a single subscriber – for I take this part from here, that part from there.

  For me, every copy of Pickwick that was printed by Bradbury and Evans is different. The typesetting forme was tightened as more copies were printed and the moveable type spread gradually apart, and letters darkened and broadened, making each copy unique, by some infinitesimal degree.

  Even defining the perfect Pickwick in parts is a considerable feat; there are so many variations spread across the twenty-parts-in-nineteen, that to merely describe the work takes a dozen pages in an auctioneer’s catalogue. Pickwick poses more problems for the collector of first editions than any other work that has ever been published. This is therefore another way in which Pickwick is superlative.

  How can I tell you of the joy of a collector at finding the single rarest element in all Pickwick: the issue of Part VI, in which the page numbers for the two plates were erroneously swapped? I have shown that to another collector and savoured his envy, and told him that no matter what he offered, he would not have it while I was alive. I am sure peculiar errors are to be found in other books too, but in what other book would people take the time to look for them, or care a jot when found? And, for that matter, I shall never forget the moment when I discovered – and I am sure I was the discoverer – that in the early parts there were fifty lines to the printed page, but only forty-nine in the later ones. Why? It may seem unimportant, but it was an extraordinary revelation to me, and so it was to the other collectors I informed, who immediately set about counting lines themselves. Has any other book existed in which people would bother to count the lines?

  The perfect Pickwick has everything – advertisements, misprints, the paper crisp and bright as the day it was printed, the type unbroken because it was printed early in the run – every wonderful thing that can make the collector’s heart leap. And just as the greatest violins by Stradivarius become known by their former owners, so it is with great Pickwicks. The Lapham – Wallace Pickwick. The Bruton – Patterson Pickwick. The Douglas – Austin Pickwick. The McCutcheon – Young Pickwick. The McCutcheon – Ulizio Pickwick. The MacGeorge Pickwick. And mine. There are perhaps ten copies of Pickwick in existence which could be called perfect first editions, and even perfection can be flawed. A good Pickwick is worth many times its weight in gold.

  Is it not the most delicious paradox that this work, so widely circulated that only the Bible, Shakespeare and perhaps the Book of Common Prayer can better its circulation, can attain such heights of extreme rarity too? Pickwick is as general as mankind, and yet as rare as a man.

  How is a perfect set to be displayed? You would expect a proud leather case, to house a collector’s achievement. That tends to happen – eventually. The Lapham – Wallace Pickwick, for example, is housed in a most attractive green levant morocco case. The case must be green. That is the Pickwick hue. I once saw a set in crushed red levant morocco, and it made me shudder. I could not respect the man who did that. Yet many of us simply wrap our Pickwicks in brown-paper parcels, which are excellent temporary protection as the search for perfection continues, knowing there will come a time, probably when the collector has passed away and his Pickwick is bequeathed to someone else, for the set to receive its finery. There is a grim laugh that we collectors have, when we consider what it means to get our box.

  *

  ‘EVEN FIFTY YEARS IS NOT the longest Pickwickian quest,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘For that is mine.’

  ‘I presume you mean you be
gan when you were a child.’

  ‘No – and I mean this seriously – it began before I was born. How do you think all the material in this house was accumulated, Scripty?’

  ‘So your father was a staunch Pickwickian, then.’

  ‘And his father. The male line in my family. There has been more than one Mr Inbelicate.’

  ‘I am keen to hear about the others.’

  ‘I will not tell you. For in the work you produce, grandfather will not appear as separate from father, nor father separate from son. It will be as though the one and the same Mr Inbelicate has done it all, with neither preceding nor succeeding generations.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My taste.’

  He asked me to gather manuscript material from various places around the house concerning travels to Pickwick-associated places. Starting the next day, I was to turn it into:

  Mr Inbelicate’s Narrative

  In June 1870 I joined the throng entering Westminster Abbey’s south transept. The death of a military leader or a monarch creates such crowds, yet Charles Dickens had been neither. No Englishman had ever attained such a hold on the populace. I passed under high arches, queued in dim corners, read historical names on tablets and observed the blind statues. Benches covered in black cloths were roped together, to funnel the crowd leading to the open grave, near the Shakespeare and the Milton memorials. So many flowers had been thrown, the coffin’s lid was rendered invisible. A portrait of Dickens as a young man stood on the wall above the grave.