Death and Mr. Pickwick Read online

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t stop laughing, and she got very angry with me. But she tells you all this herself in the letter. And she finishes by saying that you are sure to become president of the Royal Academy one day, and that will make her the proudest and happiest woman in the world. But come, let us adjourn.’

  *

  They sat at the window seat where Seymour had sketched Der Freischütz, and ordered chops and wine. Just as their food was brought to the table, a street violinist stood outside the tavern and began a mournful air. Two passing dustmen listened to the tune and applauded. The violinist began a medley. Holmes sighed.

  ‘Thank goodness the windows are closed. Music isn’t sauce.’

  ‘I think the right tune would bring out the taste of the wine.’

  ‘Turn it to vinegar, you mean. Now, Germany. You have heard me talk of Charles Burney’s writing?’

  ‘I have heard you talk to Joseph about him. And I have had to amuse myself while the discussion has gone on.’

  ‘Burney’s mission was to write the true history of music. So he collected the evidence.’

  ‘That is what anyone would do, surely?’

  ‘The point is that he gathered the evidence himself, using his own eyes and ears. Far too many people write books merely by consulting other books. Burney got out of the library and roamed the Continent for evidence. Well, an idea has come to me, Robert.

  ‘I am planning to make a tour of the Continent for several months, especially Germany, something in the Burney manner. It won’t be yet – probably not for a year. I need to save, I need to plan. My intention is to visit places with important musical associations – but it would be more than that. I want to record the experiences of travelling. I want to set down anything interesting that occurs to me – the anecdotes and the events, and the characters I encounter, whether or not there is something musical about them. It would become a book.’

  ‘So it would be a series of traveller’s tales as much as a musical mission?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘And will you go alone?’

  ‘I mentioned it to Mrs Novello. She has decided she will accompany me.’

  ‘The bachelor and the older married woman! People will talk.’

  ‘Yes, so she will be invisible in my account. She insists that she will be my common sense and that without her, I would be lost. She says – and these are her exact words: “Edward, you would board the wrong coach, and fall prey to sirens.”’

  ‘She is right!’

  ‘I think she really wants to escape her husband’s miserable moods for a few months. Oh – and I am thinking that when I am away I shall grow a beard, and only cut it when I return. I have always wanted a beard. The Germans are far more accommodating about facial hair.’

  ‘Make certain you let me paint you before you shave it off. I have been toying with the idea of a biblical painting, and you would make a good apostle, though I think you are too young for a prophet.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘And make certain you write to me when you are away.’

  ‘I shall.’

  *

  In a letter Robert Seymour received from Antwerp, and read with great interest, Edward Holmes described the cathedral:

  It is magnificent, and so tall, and the common remark is that it is lacework in stone. But here is an incident that happened, which will be perfect for my book. I had left Mrs Novello in the body of the cathedral, because I decided to brave the staircase, which everyone told me has a magnificent view of the city. At the bottom of the stairs, there is an old female attendant who warns you – in French, Dutch, German and English – not to climb if your heart is weak. As far as I am aware, my heart is strong, and I began the ascent. Well, the staircase was dark and like a corkscrew, and I was aware of the attendant’s calves, and how sinewy they were for an old woman, and very soon she was leaving me behind, and I was short of breath! I stopped to lean against the wall. She called out ‘Come!’ and I continued. Then we reached a part where there was not a glint of light and I groped my way along the stone wall. Suddenly the old woman shrieked out in terror – in all my life, I have never heard such a shriek. There was an angry male voice too. It turned out that a sailor had fallen asleep on the stairs, and the woman had stepped on his stomach in the darkness – and she feared it was a huge dog, which would savage her!

  Some weeks later, Seymour received another letter, this time from Frankfurt, which he read with equal relish:

  I do not know how typical the weather is, but most days it is so hot that the sunshine alone makes one realise one is not in England. When we boarded the post coach, or the Eil-wagen as they call it, on our way to Frankfurt from Cologne, it was red hot. In the corner there was a fat Dutchman who was sweating so much that his gestures actually flung sweat, and one droplet hit a lighted cigar smoked by another passenger, and truly there was even a hiss. When the Dutchman found out we were English, he began talking incessantly. He had visited the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle to treat a stomach disorder, but everything in his discourse indicated that moderating his diet was the cure he required, and he knew it, but he could not stop eating. He spoke of sauces and wines, and used the word lekker, conveying a deliciousness no English word can ever hope to match. Then he said he had an agonising headache, and he apologised that he had to shut his eyes because of the pain. I could not help feeling a respect for such a glutton, who would endure whatever miseries resulted from a rich diet, and still did not stop, because he enjoyed it. He was, it seemed to me, a hero to put himself through such agonies.

  A third followed, from Prague, but which dealt with several cities, and Seymour told Jane of how envious he was of the expedition Edward had undertaken, gathering experiences and anecdotes. He read:

  I had heard great reports of the taste of the Danube carp and, at an inn in Linz, Mrs Novello and I both looked forward to the dish with great anticipation. But from the very first mouthful we were revolted! It had a peculiar earthiness – or rather muddiness – that seemed to be at the base of the flavour, and there was a strong, thick sweet-sour sauce. The waiter noticed that we were not eating, and he said the sauce was too powerful for English people. I asked what was in it, and when he said that its principal ingredient was blood from the freshly caught carp, mixed in with vinegar and ginger, I nearly returned the mouthful I had eaten. A man at the next table said the fish would do me good. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘with due respect, I don’t want to be done good to.’ I took a glass of Hungarian wine, but this too had a sickly sweetness, and it seared my veins, and I knew I would pay for it in the morning. But equally, when I have found food I like, I have consumed it like a starving man. For instance, in Vienna, they make a sort of dumpling with an apricot inside – they adore food hidden in food in this part of the world – and I couldn’t get enough of them. Oh, and let me tell you about an Englishman we met in Vienna. All three of us laughed together in the rows of the Joseph Stadt Theatre – Mrs Novello said I was laughing excessively, like I was having a fit – but they laugh at the very Viennese dialect they use themselves, and it’s all done in a good-natured way, and we understood enough German to pick up the humour. Well, afterwards this man said that he had an urge for Constantinople, as though all the miles and all the hardships of travel were as nothing to him. ‘I think I will take a run to Constantinople,’ he said. A run!

  The next afternoon we three sat together in the marketplace eating these dumplings I loved, and he said, come, let us go and inspect cymbals and tambourines together in Constantinople. I got the impression that if I had said yes and we had gone to Constantinople, another city would follow and then another. All of them just ‘a run’. Well, I admit, I considered taking off with him. It was hot and dusty in Vienna, and windy as London in March – really, it was like a dust storm, half a desertload flying around, and you feel it in the pores of your nose, which is an irritation I have never experienced in my life before. But even if it had been mi
ld, without a speck of dust in the air, this man was the type to move on, and then move on some more. He was already tired of the city, and today for him was already much like yesterday, and would be like tomorrow too. More life, more variety, new manners and new dispositions of people – these desires are not so easily blunted. There is some impulse in an Englishman which, once aroused, urges him onward.

  But Mrs Novello and I stayed in Vienna, and visited the church of the Augustines. We looked around inside, and they have on display the skeletons of two saints, in glass coffins, and all the visitors gawp at them, and the eye sockets of the skulls gawp in their empty way back, and little children cannot bear to look at these coffins. But the thing that drove us out was the organ-playing. I have never heard a sound like it. It was a diseased breathing, like a liquid rattle, as though there were no organ-works inside, and some half-asphyxiated creature had taken up residence among the pipes. The skeletons are lucky their ears have rotted away. Oh and this will interest you – then we went to see Der Freischütz. Do you know, in their version, they use arrows instead of shot, made from a withered tree.

  Oh and I should also tell you that the cabmen of Prague have an admirable quality, Robert, compared to London drivers: they are always satisfied with their fares.

  *

  THE WITHERED TREE OF THE Viennese Freischütz was the shrunken ambition of Robert Seymour on the morning the letter of rejection arrived from the Royal Academy; the satisfying fares of the Bohemian cabmen were the coins Seymour gave to a young nephew, John Mead, then staying with him, to whom he said: ‘There is a painting of mine – would you be so kind as to bring it back here for me?’ When alone, Seymour was Schmid himself wailing at the court’s sentence of death.

  There were two duelling pistols, in a box, in a cupboard. He had purchased them because they were gentlemen’s weapons. He and Wonk had shot at bottles at the Roman Encampment, with forfeits being paid by the loser.

  ‘Gentlemen’s weapons’ was what he had told Wonk. Seymour had bought the pistols on a low day. There had been a recovery of spirits on that occasion, and Wonk had returned with wine, bread and cheese. Now Seymour opened the cupboard door. He paused, staring at the mother-of-pearl marquetry of the box, then threw back its lid, and took out one of the pistols. He found wadding, and shot, and the powder horn, and placed all these on the table.

  *

  ‘HOW SERIOUS HE WAS IS a matter of consideration,’ said Mr Inbelicate.

  *

  ON A CHAIR IN THE corner of the room stood a small collection of old prints by Gillray. In Seymour’s state of mind, the details of the upper image caught his attention. It was one of Gillray’s most gruesome works, The High German Method of Destroying Vermin at the Rat-Stadt, showing French envoys being decapitated by Austrian hussars. Carefully, Seymour brushed away the dust. One of the headless men raised his hands as if still alive, the neck gushing blood, while the head itself was impaled on the point of a sword.

  Seymour placed the picture carefully on the table, and then picked up the picture below. This showed the corpses of Parisian aristocrats roasted and eaten in a kitchen, with children gobbling from a tub of entrails. One aristocrat’s head was on a plate, his eye on a spoon about to be swallowed, while his ear was on a fork.

  The pictures were ludicrous in their violence. But no painting would dare enter this territory. A painting might show the Frenchman about to be beheaded, with the sword about to fall, but the viewer would not see the sliced neck. Gillray spared nothing. He showed atrocities at the very moment they occurred. Violent the pictures were, but at that moment they made academy painters seem cowards.

  He heard the key in the door. It was his nephew carrying the painting wrapped in cloth. The boy placed it against the wall, and did not immediately notice the pistol on the table. As soon as he did, horrific understanding came.

  There was a struggle as the boy tried to seize the gun, there were cries from Seymour of ‘Do you think I couldn’t do it?’ Some of Seymour’s hair caught in the pistol’s hammer. He pulled the pistol away, ripping out the hair, and threw the weapon at his own painting.

  He was calmer afterwards, and apologised. The pistol was returned to the box. Then he discussed the rejection with his nephew, and afterwards they talked of the pictures by Gillray. ‘I can hardly believe such prints were ever in existence,’ said the boy.

  ‘The life has gone out of the print-shop windows since I was your age,’ said Seymour. ‘And these were just the pictures you saw – the king used to bribe the print-publishers to destroy the most offensive pictures.’

  ‘Why did pictures like this disappear?’

  ‘Whatever the reason, we have changed as a country. The Gillray of our times would be different.’

  *

  ‘THE ENDING OF ROBERT SEYMOUR’S desire for high art,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘is obscured by the passage of time. The sequence of events is not at all clear.’

  He took a number of volumes from the library shelves and placed them on the table before me. One was a moralistic tale of school life, In School and Out of School, illustrated by a Seymour frontispiece of a schoolroom, with charts on the wall and a teacher pointing to a globe. There was also a cricketing scene at playtime, and one of a pupil on his deathbed.

  ‘That work is unreadable,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘All part of the wave of morality sweeping the likes of Gillray away. Now, this work has more interest. Seymour must have been delighted to receive the commission, at that point in his life.’

  It was a work of Gothic horror, Legends of Terror and Tales of the Wonderful and Wild. I turned to a Seymour picture, The Demon of the Harz – showing the Harz forest, and a demon in the shape of a huge wild man. More interesting still were the demon’s assistants. There was one with a serpentine tail, and others with terrible beaks, but the most troubling – the most fascinating – was a creature with a body that resembled seaweed, with glowing eyes on an insect-like head, eyes which looked straight at the viewer. No such creature, with all its weedy polyps, could exist in the material world. I looked at the accompanying text, which said that the creature resembled phantoms seen in troubled dreams.

  ‘And now we come to these,’ said Mr Inbelicate.

  They were volumes of bound journals from the 1820s – the Economist and General Advisor, The Chemist, the Art of Beauty – as well as miscellaneous works on engineering, with diagrams of machinery.

  ‘These were all published by Knight and Lacey of Paternoster Row. You’ll find nothing even signed by Seymour, and so we cannot say for sure which pictures are his. He probably did not even care.’

  I looked at an illustration of a fishmonger in the Economist and General Advisor, which showed the tricks of the traders to fool the public about the freshness of fish – such as squeezing bullock’s blood into a fish’s eyes and gills, and even pumping them up with a blowpipe. This was one in a series of articles, The Annals of Gulling.

  ‘The artful devils could make a salmon look like it was fresh off the hook,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘They called it painting.’

  He showed me one more work from this period, The New Picture of London, with a Seymour illustration of the grand entrance to Hyde Park. I saw the statue of the naked warrior with a shield.

  ‘And it was around this time,’ he said, ‘that Seymour started to visit the gymnasium.’

  *

  THE GYMNASIUM AT PENTONVILLE, NEAR the New River Head, was a capacious reservoir of muscular instruction, built to supply the needs of Londoners thirsting for gymnastic knowledge.

  The first notice, of three by the door, announced to the nobility, gentry and public in general that that great expert in exercise, Professor Voelker, would hold classes on Tuesdays and Fridays. The second notice, for those requiring historical context, told of the origins of gymnastic exercises in the practices of the ancient Greeks. The third notice, in large black letters, announced: ‘Boys! Become more elastic and strengthen your bodily powers!’

  In the hall, Rober
t Seymour took a short run and vaulted over the wooden horse, landing with his arms raised above his head. A bell rang, the signal to change exercise, and he proceeded to the ropes. Around him were men hanging from the trapeze, lifting themselves to the neck at the bar, ascending poles, walking on beams, scaling ladders, or scoring a hit with a foil. There were spectators on the edges, some of whom Seymour recognised from their regular visits to the print-shop windows. Seymour bent an arm, displaying his biceps, as he clung to the rope with a single hand. An underdeveloped weakling on the rope next to Seymour’s was breathing heavily. ‘Gets you out of the office,’ said this fellow.

  The bell rang again, and having completed a circuit, Seymour descended and strode towards the changing room, confident that his physique was admired.

  *

  As he wiped his neck with a towel, Seymour cast discreet glances at the men in the changing room, in their different stages of muscularity. When rubbing his chest, he heard the attendant say: ‘Towel, Mr Cruikshank?’

  ‘Just Cruikshank. Thank you.’

  Seymour turned to the man with the whiskers and the alert eyes. He had already noted this man’s physique at the apparatus.

  ‘Are you staring at me, sir?’ said the man.

  ‘Are you George Cruikshank, the artist?’

  ‘I am. And what of it?’

  ‘I have long admired your work. My name is Robert Seymour. I am an artist myself.’

  ‘What sort of artist?’

  ‘I would be delighted if you would join me for a drink, and perhaps I can show you.’

  ‘I choose my drinking companions carefully.’

  ‘I mean you no harm, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps there will come a time when I shall be familiar with your work. Now I wish to change, and I would prefer you not to stare at me while I do so.’ Cruikshank walked to the other side of the room where he began chatting to a slim man who had a towel wrapped around his waist. Seymour noticed nods and glances aimed in his direction.