Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 28

  The whole table of a dozen guests concurred. The soup was extraordinary, mouthwatering – never had their palates been so stimulated.

  Quin returned, and caught the remains of this praise.

  ‘You must tell us the secret,’ said the merchant. ‘We will not tell a soul. You did promise.’

  ‘Well,’ said Quin, leaning forward, ‘it is composed of sage, onions, spices, ham and wine, all boiled up in a copper pot with water and other ingredients.’

  ‘But the proportions?’

  ‘And the spices?’

  ‘The other ingredients?’

  ‘I have written it down.’ A bewigged footman in red livery brought in twelve letters on a platter, each sealed. Quin gave strict instructions that the guests should read the letters when they had left his premises and not before. ‘Now alas, gentlemen, my cold begins to be a burden, and so I must retire.’ He shook hands with all his guests and bade them adieu.

  Each of the twelve, as they headed home in their coaches, examined the letter by lamplight. The letter began with Quin saying: ‘As I write these lines, I am tired after a long walk over the fields, which I try to take these days after breakfast, on the advice of my physician. I have just given the housemaid my boots. The mud was thickly encrusted, but with some soaking, it should come off. But to the recipe.’

  They learned that they had indeed eaten a dish composed of sage, onions, spices, ham and wine, boiled up in a copper pot. Set down in the letter were precise details of proportions, spices and other ingredients.

  Then twelve faces fell as they came to the last line: ‘The muddy boots should be soaked in water and boiled for three solid hours – and, in very generous amounts, the resulting wholesome liquor should be added to the seething copper pot.’

  *

  ‘So,’ said Moses Pickwick, ‘James Quin kept the secret of his Siamese Soup, and he took it to his grave. But I have it on good authority that its true basis is the sauce whose recipe is preserved in my ledger.’

  Moses felt happy enough to have told the tale, but as the listeners dispersed, he became aware of a white-haired guest, whom he knew to be a doctor, sitting at a table among friends.

  ‘I’m afraid that these days,’ he heard the doctor remark, ‘you can’t go into the countryside without seeing labourers pushing wheelbarrows full of dirt and stone up planks.’

  The doctor, noticing that Moses was looking in his direction, then asked the publican for the tobacco box, if it were not too much trouble. Although normally the job of the barmaid, on this occasion Moses decided to fulfil the request himself. He stood by the table and the doctor inserted his halfpenny and filled his pipe, and so did the others in the group. Moses lingered even when all the pipes were loaded, because he wanted to listen to the conversation. ‘It is my fear,’ said the doctor, ‘that railway tunnels will result in a surge of fatalities from pleurisy. It’s the rapid transition from the climate outside the tunnel to the climate within, and then the climate outside again.’

  ‘Well, I fear,’ said another man, showing off his voluminous and thread-veined cheeks as he puffed his pipe alive, ‘that fatalities will be more sudden. How many bodies will be torn apart when the boilers explode?’

  ‘It’s the effect on old England that concerns me,’ said a third, who had a peculiar habit of shining his pipe bowl with grease from the pores of his nose, as though it would help preserve the clay. ‘Ancient estates will be sliced to pieces. Ugly lines will score their way across the countryside. Every time I see an engineer or a surveyor, I am anxious for our nation. The English countryside will be gone for ever.’

  ‘It is our souls we should worry about,’ said the fourth, a desiccated man in glasses who was missing a finger, but who waved the stem of his pipe in the air in its place. ‘When the railways get people to the cities faster, and in greater numbers, it will be a fast trip to dissipation.’

  Suddenly an ardent and eyebrow-raised young fellow, whose family supplied the White Hart with wine and who had been drinking with his father at the next table, interrupted the circle’s conversation. ‘I cannot take any more of this humbug! We shall travel in a quarter or even a fifth of the time taken by horse!’

  ‘That is my very point, sir,’ said the undigited speaker. ‘All the base uses made of the time that will be saved.’

  The young man stood beside Moses Pickwick and leant into the table. ‘Food will be fresher. Animals will be taken to market faster. We shall enjoy fresh fish and vegetables and cheese.’

  ‘You are wrong, sir,’ said the doctor. ‘Cows will produce less milk because of the noise and the smoke.’

  ‘And the horse; how noble a creature,’ said he of the thread-veined cheeks. ‘Do we really want to lay the horse aside?’

  ‘Here, Moses Pickwick,’ said the young man’s father, ‘you and your family should set up inns all along railway lines. That’s the future.’

  ‘No!’ said Moses Pickwick, ‘I am with these gentlemen. Why do we need the railway when roads and coaches are better than ever? When my uncle started in the coaching business, it was two days to go from Bath to London. I do it in a day. And I shave the time off journeys every year.’

  ‘That is why,’ said the young man’s father, ‘you should be on the side of the railway. You’re not so different from the railway in what you do.’

  ‘I don’t care what you say,’ said Moses. ‘Railways are unnat’ral.’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ said the doctor.

  Moses carried the tobacco box back to the counter – even though the young man’s father indicated with a rummage in his pocket that he sought a halfpenny – and headed outside for fresh air.

  He walked to the marketplace, where the stalls were lit up with naphtha. It was always lively, charming and energetic on a Saturday evening, with so many wares: Staffordshire pots and pans, pens and paper, bootlaces, pies, vegetables, hot cockles, pills. On the corner, unfortunately, was a man in a tall black hat whom Moses always dreaded to see.

  ‘Lord have mercy on my soul,’ said the man, wringing his hands in abject contrition and looking skywards. There had been an execution earlier that week, and this man always learnt the dying speech, and collected a hatful of coins for the performance. Curtailing his intended wander, Moses turned back towards the White Hart. The Bath Harmonic Society had hired one of the upper rooms, and the sound of their singing helped to drown out the execution speech.

  Rather than go in the front entrance, Moses went towards the building’s rear, to Pickwick Mews. There were old cottages for the staff, as well as many stables and outbuildings. Here the whores plied their trade. He said good evening to a rouged woman as he passed, and she returned the acknowledgement – she stood directly beneath the sign saying ‘Pickwick Mews’, which he didn’t mind. He had sometimes found a whore using the hay in the stables, and even a coach on one occasion, and that he did mind, so he usually carried out an inspection of the various buildings once a night. By the time he had returned from the inspection, the whore had left her spot under the sign and was walking down the street with a man – a man whose hat identified him as the marketplace deliverer of the dying speech. Moses smiled, as though he had expected nothing less from such a person, then he returned to the front of the White Hart. He stood for a little while directly under the statue of the stag, looking out to the world, his hands proudly upon his hips, his legs apart. It was such a large establishment, his pose seemed to say, and it was his; an inn so massive, as he sometimes told people in the bar, that an entire room could easily be forgotten about, and sometimes was. ‘There’s a trunk room,’ he had been known to say, ‘I haven’t visited for years.’

  Yet his mood changed after he picked up the accounts book from beside the tobacco box. At the bar stood a man with an aggressively amiable eye whom Moses knew to be a retired sedan chairman. The man had cackled when Moses spoke of James Quin being carried home, but now had been joined by a companion, and was sullen, and expatiating on one subject: that Bath was not
the city it was.

  ‘Summer was always bad for the chair trade,’ said the old chairman, hunched over his ale, talking to the wrinkled and miserable acquaintance whose complexion always reminded Moses of a walnut, and who invariably dragged the other down when they associated, ‘but the recovery always came in autumn, and there was always a gambler with gout, or an old lady with a chest condition, or a young man after a rich widow – but now?’

  ‘It’s the spas on the Continent that people want,’ said his companion.

  ‘Now it’s summer all the year round for chairmen. A chairman can stand on a corner and say, “Chair, my lady?” or “We will carry you safely, sir” or “If you need air, madam, the top opens like a salt box” – but nothing works.’

  ‘You must be glad you’re not a young lad just starting as a chairman.’

  ‘I pity the chairmen today. They take their hats by the peak and bow, they offer to run through the streets, you see they’ve worked up a sweat, wiping off their heads with a rag – desperate for the trade! No, Bath is not the city it was.’

  In his heart, Moses knew the chairman was right. Had James Quin paunched on stage as Falstaff in modern Bath, the theatre would be half full. Outside the White Hart, there were fewer hawkers. It could be seen any day, on the street, that the guest houses were cutting their prices. There were indications everywhere that, contrary to the old saying, Bath would not heal itself.

  Moses was not a devoutly religious man, but he knew that some said it was God’s will. The preachers in the pulpits had warned for years that Bath was a modern Sodom whose dens of vice would lead to the city’s destruction.

  Just over a year later, it would seem that hellfire had come to the White Hart itself.

  *

  The first sign of trouble was the arrival of the Saturday afternoon coach from Bristol twenty minutes earlier than expected.

  Moses Pickwick, standing behind the desk in the Universal Coach Office, checked the longcase clock against his pocket watch, and the two coincided – as they always did – and it was ten minutes past twelve. He looked through the window for indications of the horses being overworked, and there were none. Furthermore, the whiskery-faced driver was a dependable sort, who never used the whip to excess. He might have left early, if all the customers and their luggage were in place, but twenty minutes was rare.

  The driver suddenly entered through the office door, too agitated to remember to collect his gratuities. ‘Every passenger wanted to get out of Bristol as soon as possible, Mr Pickwick. I don’t blame them.’ The driver told of a thousand special constables holding back a mob.

  ‘No, it was twice as many constables,’ said a lady inside passenger, who had now stepped into the office. Other passengers spoke of Sir Charles Wetherell’s carriage being pelted with mud till it was three-quarters brown, and said that a rain of stones had shattered the carriage’s windows. A young and enthusiastic outside passenger, in a shabby top hat, told of seeing Wetherell up close, cowering in a corner of the carriage, scared for his very life. ‘That’ll teach Wetherell to mend his ways on reform,’ said the young man.

  ‘I expect it will blow over,’ said Mr Pickwick.

  As the afternoon advanced, guests and tradesmen arriving at the White Hart from Bristol added their own horrified accounts. One drayman told of a fight outside Mansion House in which a constable hit a man over the head with a truncheon, not once but repeatedly, and there were shouts of ‘You’ve killed him!’

  The details of anarchy, destruction, looting and death came without cease through Saturday and Sunday. Terrified coachmen and their passengers told of house windows smashed, crowbars used against doors, paving stones being jemmied up and hurled, entire buildings ransacked – tables, chairs, mirrors and chandeliers carried away into the street. Even food from kitchens was looted – joints of venison, turkeys and tureens of soup all being taken. Then came reports of buildings set alight, of dragoons being called in and a sabre beheading a rioter, and other rioters being shot, followed by accounts of prisons destroyed and the inmates freed, of wine cellars plundered, of the rum and brandy in the Excise House being stolen by the mob, and of drunkenness producing yet more outrage. Rivers of fire, fuelled by exploding crates of alcohol, flowed in the gutters.

  ‘Everyone,’ said the last coachman to arrive on a Sunday evening, ‘is a drunkard, a thief or a murderer.’

  ‘But we are safe here,’ said Mr Pickwick.

  He said it shortly before seven o’clock on the Sunday evening. A few minutes later, the tall and resolute figure of Captain Wilkins, of the Bath Troop of Yeoman Cavalry, entered the coach office. He requested a room for the night, prior to riding to Bristol. The composure of Moses Pickwick now appeared a little ruffled; but he soon assumed a professional air, and escorted the captain through to the main body of the inn. By offering a complimentary glass of rum, and taking one for himself as well, Mr Pickwick induced the captain to sit and discuss the awful events.

  Within minutes, a waiter approached Moses Pickwick and said: ‘There are people gathering outside, sir.’

  Mr Pickwick and Captain Wilkins swapped anxious looks. They both went to the nearest window and saw a mob gathering, and growing larger every minute. The men were passing bottles of liquor among themselves, and swigging, apparently steeling themselves for an assault.

  ‘Wilkins!’ a voice from the mob shouted. ‘We know you are in there! Come out now! Come and face us!’

  ‘You must address them,’ said Mr Pickwick. As that elicited no answer from the captain, Mr Pickwick said: ‘I don’t recognise them. I don’t think many of them are Bath men.’

  ‘They are ruffians and cut-throats and drunkards from London who think that the law is too weak to catch them outside of the capital,’ said Captain Wilkins. ‘Men who love a fight.’

  Mr Pickwick beckoned to the waiter who had told him about the crowd, and said words out of earshot of the captain. The waiter nodded. Mr Pickwick added: ‘And be quick.’ The waiter ran towards the kitchen.

  There were more shouts of ‘Come out, Wilkins!’

  ‘You must try to calm them down,’ said Mr Pickwick to the captain, who merely looked out of the window. After a pause Mr Pickwick said: ‘It is a crowd, sir. It is a large crowd. It is a mob.’

  Eventually the captain said: ‘I shall address them.’

  Mr Pickwick led the captain to a room on the top floor. The captain opened the window. Mr Pickwick also summoned a frightened maid who was on the landing. He said words – again out of earshot of Captain Wilkins – and he mentioned the name of the boy who cleaned the White Hart statue. The words ‘And be quick’ were uttered again.

  Captain Wilkins leant out of the window. There was an upswell of shouts of ‘You ain’t going to Bristol!’ ‘We’ll never let you pass!’ and ‘Call off your men!’

  Wilkins glanced behind towards Mr Pickwick and appeared to swallow, then turned back, straightened himself, and leant forward. ‘It is my duty as an officer, to—’

  A stone flew past Wilkins which smashed a pane in the next window. He called out, ‘I have my orders!’ Another stone flew, and another, one shattering the window the captain occupied, another hitting him on the shoulder. He came inside, and the next moment a hail of stones hit the front of the White Hart with every window a target.

  Men of the mob charged forward from all sides, and they started tearing at the shutters and frames of the lower windows, and punching through with jackets tied around their fists. Pieces of the wood were gathered into a pile in front of the White Hart, and other men brought faggots.

  Now the first men of the mob jumped through the window frames of the lowest floor, intent on looting and destruction. But Moses Pickwick was ready.

  In the fires of the White Hart’s kitchen, according to the order that Mr Pickwick had given to the waiter, pokers had been warmed up to red hot. Now Mr Pickwick and a group of waiters ran forward, flailing the poker tips in the faces of the rioters, the glow showing up the fear in the
mob’s eyes.

  ‘I’ll brand you like a coach horse!’ said Moses Pickwick, whose voice was – fortunately – in the bass register. As a rioter turned and attempted to climb out of the window, Moses Pickwick struck: he planted the tip of the poker exactly in the middle of the man’s right-hand rump cheek.

  ‘Your wife will have to rub some balm in there tonight,’ said Mr Pickwick to the screaming man, casting a look of superiority towards Captain Wilkins, as a waiter’s poker burned another bottom, leaving the breeches still smoking, as the man scrambled out the window.

  ‘Here’s absolution for your sins,’ said Mr Pickwick, his poker sizzling flesh and cloth again. Then Mr Pickwick hollered at the top of his voice – it had switched to the high register – ‘The slates! Hit ’em with the slates!’

  The cry ‘The slates!’ was taken up by another waiter on the landing, and then by another, and another, and so the cry reached the loft and on to the roof – where the boy who cleaned the White Hart statue kicked off loose slates so they slid down and hit the street, shattering among the mob.

  Moses and his staff kept the crowd at bay until special constables arrived in force. The crowd dispersed, and arrests were made. There were flashes of violence and disruption in the next few hours, but by two o’clock in the morning the city was quiet again. At that point, Moses Pickwick sat down in an armchair in the entrance hall of the White Hart. Judging from the expression on his face, this was the proudest moment of his life. The White Hart was saved.

  Moses Pickwick asked Captain Wilkins to join him for another rum, but the captain excused himself, put on his helmet and left. Mr Pickwick was joined instead by a circle of waiters, maids and the boy who cleaned the statue. It was rum all around, and Mr Pickwick was cheered.

  ‘I thank you,’ said Moses Pickwick, ‘but the cheer belongs not to me alone, but to all of us. It belongs to the White Hart itself.’ He raised his glass. ‘To the White Hart!’ All the waiters and all the maids and the boy who cleaned the statue and not a few guests joined in too.