Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 30

‘And these pains in your stomach?’

  ‘Shooting pains.’

  ‘According to your records, two weeks ago it was dull pains.’ She turned the pages of notes made by her predecessor, detailing the very frequent illnesses of the boy. She had already seen the most recent entry, which was specifically written to her by the retiring matron, and underlined: ‘He catches lots of complaints from larger boys.’

  After feeling his abdomen, she said: ‘I will keep you in for a couple of days to see how you go.’

  It was as if a shadow had lifted from his face. The matron clearly had a healing voice, if not healing hands.

  *

  It was shortly after ten o’clock at night, and the boy was sound asleep in the sickroom’s annexe. Until he coughed himself awake. When he opened his eyes, there was a potent smell of tobacco and a small glowing spot in the darkness. He drew back, clutching the sheets. Two shadowy youths towered over the bed.

  ‘Hello, à Beckett,’ whispered a voice. A hand from the other side of the bed clamped down over à Beckett’s mouth, and an elbow pinned down his chest. The fear in his eyes showed above the fingers.

  ‘We’ve been thinking you might need cheering up,’ said the voice. A cigar’s tip traced a figure of eight in mid-air. ‘And we wouldn’t want you getting cold. Where do you reckon he needs warming up the most?’

  ‘His nose, I’d say,’ said the other voice, of the hand and the elbow.

  ‘That’s a very good suggestion. To start with.’ The hand exerted pressure against à Beckett’s mouth, and another hand held his head. The cigar brushed against the bridge of à Beckett’s nose and his entire body tightened as he took the pain. ‘Where else, do you think?’

  ‘What about his feet?’

  ‘You are right. He may have circulation problems in his toes. Shall we warm you up down below, à Beckett?’

  *

  In the morning, the matron asked about à Beckett’s nose. ‘It was itching in the night, and I scratched it too hard. But I am feeling much better this morning. I think I shall get up.’

  He swung his legs out of bed, and she saw the wound on his big toe.

  *

  Gilbert à Beckett walked along the corridor to class, staying close to the wall. Everywhere there were examples of neglected maintenance of the school buildings: broken windows, holes in the skirting, split banisters, missing tiles. The one happiness in his life was his friend Henry Mayhew, a boy with a round and homely face, a year younger than himself, though looking by height a year older.

  ‘They are bolder than ever,’ said à Beckett in a corridor during a break between classes, as he proceeded to tell his friend of the night’s attack.

  ‘Write to your father. Tell him everything. I don’t just mean last night. I mean everything they have done to you.’

  ‘But what will be the consequences?’

  ‘Your father is a formidable man. I would not want to be in their shoes if he came to the school. And if they tried anything on you in retaliation – then I would even less want to be in their shoes.’

  So à Beckett wrote a full and detailed account. He told of kicks in the thigh, of hair pulled out, of mud thrown, of spittle in the food and of a penknife held against the neck – the latter accompanied by the remark: ‘We’ll be back when you’ve grown some bristles on your chin, à Beckett.’ He explained that it was always worse if he showed any signs of being industrious in his lessons. And that once an older boy smuggled in homemade gin, and the game emerged of getting à Beckett drunk, making him walk a straight line, and delivering blows with a coal shovel if he strayed off course. He finished on the events of the sickroom.

  Two days after he posted the letter, a reply came – à Beckett waited to read it until he and Mayhew could examine it together in an empty dormitory.

  ‘This is it,’ said Mayhew. ‘Your life changes here.’

  À Beckett broke the seal and cast his eyes at the contents. It took moments to read in its entirety. His face crumpled, and he handed the letter to Mayhew. He read: ‘Your letter is not worthy of a son of mine. Fight your own battles. Endure, and be the stronger for it. And never write about this again.’

  *

  It was an oversight, a lapse of memory, surely, that made Gilbert à Beckett, a few years later, leave the proof copy of the scurrilous and illustrated political document he had written, Cerberus, The Hades Gazette, in his father’s study. It lay on a stool a mere glance to the side away from the writing desk – the desk where his father sat, without fail, upon his return from a pleasant lunch with his Member of Parliament.

  At this very desk, William à Beckett conducted his extensive researches into the family’s history, showing how they were descended from the father of Thomas à Becket. His work in progress was demonstrated by the charts, maps and title deeds distributed over the study’s central table, as well as by a magnifying glass over a signatory’s name, and by books open at pages showing the family’s involvement with the Crusades – all ready for William à Beckett to resume his research at the exact point he had left off. It would seem, yes, impossible not to notice the woodcut caricature of the triple-headed bulldog that guarded the entrance to Hades. Once the picture attracted a gaze, closer inspection would reveal the animal’s jowls dispensing foam in all directions, with a violent splash falling into the mouth of a man walking by. The man was shown grabbing his own throat, as though struck by a sudden urge for felo de se by self-strangulation, or, more likely, because of the agony of the poison that dripped down his gullet. What is more, although the man was not skilfully drawn, there was enough in the features to suggest the very Member of Parliament whose food, wine and hospitality à Beckett Senior had just consumed.

  In defiance of the rage which flashed through his eyes and knitted his brow, William à Beckett took the Hades Gazette and sat down at his desk with some semblance of calm.

  In the ‘Court Circular’ on its first page, the Hades Gazette listed new arrivals in the nether realms, and those expected within a short time – the royal family and respected members of both Houses of Parliament, as well as representatives of the established church, the armed services and the law, many of whom were personally known to William à Beckett. When he reached the last page, he saw a small box clearly stating that the work had been written and drawn by two fellows: Henry Mayhew, whom he knew to be an associate of his son’s, and William à Becket’s own son, Gilbert.

  Continuing with the semblance of calm, and with the same dedication he applied to his genealogical research, William à Beckett dipped his pen in the inkwell, and began underlining one section of the text after another. When he had completed this task, his finger paused at each underlining, and he counted under his breath. He wrote the number ‘43’ at the bottom of the last page, and double-underlined it.

  His son and Henry Mayhew were next door. With the briefest of addresses, he invited them into the study. By a motion of his hand he indicated they should occupy chairs next to each other at the central table, from which he had cleared the charts, maps, title deeds, magnifying glass and books on the Crusades. There was a quill and an inkwell before each chair. On the table, at the exact midway point between the two youths, William à Beckett placed the Hades Gazette. He made minute corrections to its position so it was perfectly aligned with the edges of the table.

  The two youths cast nervous glances at each other, although Mayhew was noticeably the more nervous. Gilbert à Beckett had now grown his side whiskers nearly to the bottom of his jaw, beyond the usual fashion for a youth or a young man. He had also acquired a thin, elegant and handsome face, while Mayhew’s had remained round and homely.

  William à Beckett spoke in a calm, firm voice. ‘Each of the places I have marked by underlining is a seditious libel. You will both delete these underlined words without delay. You, sir’ – he pointed to Gilbert – ‘will delete with a downward stroke from top left to bottom right, and you, sir’ – he pointed to Mayhew – ‘will delete with a downward stroke
from top right to bottom left. Thereby forming a cross, like an illiterate’s signature. Proceed.’

  When the Hades Gazette bore forty-three crosses, William à Beckett said: ‘Put down your pens. Now listen with great attention to what I shall say.’

  He sometimes gripped his jacket as he paced back and forth, just as he sometimes held back his head and stood still, to emphasise certain points. ‘Scholarly works – works composed after considerable thought and study, works for an intelligent and discerning audience, works that will never be read by the mob – for these works there is liberty. But then there are other works – dangerous works, works such as pamphlets written in a day, sold at a price the mob can afford, works which excite public commotion, works with simple slogans, which can be shouted out on street corners, persuading the weak-minded to buy them simply because the slogans are shouted – for these works there should be no liberty. People that can read can be enraged by what they read.’

  He leant over the table and brought the point of his index finger down upon the mouth of one of the dog’s heads. ‘And such works do not even have to be read for them to have pernicious effect. The mob can be inflamed by a single picture.’

  He stood back. ‘You, Henry Mayhew, if you are anything like him’ – the finger now stabbed towards the centre of Gilbert à Beckett’s face – ‘are nine-tenths enthusiasm and barely one-tenth judgement. Now tear it up, both of you, half the pages each.’

  When this was done, William à Beckett said: ‘There remains the typeset copy.’

  *

  One may read in The Aeneid that Cerberus was subdued with bread dipped in a mixture of honey and a sleeping draught. To the unfortunate printer of the Hades Gazette, confronted at his works by à Beckett, à Beckett and Mayhew, it might have seemed that only two heads had eaten the soporific sop, for the youths were subdued, and said nothing, while the third barked at him every possible litigious threat to property and freedom. With his hand sometimes subject to a nervous spasm, the printer dismantled the frame and broke up the type before the eyes of his accuser.

  It was afterwards that the printer told his apprentice: that is when one eats printers’ pie, and a very humble pie it was indeed.

  *

  ‘Mr à Beckett, Mr Strange – we have my reputation as an asset.’

  So said Thomas Lyttleton Holt as he smoked a cigar of a decent aroma in the Wheatsheaf in Holywell Street, off the Strand – a discoloured and gloomy establishment with dingy customers, in which Holt appeared by far the best-dressed man present. He was also a handsome fellow, in his late thirties, with a prominent moustache which suggested, by appearance if not by substance, recent service in a military capacity. ‘I may not pay exactly when a bill is due,’ he added, ‘but you know that I will always pay very soon after.’

  A week had passed since the Bristol riots. The men he addressed were both younger than himself: to Holt’s left, Gilbert à Beckett, now twenty years old – à Beckett had placed, in a prominent position on the table, a magazine of unknown title, folded to a page in which he had written a theatrical review; and to Holt’s right, William Strange, about thirty, a publisher of fluctuating financial status, with deep-set eyes and a habit of stroking a curl over his forehead. There was a proposal for a joint venture of the three, in a new political magazine.

  ‘Have confidence,’ said Holt, ‘and your quarry is half persuaded already. That’s my experience with pamphlets, on any subject. I march into the printer and say: “I would like a thousand copies printed, and when the possibles come in, it’s yours.”’

  ‘He won’t believe that, will he?’ said à Beckett.

  ‘He will when I say it. He might need a bit more persuasion from someone else. You could say you will come and collect the publication in a handcart when it’s printed, and take it round to the vendors in person – and he will know you are not afraid to put in the effort. And if he stays silent, throw in some remarks about the printing trade – something about printing being faster these days, and having the paper to do it, and so get him talking. Well, on second thoughts – you’re a bit too young to get away with that, but I could. And if he is still not persuaded – we tell him we have Seymour.’

  ‘But we don’t,’ said à Beckett.

  ‘Have confidence! We will, if we tell Seymour we have the printer.’

  ‘I do not believe the printers will be a problem,’ said Strange. ‘They need the work too much. My principal concern now is the publication’s name.’

  ‘What about Cerberus?’ said à Beckett.

  ‘The dog that guards Hades?’ asked Strange. ‘Why?’

  ‘There are the three of us.’

  Strange pondered, stroking his curl. ‘No – before long, others would put our faces on caricatures of the creature. We would be the three-headed mad dog, infecting society with our reforming rabies. It would be used against us by anti-reformers. Don’t you agree, Mr Holt?’

  ‘I do. Let me put it like this. I did once use a dog cart to distribute pamphlets to wholesalers and dealers – but I was very careful about the dog that pulled it. I borrowed my cousin’s Irish wolfhound, a superb beast, who created a very superior impression. I agree, we must be careful.’

  ‘There is another idea I have for the name,’ said à Beckett. ‘Something inspired by the French paper, Le Figaro. Its motto is worth quoting: “Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’est point d’éloge flatteur” – or, without the freedom to criticise, there is no true praise.’

  ‘How right that is,’ said Holt, feeling a brass button of his coat as though it were a high-value coin, indicative of the wearer’s constant capacity to earn. The long coat may have had a previous owner, but its quality, and the perfect fit, paid testimony to the many hours spent in the second-hand shops of Monmouth Street before satisfaction was achieved.

  ‘The name I have in mind,’ said à Beckett, ‘is Figaro in London. Think of the character of Figaro in The Barber of Seville. A cunning figure. Intelligent.’

  ‘A servant who is better than his masters,’ said Strange. ‘Yes, potential there. What do you think, Holt?’

  ‘Certainly,’ laughed Holt. ‘And I would trust only a French barber to trim this moustache!’

  ‘The concept of a barber is actually relevant to our needs,’ said à Beckett. ‘Barbers cut. There is a quotation we could use on the front page as our motto. It’s by Lady Montague: “Satire should, like a polished razor keen, / Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen.”’

  ‘Figaro in London it is, then,’ said Holt. ‘Why not write Seymour a letter today, and introduce yourself – throw that quotation into the letter as the idea of what you have in mind, and that’ll warm him up. You tell him the name Figaro in London when you meet, and he’ll think it’s perfect. There – we have our artist.’

  ‘It may not be quite so easy,’ said à Beckett.

  ‘Have confidence! He is ours already!’

  *

  ‘Do you not feel,’ said à Beckett, somewhat hunched as he sat in the artist’s parlour, ‘that the print shops are not exactly what they were?’

  ‘People are reading more and more,’ said the artist as he leant back languidly. ‘A single picture displayed in a window perhaps means less these days.’

  ‘You have hit it, Mr Seymour. Your Looking Glass is one way of meeting the contemporary needs of the public – pictures, lots of pictures.’

  ‘And you believe you have another.’

  ‘As I tried to explain in my letter, my two backers and I are proposing a true marriage of caricature and journalism. The first of its kind. Caricaturists such as yourself show us instantly the real motives of public men. I am suggesting that the pictures be augmented by the words of a journalist.’

  ‘You mean the opinions of a fine young man such as yourself.’

  ‘Not myself alone. I intend to hire a friend, a most intelligent fellow, I have known him since schooldays – he has already pledged himself to the enterprise. We will write it between us.
We will comment on the affairs of the day – and we will amuse our readers with a little harmless satire. Satirical, I assure you, not scurrilous. And there will be much more. Theatrical reviews will be an important part.’

  ‘You have the means to start this?’

  ‘Printers are vying for the work.’

  ‘What if it is seized by the government? Caricaturists are mostly left alone. But I have no doubt the authorities would take an interest in this publication. Do you intend to pay the stamp duty?’

  ‘The price we are proposing would not allow the duty to be paid. It will cost a penny. And when it succeeds, it will show up the absurdity of the duty.’

  ‘It may well show up how ridiculous is the attempt to inhibit the circulation of news; but at a penny – are you sure you can afford to pay for my services?’

  ‘We may sell for a penny, but we hope for a large circulation because of the price. Mr Seymour, single prints are too expensive. Your Looking Glass is much too dear for most pockets. We want laughter at a price the general public can afford. My backers will pay well to secure your services. It is you we seek, no other.’

  ‘Mr à Beckett, if yours is an historic venture – then I wish it well. I am afraid caution holds me back. You are proposing my pictures appear as woodcuts. Much of my work has been ruined by woodcutters – they hack away like a boy chopping firewood and the printed pictures often seem scarcely my own. Indeed, I blush to acknowledge them sometimes. There is a gentleman called William Heath. He is a very able caricaturist. Approach him.’

  ‘Might I suggest a compromise? What if you draw the picture on the front page which illustrates the title? No other pictures but that to begin with. If the magazine should fail – then nothing will be blamed upon you. It will have failed because the words do not excite the public. But if two issues should appear, and they are received favourably by the public, then I should like to approach you again, with a view to enlisting your support.’

  ‘What is the title?’

  ‘Do you know The Barber of Seville?’

  ‘Of course I know The Barber of Seville. My brother-in-law is a music critic.’