Death and Mr. Pickwick Read online

  There were loud, horrified cries of ‘No, no!’

  ‘It is true, sirs, it is true. And her maid – a pretty girl in her own right, I might add – brought me a letter in which Maria informed me of her grim intentions. Maria confessed her eternal love for me, and said that her earnest wish was that one day we would meet in heaven. And her signature was underlined with eighty-seven kisses, for I counted them, there and then. That signature was appended in the moment before the deadly vessel was raised to her ruby-red lips. But! All was not lost. For I was in Spain on a very particular mission. A friend of mine, an eminent doctor who believes that all diseases are caused by disorders in digestion, had asked me to deliver an item of medical equipment to a Spanish professional associate of his, as such items could not be acquired in that country. Do not ask me why stomach pumps are not available on the Iberian Peninsula – perhaps the Spanish government had reneged on a promise, and the medical-equipment-making industry had collapsed as a result. But – the fact was, I just happened to have a stomach pump on my person. Off I rode into the night, spurring my steed as fast as it could go, to the grandee’s residence. Pushing aside the father, I ascended to Donna Maria’s room, inserted the tube into her mouth and I pumped away, oh how I pumped! And – merciful God be praised! The lovely Donna Maria was rescued! Well, I can tell you that her father was in ecstasy! His only daughter would live! There, on the spot, he blessed our union. He joined our hands, and said that a wedding ring, in his family for generations, and made from gold acquired by conquistadors, would be ours. Our bliss seemed assured. But!’ He applied the handkerchief to his eye again. ‘She died, gentlemen, she died, on the eve of our nuptials. Her constitution was too delicate to withstand the stomach pump, you see – she was such a fragile creature. And as for her father, he was overcome with guilt and despair. The morning after her funeral, he vanished. The whole town was abuzz with rumour. Everyone searched high and low, near and far – nothing. But! There was a public fountain on the village green, which suddenly stopped. It was a most elaborate affair, with fish and dolphins and swans in stone, and the sun usually playing upon the sparkling water. Well, workmen were summoned, and the water was drained – and inside a pipe, there was the grandee, who had drowned himself head first. Inside his boot was a piece of paper, which was virtually a piece of pulp, but when it was pulled apart there were enough legible words to see that he had confessed that life was not worth living without his beloved Donna Maria.’ He dabbed the Belcher-style handkerchief on his eyes yet again. Then, in one swift gesture, he wrung the handkerchief, as though sodden, and added with a smile: ‘But on the bright side, the fountain worked better than ever!’

  There were claps and cheers all round and thumping of drinking vessels in appreciation. Whiteheaded Bob bowed, and resumed his seat.

  Jem Soares stood again. ‘Has anyone else travelled recently?’

  More improbable tales followed: of astonishing sporting achievements, of supernatural encounters, of foreign objects found in food, of being present at the great events of recent history. Seymour clapped these tales in delight.

  ‘This is gin and genius!’ he said to Egan. ‘How many of these stories do you have?’

  ‘Hundreds. There is always someone who can stand up and tell one, even if he got it from someone else.’

  ‘They should be written down and published.’

  ‘We remember them, and that’s enough. That’s the way we like it. We don’t take minutes. There’s no written constitution. We don’t even have set times for meetings. There’s nothing formal about the Daffy Club, and that’s why all sorts of people turn up here. You find yourself seated next to a Member of Parliament one night, and a lord the next. The only rule is accommodation.’

  ‘It is like this clubroom is an oasis of humbug!’

  ‘Humbug’s not a word we’d use. Occasionally, someone tells a tale which goes just a little too far and that’s what we call “doing it brown” – roasting the meat a bit too much.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  ‘Well, say for instance – when a man claims he was in the country, and ran a mile in two minutes to escape a mad bull. We’ll accommodate it, but it’s the marvellous lie we love – wild, extraordinary, but not completely unbelievable. Though the best of us can make almost anything believable, and tell the most outrageous lie with a face as straight as a Roman road. You know, Mr Seymour, the funniest thing is when someone comes in who is new to the Castle, a gullible fellow who doesn’t know about our traditions. A Daffyonian stands and tells a tale – and the newcomer actually believes the preposterous story is true. When that happens, it is priceless!’ Egan sniggered, and shook his head, as though recalling an incident of this nature.

  ‘Tell me, how did the tradition start?’

  ‘There’s plenty who claim to have told the first tale, but no one knows for sure. It probably began with sportsmen’s exaggerations, much in the manner of anglers’ tales about the size of a fish. It might even have begun in the days when the Castle was just a chophouse, before the club was formed, when a pugilist, Bob Gregson, took over as landlord. His portrait’s over there. Though he wasn’t an outstanding fighter.’

  ‘Fought three times, lost three times,’ said a man who interrupted their conversation, a man with tidy hair, and a placid bulldog at his feet.

  ‘This, Mr Seymour, is Mr Peter Pidgeon, he’s landlord at our Aldgate branch, in the Horse and Trumpeter.’ Pidgeon shook hands with the artist, and the bulldog raised a paw to be introduced as well.

  ‘Now it’s true Gregson wasn’t a good fighter,’ said Pidgeon. ‘But he was a very well-proportioned man.’

  ‘As you can see,’ said Egan, pointing towards a portrait. ‘He had – frankly – a beautiful body.’

  ‘To bruise it would be a sin,’ said Seymour.

  ‘We had a professor of anatomy who came here once,’ said Egan, ‘and he asked Bob Gregson if he would let him see his chest in the buff. Bob took off his shirt and the professor gasped. He poked his forefinger in the solar plexus and declared he had never seen a man of such anatomical beauty. Bob liked showing off his body, and he dressed well, and he had a good heart. And that started to attract more people to the Castle.’

  ‘And so did the quality of the liquor he served,’ said Pidgeon.

  ‘That’s true – and the tavern got to be known to pugilists, because liquor helps with the pain after a milling. But things really began when Bob Gregson retired, and Tom Belcher over there was put in charge.’

  ‘Best sparrer of his day,’ said the man from Aldgate.

  ‘That’s when the Daffy Club started. And things went from strength to strength when Tom Spring over there, at the end, became the third successive pugilist to be put in charge.’

  There was by now so much tobacco smoke in the clubroom that Tom Spring was half hidden in a cloud, but Seymour could make out a tall, fine-looking man, in a long fawn coat with a brow expressing all the determination, strength and courage of a boxing champion. As the smoke temporarily wafted away, he saw that Spring had a peculiar smile, as though in earnest to tell a joke. Spring also carried around a large leather bag, marked ‘TS’, and was then collecting money, and jotting in a notebook. Seymour presumed these acts corresponded to bets on fights, in which Spring kept the stakes, and that the wagers were recorded in the book.

  ‘Champion of England, I know,’ said Seymour, just before the man with the dog informed him of the fact.

  ‘You see, Mr Seymour,’ said Egan, ‘to the average person, the advantage of having a pugilist in charge is that he won’t put up with any nonsense, and if a fight breaks out among the customers, he’ll put a stop to it. But the great boon is the trade a pugilist attracts. Who would not enjoy being known as a friend of a boxer – and even more so a champion boxer? And after Tom Spring took over, the tradition of telling stories got going in earnest. See, people here have a natural respect for the authority of a pugilist, simply because he is muscular. There is a delight in
listening to a pugilist’s tales.’

  ‘Tell him about Tom Spring’s neck. That’s a pugilist’s tale!’ said Pidgeon.

  ‘I shall. The rumour circulated, Mr Seymour – and probably Tom started circulating it – that he had the superhuman ability to make himself taller. The claim was that he could be measured against a door frame and found to be five feet eleven and a half. But he could walk away, and do certain twists of his neck and other exercises, and then return to the door frame – and he would show every exertion on his face, and his neck would stretch and he would go well above six feet, like a tortoise coming out of a shell. Whether it’s true or not is difficult to say. Some men here swear they have seen Tom Spring stretch; they claim they held the measure themselves, but I have never been treated to a demonstration.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ said Pidgeon. ‘I have asked Tom about it and he winks and says, “I’ll show you one day, Peter.”’

  ‘Some say it’s a trick induced by the cut of Tom’s clothes,’ said Egan. ‘It really infuriates me, Mr Seymour, that I am not certain whether it’s true or not! Repeated blows to the head of a pugilist might have some effect, might unloosen the bones. I am not by nature a gullible man, but that story is one that has me perplexed. And once the story of Tom’s neck got going, half-believable tales came thick and fast, and before long we had our principle of accommodation.’

  ‘So a literally tall story begat other tall stories,’ said Seymour.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Egan. ‘But come now – you must make a drawing of our club.’

  Seymour drew a sketch of the Daffy Club, incorporating as a member a bald bespectacled type of the sort he favoured, though thinner than normal, and reading a newspaper. He showed a member with a nasty-looking dog lurking near a triangular spittoon, and various pipe-smoking and quaffing types lounging under the portraits of boxers and horses, and near the fowls and fish in display cases. Then he bade Egan adieu, and promised that he would submit the finished drawing the next day.

  *

  That night, Seymour could not sleep. There was something here, something in the idea of the Daffy Club and the Daffyonians, which had to be pursued.

  Even on the way home as he walked the gaslit streets, he had thought of the wonderful possibilities of Münchausen tales. He looked at the line of street lamps ahead – if a man were so thin that he could hide behind a lamp and jump out and steal the wallet of a passer-by, that would be too brown; but an Italian organ grinder who had trained his monkey to ascend the post, light a spill, and bring it down to light a customer’s pipe for a farthing – that was believable. But what if a man were so gullible that he even believed the brown ones? Suppose someone told such a man: ‘Stand me a drink, and I will tell you an extraordinary thing’? Then the tale was told of a criminal who had fasted for weeks in prison, until he was so thin that he had slipped through the bars, and having made his escape he embarked on a renewed life of robbery by jumping out on his victims from behind street lamps. And what if the tale were finished by saying: ‘And that is how I lost my wallet on the way to the Castle Tavern, and why I cannot afford to buy you a drink in return tonight, sir’?

  As Seymour walked under a lamp, he recalled some of his own far-fetched images, of men passing themselves through mangles, of women who had grown cows’ heads on their skin – what he might do if he could illustrate the tales of the Daffy Club!

  Jane was already in bed when he entered the house, and he joined her, but finding himself unable to sleep, he rose again. His mind was abuzz with the Daffy Club. He went downstairs, lit a lamp and sat at his desk.

  Before him was the drawing from the previous day, The Patent Penny Knowledge Mill. There were other pictures he had drawn in the past, on the March of Intellect, and the desire of men for knowledge and self-improvement.

  Suddenly he sat up. He opened a notebook and wrote down: ‘What if the gullible man not only believed the preposterous stories to be factual – but he travelled in search of similar stories, believing himself to be on a scientific expedition? Suppose he sought such nonsense because he thirsted for “useful knowledge”!’

  Now he knew he had it!

  The men of the Daffy Club said they travelled and, like Baron Münchausen, told of the wondrous things they experienced. In reality, they did not travel at all. But the gullible man, believing that he had not encountered such wonders because he had lived a life too limited and confined, would set out on the road to broaden his experience!

  Yes! Yes! Yes!

  It was also a way of showing up the twaddle in the Penny Magazine!

  Yes!

  The Penny Magazine’s stated objective was to enlarge the reader’s range of observation, and to add to his store of facts. So the gullible man would follow the principles of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge!

  What humbug might be foisted on this man by those who realised he was a greenhorn! It was obvious he would be preyed upon by swindlers. He could be taken in by any rogue. A gullible man needs to be gulled.

  It seemed to Seymour that the local stories and legends of England might also be incorporated. Der Freischütz had fascinated him once; but England had legends of its own – and such stories might be told to the gullible traveller as well. Tales of ghosts and demons and other horrors. He thought too of the amount of drink he had seen consumed that evening. Egan had told him that some members even consumed a pint of ale after every gill of daffy, on the basis that it helped keep a man sober. What a whopper that was, and he smiled at the thought of a cure for drunkenness that required drinking more alcohol! And what strange and nightmarish visions might be seen by a habitual toper who visited the Castle every night? The world of hallucinations could be part of this enterprise. And if a drunkard told of his hallucinations, the gullible man would take them as gospel truth! Then one more idea. What if there was a man who was concerned with genuine knowledge? Someone a bit like that man from the Aldgate branch of the Daffy Club, who displayed his knowledge of sporting facts. A man who by habit would seek to discredit the so-called science of the gullible man! An enemy!

  Yes! Yes!

  *

  ‘INTRIGUING PHENOMENON, THE DAFFY CLUB,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘It is a sporting club, because the members have some interest in sport. Sport is among the things they do. But to describe it as a sporting club would be to do violence to its identity. Its main concern is drink, and all the fun that arises from inebriation.

  ‘The point I wish to make, Scripty, is that if a club like the Daffy Club inspired Seymour, someone could say Seymour wished to produce a work about a sporting club, and strictly speaking, that would be true. But it would also be a gigantic lie – for “sport” is not the sole or even the primary concern of the Daffy’s members. Just imagine the mischief that could be wrought by a person determined to misrepresent Seymour’s intentions.’

  ‘So someone,’ I said, ‘could state that Seymour wanted to produce a publication about a cockney sporting club – and give a completely false impression that Seymour wished to concentrate on hunting, shooting and fishing.’

  ‘Exactly! But, far from being a narrow sporting-themed project, Seymour saw it as rich and varied. It became his pet idea. In odd moments, in between his work for the Looking Glass, Figaro and his many other commissions, he would return to the idea of this gullible man, knowing that one day he would do something with it. In due course, he perhaps came to see such a man not just as an isolated figure, but as representative of his age. The people had been gulled by politicians, particularly over the question of reform. Come with me.’

  In the library, he showed me a Seymour picture titled The Reform Egg. A man reaches into a bird’s nest of eggs labelled ‘Cheaper Food’, ‘Cheap Church’, ‘Repeal of Taxes’ and ‘Cheap Law’. The nest belongs to an aggressive gull.

  ‘But let us consider the next influence upon Seymour’s pet idea,’ said Mr Inbelicate. ‘We must look into the affairs of another club. A club that was founded in 1822.’
/>   *

  WHERE THE LONDON TO SALISBURY road crosses the Southampton to Andover road lies the village of Stockbridge, in the valley of the River Test. Here are charming trees and meadows, kingfishers’ lustre, and the sounds of peewit and snipe; but to an English angler’s heart, stirred by the rise of the mayfly, here is the finest chalk stream in all the land. On a bright spring day, the water is as pure and as clear as a window on fins, gills and scales.

  It was a day of unremitting sun in June 1822 – a day passed by Canon Frederick Beadon and his nephew Edward Barnard as honoured guests of the Longstock Angling Club. Now they walked back, shouldering their rods and baskets, from Testcombe Bridge to their hotel in Stockbridge.

  Canon Beadon was just nine years older than his nephew, but the two were not as close in family resemblance as they were in years. Beadon had a long face, a long nose and bright eyes, under a battered, wide-brimmed hat. His frame was large and strong, which he carried in a relaxed manner, swinging forward his large boots. By contrast, Barnard was slim, with small round glasses, and spiked hair poking from under a top hat, and his eyebrows gave him a mischievous or even devilish look, at odds with the profession of his uncle.