Death and Mr. Pickwick Read online

  ‘A good day,’ said Edward, as he took a sip from a flask of water, and passed it across.

  ‘A good day,’ said the canon, ‘but a week would be bliss.’

  ‘Eventually you will be a member of the Longstock.’

  ‘When someone dies or resigns.’

  ‘You will have mixed feelings in the pulpit if one of the members should fall ill.’

  ‘You are a wicked boy, Edward.’

  ‘Certainly there is no chance of my taking your place on the waiting list. You are the healthiest man I have ever met.’

  ‘You should follow my diet.’

  ‘I know – vegetables, fruit, salad, pastries, all in spectacular quantities, and cocoa every day for breakfast. No thank you, Uncle.’

  ‘You would never be ill, through all the long journey from childhood to old age. And meat in moderation, like I used to tell your mother. But come, let us have a chirruper.’

  *

  Shortly afterwards, they sat in the bright, oak-panelled lounge of the Grosvenor Hotel. ‘I pity the man who does not fish,’ Beadon said to Barnard. He whispered: ‘Now look at him.’

  He referred to a hunched man sitting alone on the other side of the room. ‘He has misery written on his face,’ said Beadon. ‘He goes to bed miserable, and wakes up miserable.’

  ‘He’s like a barrister without any clients,’ remarked Barnard. ‘Doesn’t know what to do with himself.’

  ‘If someone could persuade him just once to put a rod in his hand and sit on the bank, he would come alive. He would sleep soundly, and wake up refreshed.’

  ‘I couldn’t help but overhear you, gentlemen,’ said a soft voice from beside the sofa. It was the landlord, Mr Sherry, whose affable demeanour suggested a sampling of his surname, but whose wan cheeks also suggested he did not do so often. ‘That gentleman is miserable precisely because he is an angler – and this very morning he has decided to sell the rights to his fishery.’

  Barnard sat up. ‘On the Test?’

  ‘On the Test.’

  ‘You don’t mean the Houghton stretch?’ said Beadon. There was a hint of lust in his religious eyes.

  ‘The very same.’

  Barnard and Beadon exchanged significant looks. ‘Are you thinking we should strike?’ said Barnard.

  ‘I am,’ said Beadon.

  ‘The rights to the finest trout fishing in England.’

  ‘You are wrong, Edward. The finest trout fishing in the world. Mr Sherry, do you think you could introduce us to that gentleman?’

  The following morning, in the hotel’s breakfast room, Canon Beadon eschewed cocoa and ordered instead a glass of champagne.

  *

  Soon after Canon Frederick Beadon and Mr Edward Barnard acquired the rights to fishing on the Houghton stretch, a club was formed, in friendly rivalry with the Longstock: the Houghton Angling Club, composed of a dozen members, in accordance with Dr Johnson’s recommendation that a dozen was the best size for a club. A thirteenth member was added, which would seem unwise – but it was decided that anglers can have their own dozen, like bakers. As bread and fishes have a long tradition of association, this was agreed to be an excellent sentiment.

  The social standing of the Houghton’s membership was considerable. There was a lord and a baronet; at least two members owned large estates, with an enormous head of game; one had served on the board for the discovery of longitude; another was a man of science, a prominent member of the Royal Society; another, a distinguished sculptor; there were several Members of Parliament.

  They came by their carriages down the road through the centre of the village for the inaugural meeting of the club, and duly took their seats in a bay-windowed upstairs room in the Grosvenor Hotel. With all gathered at the table, it was agreed that records should be kept. The Longstock Club, after all, had recorded not only every fish caught since 1798, but every bottle of claret and port consumed by the membership. ‘I have seen their records,’ said Canon Beadon, to the other members at the table, ‘and I would judge that poison outnumbered poisson by a ratio of twenty to one.’ With a round of universal laughter the Houghton Angling Club began its history.

  *

  ‘THE EARLIEST WRITTEN RECORD OF the Houghton Angling Club,’ said Mr Inbelicate by the fireside, reading from his notes, ‘is not of particular interest. It merely states: “The Houghton Club was established in June 1822. The season was so unfavourable, owing to the north-easterly wind and the brightness of the weather, that scarcely any fish were taken.” I understand this embodies an old piece of angling lore, Scripty – “Wind from the east, fish bite the least; wind from the north, go not forth.” I am also given to understand that trout lose their appetite on bright days.’

  The next record read out by Mr Inbelicate was only a little longer: ‘“In the year of 1823, it was agreed to have a spring meeting, which took place on 14 April. The weather was unfavourable owing to the prevalence of a cold, north-easterly wind; but a few trout and grayling were caught between the 14th and the 19th when the party separated. No account of the fish was kept.”’

  A truly significant entry did not occur until four years later, on 16 July 1827: ‘“Although the book hitherto kept for registering the names of the members, the regulations of the club and the number and weight of the fish killed by each individual is still continued, yet it is conceived that another volume may be added not inappropriately to our piscatorial records for those voluntary contributions which either the pen or pencil of our members and friends may enable them to add to our general stock.”

  ‘From then onwards,’ said Mr Inbelicate, ‘the records of the club are of considerable interest to us – records in words and in pictures, Scripty. You must imagine that the Houghton men would come down to Stockbridge according to the call of the season, and wait until conditions were right for angling. They were forced to hang around the hotel, and the local inns. They were bored. They had to entertain themselves. An examination of the club’s records shows the result. They reflect all the good fellowship and conviviality – all the flow of cheerful banter, and the sparkles of wit. Something more than mere secretarial minuting developed in the Houghton Angling Club, Scripty, simply because the members were unable to fish.’

  He showed me a whimsical sketch of a club member, a bespectacled man in a nightcap sitting upright in a four-poster bed, yet holding his fishing rod. The end of his line led to a chamberpot at the foot of the bed. Underneath, a verse ran:

  Though winds blow cold, bedded in blanket hot

  Cheerful he rests and fishes in the pot.

  ‘Though not everything in the records was amusing, Scripty. Here for instance – an obituary entry for 1828, for the club’s man of science, William Hyde Wollaston.’

  He read: ‘“Wherever science is respected and friendship valued, his memory will be preserved in lasting records of the distinguished excellence by which his mind was adorned. These our short and simple annals will only show that whilst he was actively employed in the acquirement and diffusion of knowledge he often found leisure to join us in our humble sport, delighting and instructing us by his conversation and commanding by his talents and example our admiration and esteem.”’

  ‘The diffusion of knowledge again,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed. But here was a set of club records which could encompass all sorts of material, verbal and visual. And if we look at the people making the entries, the most enthusiastic contributor was one Richard Penn, a plump, cheerful and wealthy bachelor, who worked in the Colonial Department.’

  *

  ONE RAINY DAY, RICHARD PENN and Edward Barnard trudged through the mud of Stockbridge after a session at the riverbank. Both wore fishing boots; but as a consequence of overenthusiasm, supplemented by rain, Penn’s boots had become wet through and made a most disagreeable noise as he walked.

  ‘I can’t stand the boots farting any longer,’ said Penn. Saying which, he stopped, set down his bag, asked Barnard to hold his rod and took a knife from his poc
ket.

  ‘You are surely not going to cut the leather.’

  ‘The noise is driving me insane.’

  ‘But those boots are new.’

  ‘Mauritius will buy me another pair. Large consignment of sugar on its way, you know.’ He winked. He never fully explained his activities as a colonial agent, but sugar from Mauritius was understood to keep him sweet. Leaning on Barnard, he proceeded to cut two small holes in the bottom of each boot, letting the water run out.

  ‘Much better,’ he said, walking at substantially reduced volume. ‘Most anglers would suffer because it would never occur to them to cut the boots.’

  ‘Count me as one of them.’

  ‘It makes you wonder. What other bits and pieces of advice could be given to an angler?’

  ‘Make certain there is water in the river before you set up your rod?’

  He ignored the tease. ‘I am going to think about this. There may be little things which seem obvious, but which a novice angler would not know’.

  ‘The water in the river should preferably be of the wet kind?’

  ‘Mock all you want, Edward. It would be amusing, I think, to make a list of nuggets of advice.’

  *

  That night, Penn sat in his home, Rod Cottage, Riverside, not far from Stockbridge. In a notebook he wrote: ‘Are there any fish in the river to which you are going?’ After a pause he wrote: ‘Having settled that question in the affirmative, get some person who knows the water to show you whereabouts the fish usually lie, and when he shows them to you, do not show yourself to them.’ Every member of the club would, he realised, have witnessed some idiot novice who stood at the riverbank, peering into the water, checking to see whether there were any fish, thereby making sure there would not be.

  Soon afterwards, Penn, as keeper of the record book of the Houghton Angling Club, added a section ‘Maxims and Hints for an Angler to its pages. A few days later, spectacles were cast upon this entry and, attached to them, the thin face of Edward Jesse – keen angler, writer on the natural world, and friend of Richard Penn.

  ‘I think someone could learn from these,’ said Penn, closely observing his friend’s reaction to the ‘Maxims’.

  ‘You are surely right,’ said Jesse.

  ‘I rather think it would be very good if they were published,’ said Penn.

  ‘That is a very good idea,’ said Jesse.

  ‘They might even go well as an addendum to one of your works.’

  ‘They would indeed.’

  ‘Then we should make it happen.’

  ‘I do believe we should.’

  *

  ‘IT WAS THE CASE,’ SAID Mr Inbelicate. ‘that there was no man in the world easier to persuade than Edward Jesse. He would believe anything a person told him.’

  ‘A gullible man!’

  ‘Coming together, isn’t it, Scripty? Think of what Penn had persuaded him to do. Jesse was an author. An author’s work is one of the most personal and private spaces – and yet, in an instant Jesse was persuaded to incorporate Penn’s trifles in his book. People would foist any nonsensical story on poor Edward Jesse. And he had a particular fondness for anecdotes about the sagacity of dogs – take a look yourself.’

  He passed over a volume by Jesse, Gleanings in Natural History to which are added Maxims and Hints for an Angler. An anecdote was given in that volume which additional research has enabled me to present below, with further details.

  *

  AN OLD OFFICER OF THE 44th Regiment, who saw action in the Peninsula, had once, by fording a river, launched a surprise attack on the French while they were cooking – and always recalled with particular satisfaction how he and his men dined on the enemy’s soup that day. In consequence, every five years he and a small company of veterans paid a visit to Paris to dine on onion soup in one of that city’s restaurants. The officer would proudly display his medal with its three clasps, and the others wore their medals too, and once they even sang ‘God Save the King’, to the great chagrin of the restaurateur and the other diners, tinkling the medals with soup spoons by way of accompaniment.

  On the day of such a reunion, the officer of the 44th decided to pass a little time in a stroll across a bridge over the Seine. Always meticulous in his appearance, the state of his boots was naturally of great concern – so he was extraordinarily annoyed when a small poodle, with a coat matted by Parisian mud, suddenly jumped upon his boots as he stood in the middle of the bridge. He cursed, but did not kick the dog as others might, for he always had a special fondness for the canine race, and once owned a spaniel which flushed out game for his division. Accordingly, he wandered to a bootblack stationed a little way down the bridge, and soon the boots were shining to his satisfaction.

  That evening, the onion soup was greatly enjoyed by all, and the medals of the veterans were brought out for a cymbal-accompaniment to ‘God Save the King’. Shortly afterwards, the officer happened to mention the poodle that jumped on his boots and the old soldier next to him said: ‘That is peculiar. Exactly the same thing happened to me yesterday.’ In all details, their stories agreed.

  His curiosity aroused, the next morning the officer took up a position near the bridge. There was the poodle. He watched as it took itself down to the riverbank, where it rolled in the mud. The dog then returned to the bridge and sat for a while, apparently watching the pedestrians crossing the bridge. Suddenly the dog ran towards a man with well-polished shoes, and did exactly as before, rubbing itself all over the footwear. The unfortunate man had no other recourse but to visit the same bootblack as the officer had visited. After the shoeshine, the officer kept watch – and saw the dog approach the bootblack, to receive a titbit and a pat upon the head. Immediately afterwards, the dog returned to the bank of the Seine, and the entire process was repeated.

  The officer of the 44th had seen enough. He approached the bootblack and, after much evasion, the latter confessed that he was the owner of the dog, and had taught the animal the trick in order to win more trade. The officer’s anger was tempered only by consideration of the extraordinary sagacity of the dog. He still missed his old spaniel, and this poodle was clearly a wonder. So he offered the bootblack a high price, which was accepted, and the dog was duly taken by the officer on the boat to England.

  For some time, the dog was tied up and kennelled in London, but when the officer was assured of the creature’s loyalty, he undid the tether. For a couple of days the dog mooched around – but when the door was opened to admit a visitor, the dog bolted. After an extensive search in the nearby streets, the officer was resigned to accepting that the creature was gone.

  A week later, the officer received news of the death of one of the attendees at the reunion. As the deceased had married a local woman and gone to live in Paris, the funeral would take place in that city. The officer boarded a ship and, on the day prior to the funeral, decided to take a stroll along the banks of the Seine. When he came to the bridge where he had previously encountered the poodle, he saw, to his utter astonishment, that the dog had found its way across the English Channel to Paris, and to the very same bridge – where it was reunited with its former master, and was once again employed in the muddying of shoes.

  *

  ‘THAT STORY IS NOT COMPLETELY impossible,’ I told Mr Inbelicate. ‘One does hear extraordinary tales of animals finding their former owners.’

  ‘It’s hokum, Scripty, and it was planted on Jesse and he believed it, and he put it in his book, alongside the silly tips on fishing that Penn persuaded him to print. One of the many stories on the alleged sagacity of dogs he was taken in by, and which he published at various times in his life.’

  ‘I suppose it is the little seed of possibility that captures the gullible man.’

  ‘And perhaps he had not a speck of deceitfulness himself, and could not imagine that other men would be deceitful either. Undoubtedly, Penn spoke of Jesse when he showed Seymour the volume in which the “Maxims” appeared as an addendum – but I am get
ting a little ahead of myself.’

  *

  May 1833

  IN THE BAY-WINDOWED UPPER ROOM of the Grosvenor, a trout stared out at Robert Seymour from the depths of a glass case while Richard Penn sat at the club table, scrutinising the contents of a small jar of alcohol containing a fish, more recently alive, but so insignificant that no one would boast of landing it. The jar had been left with the landlord, for Penn’s attention.

  ‘People know about my scientific interests, and they send me specimens,’ said Penn, as he held the fish in tweezers towards the window, catching the light.’ This is a short-spined female cottins.’

  ‘I have never heard of a cottins,’ said Seymour.

  ‘That’s what I call them, even if no one else does. You’ll probably know it as a stickleback. Let me just dash off a note thanking this person for remembrance of my pursuits, and tell him he’s found a cottins. Take a look at our club book while I do that. You must add something to the book yourself. It’s an unbreakable club rule.’

  Seymour turned the pages and smiled at a drawing by Edwin Landseer of a freshwater fish the size of a shark, breaking the surface of the river as the angler’s rod bent like a bow under the strain of the catch. He leafed through accounts of the excitements of good sport, and the disappointments of bad, as well as jokes clever and jokes groan-provoking, and reports of the members’ multifarious exploits.

  A voice in the corridor broke his concentration on the club book.

  ‘He’ll never kill that pig,’ said the voice. ‘He’s grown too fond of it.’

  ‘He says it will be slaughtered on Monday at sunrise,’ said a second voice.

  ‘I have heard that before, Mr Sherry. But we shall see.’

  The door to the club room opened. Edward Barnard entered, and was promptly introduced to Seymour. Penn explained that he had written to the artist to commission humorous illustrations for a new edition of the Maxims, which would be published without Jesse’s anecdotes, and had extended an invitation to attend one of the club’s friendly gatherings.