Death and Mr. Pickwick Read online

  ‘That can be slotted in somewhere,’ he muttered, and spooned more gooseberry pie into his mouth.

  *

  The girl continued to St Mary’s, where she delivered the sermon to the hand of her master, a man with forehead veins so prominent, and such bloodshot eyes as well, that the blood which Rowlandson saw drained out of the Reverend Baron might have been pumped into this reverend to use. When she left, the vicar broke the seal, and ran a quick florid eye over its contents. He looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. ‘Time to meet the boy,’ he said to himself.

  The vicar walked to his church porch, where waited the young Robert Seymour.

  ‘Good afternoon, Robert,’ said the vicar. ‘I hope you are ready for today’s practice.’

  ‘I am, sir.’ He took the paper, then took himself to the pulpit, while the reverend sat upon the furthest pew.

  Robert Seymour assumed an expression of the most extreme earnestness. He looked out towards the rows of the invisible congregation.

  ‘Let us consider today,’ he said, ‘Hebrews chapter thirteen, verse eighteen. “Pray for us; for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.”’

  ‘A little more emphasis on the word “trust”,’ said the reverend, from afar. ‘But continue.’

  *

  MR INBELICATE HAD COLLECTED NUMEROUS curious items, in the hope that one day they would form the basis of a specialised museum. At the same time, his preference – as he put it – was ‘life, not security’. Not for him the safety of glass cabinets. Thus, on a shelf in his library was a large, locked family Bible which threatened to tumble and crush the fragile object he had placed next to it: a painted, papier-mâché snuffbox which, though chipped, showed Dr Syntax sketching farm animals. This snuffbox is two hundred years old. For such a fragile item to have survived at all, one suspects that once there were many more such boxes.

  There are other items of Syntaxiana around the house. Next to the street door is an umbrella stand, holding an inflexible ebony cane, whose handle is a bronze casting of the head of Dr Syntax. It reproduces exactly the crescent-moon profile of jutting chin and prominent nose. ‘If,’ Mr Inbelicate said to me once, tapping the handle of the cane against his palm, ‘an undesirable ever came to the door, Dr Syntax would make a most remarkable impression upon him, don’t you think, Scripty?’ Under his bed he kept a rosewood cane of a similar design, all ready to Rowlandsonise a night intruder.

  Indeed, in the office where I type these words is a box file containing ancient advertisements and crumbling newspapers referring to Dr Syntax-themed hats, wigs, coats and saddles. I have seen copies of Mr Inbelicate’s letters to antique dealers imploring them to reserve such items, should they ever fall into their hands.

  All these things – snuffbox, canes, advertisements – are the physical evidence that Rudolph Ackermann and Thomas Rowlandson were right about the appeal of the character illustrated in the Poetical Magazine, as the all-rhyming publication came to be known. Dr Syntax rode the golden road to fame and success.

  Why hold back? There had never been such a phenomenon as Dr Syntax! London was gripped by a fever that only Dr Syntax could cure. And why not? War with France had weighed everyone down with care, every street had a veteran who had lost a leg or was missing an eye, everyone had a relative who had died on service. Yet still more men were called up, by insatiable recruitment posters on every hoarding. Wouldn’t you want to escape this misery? Wouldn’t you want a few minutes with some amusing coloured pictures? The result was that the Poetical Magazine was soon seen everywhere.

  For two years, Combe wrote his verses in prison, and Rowlandson drew his pictures in his top-floor apartment. When the run in the Poetical Magazine came to an end, Dr Syntax was published in book form. And Thomas Rowlandson and William Combe never met once in the course of their joint endeavours.

  Now let us return briefly to St Mary’s, Islington.

  *

  ROBERT SEYMOUR LOOKED TOWARDS THE empty pews with such intensity, and spoke with such conviction, that the church might have been filled with parishioners.

  ‘Surely if anything can be certain knowledge to a man in this world,’ he said, ‘it must be whether he has a good conscience or no. If a man has the faculty of thought, then he must know his own thoughts and desires, he must know his past pursuits, he must know the motives which have governed the actions of his life.’

  ‘Robert, you must not move your head too much, so that it becomes the thing observed,’ said the vicar. ‘I would though raise your hand on each use of the word “know”, a little higher each time, so that it may be above your head on the third “know”. Continue.’

  ‘The world, and other men, may deceive us with false appearances. How often do we guess correctly the true state of things on this earth? Only with great effort do we discover the truth of what lies before us. But the mind has all the facts and evidence it needs to know itself.’

  ‘Head a little too close to the paper. Be mindful too of the passage in Milton about the preachers who throw their features into such distortions—’

  ‘—as quite disfigure the human face divine.’

  ‘Well remembered! Continue!’

  At the end of the sermon, the vicar approached the pulpit, looked up at the boy, and said: ‘Why did you come to me that evening, Robert?’

  ‘I have told you already.’

  ‘Please tell me again.’

  ‘The Bible is my constant companion. It has inspired me to draw many pictures.’

  ‘Your pictures, yes. Do you know, the first time you came to my study, I noticed how you looked at one of my prints on the wall, St Paul Preaching at Athens. I have seen you look at it every time we have been in the study since then. Does it inspire you?’

  ‘My eyes move from one figure to another within the picture. The figures seem so varied in their appearances that I cannot possibly be wearied by it.’

  ‘I meant did the portrayal of preaching inspire you.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘And your mother – she wishes the church for you?’

  ‘My mother has always striven to make me remember the words of the lesson on Sunday. She has always said that, one day, before the Lord, we will all be required to repeat them. I hope that, were I to give a sermon, it would help the congregation to remember the words.’

  The vicar moved contemplatively around the pulpit. ‘There are many things that remain to be worked upon – your tone of voice needs to convince the indifferent – many things – but the solemnity you have – your sense of solemnity, Robert, there is something there. Well – we will meet again next week, if you wish.’

  ‘I do.’

  *

  I REMEMBER MR INBELICATE TAKING HOLD of that papier-mâché snuffbox, and that a chip of paint came away in his overflow of enthusiasm.

  ‘Robert Seymour might well have become a minor cleric had it not been for Dr Syntax,’ he said, as his fingernail tapped the box upon the shelf, next to the family Bible. ‘But, one day, his brother purchased an issue of the Poetical Magazine and left it on the table at home.’ Where once the goldfish jar had stood. ‘Young Robert picked it up, turned the pages – and was instantly captivated by the illustration of Dr Syntax Pursued by a Bull. Here was this bony old bore scrambling up a tree to escape the bull’s horns – hat and wig carried away on the wind, bald head exposed to public ridicule. “This is rather wonderful,” thought young Seymour.’

  ‘Yet to me this young Seymour sounds a very earnest boy,’ I said, ‘with a strong religious impulse, and sermonising tendencies. I would say he had much in common with Dr Syntax.’

  ‘Exactly, Scripty! And every time he joined in with the general laughter at Syntax, he laughed himself a little away from the church.’ Until eventually there came a day when he missed his appointment at St Mary’s pulpit. There was more enjoyment to be found in the print shops.

  *

  IN THE BACK ROOM OF the shop, with its floor-to
-ceiling display of old coloured prints, Robert Seymour knelt to examine The Farmer’s Toast by Gillray, showing fat men at a drinking bout around a table, their stomachs bulging so much that buttons would not fasten over the paunches.

  Next to this picture were other Gillrays – here was the prime minister depicted as a toadstool on a dunghill; there, politicians as a class shown as hungry piglets, not so much a litter as a swarm, climbing over each other to reach a teat on England’s poor sow, her ribs showing through her hide, as the life was sucked out by those who sought office.

  And whether by Gillray or by other caricaturists, the gallery’s rectangular wares revelled in disrespect for all established institutions: monarchy, Parliament, the law, church. Seymour trembled with shocking pleasure at the print of a citizen defecating into a crown, the steam rising from the newly deposited waste, a picture of George III used to wipe the bottom, while a stream of urine entered a bishop’s mitre.

  He avidly studied the pen-and-ink faces, learning – for instance – that a jutting chin could appear still more prominent with the addition of a few bristles. He stared into the pictures’ backgrounds, noting how lines and dots and dashes and curves were repeated, with gentle variation, and texture was the result – that a few strokes could suggest cobbles, or flowing water, or the bark of trees. Then he examined Hogarth’s linked series of pictures: Marriage à la Mode and A Rake’s Progress. He pored over a book, open on the gallery’s reading-stand, called The Academy for Grown Horsemen, which purported to offer instruction in the elements of horsemanship, but whose real purpose was shown by the picture of an uncontrollable steed upsetting a cartload of apples: to provoke laughter at disastrous incompetence.

  When he was finished with this shop, there were other print shops to visit. There were all the shops near St Paul’s: Knight’s, the delight of Sweeting’s Alley; Fairburn’s, the eye-feast of Ludgate Hill; Hone’s the wit-sharpener of Fleet Street. Their window displays were free galleries! A war, a revolution, the latest fashions – all could be seen for nothing. And when these windows were done, there were prints sold on the streets in upside-down umbrellas, spun round fast by grinning men to attract attention.

  In the pulpit of St Mary’s, he had once given a sermon to the effect that the poor are always with us – but how much more expressive to see a Gillray wretch in rags, eating raw onions, and warming unshod toes in front of a dying fire. Prints were a far better sermon than words. So Robert Seymour committed them to memory, and forgot the church.

  Soon, he was to be found in the crowd at the entrance to the House of Commons, joining in with the boos and hoorays, whichever were loudest, as the members went in. He recognised many politicians from their caricatures, and the crowd’s abusive shouts helped him identify still more. At Hyde Park, he pressed against the railings and watched the aristocracy ride past in their gilded carriages, with drivers in livery. Wherever he went, he brought out his sketchbook and drew whatever he saw.

  Until the day a middle-aged man knocked.

  The man was made in a small, neat style, in black clothes, with inch-thick black hair which, if not oiled, had a natural sheen, and looked younger than the face. The man’s skin was dark, as were his eyes, suggestive of Welsh or even Indian ancestry, and his silver buttons, bearing an embossed lotus, were set exactly as far apart vertically on his jacket as his eyes were horizontally. He passed his card to Robert Seymour’s mother, and she in turn passed it to Robert, whose face, already sullen, became more so. Around the card’s edge was a border of black, stylised leaves. Robert read the words: ‘Thomas Vaughan, Pattern Draughtsman. Duke Street, Smithfield.’

  ‘So, Robert Seymour,’ said the owner of the card. ‘Left or right-handed?’

  ‘Left.’

  ‘That can be changed. Your mother told me in her letter that you have some ability with a pencil.’

  ‘It is astonishing,’ she said, looking with pride at her son. ‘He prefers his pencil to people. If he is near a piece of paper it doesn’t stay white for long.’

  ‘That is relevant, but not truly necessary. I can teach anyone to draw.’

  ‘I can already draw,’ said Robert.

  ‘By drawing I do not mean sketching.’ Thomas Vaughan set down on the table a sample book of printed calico designs, and turned the pages to reveal arrangements of geometric figures, more stylised leaves and bold interpretations of flowers. ‘I have a motto – “Find the foible of the female”. Now you, madam – I believe a shawl in this pattern would be to your taste, taking into account your clothes, your skin, your eyes, and your hair.’

  ‘It would be, Mr Vaughan. They all would be.’

  Vaughan produced from a satchel a thick piece of sycamore, with a handle on the back, suggestive of a flat iron, but square, and ridged with a design of lilies repeated in rows. He ran his finger along this surface. ‘Your son’s designs, when he reaches the required standard, will be turned into one of these. Then colour is applied, and we press down – and there you have it!’

  Robert Seymour’s face indicated he would sooner not have this ‘it’.

  ‘Your son will receive two suits of clothes, and meals and lodging, Christian teaching on Sunday, and oysters, in proper season, no more than twice a week. I have set all these points down in the documents of apprenticeship.’ He laid them on the table, between the pattern book and the printing block. ‘They stipulate the minimum standards – but I assure you I shall go beyond them. My wife and I endeavour to keep our apprentices happy – we have musical evenings and outings and much more. But there is one … one clarification about the documents which I should establish for you and your son.’

  ‘He knows about the duties of apprenticeship, Mr Vaughan.’

  ‘Even so, I want him to be in no doubt about what apprenticeship entails. First of all, Robert Seymour, every day you will be up before sunrise to take advantage of the light.’

  ‘He does that already, sir,’ said Robert’s mother.

  ‘Very well. But let us suppose that in a few weeks, even with all I do to make your son happy, one day he wakes up and decides that he is not suited to pattern-drawing. Let us suppose further that, in his mind, he believes he would be better at some other pursuit. And let us additionally suppose that he is correct – that he would indeed be a great something else. That something else may be – let us say – producing pictures of his own. It does not really matter. But no matter how miserable he feels – no matter that the world and everyone in it proclaims that he should do something else – then, he would still be my apprentice for seven years. This cannot be altered. That is the nature of the documents which will bind your son to me.’

  Elizabeth Bishop looked towards Robert for some glimmer of approval. She found none. Only his intense expression which, at its most intense, as it was at that moment, bored right into her.

  But she placed her signature upon the documents.

  *

  A week later, Robert Seymour stood on the doorstep at Duke Street, with a sack over his shoulder containing clothes, a few books, and other small personal items.

  The door was immaculately black. He rapped the fleur-de-lys knocker. There was no response. After several minutes, he was about to knock again when he heard an upstairs window open. Stepping backwards for a better view, he saw a young woman leaning out who had the bushiest hair he had ever seen, and a perfect scowl for frightening hawkers and street musicians. She called out: ‘The new apprentice?’

  ‘I am Robert Seymour.’

  ‘Wait there until I have finished this room.’ The window slammed shut.

  After at least ten minutes the door opened, and there stood the bushy-haired woman in a pinafore.

  ‘You can come in but no one’s here for you,’ she said. In reply to his puzzled look, she added: ‘Mr Vaughan will be back when Mrs Vaughan is ready.’

  He stepped into the hall, and everywhere were flashes of colour, pink being especially prevalent, manifested in vases, paint and drapes.

  ‘Mrs
Vaughan decided to take the household away. An idea in her attic happens, and that’s that. So husband, boys, staff, off they went – all except for one person. And that’s me. Upstairs with you, now.’

  The route upstairs gave further evidence that the Vaughans were well-to-do. The stair carpet showed no signs of wear; there were wall hangings and paintings; there was a porcelain statuette of a horse rearing up on an elegant landing table; there was a fragrance of eau de toilette.

  ‘You’ll be sharing with Barton – a strange one, he is. You’ll get your meal today at five. You may look round the house – but the best of the valuables are under key, and all the important rooms too, so don’t get ideas. That’s your room along there. Oh and this I am to give you.’ She reached into her pinafore, and pulled out a key. ‘It’s for the street door. Come and go as you want. Make the most of it until the Vaughans come back.’

  *

  Smithfield market, after dawn.

  Whole sides of pigs hung from the hooks on the long sheds, and there was the smell of boiling meat. Stray dogs, driven wild with temptation, befriended the market workers, sniffing their aprons which were soiled green-brown with hay and grass, an animal’s last meal before slaughter. There was the sound of sawing and steel being sharpened. On the tripe stalls, black beetles fought for territory with the flies. At the rear of a shed, a ragged collection of men and women queued to collect a pint of tripe broth, theirs for the flourish of a jug.

  Robert Seymour sketched the tumbling of a pig’s internal organs as they followed the path of a blade. There was still breath in the animal, and its limbs twitched. He watched the steam rise from the blood around the butcher’s boots. Then he wandered inside a shed, towards a barrel into which a man emptied a bucket of white, bloodied brains. He glanced in other barrels nearby, which contained tongues, lungs and chitterlings. The workers here laughed and chirped. In an annexe, a mixture of blood, water and intestinal matter lay spread out across the floor. Seymour then walked to a shed where skinners separated hide from flesh, and snippers cut off hooves. He saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow-load of bones.