Death and Mr. Pickwick (11 page)

‘The two of them would walk through the streets of London on a summer's night. Thomas told me that sometimes the draper would become distracted, and, ignoring all the people on the street, he would take Thomas by the arm and pull him to some fragment of London from before the Great Fire. Sometimes it would be a decoration protruding from the brickwork, which didn't match the rest of the building. Often it was an old merchant's sign – the draper had a particular fondness for those – I remember Thomas mentioning a griffin under a window. A stone feather – that was another. And the draper would insist that Thomas sketch the decoration, and make a record. So the bond between them grew.

‘But this friendship was the bellows to the flames of Edward Dayes's jealousy. And one afternoon, Edward Dayes quarrelled with my son, and accused him of spending too much time with the draper, and neglecting his work, and after just three years of the proposed seven, Dayes dismissed him from the apprenticeship. It was for the best, of course, for what more could my son learn from a man who was riddled with such ill feelings? So Thomas took his own way, and often accompanied the draper on his excursions.

‘But even when Thomas left his service, Edward Dayes was consumed with jealousy. I suspect he spent his time dwelling upon the thought of the young apprentice who was better than the master. You see, one day – some years later – in a fit of desperation – when his jealousy must have taken him to a pinnacle of loathing himself – one day, Edward Dayes—'

Seymour looked up, as the interruption to her story was so marked. He watched as she drew her finger from ear to ear and made a sound suggesting a blade.

He said in astonishment: ‘
He slit his own throat
?'

‘He made a hole in the water, yes. The circumstances of how he killed himself are not clear. No one seems to know. That is very strange. You would expect every detail to come out. It must have been a truly
terrible
death, too terrible even to describe. Perhaps it was with a knife – it may not have been his throat, perhaps he thrust it into his stomach and disembowelled himself. Perhaps he tied himself to a beam, and jumped, and his own weight removed his head clean from the shoulders. Perhaps he set fire to himself – I have thought of that, and remembered my old observation that he seemed made of wax. We shall never know.' She sipped her tea. ‘How is the drawing coming along?' she said, in complete blitheness.

‘There is just a little more to do.' He resumed sketching, but he fidgeted awkwardly, and this communicated itself to the pencil, and the little cotton ruff at her throat he drew in a careless line, and the lead broke upon the paper.

‘You are fast. But don't be impatient,' she said, as he picked up another pencil. ‘Yet don't be timid. The one good thing my husband will teach you with his little petals and leaves will be a confidence with the hand. You need a good sweeping movement across the paper.'

He turned the portrait for her to see.

Mrs Vaughan looked at the picture, then at Seymour, then at the portrait again. In a welling up of feeling, she asked him to come to her, and she grasped him to her bosom, hugging him as though for dear life.

*   *   *

It was a Sunday evening, two years on, in a bachelor's narrow and untidy dining room, on the other side of London, and baked carp was served.

Wonk had accepted an invitation from his uncle, because his father had always advised him to keep in with this relative, a half-brother, as one day it might bear dividends: a letter had arrived at Vaughan's a few days before, stating that a friend may also be brought. It occurred to Wonk that if Seymour attended, it would spread the sometimes difficult work of conversation – and besides, the offer of supper meant Seymour was perfectly happy to go.

The bearded uncle, who had been known to discourse on the hierarchy of a herd of cows after a roast beef sandwich and on the Dutch trade in cloves after a spoonful of apple pie, now turned his attention to fish.

‘A friend of mine caught this carp and I am grateful to him,' he said. ‘But no fish tastes as fine as the fish you have caught yourself. And the tastiest fish in the river are usually the hardest ones to catch.'

‘You speak from experience as an angler, sir?' asked Seymour.

‘I do. I don't get the time these days.' Piles of loose papers around the dining room, whether on the floor, or on the sideboard, or stuffed into bookshelves, were testimony to other interests.

‘What is the tastiest fish you have ever caught, Uncle?' said Wonk, as it was the only question that occurred to him.

‘I know that without a moment's consideration. I spent a week at the River Irk, and the eels there are uniformly
delicious
. A truly
beau
catch, every single one. It is the fulling mills on the river. All the fat, oil and grease scoured out of the cloth gets under their scales. Oh I can taste the eels now!' He rapped the hilts of the knife and fork upon the tablecloth as he usually did when a new idea occurred to him over dinner. ‘Why don't you lads take up fishing?'

‘I don't know that Mr Vaughan would approve,' said Wonk.

‘Nor Mrs Vaughan,' said Seymour.

‘Sunday afternoon is your own, isn't it? Come with me.' They left the baked carp steaming upon the plates as he led the boys to an attic, where he sorted out two bamboo fishing rods, as well as reels and other equipment. ‘Ah, and something else. Come with me again.' He returned to the dining room, as the boys carried the equipment downstairs. From a high shelf, among many books on diverse themes, he reached down a copy of Izaak Walton's
Compleat Angler.
The carp by this time was stone cold; but all thought of eating was gone as the bachelor reminisced about angling expeditions of the past, and the heat of his enthusiasm began to kindle the curiosity and interest of Seymour and Wonk as well.

*   *   *

The result was that every fine Sunday, Seymour and Wonk sought the joys of river and pond. On a scorching afternoon they sat upon the bank until the skin on the backs of their hands peeled, with Walton as the only balm.

‘Walton says that no life is so happy and so pleasant as the life of an angler,' said Seymour, gazing into the river.

‘Anglers,' replied Wonk, taking up the theme, ‘sit on cowslip banks. And drink cowslip wine. And hear the birds sing. And feel as quiet in their hearts as a stream.'

‘But Walton makes it harder to go back to the city afterwards,' said Seymour. ‘Where there are no fish except those on fishmongers' slabs and the birds sing shrilly just to make themselves heard.'

He stood, stretched his legs, and then lay down prone upon the bank, looking into the water. ‘Have you ever noticed, Wonk, a curious thing – that a dark fish which is swimming close to the surface can look darker than a fish that swims at the bottom among the weeds?'

‘I think I
have
noticed that,' replied Wonk. ‘But without you I wouldn't have been truly aware of it.'

Seymour turned his head and he and Wonk looked at each other for several seconds. Seymour took in the deep, dark eyes of his friend, and then smiled, made a flourish with his hands, and broke the stare.

‘Let me tell you something that I have observed,' said Wonk. ‘When you are in a good mood, you always do a little movement with your hands, just like you did now, just like a stage performer after a trick.'

‘Oh – hands, hands, hands. Do you know, Wonk, hands are one of the most troubling things to draw. If you have the hands empty in a picture, there is too much fussy detail in the fingers. It is better to have hands holding something. Like a bag, or a cane, or an umbrella. Or a fishing rod. Or something else.' He looked across to the opposite bank, where sat a patient angler who had not been observed to catch anything at all. ‘Now what's he going to try next?'

Beside the angler, upon the grass, was an unrolled cloth, which showed off an outstanding collection of artificial fish and other lures, which by a crafty disposition of painted wood, stuffed leather and mother-of-pearl suggested the glint of scales. The angler was currently taking great pains to select the right lure, and eventually settled upon a leather frog, which he attached to his line and cast into the water.

Seymour took out his sketchbook and embarked on a rapid drawing of the angler. ‘You know, Wonk,' said Seymour as he added details, ‘an angler seeks three things. To catch many fish, to catch large fish, and to catch difficult fish. The bungling angler has these ambitions too – except that he will catch no fish at all – or if he does catch a fish it will be a very small one – and if he
should
land a difficult fish he will sustain personal injury and be arrested for trespass. Here.' In the drawing, the angler had sat so long in the same position that a spider had woven a web between his person and the rod. ‘I might call this “A Study in Patience”.' He very deliberately made the flourish with his hands.

‘You draw so effortlessly, Robert,' said Wonk.

‘No, it is
not
effortless!' The sudden anger made Wonk start.

‘I meant to say,' said Wonk, ‘that you draw so quickly. You could sell pictures like these. Perhaps you could even get them etched and printed, and sell lots of copies.'

‘Strangely enough, Mrs Vaughan showed me some of her son's old copper etching plates the other day. She had a whole box of them, all caked with verdigris and filth. She came over mopey, though. She said one of the last things her son asked her to do was to sell the plates, to be melted in a refiner's pot. But she couldn't bear to do it.'

‘Can she teach you how to etch the plates?'

‘She doesn't know enough. She just knows you bite the metal with aqua fortis, and that when the plates go in a press, it forces the paper into the grooves. Ha, she recalled something her son said once. “The paper is forced into the grooves, and sucks up the ink like an old aunt sucking on her gin.”' He stood up. ‘We've got something!' Seymour's line was taut.

They glimpsed the arrow-shaped head, the flash of gold-green scales, there were the struggles on the surface. It was a pike.

Seymour reeled the fish in, and Wonk administered the club to its head.

‘Look at the teeth!' said Wonk, inserting his finger right inside, as Seymour held open the bony jaw, revealing the inward-curving fangs.

They stopped at an inn before returning to Vaughan's, carrying the prized pike in a sack.

‘Anything you want to sell in that?' said the landlord with an artful look.

‘It's our first pike, and we intend to eat it,' said Seymour.

They took a small circular table at the rear. Shortly afterwards, an unkempt man entered, with a bulging sack of his own, who said a word to the landlord and was promptly shown into a back room. The man emerged a few minutes later, carrying no sack at all. About a quarter of an hour later, a small respectably dressed man – in his black garb, and with his grey hair, he could have passed for a lawyer – entered the inn and was shown into the back room, and reappeared with a sack identical to the one carried by his unkempt predecessor. He left immediately.

‘Something nice for his supper there,' said Seymour. ‘I would like to taste game myself. But Vaughan is too law-abiding to touch it.'

‘Not so. The cook gave me a slice of poacher's pie once that she made for him. Pheasant.'

‘I am surprised. Still, who needs game when we have pike?'

For they had come to an arrangement with Vaughan's cook that she would prepare any fish they caught, as long as they would give her a share. Thus, that evening they dined on baked pike with mushroom sauce. Cook had strongly urged that the fish should be brined for a whole day first, but Seymour and Wonk were not to be denied. They ate it on their own, on trays, in their room.

‘Who would ever buy fish from a fishmonger?' said Seymour. But suddenly he put down his plate. ‘I have rarely known such happiness as today. Come here.'

For the first time, the two boys hugged. Seymour drew back, and looked at Wonk. ‘I truly want to draw you, Wonk.'

‘You may.'

Instead, the two youths kissed.

*   *   *

The Battle of Trafalgar was fought every breakfast time. Admiral Nelson stood up at the table, raised a sausage as a telescope, and gave the command for a broadside.

So went the tale among the proportion of Hoxton's population not enclosed within the iron gates of Hoxton's home for naval maniacs.

It was not surprising, therefore, that two young men, approaching that establishment on a hot summer's day, puffed up their cheeks and gave facetious impressions of cannonfire as they passed in front of the railings. One was Robert Seymour, now eighteen, the other his friend Joseph Severn, the older by five years. Both carried sketchbooks and shoulder bags.

‘Weather like this makes them even madder,' said Severn, rubbing a finger around his nose and other areas of perspiration. ‘Imagine if they broke out.'

‘I suppose they could find employment in His Majesty's Government,' said Seymour.

‘Ah, it is too long since our last meeting, Robert,' said Severn, turning towards Seymour and smiling – the smile, set in that particular cast of Severn's face, was no mere smile for Seymour.

‘Stand still for me one moment, would you please, Joseph?' he said.

‘Is there some speck of dirt on my face?' Severn stopped and turned to Seymour.

‘I just want to look properly at you.' Seymour placed his hands on Severn's shoulders. ‘You are trimmer and stronger, and your hair is curlier. Everything about you cries out to be painted. Shapely eyebrows, huge brown eyes, strong nose, luscious mouth—'

‘You are embarrassing me, Robert,' said Severn, striking the hands away and moving on.

‘It is true! People swarm around you and swoon, because they are unable to help themselves. If you would let me paint you, it would be the making of my reputation.'