Death and Mr. Pickwick (112 page)

‘There's a Seymour mentioned here,' she said. ‘Is this something to do with you, Mr Seymour?'

‘A distant relative,' I said. ‘Dead now. I scarcely knew him.' She nodded, and put the
Figaro
down. Then she tried to interfere some more.

A doctor has prescribed me some medicine. I took a dose. It wasn't enough. I took more. Eventually I had four doses. Mrs Shadick had noticed the level the day before, and now she picked up the bottle.

‘How much of this have you drunk, Mr Seymour?' she said. ‘You surely haven't drunk that much since yesterday. This isn't right. How many doses?'

‘Four,' I said.

‘Four? In one night?
No
, Mr Seymour.'

I stayed silent, and she went away, clicking her tongue.

I laid a trap for her in response. The next night, I placed one of my father's more gruesome drawings, called
She Was Cut Up
, beside the bottle. It shows a man horrified as he draws back a boudoir curtain, and the light from a crescent moon in the window reveals a mutilated woman – her decapitated head and arms are on a dresser next to a candle, while her legs and torso are on the floor. But when Mrs Shadick glanced at the drawing, after collecting my supper plate, she did not seem to take in its meaning at all. She laughed and said: ‘That reminds me – I have some mutton I can cut up for you tomorrow, Mr Seymour.' The woman is completely obtuse and I want nothing to do with her. But even if she were the cleverest bluestocking in Canterbury, I would not want her near me.

She came upstairs again the next night to collect my supper plate. In a mood of some distraction, I had forgotten to close the door, and was sitting in an armchair looking out of the window and she knocked quietly, a truly deferential knock. I said to her, ‘Come in,' but it was unnecessary, for she was already at the plate.

‘Why, you have scarcely touched your food, Mr Seymour,' she said.

I said nothing, and continued to look outside.

‘You are very good at paying your rent, Mr Seymour. Never a day late. You wouldn't believe the way I have had to argue with some guests! Students are the worst. But – if you don't like the food I cook, you should tell me. I can do something different.'

‘I don't like to put you to any inconvenience.'

‘Oh it isn't any inconvenience,' replied this little woman, with a warm purr. I could tell that she was pumping herself up for a big question. ‘Don't you have any relatives or friends, Mr Seymour?'

‘Not now.'

‘I have never said this to any gentleman who has ever lodged here before – and I only say it to you because you
are
a gentleman – you have never said a bad word to me – and the things I have been called by some – no woman should be called them – but, what I am trying to say Mr Seymour – if you ever want to come downstairs into the parlour – it could be good for both of us – you being on your own – and I get a bit lonely myself sometimes.'

Suddenly, without any warning, I stood up. I could not help myself. ‘If you only knew what loneliness is – my solitude drives me
mad!
'

She was shocked, flustered, and she exited immediately, shaking the fork and the knife against the plate, rattling them all the time she went downstairs. I heard her say to her son – ‘That's a man who's been disappointed in life. I tried!'

*   *   *

Sometimes, when I have been traced, I have been asked my opinion of Dickens. I have thought about this. And I have come up with the phrase: ‘Dickens carries his bias for fictitious narrative to ultra-professional length.'

I remember when, as children, my sister and I were dangerously ill. The poverty of our family was worsened by two blows which happened around this time, both affecting Uncle Edward and his ability to provide for us. First, there was a change of proprietor at
The Atlas.
The new owner wasn't so keen on Uncle Edward's musical reviews. Uncle Edward also played the organ at the Chapel of Ease in Holloway – but the vicar told him that subscription letters for his services, sent out to the parish, had not received the expected response, and there was no alternative but to terminate his work.

In desperation, my mother wrote to Dickens. She reminded him of his connection with my father. I remember her outrage when she received his reply – the door was open, where I lay in my sickbed, and I heard her discussing Dickens's letter with Uncle Edward. Dickens said that her letter was untrue, and he declined to have any further involvement with her. She wept, and Uncle Edward comforted her as best as he could. In my trunk, I have come across a draft of a letter Uncle Edward sent to the Literary Fund, the only source of aid he could think of – I confess I was overcome by his words to them: ‘I live modestly. I have never got into debt before. I fear what will happen to my sister and her children.'

There was something else that happened around this time. I was too young and too sick to take it all in, though my mother mentioned it on subsequent occasions, and so I know the details. I was lying in the parlour, swathed in blankets. A man who knew Uncle Edward from
The Atlas
had been in touch with Dickens, urging him to help us.

‘Dickens seeks some concession from you,' said Uncle Edward. ‘Then he will help.'

‘A concession? What sort of concession?' said my mother.

‘It is vague.'

‘Dickens knows about the children? He knows that they are dangerously ill?'

‘Apparently so.'

‘What concession can I make?

‘I presume something concerning
Pickwick.
'

‘He wants me to concede to a falsehood? He is asking me to choose between truth and my children's lives? How
can
he put me in that position?'

But we survived, and my sister and I recovered, and no concession was made.

*   *   *

In the trunk there are letters from my mother, written to me when I was a young man. They usually take the form of: ‘Mr so-and-so came and trimmed your strawberry plant last Sunday and cut the rose tree.'

Even now, although she has been dead for over thirty years, I dislike her calling it
my
strawberry plant. Also, almost every letter she wrote had some warning about, or concern for, my health, possessing a residual power to annoy me to this very day.

So, for example, I might have written to her about coming home in the rain and she would say: ‘You must take care to have your clothes well aired before you put them on again after being wet. If you do not, you will lay the foundation for bad health or a fatal illness.' If I didn't have a cold, she would try to stop me contracting one. ‘Do not be tempted to stand long on the ground – you will be sure to catch cold if you do. The rays of the sun draw the vapours from the earth and make it dangerous to stand still.' For similar reasons, I was to avoid doing any activities which led to perspiration. But if I did have a cold, she offered advice too: ‘Let me caution you to air your linen while you have a cold. Have some gruel. Put your feet into warm water. If you have a headache, lie down. Do not read, especially books of the imagination, keep as quiet as you can. A short gentle walk might do you no harm if the wind is not bleak, but tie something over your mouth and button your coat over your chest. Practise the violin with moderation.'

But, like so many young men, it was a case of: ‘If you “don't” me, I'll
do
.' In particular, I practised the violin in the extreme.

That concern about reading often came up. Sometimes I deliberately mentioned that I found little time for reading, as a sort of game, because I knew she would respond to my comments. ‘I am glad you do not find much time for reading,' she would say. ‘Your health will derive more benefit from walking in the open air.' On the other hand, sometimes I mentioned reading a long novel, even when I hadn't read it, just to get a warning.

But when I went out on a boat trip! ‘You committed a most imprudent act,' she wrote by return, ‘by going on to the water. I hope you will not do it again. It might cost you your life or leave some consequences which would cling to you as long as you live.' And after her signature she even wrote: ‘PS – Don't go into the water again.'

I did, at one point, make a decision to say as little as possible in my letters to her. This led to the complaint that my letters were too short. Also my letters had to be punctual. Otherwise: ‘The non-arrival of your letter at the usual hour on Monday morning began to fill my fertile mind with painful apprehensions. I thought you had got a kick from a horse or were ill from putting on damp clothes and I don't know how many more ideas came into my head which were dispelled by the postman after two hours of suspense.'

Though, as I looked at those letters again recently, a part of me missed her warnings, for there is no one who cares about me now, and even if there were, I know I would turn them away.

*   *   *

In recent years, there has been the emergence of a cancerous growth on my face. I go to Charing Cross Hospital for treatment. Yes, the irony is that I go
there
, where Mr Pickwick's spectacles came off in the struggle with the cabman. The doctor asks me to remove my spectacles, and he strokes the cheek, and expresses a hope that the disorder will leave me. I have neither scope for great hope, nor great alarm. I am not prone to hypochondria. A lifetime of my mother's worries for my well-being have cauterised my feelings about illness.

*   *   *

I have mentioned that, from time to time, I am traced. A few years ago, one obsessive collector of Pickwickiana showed me a letter he had acquired, and I asked whether I might copy it. It was from the artist Mr Buss, dated 19 November 1845, to a wealthy associate of his, a certain Mr Mayer. Mr Buss had heard about our plight, for he had a friend who was acquainted with my father, and in the hope of helping us, he had written to his associate. Let me quote the most significant line: ‘Seymour originated the Pickwick Club. Pickwick (the immortal) and his companions.'

The companions – he says Pickwick
and his companions
. That is not insubstantial. If my father invented the main character
and
the three supporting characters in
The Pickwick Papers
, that is not the tiny, passive role Dickens assigned to him in his preface. And it is another paradox: Dickens is hailed as one of the greatest creators of characters in the history of English literature – he, of all writers, had no need to use another man's characters. If Dickens really adopted characters invented by my father, then how could he possibly have been in control of the project, as he claimed?

I wondered whether, in my father's old prints, there were precedents for the characters which would lend support to Mr Buss's statement. It was easy to find forerunners for the sporting character, Mr Winkle, but what about the others? I may say that it did strike me that my father's very profession as an artist meant the club he envisaged would not consist of duplications of Mr Winkle. The lack of variety would disgust his eye – an artist seeks characters different in appearance, to create visual interest.

*   *   *

So it was a significant discovery, that day in a second-hand shop when I came across a print called
The Modern Style of Language.
Here, my father had depicted characters of four different humours; the Sentimental, Narcissical, Ironical and Byronical. That last figure was a poetical character – who wore a blue cloak, exactly as the Pickwickian poet Snodgrass did.

Some time later, in another shop, I found a picture titled
A Declaration!
of a fat man on his knees, wooing a fat woman who was sewing. Here was a character something in the manner of Tupman.

I knew that my father had illustrated a meeting of antiquaries, so there was already a foreshadowing of Mr Pickwick's interests – but the shadow became a solid form when I discovered his character Peter Pickle, whose humorous and diverse experiences included a period
as an antiquary
.

This may not be the end of it. Could my father have created a fortune-hunter, like Jingle? Judging from his works, he could. There is his picture
Playing the Lyre
, which shows a handsome soldier wooing a fat old woman, who blushes behind a fan – they are sitting on a sofa, while he literally plays the lyre, and an accompanying verse brings out the significance of the instrument:

And rich old ladies most admire

Those youths who play the lively lyre.

So there is nothing improbable about my father inventing Jingle.

I confess that, before I saw Mr Buss's letter, I had wondered whether my mother was entirely to be believed concerning
Pickwick.
She claimed that the drawings for the first two numbers, with the exception of that of the dying clown, were already in existence before my father met Dickens; and that, even in the case of the dying clown, there was an earlier version of that drawing in which the character wasn't a clown, but a writer.

I admit – because of her ridiculous and excessive concerns over my health, I sometimes had an attitude of: ‘Oh,
is that so
, Mother?' I believed she exaggerated. I admit – at times, I even thought she was a little deranged. I had seen
with my own eyes
evidence implying that she was wrong: for in my father's workbook there was an entry referring to the re-etching of the
Pickwick
plates, suggesting that my father had been asked to redo or modify the plates, in accordance with Dickens's wishes; and so I concluded that even if Dickens were exaggerating, my mother couldn't have been completely right either. But when I saw Mr Buss's letter I did wonder whether my scepticism towards her was justified. Yet the evidence of the workbook seemed undeniable. It is true I had been to Cobham, and believed that that particular picture had been drawn prior to my father's meeting with Dickens, but I couldn't believe all the rest were.