Death and Mr. Pickwick (119 page)

*   *   *

My sole comforter in this land now is drink.

*   *   *

Often now, in the evenings, I wander along Bourke Street. There are cabs always arriving and departing. Every other building is a public house or a restaurant or a tobacconist or a billiard hall. Young men stand in groups, drinking from bottles, with a lazy I do-not-want-work demeanour.

Sometimes this street makes me think that Richardson's show from Bartholomew Fair has risen again in Australia, for there are so many lamps, lighting so many entertainments. Couples walk arm in arm. A man barks out the attractions of a circus or a theatrical event. Fiddlers and trumpeters play, hot potatoes are hawked, and so are muffins – I look at the muffin seller on the corner, and he especially reminds me of England, with his basket covered up in green flannel to keep his wares warm. I watch him ringing his bell and crying ‘Muffins and crumpets – o!' and I am almost back in England.

Sometimes, especially at daytime, I wander to the Eastern Market, a roofed arcade where hay is sold from wagons, and there are a few stalls selling miscellaneous items. Quite often I listen to a man making a political speech on the pavement outside the arcade, attracting a small crowd as he proclaims that a young country should not be like the old.

*   *   *

I have avoided writing this down until now. It is a shameful episode in my life, and I write it some months after it happened.

I had been drinking very heavily, and alone in my room I began to make wild and violent statements. I have no recollection of any of this. But I am told I said: ‘I will kill him – I will pull him apart – I swear I will.'

I am not clear in my mind who these thoughts were directed towards, if I did say them. In my heart, I do not believe I uttered such words. But the landlord reported me to the authorities. He said he feared that I would injure him or his wife. I heard these claims read out in court. I was charged with lunacy through intemperance. The landlord told the court: ‘Mr Whitehead is always under the influence of alcohol.' I have never felt so ashamed in my life.

The court ruled that I be remanded in hospital for seven days, for medical examination. A ward cleaner, who liked to prop himself on his mop as though it were a punt-pole, leering away through his facial stubble, put a newspaper on the sheets as I lay in bed. ‘Thought you might like a read,' he said, with a laugh. ‘You're in it.' I saw, to my humiliation, an article headed: ‘Lunacy Through Drink'.

*   *   *

I am coughing a lot these days. If I can get it under control, I must work on some material for the
Melbourne Punch
, which will earn a little. I survive on whatever food I can get, mainly oxtails from the boiling houses which render sheep and bullocks for their fat. The oxtails are yours if you take the trouble to carry them away. I have found an innkeeper who will cook them at the back if I stay for a drink. I sleep in his stables.

*   *   *

I have developed a tendency to wander from one side of Melbourne to another. I go to the wharves, where young shiftless men eye me up, and my only protection is my poverty. I visit the filthy lanes around Little Bourke Street, among the Chinese opium dens. A little walk away, and I am in fashionable Melbourne. Then I make my way back to the wharves, and I sit at the river's edge. There is another man I sometimes see, a drinker like myself, and he grunts a few pleasantries.

*   *   *

Neild urges me to be temperate. He says that my eyes are getting so bloodshot, and my face so red, that if he sees me the memory lingers for days.

*   *   *

It is rare that a chance meeting with someone from the past is a pleasant experience. People drift apart from people for a reason. The chance meeting I had the other day was the worst in my life, and it stings to think of it.

I was sitting down in the street, coughing, obviously not feeling in the best of spirits, when a man approached me from the front. He has grown a long moustache, and now has receding hair, but I remember him, from back in England. His name is Horne.

‘There is always hope, Charles,' he said, as he stood over me.

‘Hope is mockery,' I spat out. ‘The present is intolerable. And the one virtue of the past is that it is true.'

‘I have seen you on a number of occasions since I came to Melbourne, but you haven't seen me. Recently I saw you at a book auction.'

‘I was buying some of my own books. They were cheap enough. I have now resold them. And before you ask – no, I did
not
make a profit.'

‘There is something I have put in motion to help you. After I saw you at the auction, I decided to write to Thackeray at the
Cornhill.
I have given him a full account of your circumstances, as I have observed them, and remarked on the shameful manner in which Australia treats a man of your talent.'

‘You have done
what
?'

I struggled to my feet, coughing as I did so. Horne tried to help me. I pushed his hand away.

‘It is sure to do you good, Charles.'

‘Surely you have not given my name? Tell me you haven't. You have surely disguised my name with asterisks?'

‘There must be no false delicacy. The full truth must be told.'

‘Who
on earth
do you think you are? You have let people in London see what I have become!'

‘I did it to help.'

‘And you thought that gave you the right to expose me to ridicule and contempt?'

I could barely stop myself from striking Horne. He was saved by my coughing fit, which robbed me of my strength.

‘Do not say you did it to help,' I told him, when I had recovered enough to speak. ‘You have your own concerns, Horne. I can guess what you are doing. You are
using
me – using poor, pathetic Whitehead to prick and poke the conscience of Australia about the neglect of authors. Australia is blinded by Mammon, you'll say, and this is what happens. Authors should be feted and caressed and yet they end up in the gutter.'

‘In spite of what you think, this will help you.'

‘No – it will help
you
! You have no idea what you have done to me! I will not put up with this! I came here thinking that no one would find me here. And
you
find me.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘To write to the
Cornhill
without delay. I will pay my own postage somehow. I
will
put a stop to this.'

After I had written the letter – which I could ill afford to post, but I had to – I gradually calmed down. In the evening, I sat at the river's edge. Beside me was the man who grunts pleasantries. Without any invitation I said to him – I don't know why – ‘I will recite you a poem, a good poem. I wrote it myself, some years ago. It is called “The Solitary.”' I lifted the bottle, wiped my lips and began:

An hour, and this majestic day is gone;

Another messenger flown in fleet quest

Of Time—

But I could not remember how it continued. I took another drink.

I said to my companion it didn't matter. Who would read it nowadays, even in London, let alone Australia?

Once, everybody was wild for poetry. Especially Byron. It was a disgrace not to have read his latest poem and not to be able to recite long passages. Parents ensured that their children knew lengthy poems by heart. Then along came
Pickwick.

Before
Pickwick
, the London newspapers used to be full of advertisements written in poetical form. After
Pickwick
, the taste for verse declined. Few could earn a living writing advertising poems now.

I patted my companion on the shoulder and left. I was hungry. I wandered past an inn and through the window I saw people laughing, gathered around a table. Just at that moment, the waiter brought in a tureen – a huge cloche was drawn back, revealing roasted black swan. I stood there, entranced, for I could smell it outside. There was port-wine sauce. It smelt delicious.

I decided to wander back to the muffin seller, but he was gone. A muffin or a crumpet was all I wanted. I went without and bought drink instead.

*   *   *

There are some allotments kept by the Chinese which I have been eyeing up for some time, but I shall resist the urge to steal for as long as I am able.

*   *   *

My cough worsens. It is a wet cough. My head aches. I am hot. I slept last night on a street. I have persuaded the
Melbourne Punch
to take some comic verse, but I cannot write anything worth printing in this state.

*   *   *

I went into the public house that has the battered copy of
Pickwick
. I would have avoided the place if I could, but it was near and I felt I couldn't be bothered to walk another step. ‘It's the poet!' said the man at the bar. ‘Do you know, I am fifty years old today. Write a verse in my honour, and I will pay you in drink.'

With that offer, it took me mere moments to say: ‘Let's practise some benevolence – And forget time's malevolence – Age is but a number – Let's drink until we slumber.'

‘You
are
a poet! Get the poet whatever he wants, landlord!' It was one of the better nights I have had since coming to Australia; but after a while, being acclaimed a poet brought back memories of the Grotto, and the night seemed a pale imitation of the good sessions I used to have there and, indeed, a mockery of those times.

*   *   *

Dr Neild saw me on the streets, coughing, and he invited me to stay at his house. I was loath to impose upon him, and accept his charity, but he insisted that I would repay him in conversation. ‘Who else talks to me of Addison and Steele and Johnson?' he said. ‘Come, Charles, the room at my house is yours. I shall buy you a new pair of shoes to replace that pair, and then we shall go out walking together.'

 

*

ONE MORNING, CHARLES WHITEHEAD DID
not come down to breakfast. Dr Neild waited twenty minutes, then went upstairs. The room was empty.

Neild went from public house to public house, making enquiries in each: ‘Have you seen a tall thin man? Stooped. Dresses in black. Has a cough.'

‘Oh I know
him
,' said a neckerchiefed landlord, whose nodding knowing was accompanied by the grins of customers around the bar. ‘I'd like to see a bit more of him, because my takings could do with a jump.'

The next landlord said much the same, and the next. Neild's search yielded nothing until, in a small and especially shabby drinking den, a man remembered seeing a person of Whitehead's appearance standing against a wall, obviously drunk, knees shaking, bringing up phlegm.

Further enquiries revealed that this man had collapsed, been placed in the back of a dog cart, and taken to Melbourne Hospital.

*   *   *

At the hospital, an ageing administrator's finger moved down and across the entries of a ledger to reveal that a Whitehead, Charles, had died of hepatitis and bronchitis on 5 July 1862.

The administrator, whose skin was as cracked as dry earth, and whose glasses so resembled magnifying glasses they could have burnt the ledger had the sun been at the correct angle, added: ‘Buried in a pauper's grave.'

He closed the ledger.

‘Who was with him when he died?' said Neild.

‘I expect – no one.'

*   *   *

There were pleasant avenues and ornamental gardens in the cemetery. Though Australia was a young country, there were already substantial marble tombs and grand funereal monuments.

There was also the patch where the anonymous poor were buried.

It was not even possible to locate the precise plot in which Whitehead had been laid to rest.

A gravedigger was working in this area when Neild arrived. Seeing Neild, he smiled one of the happiest smiles possible, full of life. He leant upon his spade as Neild approached.

‘Whitehead? No I can't say I remember that particular guest,' said the gravedigger. ‘But I am never normally told their names in the first place.'

‘What can I do to lay down a marker of some kind?' said Neild.

‘You'd need to know where he is. That could be difficult.'

The gravedigger stepped upon his spade, and Neild looked at the shoe. A
shoe
– not, as might be expected, a boot. It was identical in style to the pair Neild had purchased for Whitehead. And as new.

‘Do you collect the deceased yourself from the hospital?'

‘Friend of mine does it. But he won't know anything, sir.'

‘I see.' Neild stared at the ground, and then said: ‘He was a quiet man, mostly, but he could become talkative. He could talk for hours upon end about books and the people he had known in London. Would he have been buried immediately after death?'

‘We might leave it for a few days, but not much longer. Well, you can't, can you? Especially in a few months, when the weather starts to get hot.'

‘How was he buried?'

‘How, sir?'

‘What do you do, precisely, with graves of people like this?'

‘If he was the first in a new plot, then he'd be seven or eight feet down. Then I'd sprinkle a layer of earth – I do it with respect, though some smoke a cigarette afterwards, or have a swig.'

‘He would not have begrudged a man taking a drink after the work.'

‘That's nice to know. Then a new guest comes, and the job's repeated, until the grave's full, and so normally four are together. Then three foot of earth finishes it all off very nice. Not much more I can tell you, sir.'

 

*

November 1867

AS THE ROUND-SHOULDERED OLD FELLOW,
too thin to fill his overcoat, stepped across the threshold of the Old Green Tree public house in Bath, he smiled cheerily and raised the little finger of his right hand. A group of mostly withered and bony men, sitting at a table in the small, oak-panelled room, did exactly the same in response. They had given the drivers' salute, from the days when coaches passed upon the road. At this table sat Moses Pickwick, still stout, but visibly aged, and with his luxuriant black wig sitting in defiance of time upon the old head. His companions were former drivers of the Pickwick company's coaches.