Death and Mr. Pickwick (121 page)

‘I still need to be convinced that Seymour invented the traits of the Pickwickians.'

‘Let us continue through the manuscript,' said Mr Inbelicate.

 

*

THERE WAS SOMETHING I
COULD
prove. Dickens's great mistake was that he went on to say: ‘Mr Seymour died when only the first twenty-four pages of
The Pickwick Papers
were published; I think before the next three or four pages were completely written; I am sure before one subsequent line of the book was invented.'

How definitive. Strange, then, that there is an unused drawing, showing the Pickwickians in the kitchen at Dingley Dell, which my mother found in the summer house after my father's death. This picture refers to a scene
on the very last page
of that number. So Dickens was not telling the truth again.

His statement wasn't even true about the published drawings. The drawing in which Mr Winkle has difficulties with the horse relates to a scene four pages from the end of the number. As this was such an obvious refutation of his statement, and so many people had copies of
Pickwick
to prove it, the contradiction was presumably pointed out to him, for he wrote a short note of correction to
The Athenaeum
a week later, saying he had meant to say, not three or four pages, but twenty-four pages. But make that substitution and see how it undermines the force of his statement! He had been trying to pretend that my father was associated with a negligible amount of Pickwick – little more than one-twentieth. We have now wrung out an admission that it was twice that – and that is not negligible. Occurring in the early stages of the book, it was bound to exert a considerable influence on the whole. And look at all the force with which he asserts ‘I am sure before one subsequent line was invented' – not only is he
not
sure, he
cannot
be sure, for the statement is demonstrably untrue. This is a man who says he is sure when he is clearly making things up!

Yet Dickens had the gall to say in his prefaces that ‘intangible and incoherent assertions' had been made to the effect that my father had some share in the invention of
Pickwick
!

I wrote to
The Athenaeum
in protest. Here is what the magazine published in response: ‘We have received from Mr Seymour another letter, repeating the former's opinions with respect to his father's share in the
Pickwick Papers
, in answer to Mr Charles Dickens's statement of facts. Our readers have already heard both sides of the story and there is no need to carry the controversy further in these columns.'

So my statement consisted merely of opinions, and would not be published; Dickens, on the other hand, stated facts, and those would be allowed to stand. Thus the debate about
Pickwick
was summarily terminated, and the liar's account taken as genuine.

By temperament, I avoid people as much as I can. Why would I wish to be made a laughing stock for my supposed ‘opinions'? I knew a lost cause when I saw it. Thus I let matters drift. Now, quietly, slowly, working on my own, I have been putting my case together. The cause is not lost.

But someone else must pursue it. I will not be drawn into public debate.

*   *   *

I mentioned the picture my mother found in the summer house, showing the Pickwickians in the kitchen. She put this with the other surviving pencil drawings for the first two numbers of
Pickwick
. One rainy day, when my sister and I were very small, we thought it a good idea if we pasted all our father's
Pickwick
pictures into a little exercise book. It was a book which could fit, without too much difficulty, into the pocket of a waistcoat. We also pasted in little pictures of our own, scraps we had drawn and watercoloured.

I kept the exercise book for many years. Occasionally I would look at it. All except for one of my father's pictures, that of the dying clown, were finished most attractively with a sepia wash. A few years ago, I thought these sketches might as well be sold. My sister was dead, and what was the point of hanging on to these memories?

I took the exercise book into a dealer's shop in London. The short, chubby man in a well-cut suit frowned. He sucked in his breath in disapproval.

‘Oh, it
is
a pity they are pasted into this little book,' he said. ‘What is it – a penny copybook? Oh
dear me.
And these other things, these scribbled drawings. What are
they
?'

‘My sister and I did them as children,' I told him. ‘We put them in to try to be like our father.'

‘Oh – oh…' He frowned again. ‘This sketch by your father is even
torn
. I do not know. There are not many pictures. And four stuck on one page. Excuse me.' He fetched a ruler and placed it against the sides of the clown picture. ‘Only four and a half by four. Oh dear.'

‘Well, are they worth ten pounds?'

‘They
might
be worth five pounds.'

‘Well, give me five pounds and I will let you have them.'

He gave me five pounds.

It was about a month later that I read the newspaper account of the auction – the furious bidding for the sketches, and the unheard-of sum paid:
five hundred pounds
.

I took the train to London and went to the dealer's shop. The first words I uttered when I opened the door were: ‘Lying swindler!'

‘Oh – Mr Seymour – you have no right to call me such names. A price agreed is a price agreed.'

‘You knew exactly what they were worth.'

‘I knew no such thing. I bought the penny copybook in good faith. There might well have been no bidders, and the auctioneer might have ended up buying it in.'

‘I want their
true
value. I am not leaving until you give it to me!'

‘Men who go to auctions pay what they pay. There is no true value. In all likelihood, the bidders were afraid of losing face and so could not help themselves, and the price went higher and higher. Who can know how an auction room will behave? Not I.'

I could not help myself. I broke down. At that moment, another customer entered the premises. The dealer immediately put an arm around my shoulders and said: ‘My good sir, come with me.' He led me to an annexe at the back of the shop. He took out an envelope and put a ten-pound note inside. ‘Here,' he said, thrusting the envelope aggressively into my hand. He led me out of the store, nodding to the other man, and shaking his head in earnest concern.

I stood on the street and looked back into the window. The customer obviously believed that I had been the recipient of some benevolent act.

I have already said that I do not usually visit public houses, but on this occasion I did so, and spent some of the ten pounds on an afternoon of drink. To make it worse, I heard a man laugh, slap the counter and say: ‘It's just like in
Pickwick
!'

I do not know what was ‘just like in
Pickwick
'. I had to leave.

The ten-pound note was the last payment the Seymour family would receive for work on
Pickwick
. I put the change from the public house into my mother's old purse, and have used it gradually, to buy a cake or some little treat now and then. There is still fourpence left.

*   *   *

The following words are not my first attempt. When I read the draft, I was suffocated by the flow of abstractions, unrelated to experience, and committed the pages to the fire.

My father's business was making abstractions visual. Like other political caricaturists, he didn't talk about ‘injustice' – he drew a pair of scales, weighted down to one side.

I do not possess a fraction of my father's talent. That did not stop my doing drawings this morning, to escape the oppression of abstraction. I shall describe the drawings, before they are thrown on the flames. Their quality is an embarrassment to the name of Seymour but they are the best I can do.

My first drawing shows a young, flowing-haired author, meant to be Dickens, lifting, like Atlas, a complicated piece of machinery, all pistons and cogs, in which a wheel of brutal clubs rotates and hits Mr Pickwick about the head. With the addition of a few movement lines, I have shown Dickens's knees quivering under the weight. In the second picture, I show Dickens and Mr Pickwick dismantling the machine, throwing nuts, bolts and pipes over their shoulders. The pictures are intended to illustrate two of Dickens's assertions from his prefaces to
Pickwick.
In his first preface, he talks about deferring to the judgement of others to include the machinery of the club; and also he talks of how the club proved to be an embarrassment and an encumbrance and he gradually moved away from it. He says: ‘The machinery of the club, proving cumbrous in the management, was gradually abandoned as the work progressed.' My next picture shows a white-haired bespectacled professorial type, scratching his chin, looking at scrolls of engineering blueprints, intended to represent the components of the machinery, as he asks himself, in word-balloons: ‘What is meant by the machinery of the club?' and ‘Why was it cumbrous in the management?'

Before I write another line let me say that there is a mouse which sometimes emerges from the skirting board, and he is out now. He is the only being I can address the following to: does ‘the machinery of the club' merely mean that the main characters should be members of a club?

That would be little more than the requirement that the main characters be male, given that clubs were almost exclusively the province of men. That cannot be cumbrous at all. It would be chains made of vapour.

The mouse is chewing away at the fringe of a rug. I have watched him for several minutes. It is strange he is not afraid of me. He carries some strands away. He must be building a nest. He is my little lodger.

Could the encumbrance be that the club should do club-things, such as holding meetings, or putting on uniforms?

That could be a constraint, if it kept happening. But it is quite clear that, from the moment the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club goes travelling, Dickens never has to be constrained by club-things again. So that cannot be the encumbrance.

Mrs Shadick has seen the mouse too, and has spoken of putting down a trap, but I shall not kill the creature.

Could the machinery of the club mean the narrative scheme of the book – that is, of the editor, supposedly working on the club papers?

It is true that the editor's presence gradually fades out. But the editorial device is flexible enough to be used for both the frivolities of the Pickwickians and the horrors of the dying clown. The editor can, if necessary, completely shift tone, from the facetious to the sombre. How
can
this be cumbrous in the management? It is an extraordinarily useful device which allows the diverse content of
Pickwick
to come into existence: whatever is in the papers, is passed to the editor.

Mrs Shadick has spoken of getting a cat. I hope she does not.

I might add: if the editorial persona is a constraint, why not refer directly to the editor? Why talk of the club at all? No, the editor and the club papers will not do as an interpretation of the ‘machinery of the club'.

If my father were here now, I wonder whether he would tolerate the mouse, or would agree to the cat?

But it would undoubtedly be cumbrous, especially to a man like Dickens, if my father devised the character traits of the members of the Corresponding Society. In other words, if ‘the machinery of the club' meant exactly what Mr Buss said in his letter. Namely, that my father invented Mr Pickwick, Mr Winkle, Mr Snodgrass and Mr Tupman.

Mrs Shadick knocked and came in just now, to collect my breakfast tray. She saw the mouse, which ran off, and said she would borrow next door's ginger tom. I said the mouse didn't bother me, but she said it did bother her. I do not like this at all.

How could Dickens put up with the characters of my father's invention? He would feel them hanging on to him, weighing him down, grabbing his pen and directing it, within his very fingers. They would certainly be an encumbrance. Also, with the exception of Mr Pickwick himself, the members of the Corresponding Society do appear less as the work proceeds. Even Mr Pickwick's personality changes somewhat as the work goes on: he becomes less of a fool on a ridiculous scientific mission, and more of a benevolent – even heroic – soul, as though Dickens is bucking against a character which was imposed on him. All this is consistent with Dickens's statements. I cannot think of any other interpretation of the machinery of the club which could be the encumbrance.

Perhaps some of the papers I have put on the fire might be eaten by the mouse instead?

What I suspect is this: that Dickens gave names to the characters, with the exception of Mr Pickwick, whom my father named. The mere act of naming was enough for Dickens to assert that the characters were entirely his own. I do not rule out the possibility that my father named the characters, but I shall give Dickens the benefit of the doubt, because I have found that he used the name Fitz Winkle in his story ‘Public Dinners'.

I have proved, I believe, that Buss was correct in his statement.

The implications are extraordinary. I have already expressed my doubts about the Nimrod Club. But another logical problem in Dickens's account now occurs to me. Dickens says that, when presented with the Nimrod Club idea, he could not do it, because he was no sportsman, and so the sporting content was reduced. But if, as I believe I have proved, my father presented him with an antiquarian and scientist, a poet, a lover and a sportsman, then to object to the sporting content would be to imply that the sportsman, Winkle, should be dropped. Yet Dickens specifically says that he included Mr Winkle for my father's use – he emphatically does
not
want to drop him. It is another contradiction.