Death and Mr. Pickwick (126 page)

‘You sound like you are quoting something there.'

‘If so, I cannot remember where from. I dare say it lingers through some distant connection with
Pickwick
. I remember I told an old porter how interested I was in the underground of the Angel. And the porter said, “Well don't get too interested.” He explained that many years ago, there was another young man who was also intrigued by the caverns. This man happened to play the flute. So he went down there, saying that he would play his flute as he went further in, to let people know where he was. Well, he went down, sir – and the flute got fainter and fainter. And then it stopped completely. The young man was never seen again. But on certain days, the porter told me, when the wind howls, people believe they can hear the faint sound of a flute coming from the crypt. Then he grinned, and said, “I have even thought that I can hear it myself.” He was probably teasing me.

‘So I never made my subterranean map. And after I arrived at the Angel, all these years later, I thought I would ask the owner for his permission to go down. But when I arrived, my life took another course. There was a middle-aged man in the lobby, crying, being comforted on a lady's shoulder, I presume his wife. I believe he had suffered a bereavement.'

‘As you had.'

‘We must all grieve in our own way, sir. Then the man left, with his wife by his side, and I took their seat, and it was warm, and – this is the point, sir – on a table by the sofa were several small volumes by Charles Lamb, De Quincey and other authors. I do not know why they were there. Perhaps the man had forgotten them in his distress. Well, I idly picked up the Lamb – and strange to say – Lamb's choice of words reminded me of
Pickwick
. It was very curious. When I first met you, I told you about pickled salmon. Well, I noted how Lamb remarked on salmon fortifying its condition with lobster sauce. It was very curious indeed. Then I noted other similarities. Lamb used
many
words of a Pickwickian nature. I had taken a notebook with me and could not resist writing them down, and arranging them. I somewhat anticipated that you might ask me about my future plans, and so I have brought the notebook with me.'

He unlocked his briefcase, took out the notebook, and opened it to a double page headed ‘Lamb'. I saw words, categorised into three kinds, and alphabetically arranged: ‘Names', ‘Places' and ‘Others'. Some words, I concede,
did
have a Pickwickian association, for instance ‘Antiquarian' in the ‘Others' category. Yet the lists included words so commonly used that any writer might employ them. Words such as ‘boy', ‘dog', ‘Parliament', ‘Birmingham', ‘John', and Mr N's valiant loser, ‘eye'. But he continued talking, and had obviously not discerned my indigestion of these latter words.

‘Out of a spirit of curiosity, I went to a second-hand bookshop where I examined a collection of Lamb's letters published after 1836 – that is,
after Pickwick.
My mind
crackled
when I saw that Talfourd edited them! I could not stop myself purchasing the volume. There were many Pickwickian words. I had to note them down as well.'

He turned to another page of the notebook for me, and I saw: ‘gaiters', ‘habeas corpus', ‘manuscript', ‘temperance', ‘muffin', ‘Bury St Edmunds', ‘the Fleet', ‘reptile' … the list continued.

Mr N's discourse was now unstoppable. I merely sat back and listened.

‘The words were undeniably
there
,' he said. ‘My mind was effervescing. I went back to the bookshop. I became truly adventurous, sir. There was a copy of Virgil. I thought to myself – surely not. There couldn't be Pickwickian words there. But I could not stop myself – and in this too I noticed phrases of a decidedly Pickwickian turn. It happened again in Caesar's
Gallic Wars
.

‘I considered this an extraordinary and wonderful phenomenon, sir. It occupied me during the month when I was bound by my wife's promise. It may occupy me now the concordance is complete. If I may put it like this: I have come to believe that there is – as it were – a numerical scale – a ranking, if you like – a scale, from one to ten, with decimal fractions between. All works of literature can be assigned a number on this scale, the mark of ten being pure
Pickwick
, attained only by that great work itself; while other works of literature would be assigned some place down the scale from ten. Some of these works may have played upon the mind of Boz in his youth, and influenced
Pickwick
; and works published after
Pickwick
could have some infusion of Pickwickian spirit. But truth be told, sir – I know you are thinking this – perhaps there is
no
causal connection between these works and
Pickwick
, except in my mind. Well, so be it. The connection exists for me alone – and it provides me with fascination and sustenance. Do not deny me this pleasure, sir. A pleasure which my rare study has given me. Great judgement and connoisseurship – I might even say
science –
would be required to assign a work of literature its number on the Pickwickian scale, from one to ten. There might even be irrational numbers, inexpressible as decimals. What a thought, sir. Which work would attain a Pickwickian value of pi?

‘I feel sorry for the man who cannot see all books as manifestations of
Pickwick
. Others may not see this – but
I
do. I would recommend my life, even if I am the only man privileged to live it.'

I never saw Mr N again. There was an unhealthy pallor upon his cheeks, so perhaps he died shortly afterwards. The whereabouts of
The Pickwick Concordance
are unknown.

 

*

I CLOSED THE MANUSCRIPT, AND HANDED
it back to Mr Inbelicate.

‘He was quite mad, of course.' I said.

‘At the end, yes.'

‘
But fifteen years
!'

Mr Inbelicate smiled. ‘It is not the longest expanse of time spent by one man on a single Pickwickian pursuit.'

‘Someone spent
more
than fifteen years?'

‘Try fifty years. Yes – fifty. Five-oh, fifty.'

‘I would say “I do not believe you”, but I know you will immediately prove your point.'

‘We have actually encountered the fellow already, in passing.'

I was required to fetch another manuscript. It was written in the shaky hand of an old man.

 

*

MY LONG LIFE HAS BEEN
dominated by one author – specifically, one book by that one author. Men have their varied and different approaches to the immortal
Pickwick
, but mine has been that of the collector. I have dedicated myself to the search for the perfect
Pickwick
in parts.

The scarcity of the earlier numbers is but the rudimentary foundation of my desire. The minor variations in illustrations add seasoning. It is the
inserts
of the parts that are my keenest pursuit. You may have heard of the
Pickwick Advertiser
, the booklet of advertisements that Chapman and Hall sewed into
Pickwick
from Part IV onwards. Those booklets are very rare but fairly common to the seeker of the perfect
Pickwick
. True rarity begins with the slip advertisements, and the statements issued to readers – items thrown away by most people who bought
Pickwick.
Items which are now so rare their scarcity achieves an exquisiteness to make a collector tremble with pleasure. Consider for instance the advertisement slip for
Phrenology Made Easy
in Part VI, or for Gilbert's maps in Part IV. What is the chance of their surviving? Hardly any at all. That is why I seek them.

There are those of us who will spend twenty years – thirty years – forty years – aye, the
fifty years
I have spent – searching, in attics, salerooms, private libraries and second-hand bookshops, all in the hope of attaining a perfect
Pickwick
in parts. I enjoy saying all those ‘p's together – a perfect
Pickwick
in parts. If I hear a rumour of an unscathed part, I will travel far and wide, and the night before inspection, if I sleep at all, the sleep will be dreamless, like a clean margin, as if even my unconscious soul is preoccupied with perfection in
Pickwick
.

However, one learns to be suspicious when one sees the part. Sometimes the pages are too clean. I insert my nose, close to the stitches, and sometimes detect the faint chlorine-like whiff of the cleaning agent. They will not fool me.

My life for these fifty years has been an unending tale of how and where I found the part with a little less foxing – a reduction in damp spots – an absent chip on the wrapper spine. I have spent my time fighting against the very popularity which caused a crease or an oily thumbprint to appear on a page when the part was transferred from hand to hand. I have gradually constructed a set which approximates to perfection, a set which was never offered to a single subscriber – for I take this part from here, that part from there.

For me, every copy of
Pickwick
that was printed by Bradbury and Evans is different. The typesetting forme was tightened as more copies were printed and the moveable type spread gradually apart, and letters darkened and broadened, making each copy unique, by some infinitesimal degree.

Even defining the perfect
Pickwick
in parts is a considerable feat; there are so many variations spread across the twenty-parts-in-nineteen, that to merely describe the work takes a dozen pages in an auctioneer's catalogue.
Pickwick
poses more problems for the collector of first editions than any other work that has ever been published. This is therefore another way in which
Pickwick
is superlative.

How can I tell you of the joy of a collector at finding the single rarest element in all
Pickwick
: the issue of Part VI, in which the page numbers for the two plates were erroneously swapped? I have shown that to another collector and savoured his envy, and told him that no matter what he offered, he would not have it while I was alive. I am sure peculiar errors are to be found in other books too, but in what other book would people take the time to look for them, or care a jot when found? And, for that matter, I shall never forget the moment when I discovered – and I am sure I
was
the discoverer – that in the early parts there were fifty lines to the printed page, but only forty-nine in the later ones. Why? It may seem unimportant, but it was an extraordinary revelation to me, and so it was to the other collectors I informed, who immediately set about counting lines themselves. Has any other book existed in which people would
bother
to count the lines?

The perfect
Pickwick
has everything – advertisements, misprints, the paper crisp and bright as the day it was printed, the type unbroken because it was printed early in the run – every wonderful thing that can make the collector's heart leap. And just as the greatest violins by Stradivarius become known by their former owners, so it is with great
Pickwicks
. The Lapham – Wallace
Pickwick
. The Bruton – Patterson
Pickwick
. The Douglas – Austin
Pickwick
. The McCutcheon – Young
Pickwick
. The McCutcheon – Ulizio
Pickwick
. The MacGeorge
Pickwick
. And mine. There are perhaps ten copies of
Pickwick
in existence which could be called perfect first editions, and even perfection can be flawed. A good
Pickwick
is worth many times its weight in gold.

Is it not the most delicious paradox that this work, so widely circulated that only the Bible, Shakespeare and perhaps the Book of Common Prayer can better its circulation, can attain such heights of extreme rarity too?
Pickwick
is as general as mankind, and yet as rare as a man.

How is a perfect set to be displayed? You would expect a proud leather case, to house a collector's achievement. That tends to happen – eventually. The Lapham – Wallace
Pickwick
, for example, is housed in a most attractive green levant morocco case. The case must be green. That is the
Pickwick
hue. I once saw a set in crushed
red
levant morocco, and it made me shudder. I could not respect the man who did that. Yet many of us simply wrap our
Pickwick
s in brown-paper parcels, which are excellent temporary protection as the search for perfection continues, knowing there will come a time, probably when the collector has passed away and his
Pickwick
is bequeathed to someone else, for the set to receive its finery. There is a grim laugh that we collectors have, when we consider what it means to get our box.

 

*

‘EVEN FIFTY YEARS IS NOT
the longest Pickwickian quest,' said Mr Inbelicate. ‘For that is mine.'

‘I presume you mean you began when you were a child.'

‘No – and I mean this seriously – it began before I was
born
. How do you think all the material in this house was accumulated, Scripty?'

‘So your father was a staunch Pickwickian, then.'

‘And his father. The male line in my family. There has been more than one Mr Inbelicate.'

‘I am keen to hear about the others.'

‘I will not tell you. For in the work you produce, grandfather will not appear as separate from father, nor father separate from son. It will be as though the one and the same Mr Inbelicate has done it all, with neither preceding nor succeeding generations.'

‘Why?'

‘My taste.'

He asked me to gather manuscript material from various places around the house concerning travels to
Pickwick
-associated places. Starting the next day, I was to turn it into: