Death and Mr. Pickwick (13 page)

‘This is excellent!' said Severn, suddenly brimming with enthusiasm.

‘Do you think so?' said Seymour, leaning forward, looking carefully at Severn.

‘Definitely. The hair in particular is very impressive. I have just remembered something I was going to show you. It's called the five-point exercise.'

Seymour seemed a little put out that his friend had not lingered over the painting for at least a few more seconds. He returned the miniature to his bag.

Severn meanwhile had opened his sketchbook, and taken up his charcoal. ‘On a piece of paper, you put down five dots anywhere,' he said. ‘Like so. These positions mark the head, hands and feet of a human figure. You have to quickly come up with a figure that fits these positions. So.' Severn sketched a slave on his knees, roped. Turning the page, he set down another five dots, and drew a crucifixion, but with the figure of Christ more bent than in usual depictions. ‘Now you try.'

Seymour drew the five dots, four of which formed a square, at which he drew the hands and feet. The head dot was impossibly high above the others. Nonetheless, he drew the head at that point, and the arms, legs and torso unconnected. He presented it to Severn. ‘This is a variation – an explosion.' He had drawn an exploding gunpowder keg in the middle, ripping the body apart.

Severn smiled. ‘Whether the Royal Academy would be impressed…'

Sitting on either side of the milestone, they shared a bottle of ale in the sun. ‘Perhaps,' said Severn, ‘I shall read to you, Robert. I have brought both Tasso and Spenser with me. Which shall it be?'

‘I do not know either's work.'

Severn opened his bag and took out Tasso. ‘Now you lie back, and I shall read. Just let the poetry overflow you.' There was an intensity in Seymour's expression, as he allowed his imagination to be influenced by the words, although at times he looked towards Severn's lips, and as he watched them move, he seemed to be aware only of them, not Tasso. Then he would return to listening to the poetry. The verses told of how the Crusaders set off to a forest to cut down trees, so as to construct siege towers and battering rams; there, they were confronted by unearthly creatures, and the dark form of Pluto. In their fear, axes and saws were thrown aside.

Severn paused. ‘You know of Tasso's extreme melancholy?'

‘I know no more about him than you have just read.'

Severn tapped the book. ‘His concerns about this work drove him to madness. He would have been a distinguished resident in one of Hoxton's asylums. He regularly saw a spirit.'

‘A spirit? Now you have to tell me more.'

Knowing that he had caught Seymour's attention, he gladly told the tale.

*   *   *

It was a cold November afternoon in the Italian town of Bisaccia. The town was renowned for its hunting, and after the dogs were kennelled, and a dead stag had been carried into the kitchens of the castle, two hunters climbed the stone steps to a draughty room. The drapes there, decorated in the colours of the province of Benevento, wafted gently as the two men warmed themselves at the hearth. One was the handsome Torquato Tasso, whose face tended towards the Christ-like, though with a neatly trimmed beard, and the other was his friend Giovanni Battista Manso, whose own aristocratic features were clean-shaven, to show off a strong jaw and fine chin. They chatted about the chase for the stag, and then spoke of ladies they had seen at a ball a few evenings before – they laughed as they recalled the young whelps chasing those finely dressed does. All was pleasant and desultory, and they sipped wine from chalices – until, without warning, Tasso's head jerked to one side. He looked over his friend's shoulder, and then smiled with great affection, apparently at empty air.

Manso turned, but could see nothing to engage Tasso's attention.

‘We are no longer alone,' said Tasso.

Manso turned again. ‘Who are you looking at?' As there was no answer from his friend, he crossed the room, looked behind a tapestry, and then stared in complete bewilderment at Tasso, who was seemingly engaged in a conversation, with intermittent nods and occasionally raised brows.

‘You are right, I should go there,' said Tasso.

‘Go where? I said nothing,' said Manso.

‘Excuse me one moment,' said Tasso. His head turned, and now he looked towards Manso. ‘My friend here visits me from time to time, when he has knowledge or advice he wishes to impart. I must apologise, Giovanni, that our evening has been interrupted, but my friend's visits are never arranged in advance. They always happen on the spur of the moment, when he feels the urge to honour me with a call.'

‘You are scaring me. I see nothing and no one.' Manso moved forward and sawed through the air with his hand.

‘He has advised me to go on a pilgrimage,' said Tasso to Manso. ‘He has suggested San Giovanni in Laterano. He tells me that the Holy Umbilical Cord is there. Also, fragments from the table used at the Last Supper of our Lord.'

Tasso turned back to the air, and nodded once more. Then, facing Manso again, he said: ‘Also, I must visit Santa Croce in Jerusalem, as they hold the Titulus Crucis, and two thorns from the crown of thorns, as well as fragments of the cross itself.'

‘You are terrifying me! Stop this!'

Suddenly Tasso laughed. ‘Oh, my visitor has a sense of humour. He recommends that I take you along, and show you another relic there – the finger of Doubting Thomas.'

Manso stood by the carved stone hearth, while he watched his friend's one-sided conversation on aspects of religion, as various saints, as well as Jesus and Mary, arose as subjects for discussion. This continued until Tasso bowed his head.

‘Our guest has departed,' he said to Manso. ‘We may return to our talk of whelps and does.'

‘How can we have a normal conversation after this!' Manso walked agitatedly around the room, clutching himself at the upper arms. ‘This is your own mind creating visions. This is sickness of the brain.'

Tasso said, with great serenity, ‘I never feel better than when he is in the room.'

‘It is the strain of producing poetry. Your imagination is so developed, so far beyond a normal man's, that things formed inside your mind seem to have existence.'

‘No, not at all. I know that the spirit is real. His conversation is not a rambling thing, it is not like a dream which is here one minute and there the next, with no memory of what went before, and no consistency. If I were suffering some delusion, his appearance would not be stable. He is as real and solid to me as you are. And here is proof. He tells me things I have never heard before. He tells me of relics I should travel to see – and I had
no previous knowledge of them
. I did not know of the finger of Doubting Thomas, but were I to make enquiries, I have not the slightest doubt it would be stored in a reliquary at that church.'

*   *   *

‘So that is Tasso for you, Robert.'

‘Would you allow me to borrow the volume, Joseph?'

‘By all means do so.'

*   *   *

‘Worst gingerbread in Bartlemy! Get your horrible gingerbread here! Makes you smile, don't it, madam? And a mouth with a smile can open for gingerbread! Gin-ger-bread! You ain't been to Bartholomew Fair if you ain't had the gingerbread! Come on, lad, you and your mate – you've got to buy gingerbread, because the sooner every piece is bought the sooner I can stop hollering in this horrible voice!'

The lad and his mate were, respectively, Seymour and Wonk. Seymour had grown sideburns, as had Wonk, and they – and practically every other apprentice, family, and pickpocket in the area – had joined the crowds at Bartholomew Fair. ‘Come on, lads,' said the neckerchiefed stallholder, now trying the tactic of a low, please-help-me-out voice, and imploring eyes, ‘you're true Londoners, I know you are.'

‘I am, if you're not, Robert,' said Wonk. Soon they walked away, chewing two gingerbread-nuts.

They passed a man selling soap cut up into cubes, who shouted: ‘This'll soften the skin of a leper!' Then they encountered a stallholder pouring wine from a jug, who sang: ‘The glasses sparkle on the board, The wine is ruby bright…' There were jugglers, there were rope-dancers, there were drummers. They decided to stop at a booth where an audience had formed around a grinning top-hatted man, who restrained two pigs on leads. Upon the ground the man had laid out printed cards, twice the size of playing cards, which bore letters of the alphabet.

‘Now this pig on my left,' said the owner of the booth, ‘is a learned pig. And this pig on my right is a sapient pig. Now you, sir,' he said, approaching a large middle-aged man in the audience, ‘I can tell that you are an educated man who likes to read and write, and no doubt you can spell. It is the same with pigs. They may find it difficult to hold a pen in their trotters, but they are as keen to read as anyone these days, and they are very good spellers. Please give me a word, sir, any word in Johnson's entire dictionary.'

‘Cheese,' said the middle-aged man, who from the way he eyed the pigs was considering how he might melt cheese on trotters for supper that night.

‘Cheese! An excellent word. Now, my learned friend,' he said, bending down to the pig on the left, ‘how do you spell “cheese”?'

The pig grunted, then picked up cards with its mouth and placed them down to spell C-H-E-E-S-E. There was applause, and the booth owner touched the brim of his hat. ‘You, sir,' he said, pointing to another man in the audience, ‘please give me any word you like.'

‘What about “humbug”?' said the man, looking very pleased with himself, and smiling to left and right. ‘Or “impostor”?'

‘My learned pig, they accuse us of fraudulence. Show them what you think of that.' The pig spelt out N-O-N-S-E-N-S-E and earned another round of applause.

‘The pig's a better speller than you, Robert,' said Wonk.

‘Now my other friend, the sapient pig, is not as fond of literature as his colleague, but he is a great judge of character. He can tell who is in love.' The pig sniffed the air – and then suddenly charged forward to a young couple, and grunted, producing great giggles of embarrassment.

Then it sniffed again, grunted, and ran towards Seymour and Wonk.

‘Sirs, I do apologise,' said the showman, with an arch of his eyebrow. ‘What's got into that pig? Ah, it's the couple behind you he is interested in!' The pig pushed its way through the crowd to a young man and woman, who attempted to hide their faces behind bitten pieces of gingerbread.

‘But this sapient swine can also tell who likes pork!'

The pig ran to the other side of the audience, towards a man chewing a mustard-dripping sausage. The pig stopped and, looking up at the man, squealed so ear-piercingly that Seymour and Wonk decided to move on.

They came to a large striped tent where a man riffled playing cards at the entrance, urging onlookers to ‘Watch the books! Watch the books!' After a blur in mid-air from one hand to another, he announced: ‘Behind these curtains, ladies and gentlemen, are wonders! Inside is the famous seal boy – bring him out!'

A small and downcast boy emerged from the curtain, dressed in a loincloth, both his arms concealed within a sack.

‘He will show his flippers, but
only
inside the booth. Beware! It is a
horrible
sight!'

As he said this, the showman's head traced a semicircular path, catching every onlooker with a stare expressive of the revolt against decency.

‘Bring out the fat boy's breeches!' he shouted.

A pretty girl in a pink spangled dress, whose strong resemblance to the speaker suggested she was his child, held above her head the most voluminous garment for legs ever seen.

‘If you think he is large – wait until you see his mother! See the fat lady and the thin man together! See the giant and the midget! See the heifer with two heads – there is a bell hanging from each neck which you may ring, madam, if you feel so inclined. See the horse with seven feet –
seven horseshoes he is shod with
, and he can kick with every one. See the 150-year-old man – listen to his memories of historic events, for he was there! See the Dalmatian dog-boy – spotted all over, black and white! See the fairy girl – she lives, sir, she lives. One penny only to see such wonders! Last chance to see 'em! See the amazing multiple-faced man, a show in his own right, a thousand things he can become, from an owl to an apple, by way of a bull!'

Seymour and Wonk again moved on, following the crowds heading for the greatest of Bartholomew Fair's attractions, Richardson's show.

One hundred feet long, thirty feet high, it was not a booth, nor a tent, but – as it proclaimed itself on the posters outside – a thousand-seater theatre. There were no mere striped awnings at the entrance but plush crimson curtains, as well as pillars that would add grace to a cathedral, and gigantic golden letters which announced: RICHARDSON. A band dressed completely in scarlet played outside on clarinets, violins, brass and kettledrums, while pictorial playbills carried by dwarfs advertised
The Skeleton Spectre
and
The Monk and the Murderer
. Swordsmen in historic attire mingled with ghosts and damsels, as fathers in the crowd lifted sons on their shoulders, for a better view of these fascinating proceedings.

Seymour and Wonk ascended and descended the stairs – for a flat walk across grass was not grand enough for Richardson's show – and then were in the auditorium's splendour, lit by hundreds of lights: crystal chandeliers and beacon vats of fat ablaze on metal stands, as well as oil lamps arranged in ovals around the edges of mirrors. The audience sat on rising rows of benches. The proscenium, a gorgeous green curtain with the royal arms above, and the orchestra pit below, itself created anticipation. The thirty-minute show would begin any moment. No half-hour in a Londoner's life could demonstrate more excitement and variety.