Death and Mr. Pickwick (25 page)

Moses Pickwick proved an even more successful coaching proprietor than Eleazer, with an eye for minor adjustments that would benefit the business.

Thus, just as Moses Pickwick sported a wig himself, so he kept a cupboard of false horse tails, and if a wheeler's rear gave a ragged swish, soon there was a sweeping new adornment, and Moses patted the horse's rump to show his approval before he sent it on its way. Then he walked towards the Universal Coach Office to take up his position by the rosewood grandfather clock, where he monitored the times of departures and arrivals – and also from such a vantage point he observed the passers-by. A diseased beggar with a moist cough would be given a coin to do his coughing outside the ticket office of the White Lion in the high street.

No coaching proprietor had a better record of service to customers. He personally wished travellers Godspeed. He would remind the persons on top not to fall asleep, as terrible accidents happened when people dozed off. Many proprietors stacked their coaches, and added boxes of silk and baggage and fifteen travellers until the axles were at breaking point, setting the safety of passengers at nought – but not Moses Pickwick. No driver was employed upon a Pickwick vehicle unless he had had one accident, and thereby acquired the necessary experience to cope. A driver who went to Moses Pickwick's office with his arm in a sling, and said, ‘No better whip than me, sir,' stood every chance of employment.

Furthermore, he enforced anew the dictum of Eleazer: ‘We are a respectable business.' In the lobby, he gazed with great pride upon the elegance of the White Hart waiters, in their brown knee breeches and silk stockings, and on the dignity of the serving maids in their clean white muslin caps and bibs. If a woman of doubtful reputation, with a touch too much rouge, entered the lobby, he would fix on his Brazil-pebble glasses and only if she could pass for respectable would he let her through. An obvious whore he would redirect to Avon Street.

By means of a thousand such improvements, the White Hart's prosperity grew. Stables, coach houses and innyards of failed rivals were soon taken over by Moses Pickwick. When the White Hart's greatest rival the Bear declined, and was demolished, it meant more trade still for the White Hart.

In due course, Moses Pickwick became the best known, the most popular, and the wealthiest coach proprietor in the West of England. People flocked to the White Hart, to use the coaches, to drink at its tap and to stay in its accommodation. Freemasons hired its function room for meetings; old bachelors and spinsters hired it too, for whist drives.

And in the evening, Moses would stand in front of the White Hart's fireplace – a strange construction, with gravestone slabs incorporated in the wall above the mantelpiece. He smiled a broad smile and his squeaky-to-bass voice made friendly remarks to passing customers, and this distracted attention from the gravestones.

Occasionally, whist-playing spinsters asked whether there was a
Mrs
Pickwick. Moses replied in the affirmative, but offered no further information. But it can be revealed that Moses married late, when he was forty-seven, despite warnings. ‘Be happy with the way you are, Moses,' said a customer supping in the White Hart's taproom. ‘Get married, and you'll be a coach with the wheels off.'

In the face of such advice, Moses Pickwick married a certain Ann Batten, and with considerable pageantry: fat Moses and his fat Ann mounted tiny ponies, whose legs trembled under the combined weights of horsebrasses, bells and expensive saddles, even before they supported riders. The ponies, it might be noted, were in the livery of the Pickwick coaches: one chocolate pony and one white pony, dyed yellow – the yellow one wore brown ribbons on its tail and mane, and the chocolate one similarly attired with yellow ribbons. Mrs Pickwick too had yellow and brown ribbons in her hair, and she waved and smiled at the guests before she mounted her steed, a wind whipping up her dress, and then the ponies trotted, unsteadily, straight into the inn itself. ‘How vulgar!' a lady in ringlets whispered to another lady in ringlets as the ponies passed. The extraordinarily sharp auditory organs of Mrs Pickwick, alas, heard the remark. Afterwards, Mrs Moses Pickwick was so rarely seen that some doubted her very existence.

Now, the Pickwick family, in addition to the White Hart and the Hare and Hounds, also owned a farm at Swainswick, two miles outside Bath, where grassland and cornfields were set aside for their horses – and, on a summer's day, more for pleasure than for business, Moses Pickwick would sometimes ride out to Swainswick on an old retired nag which was unable to go faster than a trot. Moses had had a great affection for this horse, starting from the time it was a foal, when he witnessed its rejection by its mother with a vicious bite to the ear and a strong kick to the flank. Though customers at the Hare and Hounds told him the creature would be more use as a clothes horse than a riding horse, he did not care. Some said there was a simple explanation: Moses Pickwick was a little mad.

So he would ride along the farm's boundary, where there was a pleasing ivy-strewn wall as well as a hedge, and a weeping ash and a fountain. He spoke to the horse all the time on the road, as though it understood his every word. Accordingly, when they passed the village stocks, Moses said: ‘Now as I have told you before, that's where they put those who can't hold their liquor.' The scarred ear of the horse twitched, and so perhaps the creature
did
understand. When they passed another horseman, on a proud stallion, Moses told his mount: ‘Now that rider is on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men in Bath. You'll notice he rides as though his family have been galloping in the country for centuries. Did you see the quality of his riding boots? They're quite the cheese, aren't they?' Shortly afterwards, they passed a man on foot. ‘You should see his wife,' said Moses. ‘A shire horse of a woman, and I for one would be scared of patting her.' This was followed by a sighting of two young ladies with parasols. Moses sat high and proud as he passed this pair, as though celebrating the dominion of man over beast. The ladies, it must be admitted, showed no inclination to be impressed by fat Moses on his worn-out nag; and as soon as they had passed, Moses heard two bursts of feminine giggles which he believed were directed at him. ‘Ignorant coquettes,' he said.

Horse and rider made their way to a field in which was an elm of great age and size, and a path which followed the hedges where redcurrants grew. ‘Now, I hope you remember my telling you that this path goes back to the Romans,' said Moses. He took the path up to Slaughterwell, the source of the area's springs, and then descended to Charmy Down, and beyond to druidical stones, and then even stranger stones – small peculiar pointed javelin-like heads which could be found here and there on the ground, which as a boy he had been told were formed whenever thunderbolts struck the earth.

Taking this route always led the mind of Moses Pickwick back to the deep past of Bath itself, to the city's legendary origins. For the Pickwick family coaching business would not exist without Bath, and – so the story went – Bath began with Swainswick. ‘It may be called Swainswick today,' he told his horse, ‘but it is derived from Swines-wick. For this was the very area in which the legend of Prince Bladud and the pigs was born. I told you that Uncle Eleazer punished a man who beat a pig? Well I believe in his heart he fined that man out of respect for the swine that Bladud tended in Swainswick.'

And though even Moses Pickwick was not mad enough to tell the entire story of Prince Bladud to his horse, he did tell the story to one or two interested customers in the Hare and Hounds. As many outside Bath will not know the tale, we set it down here.

The True Legend of Prince Bladud

Long, long ago, long before English was the language in the land, the forests were roamed by wolves.

Wolves! Hunted for their skins, hunted for their meat, hunted for sport, and hunted, most notably, by the young and muscular Prince Bladud, son to Lud-Hudibras, eighth King of Britain. In the days of late summer, in the thick grassland, Prince Bladud and three large dogs – bred in a litter across the sea – would venture near the wolf dens. The dogs would find the scent, and drag down a wolf as it returned to its cubs, or chase it into the path of Bladud's arrow.

Earlier in the year, during the lean times for wolves, Bladud would hunt at night, carrying a piglet in a sack, which he would take out and tether in a clearing in the moonlight. Before long, a wolf would come. It would jump on the terrified piglet and sink its teeth in, and then when it was distracted the dogs would be released, and sink
their
teeth into the wolf, or Bladud's arrow would fly straight into the wolf's heart.

One such moonlit night, Bladud carried a piglet in a sack through the trees. The piglet had been chosen by a servant, and Bladud had not seen the animal until the moment when he undid the drawstring. Normally he would sacrifice a piglet without a second thought, but when he removed this one from the sack, and it squealed, he saw that it had a bent foot. For some reason, which perhaps even Bladud himself could not explain, he stroked the foot and said: ‘Poor thing.' And when he placed the piglet down and tethered it to the stake, the piglet looked imploringly into Bladud's eyes. Still, Bladud walked away to hide with his dogs. A little while later, he saw the wolf creeping out of the tall grass, and the piglet trembled, and then it turned its head towards the very spot where Bladud hid. The prince suddenly stood up, waving his arms, and he cried at the top of his voice: ‘Go away with you, wolf!' The wolf ran into the night. Bladud walked towards the piglet. He took out a knife and cut the tether. The pig limped into the forest, turning to look at Bladud once more before it vanished. ‘You may or may not survive,' said Bladud, ‘but neither you nor the wolf will die tonight.'

The next morning, Bladud received a summons to his father's throne room. The king was a great fat man, so fat that Bladud had been heard to call him ‘The Giant Egg', and this may perhaps lead to comparisons with Humpty Dumpty, if one wished to cite a nursery rhyme which did not then exist.

Courtiers witnessed no happy exchange between father and son. Too much time, said the king, had been devoted by the prince to the idle pleasures of hunting. No more would he let his son roam the forests. Bladud pleaded, asking for just one more season, one more month, even one more
night
of hunting. He made every argument in hunting's favour that he knew, of which the principal one was that it made a man sharp for war. But the king's decision was irrevocable. His son would sail to Athens in the morning to learn the arts of civilisation and conquest, and become the king's worthy successor. With the heaviest of hearts, the prince bowed and left the throne room, realising that there was nothing to do but accept.

It was strange then that, once in Athens, Bladud became a changed man. No longer did he show the slightest interest in the hunt; instead, he embraced his new Greek life wholeheartedly. He sought all that Greece could teach, and he immersed himself in Plato, Zeno, Epicurus and Pythagoras. He loved especially the stories of the gods and heroes, and would listen intently to the tales of Athena and Apollo. He had learnt the Greek language, of course – he was the keenest of students, and he chanted aloud the syllables pi-pa-pu-pe, mi-ma-mu-me as his instructor pointed to them on a tile. He mastered the Athenian accent to perfection. As if that achievement was not enough, he even wrote verses in Greek, first on sand with a finger, then on wax with a stylus, and finally on parchment with a pen and ink. His inspiration was the works of the great poets. He learnt their manliness and their wisdom. He cherished their great storehouse of virtues.

In short, he did all he might to become a Greek. He would be seen wrestling on the sand, or drinking wine in honour of the gods. He would be heard chanting his poems, which often had a patriotic theme, and he accompanied himself on the seven-stringed lyre.

Never did he mention the land of his birth, that far and rainy kingdom founded by Brut. Bladud loved only the rough, mountainous terrain where figs, olives, grapes and lemons grew.

Yet underneath Bladud's calm assimilation lay a desire for a particular syllabus of Grecian knowledge – and this desire possessed him like a mania. He sought out the Greek shamans, and begged them to teach him their dark arts.

He had heard that shamans could free their souls from their bodies, and travel forth across the world in spirit form. Night after night he tried to master this wizardry, and followed the course the shamans prescribed. He placed some simple object – a small piece of pottery, a shoulder-pin, a stylus – upon a low table at his bedside, and imagined himself, willed himself, believed himself, in the last moments before sleep, separated from his physical body as he attempted to stretch a spirit hand out of his physical hand to clutch the object on the table. Once or twice he thought he had done so. But it could have been a dream. Then came a night of conviction, when he
knew
the object was in his invisible fingers.

His thirst for secret knowledge had been awakened, and he needed more.

The shamans led him into underground chambers. By torchlight, they whispered that one day he would control the wind and the rain, and that he would melt hailstones. With more study, he could predict earthquakes, and close fissures in the ground. In time, he would calm giant tidal waves. With more study still, he might both be in the underground chamber, and yet be seen on the surface by other men. Finally he would attain the knowledge of the air-traveller, the knowledge of the great Abaris who rode on a magical arrow, who flew over wide seas and ascended mighty mountains.

All this held Bladud in Athens. For eleven years he stayed and studied the arts of the shamans, ignoring his father's many entreaties to return. For what was a small earthly kingdom on the western fringes to the vast empire of shamanic knowledge?