Death and Mr. Pickwick (3 page)

‘Where is Mr Walker, then? Please, the truth.'

‘There ain't no Valker. Upholsterers are in the Castle and Falcon. Go there, put a smile on your chops even if you don't feel like it, buy 'em a drink, and you'll get your foot in the door.'

So Henry Seymour returned to the Castle and Falcon. There were handshakes, backslaps, forced smiles – and glasses raised in a toast to that most excellent fellow, Mr Walker.

*   *   *

Three days later, Henry Seymour stood in a large and high-ceilinged workshop where there was a constant sound of the tapping of brass nails, as men stretched webbing and damask over chair seats and sofa frames. In front of him was a stern and oily face, the Head of Upholstery, whose leather apron, expanded by a lumpy chest and stomach, suggested that he had dedicated himself so thoroughly to the mysteries of the profession that he had stuffed himself as part of his apprenticeship. He led Seymour down a long corridor, past rooms of seamstresses, and cabinetmakers specialising in exotic timbers, saying as they proceeded: ‘Mr Seddon tells us to do this with every new person who comes here, in every department, no exceptions. I can't get an assistant to do it, I have to do it myself, or I'm out.' They passed a small workshop where several men, working on locks, all exhibited a peculiar green tint to the hair at the temples. ‘It's the brass filings that does that,' said the Head of Upholstery.

Finally, they reached a set of offices where Seymour was informed the higher authorities of Seddon's worked, and came to a halt before a carved plinth where, under a glass dome, there was a twisted mass of metal, recognisable as the blades of melted screwdrivers, coalesced.

‘It was found after the last fire,' said the Head of Upholstery, tapping the dome. ‘Mr Seddon keeps it there as a reminder. So let's see inside your pockets. Everything – in every pocket.'

When Seymour pulled out a small clay pipe, the Head of Upholstery plucked it away and held it dangling by the stem.

‘You have a choice, Seymour,' he said. ‘You can ask for this pipe back, and I'll gladly give it to you, but we'll say goodbye, and I'll take you to the gates myself. Or you can tell me to put it in here' – there was a wooden box beside the plinth filled with broken pipes, cigars and tobacco pouches – ‘and you
swear
you will never come to Seddon's with a pipe, or anything to do with smoking again. Choose.'

Before he could answer, a stooping white-haired old man emerged from one of the offices, nodded to the Head of Upholstery, and walked away down the corridor.

‘That's Mr Seddon,' said the Head of Upholstery. ‘He'll go around the factory now, working off his breakfast. He keeps a special eye on upholstery because we use the most valuable materials. So don't think you can smuggle in a pipe.'

‘Snap it in half,' said Seymour.

Tossing the broken pipe into the box, the Head of Upholstery said, with an innocent look: ‘Now you won't be in the workshop straight away. See, I have all the men I need right now, and some to spare. But there's a place you can do some work for me, a place that'll keep you nice and busy, just for the time being, and we're a bit short there, and I can call on you as soon as I do have a need in the workshop.'

‘This is work in upholstery, isn't it?'

‘It's the upholstery
department
. It's this or nothing, until we lose a few more men.'

They came to a passage with a wide-open window and a closed door. ‘We keep that door shut as much as possible,' the Head of Upholstery said.

He pulled back the door and immediately there was a stench similar to burning hair. ‘Keep your mouth shut tight till you get used to it.' Seymour put his hand over his mouth and they climbed a dark staircase to the top of the building, the odour worsening as they rose.

Under the roofbeams, men, women and children pulled handfuls of feathers and down from sacks, and stuffed them into mattresses, cushions, pillows and bolsters. The illumination from skylights revealed clouds of feather dust floating in the air, and in the middle of the loft was a stove, the source of the stench. Some workers wore linen strips across the face, but whether this afforded genuine protection was doubtful, given the greater number of workers with a bare face and a manifest cough.

‘That's how we season the feathers,' said the Head of Upholstery, pointing towards the stove. ‘Just don't stand too close on your first day.'

Seymour had covered his nose and mouth with his hands, and was on the verge of vomiting.

‘Do you want to stay?'

‘Yes,' said Seymour. ‘Yes.'

‘One word. Don't think you can get away with any cabbaging.'

‘Cabbaging?'

‘Some men think they are very clever, and take a spoonful of feathers a day, hiding it inside their breeches, or in their hats, or in their shirt cuffs, and they reckon that soon they'll have half a pound they can sell for ninepence. But if we find so much as a scrawny chick's eyelash missing, we'll put
you
in a sack, Seymour. Mr Seddon has eyes
everywhere
.'

He turned away and yelled across the loft. ‘Ho! Tom! New man!' Then the Head of Upholstery headed for the staircase, in a hurry to avoid any contact whatsoever with the Tom he had just addressed.

A tiny fellow at the far end of the loft, who was bent over with his hand in a cushion, straightened and turned, revealing a head with just a few patches of red hair. He pulled down a greasy vest, and then came towards Seymour, wading through feathers as though they were foam on a shore.

Immediately this Tom began talking, as if asked to produce a summary account of his life. ‘I started as a poulterer's lad; then swept the ring at the cockfights; then got my own birds and spurs, fine birds, well worth a bet – that's until a rival poisoned 'em all; and I came here, to feathers. That was a long time ago. Come with me.'

He took Seymour – retching, eyes red raw and streaming – to a pile of large, plumped-up sacks stamped ‘Hudson Bay Eiderdown', next to another pile of red cushion covers. ‘I take twenty-five palms for cushions like those; I feed the cushion till it's three handfuls shy of bursting.' He laughed horribly. ‘They said shave your head when I started, but I didn't and now it's too late!' He laughed horribly again.

Henry Seymour said: ‘I will keep my hair.'

Tom had either not heard, or, if he had, it made no difference at all.

*   *   *

It was a grey, wet evening on Aldersgate Street and the dome of St Paul's loomed in mockery – like a gigantic bolster, it seemed to Henry Seymour – to mark the end of his first day at Seddon's. He stood under a gutter, washing his hands in rainwater, while his hat brim made another overflowing gutter in front of his eyes. His fingers were encrusted with blood from catching on feather stems, and the down clung to his nails – and yet, when a passing stranger made the remark ‘Foul weather', Seymour's mind formed a pun, and he managed a smile.

That night he slept in an innyard, between the wheels of his cart as the best protection from the weather, his head supported by a thin rolled-up coat, hay and cobbles.

*   *   *

It was barely a month later, nearly midday, when Elizabeth Bishop, digging in the garden, heard Henry Seymour calling from down the road. The cry seemed more distant than it was, because so pitiful. Seymour was in the cart, but scarcely able to sit upright.

He had driven through the early hours and could not descend unaided from the driving seat; now he leant upon Elizabeth's shoulder along the garden path. Whether through exposure, blood poisoning, the conditions of the feather loft or some unknown cause, he was feverish and barely coherent. ‘A change of air – I needed a change of air,' he said.

As she took him across the threshold, he also said: ‘I will go back.'

‘Soft pillows,' he whispered in relief, as she put him to bed. ‘Soft pillows,' he said, but in bitterness, an hour later, as she stood over him. ‘Soft pillows!' he cried out late at night, for no reason she could understand, his eyes stretching wide in fear.

Henry Seymour was dead within a week.

*   *   *

The minuscule midwife carried a bundle of cloth strips, of assorted sizes and soiling, as she fussed around the room, stuffing crevices.

‘So many miss the keyhole,' she said. As her puffy eyes were not far above it, she was unlikely to do so herself.

Climbing on a chair to reach the higher recesses of the door, she said: ‘I suppose he made this furniture himself?'

‘Every stick,' said Elizabeth Bishop from the bed. ‘I shall have to sell it all when I leave.'

The midwife climbed down and drew the curtains, cutting out the natural light. She pinned the edges together. When the room was as dark as required, and no fresh air entered, she lit candles and poured hot gin from a teapot beside the bed.

‘Here, dearie, it's pure, and nice and sweet, none of your all-nations-drippings that most round here would give you.' After a little pause she said to Elizabeth Bishop: ‘You did not make a
promise
to go to London. He might have said things in his fever, and you might have said things back, but you didn't swear. Though even if you had – would it
count
? And even if it
did
count – men make promises, and forget them. You make certain this child never has a single nostrilful of London air.'

A dipped candle had failed to light and was smouldering beside the bed. Elizabeth leant across, and blew it alight again. ‘If it is a boy, he
will
grow up in London.'

*   *   *

Mud, all over the streets, caking Elizabeth Bishop's boots and the hem of her skirt. Carts and coaches and street-cries, men playing fiddles and bawling out songs.

*   *   *

On the twenty-fourth day of December 1801, Elizabeth Bishop's children, now three in number, watched as she hooped a faggot of ashwood with nine bands of the same wood. The family occupied a cramped room in Islington with little in the way of furniture, but there was a fireplace, and coals to go into it.

‘Your father would have done this for you,' she said. ‘So
I
shall do it for you. Now, each choose a band.' They did so. ‘I shall have the one at the bottom.' She placed the faggot on the fire. ‘The last of our bands to crack wins – this!' She pulled a small orange from a pocket in her skirt.

All sat on the floor watching, especially the youngest child, Robert. He clenched his fist in intensity of concentration, completely absorbed by his chosen band. Suddenly there was a crack, and he turned and looked in despair at his mother. His widely spaced and sad eyes penetrated her, and he began to sniffle, and then to cry. She comforted him but his entire frame shook with misery. ‘Goodness, Robert – you'd think I had put
you
on the fire!'

She lifted him up into her arms and walked over to the window, in the hope that the streets of Islington would be a distraction from tears. They were on the top floor, and looking down, the better-dressed men, almost without exception, exhibited a huge stomach, protruding far beyond the brim of a hat.

‘Do you know, until I came to London, I had never
seen
so many fat men, Robert. Though there are thin ones too.' She then saw that one of these fat men, with a triangular hat and globular front, had crossed the street to enter the building. ‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘Well, we knew the landlord would come. I don't know what I will say.'

They all waited, with identically anxious expressions, for the knock.

But when it came and she opened the door, Robert wriggled free of her arms and stepped in between his mother and the man demanding rent. Without any warning or prompting, the boy began singing a song in a shrill and unsettling voice, a song which his mother had taught him from a song sheet the day before:

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,

Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,

Oh, give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

The landlord looked down in astonishment. The boy continued.

These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak,

These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years,

And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek,

Has been the channel to a stream of tears.

The landlord's face showed every possible manner of exasperation. When the three-year-old started to accompany himself with dithering limbs and appealing eyes, the face filled with horror.

‘The boy is mad! Utterly mad!'

‘It is not my fault, sir,' said Elizabeth. ‘I had nothing to do with this. Robert, you mustn't!'

But the boy came closer to the landlord, and placed his tiny hand upon the cover of the rent book, touching the man's finger with his own. The book was instantly drawn upwards to the man's chin. In response, the boy stroked the landlord's fat leg through the fabric of the breeches.

Oh! Take me to your hospitable dome,

Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold!

Short is my passage to the friendly tomb,

For I am poor, and miserably old.

The landlord hurried downstairs, as though dragged down by his own weight. ‘I shall come back, be sure of it!'

When the door was shut, Elizabeth did not scold the boy, but hugged him, and he became instantly brighter in the face.

‘I don't think,' said Elizabeth to her other children, ‘that we shall begrudge the orange being given to Robert on this occasion.'

He retreated to a corner with a pencil and paper as he ate the segments of fruit. His drawings were as any child's: a man of simple straight arms and a circle for the head. But today he added feet, and bent knees, and the figure ran.

 

*

MR INBELICATE DREW MY ATTENTION
to two more incidents in the early life of Robert Seymour. He called them snapshots, but he did not mean in the photographic sense – he meant in the early-nineteenth-century sense, of a quick shot by a hunter at a fast-moving target.