Death and Mr. Pickwick (4 page)

It seems that one day, when he was about five, Robert Seymour's mother stopped at a grubby bookstall outside the Angel Inn in Islington and purchased his education: a torn and imperfect copy of Chinnery's
Writing and Drawing Made Easy.
Robert soon sat studying Chinnery at the table, copying the pictures and memorising the verses – the latter recited by his mother, as she stood behind his shoulders. ‘G' was for grasshopper:

In mirth the grasshopper spends all spring

But is a giddy, thoughtless, lazy thing.

Robert reproduced the insect, as well as an indolent country fellow of the same page, who slept against a haystack. He copied too the picture's decorative border, made from knotted scythes, rakes and hoes.

The second snapshot refers to a summer afternoon, of roughly the same period, when Robert carried home two prizes from Bartholomew Fair: a goldfish in a glass jar, and a poster advertising the fair, torn down from a tree. The poster was soon tacked to the door in the family's dwelling: a display of jugglers and tumblers, supposedly at the fair, but none of whom had actually appeared.

Elizabeth suggested he place the jar on the window ledge, and Robert, with his intense stare, watched the fish; then, having a thought, he positioned the bowl on the table in the centre of the room – he precisely chose his position from which to sketch, so that the poster was shown in the background, and his drawing thus hinted at how the goldfish was acquired.

When the fish was found floating on the surface the next morning, his mother knelt and wiped away the tears. ‘At least you did the picture to remind us of the fish. And I will keep it.'

But Mr Inbelicate, in advising me on the way this work might proceed, laid particular emphasis upon a manuscript he had acquired, which he believed was a key document for the understanding of the early life of Robert Seymour. Even so, there has been a considerable leap in time, of some seven or eight years, since the snapshots.

The manuscript is untitled, anonymous, and incomplete, for it lacks beginning and end, but gives every indication of being autobiographical. One small section is relevant. I shall therefore stand back, and allow the author to speak for himself.

 

*

I OFFER NO OPINION ON WHAT
turned Gillray's mind. Except this – what strain must it be to produce picture after picture to make people laugh when laughing is what you feel least like doing yourself?

He was working on a picture of a barber's shop when his mind finally went, although he had been excitable for years. I've seen him unable to wait for paper, and he had to start etching his drawing straight on the copper plate. The wild things he drew –
well
! I've seen him howling in his room and his face became as gruesome as anything in his pictures. I've seen him wander around naked, in the shop below, without a care. Then once, he must have been dwelling too much on things. I heard him cry: ‘Bring butter! Butter!' – well, he wasn't fussy about bothering me, His Majesty wasn't. A speck of dust on his dinner plate could disturb Gillray, and so you take your time. But I cut a knob of Dorset, and I unlocked his room. The sight that I saw!

He was hanging out of the window, but not in the way you would think. He had tried to throw himself out and dash himself on the cobbles, but his head had got caught in the bars. That is why he wanted butter – as grease. Imagine the scene from outside. He was dangling by his head from between those bars, with his oversized bottom towards the bystanders in the street, his legs wriggling, and all the people in the street, and all the men in White's Club opposite, shouting up. It was like a picture he'd drawn in his younger days – you would have laughed for the horror of it. I pulled him back into the room. He never stopped asking for butter after that, but I made certain I served his bread dry.

Even when he was sane, I don't believe he cared one jot about the politicians he pencilled, or what went on in the world. He would watch the bloated, lushy Cabinet ministers emerging from White's at dawn, where they had won and lost fortunes at faro, and he always carried with him a pencil, and small cards no larger than his palm, and he stood against a wall and sketched these gamblers as they emerged. Then he'd continue on his morning walk along St James's Street, in his hunched-up manner. If you didn't know what he did, you wouldn't have given him a second glance. He had a dark brow and a brooding look. But oh – if you opened up his skull and peeled apart his wonderful brain and saw what was going on
there
.

*   *   *

The point I wish to make is that when I came into my inheritance, which was not large but large enough to set myself up in business, my association with Gillray, and the shop below, predisposed me to choose the life of a dealer in prints, especially of a humorous nature. For in those days, all along Fleet Street were dozens of bow-fronted print-selling shops. I rented such a shop myself, bought stock, and established contacts with artists, many of whom I knew already, at least to nod to. I set up the sign:
Prints: Two shillings coloured, one shilling uncoloured, bound volumes for rent at half a crown a night plus one pound deposit
. From within, I would watch the crowds gather, the men elbowing each other aside, for a better view.

Crowds is no exaggeration. It was the experience of every print shop. All classes of society gathered at the windows: bang-up-to-fashion à-la-mode men looked, but so did men in rags. You would see the fashionable beau with a diamond in his cane on his way to a
rouge et noir
den and grubby youths in gangs who wandered from one print shop to another, as a day's cheap entertainment. Respectable old gentlemen on their daily stroll would look in too. Also, foreigners galore! I remember three Germans coming in, enjoying themselves even if they didn't understand the prints' captions. And why not? There, before their eyes, were pictures of the king, the prime minister and the Cabinet shown as
men
, just like the rest of us, stripped of pretension and disguise. These were just some of the villains depicted. There were prints of doctors who were likely to kill not cure, lawyers who will empty your pockets, hypocritical priests, and generals on the run. They were all in my window and on my racks. Oh the grins, the laughs, the pointing I saw, sitting at my counter, watching the daily gawpers at the glass! The times I had to chase away a pickpocket!

Though let no man deceive you – there were
other
men and boys who congregated at print-shop windows, and not for the purposes of a laugh. The shops provided a perfect place to loiter in broad daylight, much as the porticos of theatres functioned in the evening.

I would sit and watch them make their approaches. Sometimes it was quite amusing. Let's say at about three o'clock in the afternoon, I might see a man come up beside another man who was already at the window. I would mentally decide: he's one and so's the other. I would watch to see if I was right. Sure enough, I would see the new arrival press his body against the first man, just slightly at first, so it could be dismissed as accidental, in the course of seeking a better view of a caricature. Depending on the reaction of the first, a hand may well then be placed indecently upon the person, perhaps at about the level of the belt. Then, if no protest happened, the private parts would be explored comprehensively. Sometimes I saw more active encouragement on the part of the man already at the window. Man Number 1, already there, sees Man Number 2 arrive. Man Number 1 looks at Man Number 2, and in that look the contract is made. Then Man Number 1 looks up and looks down the street, and satisfied that there is no danger, the hand moves in, towards the flap. Often I saw the two walk away together, and I had a little laugh to myself. I accepted such incidents happened. Other print sellers were not so accepting. I am aware of another shop owner, in Sackville Street, who had a persistent offender, and the owner went to the magistrates to have the man arrested, though the evidence was dismissed as insufficient. Thereafter the owner endeavoured to remove the man himself, and made remarks to shame him. On one occasion, he flourished a caricature of a disgraced bishop in the man's face. The man looked at the picture with not the slightest concern. I believe he made a visit to Sackville Street part of his daily promenade for over fifteen years.

One person I met, soon after I opened, was a young lad; I would suppose he was about twelve or thirteen. I took him to be one of the poufs at first, for there was something in his face that said that to me, though I never observed him in the act. I shall go no further than call him Robert S—. I met him in this way. At the back of the shop I had a permanent exhibition of older prints, for the window always reflected the news of the time, and it seemed to me that the drawings had value even if the events they described had passed. Thus, behind a curtain in the rear, I had old Hogarths, Gillrays, Bunburys and other artists, and I charged a penny for admission to view. I filled the walls with humorous prints, floor to ceiling, like a parody of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and I often heard guffaws from behind the curtain. Every so often, young Robert S— would come in with a penny, and spend
hours –
I do not lie, it was hours
–
looking at the works, longer than any other customer spent there. He would carry a pencil and paper in with him and make his own copies of the pictures. A lot of shopkeepers would be annoyed by a customer indulging for so long, for just a penny, but I didn't mind. I suppose in part because I wondered whether he was a pouf, and wanted him to prove it. Well, we exchanged a few words whenever he came in, and I got to know him a bit. One day, I told him the story of Gillray and the butter, and he said to me, with a seriousness I have never forgotten, in the backroom, with all the prints around us:

‘That story doesn't wash.'

There was no deference in his voice at all.

‘How can it be physically possible?' he said. ‘How could Gillray get his body through the bars and then be stuck by his head?'

‘I saw it with my own eyes,' I remarked. He made a most disbelieving grunt. I can still hear that grunt to this day. I am not one to be easily offended, but if I had been, he would have been out of the shop in a moment, and never allowed in again.

We spoke some more about Gillray, and I remember discussing with young Robert S— Gillray's
Prince Regent, A Voluptuary Under the Horrors of Digestion
. If you do not know this picture, then I may briefly describe it, for I still have a copy in an album. The picture shows the prince sitting back in a chair and picking his teeth, all seventeen stone of him, with his huge stomach being the first object to catch the viewer's eye. On the table beside the prince are discarded meat bones and empty decanters, while partially concealed behind the chair is a chamberpot full to the brim – indeed, it is overspilling – with royal waste. While on the wall, between sconces, there is a parody of his coat of arms, with a crossed knife and fork beneath the Prince of Wales feathers. I remember asking Robert S— what he thought of this picture.

He said, with astonishing confidence for his age: ‘Gillray missed a trick. He should have added the Prince of Wales's motto beneath the feathers, but changed it from “
Ich dien
” to “I dine”.'

 

*

MR INBELICATE ONCE SAID TO
me that this work has much in common with the villainous windings of a stream, or even the visual disruptions of a migrainous zigzag, and its coherence must emerge, rather than be laid down. ‘The question is always,' he said, ‘where shall we go next, Scripty?'

The answer, on the current occasion, is that we shall walk out of this print shop and wander down the muddy pavement of Fleet Street to other print shops. Parliament is sitting, and as we pass the windows, the caricatures reflect the latest debates and attract scores of viewers. A glimpse beside a lady's bonnet, for instance, catches an image of Napoleon's hat and then, as she shifts her head, a pair of scales held high by Blind Justice. But the movement of my imaginary buckled shoes, and the suction on each step from the mud – added to the influence of all those shop windows, with caricatures showing exaggerated facial and bodily features – play upon my editorial imagination. The shoes swell in size, to be occupied by enormous feet, attached to bulbous, white-stockinged calves, though mottled by mud splashes. The windows reflect slightly older political concerns now, for we have walked back two years in time. The shoes cross the threshold of one of the print shops, and now we see the feet belong to a tall and huge-framed middle-aged man, beaming good nature, with features as impressive as his frame – babyish eyes that would soften any heart, a nose that was wielded by, rather than merely being attached to, the face, and to complete it all, a fleshy lower lip. Such a man would be a gift to a caricaturist – and
being
a caricaturist, he carried himself with pride, like a living advertisement for his own work.

‘Rowly!' said the shop's silk-shirted proprietor, popping up from behind the counter, and casting a greedy eye at a portfolio under the man's arm. ‘What have you brought me today?'

‘I have got one I know you'll sell several hundred of,' he said. He placed the portfolio upon the counter, undid the ribbon, and produced a large drawing showing a drunkard transported downhill via a wheelbarrow, after a session in a public house. The legend read:
Dr Drainbarrel Conveyed Home in a Wheelbarrow.

‘
Ve-ry
amusing, Rowly. Definitely one for the billiard rooms! What else – ah!' An incompetent huntsman, riding to hounds, has cleared a fence, but now slides along his horse's neck, about to be thrown in a bone-breaking fall. His incompetence is emphasised by an expert female rider, approaching from behind, whipping her own mount over the jump. The print-shop owner showed his delight with these and the other drawings in the portfolio, firstly in grins, and secondly when he unlocked a box kept beneath the counter and chained in place, and passed over enough coins to fill the artist's ample hand.