Death and Mr. Pickwick (47 page)

‘He was irritable once when he had forgotten his tobacco,' said Penn, ‘but that lasted only an instant. For who would not lend this man the means to fill his pipe?'

‘It is bliss indeed to sit by a river, smoking.' Dampier settled himself down. ‘Well, Mr Seymour, I must say I have never met a caricaturist before, and I am very pleased to meet you. But I must also say that you caricaturists are tame fellows now, compared to what the pictures used to be like.'

‘We have all become tamer,' said Seymour. ‘But you are right. Many people say much the same thing to me.'

‘It's not just caricatures,' said Dampier. ‘Fielding or Smollett wouldn't be published today. It's as though we no longer fart.'

‘Really, sir!' said Canon Beadon, whose dietary regimen perhaps made him sensitive on the subject.

‘It's true! You would hardly believe we have buttocks! Show a Cabinet minister or the king with his breeches down and who could believe his lies? We have been thoroughly subdued.'

A general discussion on this subject began, which other drinkers in the Boot joined, as though the club had stumbled upon a topic too important to restrict by subscription. A man with a crooked nose, and a few straight teeth, set down his tankard and recalled the perfect delight of examining Gillrays after dinner when he was a younger fellow, as the guests took wine. ‘I can remember my old father laughing and joking with no restraint. The soul has gone out of the world,' he said.

‘I agree with you sir,' said Dampier. ‘Life is long, and we need laughter. We should say what we think of people. I am sure the public find your pictures amusing, Mr Seymour, but they don't go far enough.'

‘I'll tell you,' said a man with deep lines of experience, a cheerful twitchy mouth, and an alert manner, ‘hiring an album of pictures for the evening was the best way of sitting next to a shy girl.'

‘Some of Rowlandson's you'd save for girls who
weren't
so shy,' said a man in a corner with a snort, which became a coarse cackle, taken up by others.

Opinions now flowed back and forth. There was a consensus that when the Prince Regent ascended to the throne, the lavish outfits and grand splendour of the coronation set the new mood, and the populace was not so keen on breeches coming down any more. Then Queen Caroline died, and the hurricane winds of the old caricaturists were becalmed ever afterwards.

‘I think it is getting worse, gentlemen, if you don't mind my saying so,' said the petite landlord as he brought over a tray of drinks. ‘It's amusement itself that is on its way out.'

‘These days,' said the man with the crooked nose and the few straight teeth, ‘you're met with a sneer just for mentioning some simple pleasure – like going for a walk on a nice evening, or just – I don't know – just for mentioning that you were having a chat with a man you had cottoned on to at an inn. You can almost
hear
the sniff of disapproval.' There were nods, and murmurs of shared experience around the Boot.

‘It's as though all we should do is work hard, and then spend the rest of our time reading Holy Scripture,' said a wearied man who drank resting on a walking stick. ‘Apologies to clerical gentlemen present.'

‘There is something in what you say,' said the canon. ‘Vicars themselves used to be merrier. There have always been miserable sorts in the church, and we used to make fun of them, but there are more of them now.'

‘I am aware of corresponding changes in my profession,' said Seymour. ‘There are more engravings of Shakespeare in the print-shop windows now. And scenery. And pictures of flowers and fruit are becoming popular, which families are encouraged to paste into scrapbooks.'

‘But still, Mr Seymour,' said Penn, ‘is it a bad thing if we do not live in such raucous times as we used to? There are grounds for optimism. Reform is under way. You and your brother artists must surely accommodate to the prevailing mood.'

‘Undoubtedly our rulers will drink from the glass of reform,' said Seymour. ‘But they will spit it out if it tastes too strong.'

‘Reform may not go far, Mr Seymour, but it is beginning,' said Penn. ‘You can
sense
the desire for improvement – a genuine goodwill and benevolence, a will to make things better for people.'

‘There is a will to
believe
such things,' said Seymour.

‘It is your duty as a caricaturist to be cynical, but these days men want to be kinder,' said Penn.

‘We are all scared of being found unrespectable, that's what it is,' said Dampier. ‘And, as most of us in our hearts are
not
respectable, we are bringing in an age of utter hypocrisy. There used to be a man I would see around who would stand on street corners, arms outstretched, singing about cocks, farts and bums. Always made me laugh. This was about fifteen years ago. Then he vanished. Up before the beak, probably. We won't see his like again. All very safe for women and children!'

‘The aim now must be to have the humour and fun without the debauchery,' said Seymour. ‘In a way, it is more of a challenge for a person in my profession.'

‘I do not understand how the likes of Gillray got away with so much,' said Penn. ‘I am amazed that some of the old prints escaped prosecution.'

‘Well, simply imagine the courtroom,' said Warburton. ‘The counsel for the prosecution stands up, in all his dignity, and reads the solemn indictment, of how His Majesty the King was depicted bent over in the act of breaking wind!'

There was a wave of laughter throughout the inn, as though they had recaptured the spirit of former times.

‘But in any case,' said Seymour, ‘caricaturists have too little impact on events for the authorities to be especially concerned about us.'

‘You are surely being modest, Mr Seymour,' said Warburton.

‘I do not believe the First Lord of the Treasury plans his policies thinking of me,' said Seymour.

‘But I know – and I am sure you know it too, Mr Seymour – that men of your profession affect the way that people think
about
a politician,' said Warburton. ‘In extreme cases, a man could be associated for all time with his drawing.'

‘Even if that were true, sir, it is not good for a caricaturist to admit it. My duty is to prick pomposity's bubble – I do not even like talking about “my duty” – but you should understand, I would not become such a bubble myself.'

‘Who would even know what the prime minister looked like without men like you, Mr Seymour?' said Barnard.

‘I have heard rumours that Wellington has one of yours in his privy,' said Warburton.

‘I have heard that myself,' said Seymour. ‘But so has every caricaturist about his work. Caricaturists never flatter politicians, and yet politicians desire our pictures with more intensity than the most lickspittle portraits ever produced. And though I would not want it widely known – please keep this to ourselves – I am growing to
like
the politicians I draw. Are they any worse than the rest of us? They strut, and pose, and talk unending rubbish, and it all amounts to a rather endearing little game.' He clapped his hands together. ‘But we have surely spent too much time on this. You gentlemen are here for sport!'

Conversation quietened for a while, and the other drinkers in the Boot disengaged from the club. Penn stood up to relieve a cramp in his legs, and he looked towards the mantelpiece, to two piles, one of recent issues of the
Sporting Magazine
, and one of recent issues of the
New Sporting Magazine
.

‘The
Sporting Magazine
is not what it was since Nimrod vanished from its pages,' said Penn.

‘There is always the
New
,' said a thin-lipped club member with a purplish eye and elegant lashes, whose languor and confidence were in proportion to his wealth – he was indeed rumoured to be the Houghton's most comfortable landowner. ‘My spies tell me that Nimrod is wanted by Surtees at the
New
.'

‘I don't know why he gave up writing in the first place,' said Penn. ‘Hunting is not my sport, but even I enjoyed his pieces.'

‘Surely you know of the legal restraint placed upon him?' said the landowner.

‘I do not,' said Penn. ‘If you know anything about Nimrod, tell us.'

‘I not only know
about
Nimrod, I know Nimrod personally,' said the landowner, taking an opportunity to draw upon his cigar. ‘Nimrod could be described as' – he looked into the cloud of smoke, trying to see how to capture the fellow – ‘he could be described as a man of the world, but in a better sense than is normally meant by that expression. He has seen a lot in his forty-odd years, and he knows a lot, and is so sharp in observation that, were one to choose a guest for supper to add satisfaction to the food, it would be difficult to find a better companion than Nimrod.'

Another long, smoke-gazing pause followed.

‘Nimrod has sat next to me at dinner,' he eventually continued, ‘and when he turned in my direction, just in the movements of his lips and teeth and eyes he captivated me, and I thought what a good-looking, charming man. His voice is
so
polite and
so
soft. And his high forehead just irresistibly makes you think: here is an intelligent fellow. And most charming of all, he already seems to know you from the very first moment you meet him – and from then on, you are under his spell. I watched Nimrod holding his knife and fork, and his hands are, frankly, beautiful; I remember thinking hands like those would get the best out of a horse.'

‘Do tell us more,' said Penn.

 

*

THERE WAS A QUILL, POISED
to write. It leant within a beautiful male hand, upon a desk, before a windowload of rain, overlooking the Blackfriars Road in London, in November 1821.

The fraying of a shirt cuff suggested the hand had known better times, while a letter from a wife on one side of the desk indicated it no longer clasped its feminine equivalent. From beneath a blotter, an invitation card with a decorative border told of a party not attended, while the cramped and untidy room around spoke of the impossibility of extending a reciprocal invitation without causing offence.

And a watercolour over the hearth of a hunt in Leicestershire, together with a scattering of other items – including a stirrup cup on the mantelpiece and whip in a corner – testified to where the man at the desk would rather be.

He looked at the nib of his quill, which he sometimes thought resembled a javelin point.

There were framed copies of articles on the wall. People seldom frame articles unless written by themselves – so it must be presumed that the room was occupied by the author. One was signed ‘Eques', horseman in Latin. The next, simply ‘A', the first letter of a surname. Then, ‘Acastus', the Greek who participated in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, renowned for his prowess as a javelin thrower.

He had read through the contents of the latest piece he had written. It was on the same subject as the watercolour, fox-hunting in Leicestershire, and the writer's depth of knowledge was evident: the very soil of Leicestershire, the piece noted, was favourable to holding a scent, and it gave approval to the expansiveness of the county's enclosures and the quality of its fences.

Now he paused. How was the piece to be signed? After the face underwent several contemplative expressions, the hand added the signature which satisfied most that day: ‘Nimrod' – the mighty hunter before the Lord. He addressed the letter to Mr Pitman, the publisher of the
Sporting Magazine
.

*   *   *

Once Charles Apperley had adopted the pseudonym of Nimrod, his fortunes, and those of the
Sporting Magazine
itself, changed. Both author and magazine reached new, glorious heights. There came a day when Apperley was summoned to the office of Mr Pitman for a most significant meeting. A contract was placed before the author for signature.

‘You have more than doubled our circulation, Mr Apperley,' said Pitman, his face showing that special geniality to be found in the vicinity of legal documents when a signature is most earnestly desired. ‘You have even enabled us to increase our price per issue. The contract I have drawn up reflects your great value to us.'

Nimrod ran his eyes over the terms of the generosity: £1,500 a year, as well as all the costs of keeping five hunters and a hack, and payment of an insurance premium of £93 10
s
.

‘But there is one clause,' said Pitman, ‘which I inserted for a particular reason. I know it is only a matter of time before others ask you to write for them.'

‘I am by nature loyal, sir.'

‘I do not doubt it – and the contract should be seen as expressive of your loyalty to us, and our loyalty to you.' He leant back against his chair, carefully considering his next words. ‘I would not seek to irrevocably and permanently bind you, Mr Apperley, for that could chafe against your spirit, and become, in time, a source of great irritation to you, to the detriment of your work.' He leant forward again. ‘I seek to bind not you, but Nimrod.'

‘But – I
am
Nimrod.'

‘You must not forget that Nimrod was born in the
Sporting Magazine
's pages. I propose that, if you would go elsewhere, you must do so under another name. Quit the
Sporting Magazine
if you like – write for someone else if you wish – but it is on the strict understanding that you do so with a fresh identity. This contract binds you for ten years, until the end of 1835. During that period, the contract stipulates that you shall not write about sport for anyone else under the name of Nimrod. After the ten years, I give you complete freedom, and Nimrod is yours to use as you wish.'

‘A name is just a name.'