Death and Mr. Pickwick (5 page)

‘Is it true you have moved, Rowly?' said the silk-shirted man.

‘To No. 1 James Street.'

‘Well go back there straight away, and draw me your next batch.'

Thomas Rowlandson nodded a goodbye and made his way to the tall corner house. He climbed the flights of stairs to the attic. Just as he inserted his key in the lock, he heard a voice from below.

‘Curse you, Rowly! Have you moved here to torture me?'

‘Mr Mitchell!'

A short man, whose probable weight of twenty-five stone and stubby legs made him appear even shorter, embarked upon the staircase, but with considerable difficulty. He swung one arm for extra momentum – narrowly missing the nose of a messenger boy who had just entered the external door, and who then
just
squeezed past Mr Mitchell on the stairs.

‘My dear Mr Mitchell—' said the artist, descending.

‘No! Stay where you are, Rowly. I
shall
see you. But curse you!'

The blubbery man, sweat spreading, paused against the banisters, and then swung the arm again for the last assault on the top. So it was that Matthew Mitchell, retired banker of the firm of Hodsoll, Mitchell and Stirling, reached Thomas Rowlandson's room, and allowed the artist to bring a chair closer to fall into. Mitchell's bulk melted over the sides of the chair, just as his chin melted over his collar. He wheezed and brow-mopped for several minutes. Then, in proportion to his state of recovery, an extraordinarily large and good-humoured smile came to the fore.

‘Curse you, Rowly, curse you.'

‘Sometimes I feel a moment of dizziness myself when I climb.'

‘You deserve it! And more! So,' said Mitchell, now breathing almost normally, ‘you have me sitting here like a good-sized drawstring money bag – what have you got for me?'

Rowlandson brought forward a pile of drawings, to which Mitchell said: ‘Just hold them up for me, Rowly, in case my drips of sweat damage them.'

The artist displayed the drawings, one by one, and to each Mitchell gave his praise. ‘What you can do with a reed pen and India ink, Rowly! – I
love
your lines. The way they start thin, as I was once, then thicken like I have a bit and then they become thin again, as I shall, perhaps, never be – Oh I am there in the countryside with that one – What a drunk! – What a perfect hussy she is! – I always feel that I have seen people exactly like them, Rowly. I know their sort. That's the reason I love your drawings so much and everyone I show them to feels the same. What can one add to your pictures? Nothing. What can one omit? Nothing.'

Then Rowlandson showed a picture of a runaway horse pulling a gig, the wheel lifting up in the foreground. ‘I can feel the power of the horse,' said Mitchell. ‘The horse is tugging
me
, Rowly—' Suddenly Mitchell looked past Rowlandson and his face twisted in horror: ‘What is
that
?'

A small black kitten had climbed on the back of a chair, from which it sprang upon the mantelpiece. Sensing some game, the kitten jumped down, and dashed towards the chair where Mitchell sat. ‘Take it away!' cried Mitchell. He raised his elbow in self-defence and twisted his body round, away from the animal, visibly quivering. Rowlandson scooped up the kitten and stroked its head, not at all comprehending the reaction of the other man.

‘What possessed you to get
that
, Rowly?'

‘I rescued it. It was being chased by boys. They had a sack, and no doubt were going to torture it. It keeps me company when I work. I can put it outside.'

‘But then I shall pass it going downstairs …
ooohhhh
.'

Rowlandson lifted the kitten into a cupboard, leaving the door ajar, so an eye and a nose could be seen. There were plaintive mews.

‘Close the cupboard, Rowly.'

‘The poor thing won't be able to breathe!'

‘
I
can scarcely breathe! It could get out!' He snatched a look at the cupboard. ‘The eye is staring at me.' Mitchell winced and then grimaced. ‘Kittens are gremlins. They creep up on you. They have a mind of their own. They are sly. They cannot be trusted. And then they jump! Then they become monstrous! Huge!'

‘I can see that you feel all this. But I do not pretend to understand it.'

‘To me, a kitten is a creature whose every hair is like a spider's leg and its tail a vicious viper.'

‘But huge and monstrous?'

‘Would you like to be sat upon by an elephant?'

‘The comparison is ludicrous!'

‘A kitten is an elephant in the shadows. Its eyes catch a light and glow. Then they pounce. That is the best I can do to explain it, Rowly. Were it an adult cat, I would be calm enough. But –
kittens
! I don't even want to look at them. I don't know – first the stairs, then this!' He was sweating again.

‘In future we will meet elsewhere or you can wait until the kitten is grown.'

‘I have a better idea. The kitten cannot push the door open can it? No. Well, I have been meaning to invite you to Cornwall. Then we can talk at length and you can draw for me all the time. Put this kitten-monster with a friend if you must keep it, and come with me to Cornwall. What do you say?'

*   *   *

There was a fortnight of drawing and hospitality. In the afternoons, Mitchell and Rowlandson often walked down a winding Cornish lane, or sat by a trout stream, and the artist drew for his admirer. After dinner with the Mitchell family, the two would light pipes over a bowl of punch, and chat until sunrise when Rowlandson would knock his pipestem against the bowl and say: ‘I am done. Pipe out. Sun up. Time for bed.' They shook hands, parted, and after breakfast in the afternoon, the ritual would start again.

*   *   *

A few days after the artist's return to London, he made his way to a public house in Oxford Street, the Man Loaded With Mischief. He passed under the sign – of a husband tottering under the weight of an ugly gin-guzzling wife upon his shoulders – and stooped to enter the door. When he righted himself, standing a foot and a half taller than every other person, a middle-aged cupid-faced man called out across the hot and crowded room: ‘Rowly, over here!'

After exchanging greetings, the man lifted a hatbox on to the table. There were holes in the lid, through which Rowly could see the green eyes of the kitten.

‘I don't know how your friend can be frightened of kittens, Rowly.' He then spoke directly to the hatbox, imitating a cat. ‘Meeeww. I don't know how
anyone
can be frightened of you. No, no, no, I don't know how. Meeeew.'

‘You're as good at doing cats as John Bannister the actor,' said a bald and wrinkled man with scarcely a tooth, from across the aisle.

‘Thank you, sir. Perhaps it is because I
am
John Bannister the actor.'

‘I
thought
I recognised you. I've seen your
Cats in the Barrow
.'

Bannister made a slight bow.

The actor continued to make cattish noises, while Rowlandson attracted a barmaid's attention – a woman who could have been the model for the hussy in the picture he had shown Mitchell. Her curves were scarcely controlled by her clothes, and her strong forearms abundantly in evidence as she deposited beers in front of Bannister and Rowlandson.

When the barmaid left, Bannister asked: ‘So, how was Cornwall?'

‘A
fountain
of hospitality. There could be no better host than Matthew Mitchell.'

‘You're bursting to tell me something.'

‘I am. I am indeed. It's
how
to tell you. Very well. I am used to people looking at me because of my size. But I have
never
received such looks as when out walking with Mitchell.'

‘You told me he was fat.'

‘Fat! The man is a walking turtle. When we went strolling down a country lane or wandered along the coast, the stares we got. Mitchell is a fat man who makes other fat men look thin. And when he was shrieking with fear at the kitten, I was thinking to myself: there is something extraordinarily memorable about this man. You should have seen the fear rippling in the lard of his face and the way it travelled through his entire body.'

‘Well – what of it?'

‘Whether it was because I was spending so much time with Mitchell, or whether it was all the stares that especially provoked me, I don't know. But when I was in Cornwall, I
craved
to put Mitchell in my pictures.'

‘You would not dare!'

‘I can hardly express the desire I had to use him. He was born for comic drawings. But it is true that only a fool would turn his patron into a figure of fun.'

‘It would be
appalling
ingratitude.'

‘He has been kinder to me than anyone I have known. And yet, as I sat drinking his punch and filling my pipe with his oronooko, all the time I would look at him across the table and think: if you only knew what I want to do with you, Matthew Mitchell. I thought of passers-by laughing at him in the print-shop windows. I thought of gentlemen opening up albums of pictures after dinner, showing their friends scenes in which he fell over, or was frightened by a tiny kitten.'

‘You cannot do this, Rowly. Think of what you would lose. Drop these thoughts. He is just a fat man.'

‘Let me put it like this. Suppose I were commissioned to draw illustrations for a book. An edition of Smollett or Fielding, perhaps. I draw a handsome young man – but he could be
any
handsome young man, there is nothing special about him, nothing memorable. And in the next picture, although it is supposed to be the same handsome young man, you would scarcely recognise him at all.'

‘If a picture does its duty, and you pocket your money, what does that matter? Once the covers of the book are closed, people forget the young man in any case.'

‘That is my very point. You forget him. And it isn't good enough, John.
You
are recognised, as an actor. But just about the only recognisable and memorable characters we draw are politicians and royalty. Think about it. We recognise the prime minister and the Cabinet and Napoleon – everyone knows them. But when I looked at Matthew Mitchell, as he was scared by the kitten, I wanted everyone to know
him
at a glance – and they
would
, were I to draw him!'

‘But you cannot. Memorable as he may be, you must forget this insane desire. You can invent other characters. Do a club scene instead. Do another Swan Tavern picture. Your last was popular enough.'

*   *   *

The Swan Tavern, off Chandos Street, came alive when the theatres emptied – when the journalist clutching his notes for tomorrow's review was accompanied by the actor who had died magnificently (as the review would say). These, and men of their class, would ascend the dark stairs of the Swan to the private room. When the gas chandelier was lit and brilliant, so were the members of this club gathered around the table beneath – The Brilliants. But they took their name not from gaslight, but from the ale they drank, Brilliant Ale, brewed in Chandos Street itself. Around the table assembled more than a dozen members, one of whom was Thomas Rowlandson, while another was John Bannister.

The landlord entered, accompanied by a serving girl who carried a pile of chamberpots on top of each other, which she distributed at the foot of every third chair. The club's girthy chairman, who probably earned the right to sit at the head of the table by virtue of the number of his chins, looked displeased as he ran a finger along the table's surface. ‘The table's still sticky from last week,' he said. ‘We prefer it fresh, landlord.'

The girl was sent to fetch a damp cloth. With that cleansing operation accomplished, the door closed upon the club. The chairman banged a gavel and proceeded to read the rules, as he always did, at the start of every meeting. Twenty-four toasts to be drunk – each with a
full
bumper of ale – and foreign wine would
not
be an acceptable substitute – and if any member refused to join in with the toast, the penalty would be applied.

Adopting a grave expression, commensurate with the justice and severity of the sentence to be imposed, the chairman filled a bumper with water from a ewer, and then added spoon after spoon of salt. He stirred and clanged the spoon upon the bumper's rim. Were the penalty of the brine pronounced, he informed the members, the offender
must
drink of the brine, or be expelled from the club. Only after twenty-four toasts – with
full
bumpers – were the members free to drink as they pleased. The chairman then declared the meeting of The Brilliants open.

One member immediately stood – and proposed the glory of Viscount Nelson. A toast was drunk. When that member resumed his seat, another stood, and struck a sentimental note on the immortality of clubs compared to the frailty of the individual members, but as no member had died for several months, the general feeling, as expressed in certain remarks across the table, was that the member had been drinking before the meeting, and a maudlin note had infiltrated his consciousness. A toast was still drunk to the immortality of clubs, during which the watchful eye of the chairman spied one member whose bumper had not been raised to the appropriate angle for full quaffing. The gavel sounded.

‘It is the brine for you, sir.'

‘I am ripe. More than ripe. I was ripe when I came up the stairs.'

‘Then leave our ranks, sir.'

‘Brine! Brine!' came the shout from Rowlandson. The chant was taken up by Bannister, and by the other members, and they thumped the table. The bumper in front of the chairman was passed down to the offender.

The penalised man looked into the brine. ‘All right,' he said. A twinkle in his eye suggested, perhaps, that he arrived fully expecting to receive chastisement, and was not lacking in enthusiasm for its application.