Death and Mr. Pickwick (58 page)

‘So the great Seymour's inexhaustible well of inspiration has run dry.'

‘You do not believe that.'

‘Shall I tell you the truth behind that note?' said à Beckett. ‘Little is happening in the world this week. We shall struggle ourselves to fill the magazine. Seymour has found nothing to make his pencil twitch. So, with the thoughtlessness typical of the artist, he provides nothing, and has made our work even harder. I suppose we shall get through somehow, Henry.'

‘What do we put on the front page instead of a drawing? How do we explain it to readers?'

‘We merely say that the woodcutter has been taken ill with influenza. And – I have it! We shall promise our readers that Seymour will provide
two
drawings next week, in compensation.'

‘Seymour would have to agree to that.'

‘Whether he agrees or not – I am going to publish it.'

*   *   *

The following week, Seymour submitted a single picture, again by messenger, without any preceding discussion of subject. It showed a large beer barrel, marked as the property of dissenters, which bishops of the established church tapped in order to fill tankards with gold coins. If à Beckett saw a parallel to the relationship between Seymour and himself, he did not betray it to Mayhew, and his editorial comments interpreted the drawing as a commentary on religious affairs.

*   *   *

The next week, another picture arrived by messenger, with no apparent relationship to contemporary issues: it showed two dead men, the staunch upright figure of Napoleon Bonaparte and the tired, gouty figure of George IV, staring at each other across an expanse of water.

‘What the devil does Seymour mean by this?' said à Beckett, passing the drawing to Mayhew.

‘That he is tired old England, and you are the enemy across the water? That there is a rift between you that cannot be crossed?'

‘I shall interpret it as two ghosts, talking about the state of their respective countries.'

*   *   *

The next week, Seymour sent in no picture at all, and no message.

‘We will merely publish without a picture,' said à Beckett. ‘Seymour will come back, begging for forgiveness. In the meantime, I shall write that Lord Melbourne and Mrs Norton went to see
The Revolt of the Workhouse
.'

‘Shameful, Gilbert.'

‘There is so much gossip about Melbourne and Mrs Norton that what does it matter if we invent a little more?'

‘I shall write to Seymour, and plead with him to send us something.'

*   *   *

Three days later, a messenger brought a drawing of the Chancellor of the Exchequer depicted as a jester, complete with cap and bells. His head burst through a copy of
The Times
, with the annotation: ‘Lord help the country that has such a minister!'

‘I knew he would be back,' said à Beckett.

Mayhew cast an eye over the accompanying letter. ‘He says that he will go away for a week, for a rest, and that there will not be a picture for the next issue. He hopes that disagreements can be put behind us. But – he says in future he will not come to the office.'

‘Good.'

‘He also says he trusts that the finances of
Figaro
will be managed more wisely than the Chancellor of the Exchequer manages the finances of the country.'

‘Seymour will be paid when I am ready to do so.'

‘You cannot go on like this, Gilbert.'

‘Can I not? And do you also believe Robert Seymour to be the only caricaturist in London?'

*   *   *

‘And you could not tell me this until
now
?' said Jane Seymour to her husband during supper one evening in August. She sent her children away from the table. ‘Would this have continued until every penny of our savings was gone?'

He was not looking at her. He stared at his dinner plate, idly moving the food around.

‘Stop that!'

‘It is not Mayhew's fault. He has always treated me fairly.'

‘And let à Beckett pay you in compliments!' She reached across and seized the fork from his fingers. ‘Without a moment's delay, you will write to the other parties involved in
Figaro
, and get every penny that's owed to you. Remind me of their names.'

‘Thomas Lyttleton Holt.'

‘He will be our first letter.'

‘He is no longer involved in
Figaro
.'

‘
Then why tell me
?'

‘He is a pleasant man. A restless man. He always moves on to something else.'

‘Why should I care about that
now
? Why do
you
care?'

He looked across at his wife with the most desperate expression in his eyes. ‘I am fearful about what will happen if we press this too far.'

‘Tell me who else is involved in
Figaro
.'

A letter was duly sent to William Strange. Three days later, Seymour received a note from à Beckett. Jane watched as he read it. He breathed out in exasperation. ‘We will not get the money. The sly dog has transferred the entire ownership to Strange.'

‘He cannot just throw off his debts like that!'

‘That is exactly what he has done. He says he has no further concern in the pecuniary affairs of
Figaro
, and that he is only the editor. He declines any further communication with me, and says that it matters little to him who draws the pictures, but that if am to supply them in the future, I am to do so through Strange.'

‘This is not hopeless,' she said. ‘You now write to Strange again.'

‘Why should he want to pay me anything at all? He'll tell me to take the matter up with à Beckett. The sly, sly dog!'

‘You cannot just accept this loss!'

‘The only hope is that things will be better in the future if I deal with Strange. But I have been beaten by à Beckett. I don't want to talk about this any more, Jane.'

‘You must!'

‘I do not! That is it, Jane!'

He retreated to the kitchen, and made himself a cheese sandwich, while his wife stood at the doorway. He gave no response to anything she said. He merely sat and chewed slowly at the table, as though a full mouth were the reason he could not communicate.

From this point on, Seymour began to eat noticeably more. He asked his wife for larger portions at every meal. Soon, these became double portions. Whenever he sat down to draw, it was never without a sandwich beside his pencil. To his wife's comments that he was becoming ‘bacon-faced' he said nothing. It was also at this time that a strange phenomenon appeared in Robert Seymour's caricatures: the lengthening of the Lord Chancellor Lord Brougham's nose, to an inhuman proboscis. It first appeared in a drawing in which Brougham's nose sliced through a scroll in his hand marked ‘Poor Laws Amendment'. The nose was like a trunk, yet sharp, with an upward curve. A few days later he drew the nose as prehensile, and it curled around the handle of a jug, which it crashed down upon a fat man's head. After another few days, he drew the nose erect and long, and in the same picture, a terrified woman, her arms raised in shock. And one afternoon, towards the end of August 1834, when he sat down to do the drawing for
Figaro
, no idea would come apart from Lord Brougham's nose.

The resulting image was more doodle than caricature, and as he drew he grimaced, and he interrupted the drawing to make another cheese sandwich. Soon, on the paper, there was Brougham in his wig and regalia, but from his face grew the enormous projection, now like a sword. In the same picture, he drew
The Times
, and in the newspaper's columns Seymour showed his views of its journalism by adding the words: ‘LIES, LIES'. The newspaper was slashed apart by Brougham's blade-nose, while emerging from behind the paper were hands carrying quills, apparently the paper's defenders trying to fight off the attack of Brougham's nose, but so ambiguously drawn that they might well have been attacking the paper themselves.

When it was finished, Seymour traced the image on to a woodblock. Without telling his wife, he left the house, and made his way to a narrow court off Drury Lane – so narrow that it could not be negotiated by dog cart – and then into a yard filled with rubbish, and then up a dirty staircase into a house which had been converted into a wood-engraving facility.

It was now dusk, and at a circular table sat a ring of engravers: a lamp was in the centre, surrounded by a circle of glass water-filled spheres which focused the light on to the blocks being cut. A deaf-and-dumb lad, who was always enthusiastic to see Seymour, took the block, as well as the money for the cutting. Then, after a drink in a public house where he made a sketch, Seymour returned and entered the house smiling.

He walked into the parlour and before Jane could ask where he had been, he said: ‘I have done my last
Figaro
drawing. I took it to the woodcutter, and there will be no more. Here – take a look at this.'

The drawing he had made in the public house was a scene of a windy day. A sticky, pasted poster was gusted from a billsticker's hands and blown into the face of a passer-by. The billsticker commented in a caption: ‘Oh dear, sir, it vos the vind, to think it should be pasted, too!' Of more significance, on the brick wall was another poster stating: ‘R. Seymour respectfully informs the public that he has declined all connection with
Figaro
.'

‘I think you have done the right thing,' she said.

‘I
know
I have. Ideas were revolving in my mind, which would not go away. But now they are no more.' They embraced.

*   *   *

When the messenger from the woodcutter delivered the block to the
Figaro
office the next morning, à Beckett sat back in his chair and, looking at the proof, said to Mayhew, ‘What is this, what on earth is this? How can we
possibly
publish this drawing, Henry? Not a single reader would understand it, and neither do I.' He passed the drawing to Mayhew.

‘I
suppose
it is about Lord Brougham's lack of concern if
The Times
attacks him,' said Mayhew. ‘But there is another meaning which is perfectly clear to me. Seymour doesn't care about us any more. He has had enough.'

‘If Seymour thinks he can get back at me by an unpublishable caricature, then he is going to be a more disappointed man than he is already. Do you know what I am going to do, Henry? On Saturday, the main news in
Figaro
will be about Seymour himself.'

‘Whatever you mean by that, I do not like the sound of it.'

‘Give me a few minutes, and you'll see.' He began to write, occasionally taking a sip from a glass of gin and smiling, looking towards the ceiling, before he applied his pen again. Then he said to Mayhew: ‘Listen to this: “The above caricature is so purely hieroglyphical that we decline any attempt at explaining it. The artist, when he conceived it, must have been under some strange and baneful influence which we cannot possibly attempt either to enter or elucidate. We suspect that he was labouring under some frightful stagnation of his vital functions and the result has been a vivid affair which we can only describe as a pictorial frenzy.”'

‘Do not do this, Gilbert.'

‘I haven't finished yet. “The fact is that our caricaturist has been so long and deeply impregnated with the horrible aspect of our political affairs, that his mind has at last become in some degree impressed with a hectic extravaganza that has now vented itself in a caricature which must” – listen to this – “which must take its place by the side of that grand effort when an Italian painter crucified his own servant, that he might the more faithfully represent the agony on the cross. Seymour has, as it were, undergone a sort of mental crucifixion and the result is the awful sketch which heads the present number of our periodical.”'

‘Gilbert, you cannot print that.'

‘I still haven't finished! Henry, I am going to offer £100 to any reader who can explain Seymour's nonsense! And that is just in
this
issue. We could keep this running. There are
plenty
more things we can print about him! Do you know what I want to do to Seymour, Henry? When he goes to bed on a Friday night, he is going to be scared about what will appear about himself in the Saturday-morning
Figaro
. He is not going to be able to sleep.'

‘He will never draw for us again.'

‘Good!'

‘This is ludicrous! How can
Figaro
continue without him?'

‘I am going to see Robert Cruikshank, and invite him to draw for us.'

‘Even if he agreed, he would not be as popular as Seymour.'

‘I have an idea as to what we can do about that. What if we advertise the magazine as “Illustrated by Cruikshank”, without specifying
which
Cruikshank?'

‘The public will see through it. It will undermine us. You wouldn't listen to me about promoting your theatre – for goodness' sake, Gilbert, listen to me about this!'

‘All right, we will make it clear that
Robert
Cruikshank is the illustrator – but not straight away. Not in every notice. If enough people believe it is George Cruikshank, it will help us. Even Seymour, if he hears that we have Cruikshank as our illustrator, will wonder – have they got
the
Cruikshank? He will be afraid and exquisitely stung. He will be reminded of the one artist whose reputation still exceeds his own.'

‘The artist that Seymour is poised to overtake.'

‘Not when I have finished with him. Henry, I will
ruin
Seymour.'

*   *   *

The magazine accordingly published a caricature ‘from the pencil of the renowned Cruikshank' and, as à Beckett had instructed the new artist that the picture's subject be Brougham, it showed the Lord Chancellor tossed in a blanket.