Death and Mr. Pickwick (63 page)

‘More twaddle about useful knowledge,' said Seymour.

‘Their aim is indeed the diffusion of useful knowledge upon all subjects except theology and politics.' From his pocket he took out a publicity leaflet, listing forthcoming lectures on diverse subjects: jellyfish, pneumatics, the elephant beetle, the properties of a piece of coal. The leaflet noted that there were ordinary, honorary and corresponding members.

‘
Corresponding
members?' said Seymour.

‘People who write in with their discoveries.'

*   *   *

To the stock composed of the Daffy Club, the Houghton Angling Club, incompetent sportsmen, comic gardeners and the March of Intellect, meaty chunks of Pierce Egan's sequel to
Life in London
were cut off and thrown in: the fat knight Sir John Blubber; the great gaiety of the scenes at Hawthorne Hall, with sports and dancing and musical parties and the squire; an archery contest; a debtors' prison; falling through ice; failures with ladies.

A dumpling or two could be seen floating on top, including a preliminary sketch of club members at a table, with a dog under a chair, a spittoon on the floor, and the members smoking and drinking. The club's president sang:

His wife she bit off half her tongue

But vot a sad disaster

The other half more active rung

And scolded all the faster.

Such a stew needed to be strained.

Besides, as was obvious from inspection of the Houghton Club's chronicles, the records of any real club would contain much that would be deadly dull. Who, apart from Richard Penn and Canon Beadon, cared that Richard Penn and Canon Beadon together caught five jack weighing a total of twenty-seven and a half pounds last Tuesday? The solution was editing.

The editor could be developed as a personality and presence in his own right – indeed, Seymour knew this happened to some extent in the
New Sporting Magazine
, with the magazine's editor, Robert Surtees, sometimes reporting made-up conversations between himself and Jorrocks, his fictional character based upon the oysterman.

Thus Seymour conceived that a gullible man would wander all over England, with a small party of friends, forming a little society of corresponding members, and they would send back reports of their exploits and the Münchausen tales they had heard. The club, upon being wound up for some reason as yet to be determined, would pass its records to an imaginary editor, with a view to preparing a work for publication. Seymour would provide etchings to accompany these edited reports.

But Seymour still had to settle upon a name for the main character, the gullible man. And what other characteristics would he have? Also, what should the club be called? And who should accompany the gullible man on his adventures?

Seymour sat back, put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.

*   *   *

He may have been prodded by the name of Mr Peter Pickle. He may have pondered the theme of travelling, of using coaches, and of drinking in inns as horses were changed. He may have thought of Egan's work, and its mention of the village with the art gallery nearby.

Whatever the direct inspiration, Seymour abruptly opened his eyes, and sought his wife. He found her in the kitchen.

‘I have the name of my main character,' he said.

‘That's nice. And what is that?'

‘I am going to call him Mr Pickwick.'

 

*

I TURN BACK THROUGH THE PAGES
I have already written, and have pleasure in quoting myself: ‘For there is no Don Quixote without his squire Sancho Panza, and Seymour in his painting of Sancho surely knew this. And perhaps even then, as a young man at work on this canvas, portraying the thin knight and a fat squire – I say, perhaps even then – his mind wondered playfully about reversing fat and thin. What if, he might have asked, what if there were a fat knight and a thin squire?'

At the heart of Seymour's pet idea was a man who travelled throughout the kingdom, whose natural gullibility filled his head with mad stories; this, it must be agreed, is much in the manner of Don Quixote's delusions. I might use an image from a later generation of graphic artists, of a light bulb over Seymour's head – of Seymour realising that the
Quixote
could be recreated in England. Of course, if there was a Don Quixote, he needed a Sancho. And what if, instead of a
thin
Quixote…?

It is easy to imagine Seymour making the reversal of fat and thin, just as it is easy to imagine Seymour placing a pair of such characters side by side. What else would a caricaturist naturally do but put a thin man by a fat one, so as to make the fat seem fatter by contrast, and the thin thinner? And if the master was gullible, then the servant would surely be sharp. Seymour had already drawn an assistant to a fisherman in his work for Penn
–
a young fellow with a cockade in his hat. The light bulb would go on again: something could be done with a chap of that sort, to produce the modern-day Sancho Panza. I can imagine the enthusiasm of Seymour, that he can barely keep still in his seat, impelled by the idea of a new
Quixote
. He, Seymour, could travel all over England himself, sketching the places the fat man visits. The fat character was on a mission to observe – to
see more
, the pun that the artist had always been.

Not surprisingly, Seymour made Mr Pickwick a bespectacled character, intent on absorbing information through his eyes. Once given circular glasses, Seymour drew him as
all
circles: his body fat and spherical, his head bald and round. The character had to be of a certain age – a young gullible soul was not as interesting as one who had reached the middle of life, and still did not know the way the world was. Also, he would not be fashionable, a gullible man was not awake enough for that. The obvious outfit was tights and gaiters. They were going out of style, and would not be worn by a young man, but only by a man getting on in years. A swallowtail coat was fine for the upper body and, as a last touch to indicate a man with a scientific mission – even a mission that gathered nonsense – Seymour drew a very scientific and very circular magnifying glass hanging from Mr Pickwick's neck by a cord.

Having designed the main character, Seymour turned his attention to the club. Again he closed his eyes, put his hands behind his head, and pondered.

*   *   *

The Daffy Club had named itself after a euphemism for alcohol; and, indirectly, after a man called Daffy, inventor of a medicinal tonic. Could he could choose
another
medicine instead of Daffy? The Woodhouse Club, perhaps, after the manufacturer of the ethereal essence of ginger? Unfortunately, that would not work without a tradition of calling alcohol ‘Woodhouse'.

He looked at Mr Pickwick's body. The enormous stomach itself suggested drinking and eating to excess. If Mr Pickwick founded the club, then it could legitimately be called the
Pickwick
Club, a club founded by a great toper and trencherman.

He remembered Edward Barnard's talk of Putney puntites – men who moored their punts by Putney Bridge, supposedly to catch fish, but in reality to eat, drink and smoke. No serious angler would moor near Putney Bridge. That was perfect! That was the essence of the Daffy Club. There was an
interest
in sport among the members, but their real pursuit was
drinking
! What's more – and now he opened his eyes and seized his pencil – if Mr Pickwick were a Putney puntite, angling would never satisfy him.
There
was the motivation for leaving the confines of a sporting club, and going on a mission to observe the world!

He played around with the idea, and made scribbles and notes in his portfolio.

One note said: ‘Penn and his sticklebacks' – and then the mysterious word ‘cottins', Penn's personal name for the fish, when he responded to scientific queries. Seymour wrote: ‘Suppose the work opens five years after the club has been founded. The Putney puntite's interest in fishing has now shrunk to almost nothing. He has an interest in sticklebacks. Which he ludicrously calls by some silly name.'

There were various dialect words he had heard fishermen call sticklebacks. Prickleback, sticklebag, barnstickle, sharpling, spawnytickle, tittlebat.

He wrote: ‘Tittlebats!'

He continued: ‘When a man develops an obsessive interest in a fish so small and so unimportant, his life has shrunk to little more than a dot. It is then that he must refresh himself, and broaden his experience of the world. Should he
not
feel the need to refresh himself, others will suggest it to him. His new aim is to see more of life. Knowing nothing of the world except small fish would make him the gullible sort I seek.'

He paused again. There was the Society of Antiquaries and the obscurity of their interests. Perhaps the puntite could pursue some interest in antiquarian issues?

He had touched upon this with Peter Pickle. The idea was congenial. But it couldn't be much broader than the interest in tittlebats. In a flash of inspiration, he wrote: ‘The supply of water! He has an antiquarian interest in the history of ponds!'

The character of Mr Pickwick needed to be fleshed out. Seymour leant back again and closed his eyes. What would Mr Pickwick have been like as a boy?

*   *   *

Samuel Pickwick's mother, like many other proud mothers, marked the increases in her only child's height by a vertical series of pencil marks upon the wall. Unlike other mothers, she also marked the increases in his girth, by a horizontal series of pencil marks.

‘No woman will ever accuse
me
of not feeding my boy properly,' she said, as Samuel held still, pressed sideways against the wall. She added the mark showing the expansion in his stomach. The bonny child would become a bonny man. ‘You're my lovely little barrel,' she said.

His mother was also an advocate of the powers of Hampstead spring water, which she said was sure to keep Samuel healthy throughout his life. Every Sunday, under her supervision, he drank a flaskful. The chalybeate taste, like sucking on an empty fork, was unpleasant, but being prescribed by his mother, he took it down.

She also prescribed that most of his time was spent indoors. Rarely did she allow Samuel to play in the streets and in the fields, and then only under her strict supervision. For
no one
would snatch her Samuel away! As a result, his eyes, starving for light, did not develop fully, and when still a boy, he was fitted with round spectacles. ‘How
handsome
you look,' she said, and the boy believed her. After all, she believed it herself; although, as if not noticing any contradiction, she told him that when she was fitted with spectacles as a schoolgirl she cried all day.

Occasionally, when the weather was fine, she did take young Samuel to the Hampstead Ponds, in the belief that the spring water had evaporated into the surrounding air, and would invigorate the boy. He would peer into the pond near the high road on the heath, and his own reflection peered back at him, including the smaller images of himself in his spectacles. It was here that he first became acquainted with sticklebacks, and sometimes he would net a specimen, which he carried home in an earthenware vessel. Thus the association between Samuel Pickwick and a jarred fish began. His mother expressed great approval of this hobby. Especially as, by using garden snails as bait in home-made tittlebat traps, derived from old wine bottles, he cleared the garden of these unpleasant beasts, as his mother called them, with their horrible emerging horns, and placed them where they more suitably belonged, a local pond. Down he would go among the horsetails – where experience had taught him the tittlebats loved to congregate – full of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm, which began at the age of seven, did not leave Samuel Pickwick as it did other boys.

Years passed, and his mother passed away, and Samuel Pickwick's stomach grew larger, while his hair grew thinner. He would still visit Hampstead to peer at his own reflection. He liked ducks, but he took special pleasure in seeing the coots, which he preferred to moorhens and other waterfowl. He went to the ponds even as the seasons changed, and days became overcast, and dead leaves floated upon the surface. He went even when there was ice, and he thought to himself how pleasant the pond was all through the year, with the great round dome of St Paul's Cathedral in the distance – he tapped his own belly in response, and in contentment. He continued paying visits, on through to the warmer seasons, when duckweed flourished and courting couples strolled and kissed under the shade of the willows and young boys would carry their jars ready to catch small fish, as he himself had done as a boy, and still did. For his fascination with the stickleback had not diminished in the slightest. How marvellous to think that this creature was the smallest freshwater fish in England, less than an inch long when fully grown, and so common that no pool was without them! Fie on other men, who considered the stickleback a lowly creature because, aside from occasional use as bait, or – when caught in large quantities – as manure, the stickleback was of no utility at all. Scientifically it was known as
Gasterosteus aculeatus
, but it was also something of a thingamajig fish, with many a moniker from barnstickle to sharpling, not to mention Mr Pickwick's favourite nomenclature, the tittlebat.

There were of course other fish in the Hampstead Ponds. There were fine crucian carp, for instance. But fishing for carp requires the utmost caution on the riverbank – the angler must approach the water on tiptoe, stay silent, and if possible, be invisible. The gigantic stomach of Mr Pickwick, and the vibrations he imparted to the bank and the waters, were not the ideal qualifications for success as a carp angler, though he had tried. His failures with the hook merely increased the appeal of the tittlebat. ‘Clever creatures,' he said. Creatures worthy of study.