Death and Mr. Pickwick (66 page)

The duel would result from mistaken identity, and the club jacket would be the cause – a jacket of a most distinctive design, with buttons engraved ‘PC' for ‘Pickwick Club', but recalling the pugilistic blazers Seymour had seen at the Daffy Club. The wearer of the jacket would involve himself in some imbroglio at the ball, offence would be caused, and Mr Pickwick's sporting companion, the jacket's owner, would be blamed.

Now the circumstances of the imbroglio virtually created themselves.

The man wearing the jacket would cause trouble by flirting with a woman in whom another man was interested. In the morning a messenger would arrive – and the sportsman would find himself challenged to a duel. The sportsman would believe himself capable of almost anything when drunk and so, although he had not the slightest memory of events of the previous night, he believed he
did
cause offence; and feeling obliged to defend the honour of the club, he accepted the challenge!

He would need a second. The poet would be an excellent choice: he would see only the romance of the life-and-death engagement, the stuff of stirring stanzas, not the sportsman's fear, which set the gun quivering in the palm. Besides, duels had been fought over poetry. If the sportsman were reluctant, the poet would egg him on.

Seymour opened his eyes. It was all there.

 

*

‘YOU ARE ASSUMING QUITE AN
“if”,' I said.

‘What – that Seymour created the members of the Corresponding Society?' said Mr Inbelicate. He made a sound which, rendered into letters, would be onamatopoeic for ‘piffle'.

‘Scripty, you sound just like a cantankerous old professor.' He plunged the poker into the fire, on a day that was hot already, and brought the hottest coals to the surface. ‘And they are always ready to assume that others have committed howling errors. We shall return to the creation of Mr Pickwick's companions in a while.' He withdrew the poker and pointed it at me. ‘We have agreed that it would be desirable to have a powerful and exciting event at the start.'

‘Something dramatic, a unifying event, which would demonstrate the traits of Mr Pickwick and his companions. Which might be a duel.'

‘
Might
be a duel! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to link the sporting character and the Lothario in a single event? Guns and fishing rods occupied an entirely different world from women in those days. Occasionally you would find a female sporting enthusiast, but it was rare. The
affaire d'honneur
is one of the few links that
could
exist between sport and women. And I do not believe anything else you could suggest would have the drama of a duel.
And
it is easy to demonstrate the theme of the reluctant duellist in Seymour's work. You will recall that he once drew an apparatus to help duellists with weak nerves.'

‘Aided in its work by a good dose of laudanum and brandy,' I said.

‘I must also show you one of Seymour's pictures on foreign affairs. Come with me.'

In his library, he brought out a copy of
McLean's Monthly Sheet
, commenting on strife in Portugal, which showed Queen Maria facing her rival Miguel across a chasm. A man in a cocked hat urged the people: ‘Fight for your illustrious queen!' A monk similarly urged: ‘Fight for your august king!'

‘I see no duel here,' I said, ‘unless you simply mean opposing parties.'

‘No, no, no – it is the
caption
Seymour has added. “Oh it's a mighty pretty quarrel!” He has attributed this to Sir Lucius O'Trigger. This is most important as evidence! This is an allusion, Scripty, to a duelling scene in Sheridan's
The Rivals
, in which Sir Lucius, an Irish baronet, encourages a reluctant duellist. Mistaken identity is involved too – Seymour was obviously familiar with the play. Read
The Rivals
, Scripty, and you will see a clear influence upon the duelling scene we are concerned with. We know Seymour went to the Bull because we have the drawing of the staircase. There is no doubt in my mind that he went to Rochester because he conceived of a duel as the best way of linking the traits of the Pickwickians.'

‘
If
he came up with the traits.'

‘What you
should
be doing is working backwards from the events of the duel. You should be thinking about the borrowing of the jacket. You don't just lend a stranger clothes. He has to have done something to win your trust. So we must return to Seymour, lying on his bed in the Bull. He closes his eyes. His mind wanders. He starts recalling his own past. He thinks of the time he spent with Joseph Severn, in the studio in Goswell Street. That location was perfectly convenient for Mr Pickwick's researches in Hampstead, because he could trot to the end of the street, and catch the Hampstead stage at the Angel. Now, let us imagine Goswell Street, on the eve of Mr Pickwick's departure for Rochester, as Seymour attempts to construct the events he requires.'

 

*

GOSWELL STREET, AT NIGHT
, 12 May 1827. Several women formed a group outside the door of the Prince Regent public house. The fanlight illuminated the hooked nose on the first woman, which altered its apparent shape as she turned – she smiled, fair-haired and pretty as a day-old chick, to a man who left the Prince Regent. As he showed no interest in her, she cursed and continued her conversation with the other women.

A little way along the street, a pawnbroker remained open. A stall at a corner sold coffee at a penny a cup to clerkish-looking men of a disappointed age. Here and there were shops, now shuttered, selling candles, as well as dealers in horse cloths and blankets, and another stall where a woman still weighed out cat's meat. There were also booksellers, waste-paper dealers, and a store selling anything that haphazardly came to mind: umbrellas, parasols, cigars, memorandum books. Further along, a man was in the road on his knees, clearly the worse for liquor and – as he happened to be near the coach stand – as though reduced to that amusing state of degradation in which he touted for trade as a human horse. This was Goswell Street at night, an ordinary street, on an ordinary night, on 12 May 1827.

At an ordinary-looking boarding house in this street, Mr Pickwick put on his nightcap and nightshirt. He had returned from a meeting of his club. For – in spite of being a man of solitary intellectual pursuits – Mr Pickwick believed that there was nothing so delightful as to incorporate. Being placed beyond most men's weakness for the fair sex, Mr Pickwick had instead formed a club, and named it after himself. If some considered this an act of vanity, then his reply was that ‘vanity stimulated philanthropy' – the fires of self-importance in his bosom were quenched by the waters of benevolence; or, if not by water, by something stronger.

Tomorrow was to be a great day in his life, when his mission to see the world would begin.

So, on the morning of the thirteenth day of May, after bidding adieu to his landlady, Mr Pickwick undertook the short walk to the cabstand at St Martin's-le-Grand, just north of St Paul's Cathedral. Here, a red-faced waterman, in a doormat-textured suit, stopped filling the horses' trough and, ascertaining with a glance that Mr Pickwick sought transportation, cried out: ‘Fust cab!'

A cabman emerged from the Raglan Arms who was close kin in redness to the waterman, being especially roseate at the nose. When he discovered that he had relinquished a comfortable position, where he had been smoking his pipe, for a one-shilling journey, it did not induce the best of moods.

Mr Pickwick settled his feet into the cab's dirty straw, extricating one foot from the strap of a horse's nosebag which was stowed under the seat. The cab took off, in a rickety way, and its motion swayed driver and passenger together. Mr Pickwick saw the world in motion, both beside him, on the streets, and also underneath, through a chink in the cab's floor. It truly seemed to him that his mission had already begun – there was a constant succession of people and sights to be recorded and sent as reports to the club. So when Mr Pickwick suddenly took out his notebook, it was understandable that the cabman, who had suffered at the hands of informers, became concerned.

Mr Pickwick's immediate attention fell upon the horse pulling the cab. The beast was, admittedly, not in the finest condition – its mane thin, its tail frayed, its back all bones – but twelve hours a day in harness would make even a thoroughbred racehorse a worn-out nag. In the interests of scientific investigation, Mr Pickwick asked the driver the simple question: ‘How old is that horse?'

The cabman gave Mr Pickwick a most suspicious sideways look. Was this passenger spying on him? Normally informers went after cabs concerning fares and parliamentary regulations, but he had heard of informers enforcing Martin's Act, concerning animal cruelty, and perhaps they now targeted horses pulling cabs.

The cabman thought quickly: what if the animal were
so
old that being in harness was not cruelty but a crutch? Would the passenger swallow that?

In the huskiest voice in London the cabman answered: ‘Forty-two.'

It was for ordinary men to attach disbelief to the extraordinary. It was in Mr Pickwick's nature to
embrace
the extraordinary – and, as long as it was not impossible, it was worthy of recording in his notebook.

‘
Forty-two
?' he said. This would be something to tell his club! Never had he encountered a horse of so many years!

‘You should 'ave a look in his mouth,' said the cabman. ‘Teeth as long as coal-chisels.'

‘Does he flag, at his age?' said Mr Pickwick.

‘Not 'im,' said the cabman. ‘I take in the rein, and make it werry short, and 'is bones sing in a sqveaky vay vith the pleasure of constriction, and 'is neck's the most beautiful arch. Then I pull in the girth to the tightest notch, to get 'im all nice and compact – 'e'd fall down in the street othervise. But vunce 'e's in 'arness, 'e 'as to keep going. Vith those big veels spinning be'ind, 'e can't 'elp 'imself.'

Now the cabman, from previous experience, knew informers to be talkative types and that their conversations eventually led to a request of: ‘You couldn't lend us a few shillings until the month is out, could you?' If a cabman didn't allow himself to be bled, there would be a summons for breaking regulations within a week.

But this particular passenger – what was he doing? Taking notes. The cabman had never encountered such brazen effrontery! He eyed Mr Pickwick again, in his own special, aslant, way. The cabman did not recognise Mr Pickwick – but then, that made it all the more likely the fellow was an informer, because informers had to keep moving from patch to patch.

And now the informer was actually rubbing his nose with the shilling! The cabman gave a dirty look. Here was a man nosing on him, in every sense of the word. How ripe that nose for a punch!

*   *   *

Seymour opened his eyes. He was still in the room at the Bull. He recalled that for Kidd he had produced drawings, as had other artists, for a series of pamphlets forming
Kidd's London Guide
. There had been one pamphlet which warned of ‘adventurers'.

‘These are men who live by their wits,' ran the pamphlet, ‘they leave home, destitute of everything, and yet contrive to live very comfortably. They sponge for their dinner, and lay wagers – taking the money if they win, and making a joke of it if they lose. They lounge about in cigar divans, and may always be found attending to everybody's business but their own.'

Seymour recalled the guide had warned against taking the slightest notice of strangers, or any individual anxious to enter into conversation.

There could be a stranger, an adventurer of this sort, who intervenes, and saves Mr Pickwick from a beating at the hands of the cabman. A scoundrel, a fortune-hunter. The gullible Mr Pickwick would easily fall for the man's patter and flannel.

Seymour lay back on the pillow.

A few years earlier, for a publication called
The Comic Offering
, he had drawn a picture of a fortune-hunter – the sort who preyed upon old women for their money. A handsome and fashionable young man with an old bonneted crone for his wife. As they strolled with three fat, piglet-like dogs, the crone gazed up lovingly at her tall young husband, their arms entwined. Seymour had drawn the young man's face twisted in embarrassment: when the couple passed a window, they were stared at, with obvious titters, by a fellow of the young man's own age, who put a monocle to his eye for a better look, while the monocled man's partner, a pretty woman, was also highly amused by the scene.

He had written below this drawing:

Pity the sorrows of a poor YOUNG man

Whose hobbling wife hath brought him past your door

Her days seem lengthen'd

To cheat the fool who sought her wealthy store!

Seymour breathed deeply. It had been years since he had taught Wonk the original song, that evening in the bedroom at Vaughan's.

He put the thought aside. What if, he asked himself, an adventurer-cum-fortune-hunter were responsible for landing the sportsman into trouble? What if the adventurer, wearing the club jacket, flirted with a rich old woman at the ball, and offended a rival suitor? A duel could be fought over this woman.

He closed his eyes again.

The adventurer was an anointed scoundrel. A teller of tales. He could spin the rich old woman a yarn. But who would
also
be interested in such a woman at the ball? Who would be the adventurer's rival? There would be young military officers at the ball. Typically men of independent means, from wealthy and privileged backgrounds. They would not need the money of an old woman, nor would they find her attractive. But – a middle-aged doctor, perhaps. A doctor in the military. Such a woman would be right for him. Here, thought the doctor to himself, as he eyed the old woman's jewels, was his pension!