Death and Mr. Pickwick (67 page)

*   *   *

The adventurer had to be worked into the story
before
Mr Pickwick and his companions reached Rochester. At Rochester, Mr Pickwick would want to look around, that would be the main concern, as the first stop in his expedition. So the adventurer had to come before that. He had to be a passenger on the Commodore coach, along with the Pickwickians. But he also had to do some service, which would merit the loan of the club jacket. There was not much a person could do, by way of service, on a coach. Something had to happen
before
the coach set off. So the adventurer would rescue Mr Pickwick from the cabman.

*   *   *

As the cab drew up, Seymour saw the crowds milling around the Golden Cross. There was a dustman, with his distinctive fantail hat. A milkmaid with a yoke. An off-duty soldier. In the pamphlet for Kidd he had drawn a little chimney sweep, whose bag of soot leaked black clouds over a passing man's white trousers, while the sweep remained oblivious – the sweep was in the crowd too, with his bag of soot, though it would not leak this time. What about an itinerant hot-pie seller?

He recalled such a pieman, a half-pint-sized man of Spanish descent, who handed out his halfpenny pies in Newgate Street, close to the prison. A strong savoury odour arose from his heating apparatus, a wicker basket on legs with a charcoal burner inside. On the top of this apparatus was a circular wooden dish, very stained and grubby, with a metal arrow, which spun round with a clickety, whirring noise as the pieman called ‘Toss for pi-eees! Toss for pi-eees! Pi-eees all 'ot!' The toss referred to twelve farthings, hammered into place around the edge, alternating Britannia or monarch's head uppermost. For, instead of purchasing a pie at a halfpenny, some customers – especially boys – opted to gamble. The pieman would spin the whirligig, and if the arrow stopped opposite the chosen call, the gambler would receive a pie for free; otherwise, the pieman would keep a halfpenny, and retain the pie. Seymour had never seen anyone win.

There were shouts of ‘Give us a pie!' from behind the prison walls.

In response, the pieman shouted the different sorts he sold: pork, beef, mutton, kidney, rabbit and veal. All anointed with thin, greasy gravy, poured from a can with a long spout. Seymour knew from experience the pies were heavily seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg and mace – and Jane whispered, as they approached, that she had heard rumours that the rabbit in piemen's pies was really skinned cat, and that you wouldn't know the difference unless the butcher sold it with the head on. At that moment a customer happened to purchase a rabbit pie, and the Spanish pieman poured gravy with special relish, supplemented with a grin, as if he knew the rumour of the cat to be true. Lifting up his spouted vessel, he said, in a thick accent: ‘I open the gate, and pour leeberallee.' He finished with an even wider grin.

A pieman would certainly have to be in the crowd at the Golden Cross. Perhaps not this Spaniard, though the whirligig was essential. Perhaps a pieman with a long nose, sinisterly shaded under his hat.

The idea for one other character came to him. A man who looked out of the illustration, his eyes aimed directly at the viewer – a man with a knowing, crafty smile, as if to say, ‘You are like the rest of us, you love to see a fight in the street!'

Into this crowd, the adventurer would make his debut.

*   *   *

Never had a shilling provoked such fury – as soon as his palm received the fare, the cabman tossed the coin on the pavement in utter disgust. As Mr Pickwick stood blinking in incomprehension, one hand of the cabman plucked away the novice traveller's spectacles, and threw them on the pavement too, while the other hand swung upwards and punched precisely on the spot where the coin had previously rubbed – Mr Pickwick's nose.

Mr Pickwick's three travelling companions were already waiting at the Golden Cross, and when the cabman saw them approach, he had one response: ‘More informers!'

The cabman, like a proud amateur pugilist eager to show off his fistwork, sparred away, aiming blows at the Pickwickians. The crowd gathered to watch this fun: soldier, milkmaid, chimney sweep, pieman, dustman and all the rest. None were more hated than informers.

‘Go on, upset his apple cart!' cried a man shinning up a lamppost for a better view, cheering on the cabman's blows.

‘Put the informers under the pump!' cried the pieman.

This fate would have befallen the Pickwickians, had not a rescuer arrived.

A stranger appeared from Mr Pickwick's left, the fortune-hunter, the adventurer, a man thin as the Devil, elbows flailing, clearing a path through the crowd. He led Mr Pickwick and his friends to the safety of the inn.

Seymour stirred, and pictured for himself that place – tall and Gothic, with twin spires, and a cross set into the brickwork, below which was the gateway arch where the terrible accident occurred. He saw pieces of the woman's face dripping down from the arch. He saw her lips, half-on half-off her mouth, lips that would never eat again.

To thank the stranger, the Pickwickians bought him drinks. He intended travelling to the same destination, to Rochester, so they all boarded the Commodore coach. Noticing the arch as they left, the stranger converted the horrible reality of the woman losing her face into a comic story, a tall tale, of exactly the sort the Daffy Club told. In the stranger's version, the woman was eating a sandwich when she hit the arch, and instead of losing her face, her head was knocked completely off. It bounced upon the cobbles, while in her hand remained the half-eaten sandwich, still gripped by her fingers, pressed hard at the exact moment her head was lopped, so as to squeeze out mustard on to her thumb, which then mingled with blood from her neck.

Mr Pickwick believed every word!

By the time the Pickwickians reached Rochester, Mr Pickwick's notebook was filled with the chatter of this adventurer, as though everything that emerged from his mouth was not only of great interest but entirely true.

 

*

‘THE FIRST NOTEBOOK IN THE
world was probably that of the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras in the early fifteenth century,' said Mr Inbelicate. ‘But had any more wonderful notebook ever been created than the one filled with the words of the stranger? Anything the stranger said, Mr Pickwick swallowed, and wrote down. Though it has to be said that Mr Pickwick, like many men who keep notebooks and scrapbooks, showed little tendency to be modifed, personally, by the things recorded. The notebook became his memory.'

‘So the stories that Seymour had heard at the Daffy Club,' I said, ‘could become the stranger's. Like the tale of the Spanish woman whose stomach was pumped.'

‘Yes indeed. I like to imagine the stranger seated beside Mr Pickwick on the coach's roof. The stranger has an unnerving nervousness, with all his parts inducted into jerky movement. His hands are never still, always tapping, always ready for a flourish. There is a perpetual scheme in the eyes. His shoulders twitch. The shoulder blades revolve under the coat. The type of man of the Kidd pamphlets, who lives by his wits – seeking fools as his prey. Normally they would be men from the country, ogling the city's sights. But here was a curiosity to the stranger – Mr Pickwick, a Londoner as green as any country bumpkin!'

‘But in any case, the stranger had done Mr Pickwick a great service,' I said.

‘Indeed. He had rescued him from the mob. And if the stranger needed to borrow the club jacket, he surely wouldn't be refused. And he would certainly need to borrow clothing to attend a respectable ball,' said Mr Inbelicate. ‘The man of Kidd's pamphlets is destitute, with little more than the clothes he was wearing. So Mr Pickwick's third companion, the ogler of women, who wishes to go to the ball, lends the stranger the sportsman's jacket, without the sportsman being aware.'

‘Because the sportsman is drunk.'

‘Blind drunk.'

Mr Inbelicate and I chatted for a while about forerunners of the ageing Lothario to be found in Seymour's work. One appeared in Seymour's illustration of a poem, ‘John Day', showing a fat and incompetent wooer, a coachman who attempts to win the heart of a barmaid at an inn where he changes horses. Seymour depicted John Day making his approach on his knees, whip sticking up and propped against the counter, side whiskers bending lasciviously towards the maid's face:

One day, as she was sitting down

Beside a porter pump,

He came and knelt with all his fat

And made an offer plump.

Said she: ‘My taste will never learn

To like so huge a man

So I must beg you will come here

As little as you can.

‘I suppose,' said Mr Inbelicate, ‘that nowadays we would call Mr Pickwick's third companion a dirty old man.'

‘I thought that's what
you
were that first night when I saw Mary was your servant.'

‘Ha ha! Well, if that is what people think, then I am in good company. Similar thoughts must have occurred in connection with Lord Melbourne, don't you think? Mrs Norton was so much younger than he was.'

 

*

‘IT IS
INCONCEIVABLE
THAT A
man like Melbourne could be Victoria's prime minister,' said Lord Wynford, the Tory peer. His double chin hung over his desk as he leant towards George Norton. Behind Wynford, against the gloomy panelling, stood two crutches, for Wynford's gout was so great a trouble he could barely walk. In front of him, propped against an inkwell, in a frame normally reserved for a miniature of a wife or child, was one of Seymour's
Figaro
pictures, showing Lord Wynford's great enthusiasm for capital punishment. Here the punishment was carried out on a defenceless animal: a poor cat was hanging from a gibbet, a weight pulling down the rope to tighten the noose, while Wynford, supporting himself on his crutches, looked on, rubbing his hands with glee.

‘Think of when she becomes queen,' he said. ‘She – the young, innocent, virtuous female monarch. Now imagine her in a private audience with Melbourne as her prime minister. The door closes on them. He, at his age, with a leer on his face, lusting after the virgin sovereign. It would
never
be accepted by the country! Sue for adultery, show people what he is like – and Melbourne is finished.'

‘I have not made a final decision yet,' said Norton.

‘There is only one decision possible. Not only for your country but for yourself. Think of the damages you could make! Perhaps – ten thousand pounds. Besides, if you do this, and Melbourne falls, you will find yourself a seat again. Think of that.'

‘I am thinking of that.'

Wynford scrutinised Norton, as though he could discern some reason for hesitation. ‘You do have good evidence, I presume?'

‘Everyone knows they are at it. The newspapers are full of the affair.'

A pouting disappointment came to Wynford's face. ‘
That
is not enough. Slanders in the press are easily dismissed.'

‘There is much that is suggestive.'

‘Proof is required. Is there correspondence between them?'

‘I suspect so.'

‘Search for that. Now, your advocate. Sir William Follett is your man. He will put whatever Whig flunky Melbourne chooses into a funk. No man is better at winning an action on a technicality.'

‘I am not certain that adultery
has
technicalities.'

‘The very reason you should hire Follett. He examines a case from every perspective – and from the least expected quarter, he will pounce.' Wynford leant back in his chair, ready to deliver a pleasant reminiscence. ‘I have seen him at work. He can look at the papers of a case, run his eyes quickly down them, and suddenly he will say, “It is missing THIS!” And – it is amusing – he will make a specific movement of his finger, like he is following an arc, to land on the paper. Then he will get up, and his manner suggests
amazement
that others have not seen the loophole before. You know about the Salisbury coach manslaughter case?'

‘I am afraid not.'

‘You should. The case made Follett's reputation.'

*   *   *

It was as if there was a never-ending auction, with whiplashes for bids, and the highest speed the winner – such was the rivalry between the drivers of Celerity and the drivers of Defiance, two coach companies on the London to Plymouth road.

One night in July, in the early hours, on the southern fringe of Salisbury Plain, a Celerity driver carried a passenger who had provoked him almost as much as a driver from Defiance – a navy man on shore leave, a handsome fellow whose exploits at sea were never far from his lips. After a stop to change horses, the Celerity driver invited the sailor on to the box, to experience the all-out speed of a coach on a downhill stretch of road. ‘You may be good with a rudder,' he told the sailor, ‘but watch me work the reins.'

The driver whipped the horses even as they descended, more for show than anything else, and in the pale moonlight he attempted to gloat right into the face of the sailor, who evaded by keeping his eyes forward, on the road. ‘I can do this stretch faster than any other coachman
dares
,' said the driver. Even as he uttered the words, he saw the sudden horror on the sailor's face. Coming out of the darkness, coming up the hill, and coming in the very same path was the coach of Defiance.

*   *   *

‘The sailor was killed in the crash and the driver was tried for manslaughter,' said Wynford. ‘His prospects were austere. Fortunately for him, he had Follett as the counsel for his defence. Follett found a loophole – and inserted his finger right into it.' Wynford winced from a sudden attack of gout. ‘The way that Melbourne, one suspects, inserted his.' He reached down to rub his foot, and looked for any uneasiness on Norton's face. Satisfied that it was there, he continued. ‘The indictment did not state precisely what sort of horses had drawn the coach,' said Wynford, ‘whether they were two mares and two geldings, for instance. And who could possibly remember a detail about the horses harnessed at night? Follett took great advantage of that technicality! But he hadn't finished. He noticed that the indictment did not state that the accident took place on a
highway
! So the driver was found not guilty and Follett was made. Choose Follett as your counsel, and Melbourne will fall.'