Death and Mr. Pickwick (69 page)

‘I intend the first work,' ran the letter, ‘to be on the theme of Christmas, to be published in time for that festival, and called
The Book of Christmas
. If it should meet with the public's favour, the other works would follow. In spring, we'd have readers dancing round the maypole, and in autumn they'd be making corn dollies from the last sheaf of corn to be harvested.'

The letter proposed that Seymour might undertake a series of pictures about Christmas of his choosing, about thirty-five in total, which would be passed to a suitable writer who would provide accompanying letterpress. ‘The writer I have in mind is someone perhaps known to you – Thomas Kibble Hervey.'

‘Hervey – is that not the man whose poem you illustrated?' said Jane, from the other side of the breakfast table.

‘“The Devil's Progress”. About five years ago.'

‘As I recall, you found the name Kibble annoying.'

‘I knew someone called Kibble at Vaughan's. An unpleasant association. Not Hervey's fault, of course. But I didn't particularly want to be reminded of the other Kibble.'

‘Were you not struck by how strange Hervey looked?'

‘Another bad omen which was not his fault. But yes, he was a peculiar-looking fellow. And very sickly.'

*   *   *

Though it belonged to a poet, the face of Thomas Kibble Hervey lacked all pretensions to poetry, unless a poem were written of a frog in abject ill health. Usually found in his nightshirt, propped up against the pillows of his sickbed, Hervey possessed bulging eyes, a spotted, greasy, bald scalp, and a tiny mouth often employed in a retch if it were not already in the middle of a sneeze. Admittedly there were occasions when Thomas Kibble Hervey was up and about, but so many phenomena then sent him scuttling to his bed he might just as well have stayed under the covers in the first place. It was not unknown, for instance, for a room in which a pipe was alight or a lady wore eau de cologne to be the prelude to the blankets and closed curtains, while if Hervey stayed in a hotel and he saw a maid walking along the corridor, and she brought her feather duster within two feet of his nose, he would gasp with such violence that onlookers feared he would disgorge his lungs on to the carpet. If he merely walked out on a frosty morning, the very air could be his demise. And sometimes simply hearing an amusing tale would make his nostrils itch and his chest constrict, and before long he was under the eiderdown.

‘If only my father had not been a dry-salter,' Hervey usually exclaimed, when he had recovered sufficiently to utter complete words.

For it was his firm belief that sustained exposure to the dyes, gums and oils in his father's shop would weaken anyone's constitution. Certainly, for the first few years of his life Hervey had been in good health – ‘No babe stronger,' he often said – until one winter's morning when he ran towards his mother, who stood in the garden feeding the birds. Up and down the young Hervey's arms went, perfect pistons, but as the cold air entered his lungs, he pulled up.

‘My chest felt as chilled as the grave,' he would say, pulling up the sheets to his chin, recalling that moment.

The mother had to carry her poor wheezing boy indoors. The next year, as daylight hours shortened, the precocious Hervey looked out of the window with a resigned expression and said: ‘I believe this winter could be my last, Mother.' He added, ‘Bring on spring, Lord, bring on spring.' He had never stopped saying the same in any subsequent year, though of course in a deeper voice, and addressed to his wife in more recent times. In summer, he was not troubled as long as he avoided busy streets, and the dust thrown up by carriages. But as autumn came, he was filled with dread anticipation of the season to come, especially as he looked out of the window and a gale whipped up the leaves. Sometimes, the very fear of winter was enough to bring on an attack.

So, when asked to write the letterpress for a book about Christmas, to accompany the pictures of Mr Seymour, Hervey thought twice before accepting the commission.

‘Perhaps the cheerfulness of Christmas will bring its own sort of warmth,' Hervey said from his sickbed to Spooner, as the latter handed over the thirty-five pictures that Seymour had drawn, tied up with a red ribbon.

One picture,
Enjoying Christmas
, immediately caught Hervey's interest. It showed a fat, bald, bespectacled character who sat by a fire. The figure bore a cheerful expression, and there was a glass of hot brandy and water on a table at his side, while a contented cat occupied a spot on the carpet directly in front of the fire, peering into the coals, where a kettle steamed. By the light of a candle, the fat man read a book – none other than
The Book of Christmas
itself.

*   *   *

Mr Pickwick had always loved Christmas, ever since boyhood, and the pictures in the book, by this talented artist, kindled his enthusiasm for the approaching festival. There, before his spectacles, was a simply marvellous drawing of a coach coming up from Norfolk, piled high with turkeys for the Christmas dinner tables of the capital – baskets, boxes and barrels of seasonal fowl were the coach's entire freight as it arrived in London at night-time, with St Paul's Cathedral in the background. Most amusing of all, the driver, his companion and the guard had beak-like noses, as though part turkey themselves! Mr Pickwick laughed heartily at that!

As he turned the pages, here was everything that Christmas might be, in pictorial form. The food market on Christmas Eve, with meat porters bearing joints on their shoulders, and fruits and whole hams on the stalls, and urchins gazing longingly at the vast cakes on sale in a confectioner's window; a pretty woman led into a room by an army officer, not realising there was a mistletoe bough overhead, and two men lay in wait behind the door; seasonal songs performed on the streets by a family, caterwauling from a song sheet entitled ‘A Christmas Carol'; a pantomime, with clowns on stage, carving up a huge goose pie, from which geese soared – one of the clowns carrying a gigantic knife and fork, kicking up his leg, stepping like a goose himself; and many more scenes, from the telling of ghost stories on Christmas Eve, to a view of a small country church receiving parishioners on a Christmas morn.

Mr Pickwick examined all these pictures with unflagging delight. One of the drawings even showed
The Book of Christmas
itself displayed in a pile of Christmas presents, alongside a drum, a fiddle and a skipping rope. He was just about to look at a picture whose caption he glimpsed as
Enjoying Christmas
when the boiling of the kettle on the coals interrupted his progress through the pages.

*   *   *

Hervey's progress in creating letterpress for
The Book of Christmas
was slow, and by November there was no sign of the completed manuscript. Bouts of illness did not help. He felt an onset of fatigue, too, whenever he saw anything in the slightest degree puzzling in Seymour's pictures – Hervey would retreat to bed, where he put on a nightcap and tied the strings tightly, as though additional cosiness would incubate his thoughts. Once, after a three-hour session under covers and cap, he rose in the middle of the afternoon to write, concerning the resemblance of the Norfolk coachmen to turkeys, ‘We presume that Mr Seymour must have had in mind and intended to illustrate by “modern instances” that class of “wise saws” such as “birds of a feather flock together” – “tell me the company and I will tell you the man” – and others which tend generally to show that men are apt to catch the hues of surrounding objects and take the features of their associates.' While late one morning, when he confronted a picture showing a turkey running towards Leadenhall Market, where it would face certain slaughter, the depiction struck Hervey as so odd that he not only adjourned to bed, but also requested the assistance of an extra blanket from his wife. Eventually he rose and wrote, ‘Turkeys are indisputably born to be killed. And such being the destiny of this bird, it may probably be an object of ambition with a respectable turkey to fulfil its fate at the period of this high festival.' After putting on a second pair of socks, he added: ‘Certain it is that at no other time can it attain to such dignities as belong to the turkey who smokes on the table of a Christmas dinner – the most honoured dish of all the feast.' He had to throw a shawl over his shoulders before he could add the final explanatory line: ‘Something like an anxiety for this promotion is to be inferred from the breathless haste of the turkey of which our artist has here given us a sketch.' After which, Hervey felt exhausted, and required another term in bed, until his wife brought in a tray with a bowl of hot soup.

‘One of the great problems in composing this manuscript,' he told his wife as she checked the windows for draughts for the third time that day, ‘is that Mr Seymour and I see Christmas differently. If you will fetch me his drawings, I will demonstrate my point.'

He showed her a picture of children sitting around a fire in the evening, in an old baronial manor, while a withered crone told a tale. ‘The picture is quite remarkable for the atmosphere it creates. You do not need to be told that she is telling a Christmas ghost story. Look at the way the children turn towards the shadows. They are scared there is something lurking. This old woman has
terrified
the children.'

Hervey's wife straightened the nightcap, so that it covered the tops of his ears.

‘Good though the picture is as a drawing, I have far higher ideals for Christmas. Now look at this one, my dear.'

The picture showed musicians – three rubicund fat men and a half-asleep boy – beside a lamppost, playing in the snowy streets at night. The instruments of the men were a trombone, a flute and a cello while the boy played a fiddle, but his eyes drooped as he bowed the strings, for the hour was late – a clock on a facade showed that it was three in the morning, and an angry man leant out of a window protesting at the noise.

‘My concern,' said Hervey, ‘is the poor residents having to put up with this row when they are trying to get some sleep. Surely the musicians should be filled with some feeling for their fellow man at Christmas? And look at all the drink he has shown!'

A bottle of liquor protruded from the trombonist's pocket. An inebriated woman danced under a lamppost. A shop sign proclaimed ‘Spirit and Wine'. An advertisement over the shop, illuminated by a lantern, said ‘Dead Fine Gin'.

‘Should Christmas really be about selfishness, drunkenness and ghost stories?' He shook his head in repugnance, and then coughed in a repugnant way. ‘But I must sleep, my dear.'

She nodded obediently, gathered up the soup bowl, went downstairs, and handed it to the bonneted Irish maid, saying that the master was not to be disturbed. The maid in turn remarked to the cook, when she took the bowl to the kitchen: ‘I don't think he could even
cope
with being well again, he couldn't.'

Just then, there was a loud knock at the street door.

The maid adjusted her bonnet and went. Seymour stood on the doorstep.

‘I wish to see Mr Hervey.'

‘He is in bed, sir. He is not at all well. He is not to be disturbed, he isn't.'

Seymour pushed past the maid. He called out: ‘Hervey! Hervey! Where are you? Upstairs is he?' Seymour climbed the stairs and opened one door after another until he saw the frog-faced nightcapped Hervey with a terrified expression, holding up the sheets to his mouth.' When will it be done, Hervey? You have had enough time!'

‘Mr Seymour – oh Mr Seymour – I am not well. Do not come closer. Please, I beg you. Oh dear, I can smell etching acid!'

‘Spooner may be soft on you. I am not.'

By now, Mrs Hervey had come to the bedroom, with the maid behind her. ‘Who are you, sir? You have no right—'

‘Your husband knows me. And I have every right to see that my drawings are treated with respect.' Seymour stood over the bed. ‘How many weeks are left to us? Don't you realise how close we are to Christmas?'

‘I have been ill, Mr Seymour. Look at me.' He held up his wrist. ‘I am thin as a barber's cat.'

‘Get this done, Hervey, I am warning you.'

‘Warning
a sick man
?' Suddenly Hervey's expression changed. For a supposedly unwell person, his anger was strong and healthy. ‘I shall not keep quiet about this threat. Mr Spooner will hear of it. He is a good friend of mine. I am warning
you
.' Then Hervey collapsed into a coughing fit, and his wife massaged his back. ‘You have made me worse, Seymour!' screamed Hervey. ‘If this is not finished on time,
you
are to blame!'

With no more words, Seymour left the room, descended the stairs, and walked into the street, his face a perfect mask of grimacing that took a long session in a public house to slip.

*   *   *

A week later, the smell of sprats served with caper sauce and lemon wafted on to the streets of London. A calmer Seymour, and his children, had eaten a portion themselves, before joining the crowds to watch the procession on Lord Mayor's Day. Along came the mounted band of the Household Cavalry, heralds in tabards, and the great gilt coach pulled by six horses, with men in armour riding before, and the sheriffs and the aldermen following. The procession had known better days but, even so, Londoners flocked to see.

Standing among the terrific currents of applauding hands, Seymour became aware that a person but a few yards away was a former associate – and the former associate became similarly aware. It was Henry Lacey, of the publishing company Knight and Lacey. An awkward expression replaced the enthusiasm on Lacey's features, for the company had been wound up, bankrupt, with money still owed to the artist. Nonetheless, Lacey extended his hand, and Seymour took it, and introduced his son and daughter, and the four wandered away from the crowds and chatted with a degree of ease.