Death and Mr. Pickwick (79 page)

She knew any hesitation would be all the worse for her.

She went to the bedroom and removed her clothes. She lay upon a glass-footed bed. When her father entered the room, he closed the windows. He looped the straps around her wrists and ankles, and fastened each buckle.

The rod descended without mercy and the wire struck her thighs, and her stomach, and her upper arms and breasts. He avoided the face and the delicate hands, except that in his fury, a sharp edge of wire accidentally clipped her cheek and drew blood. ‘Vessel of Satan! Your foul master did that!' His arm descended and blood poured down her thighs, and her sides, on to the bed. ‘Unnatural child! Where is your duty? What obedience do you show? And here am I the tenderest, the kindest and – I confess the fault, O Lord – I am your too indulgent father! Do you know how blessed you are to be my child?'

There was nothing rebellious in her being. She was all forbearance. She did not cry out, she did not beg her father to stop. Not once did she entreat him for mercy.

For years, she endured. In bed at night, the creak of the staircase would set her trembling, lest her father, taken with some sudden thought of her wickedness, was on his way upstairs. One night he opened the door and said, without any obvious cause: ‘Do you think I am harsh with you, daughter? I am
incapable
of being harsh!' Then he burst into tears, staggered into the room and sat on the corner of the bed. For all that he had done to her, she still came forward to comfort him. He allowed her to hold his shoulders as he sobbed upon her, until he abruptly pushed her away. It was then that he screamed: ‘Your vile depravity even leads you to lustful thoughts of
me
!'

She put all her hopes into one saviour: time. That, one day, she would leave her father's house. All means of chronology – whether the seasons of nature, or the wares of clockmakers' shops – were heralds of that day.

Eventually, she left when she was twenty years old and found a position as governess with a family called Dew. She not only served the family well, but was wooed by two sons within that family, and agreed to marry one.

Ely Stott, on learning of the intended wedding, for once did not impute evil to his daughter: it was the Dew family who had plotted, and sought the marriage with the intention of inheriting his fortune. But he would foil their plan! He had never been known for his interest in words – no playful pun had been heard to escape his lips – but in the word ‘Dew', he found a particular inspiration for his displeasure. ‘Dew? I will give the girl her due!' He said this to patients, to the glassblower's boy, and to whomsoever he encountered in the course of a day. He repeated it when he went to a lawyer's office.

‘My dear Mr Stott,' said the lawyer, behind his desk, the words of the address being said with increasing gravity. ‘I do appreciate the situation is most – most
awkward
for you. I understand your distress as a father. But we really have no power at all to stop your daughter marrying Mr Dew's son. All that might be arranged is a compromise.'

‘What does that mean?' said Stott.

‘It would mean some pecuniary loss. We might call it – an inducement.'

‘You mean pay Dew's son not to marry her!' Stott stood up in red-faced rage. ‘Never!' He slammed the desk. ‘Do you think I'd let him get his hands on my money
now
, rather than after I am gone?'

‘Then, Mr Stott, there is one other course of action, though it may be too distasteful to contemplate. From a professional point of view, I cannot express an opinion – but from a personal point of view, I confess it would not be to my taste. You could remove your daughter from your will.'

Stott sat and put his hands to his temples. Eventually, he said: ‘If I were a bad father, she would get nothing. Not one penny. But I am a benevolent father. I will give her –
what she is due
.'

He instructed the lawyer to draw up his last will and testament, in which his daughter would be given an annuity of £100. ‘This is what she is due for refusing to accommodate herself to my domestic arrangements,' he said to the lawyer, ‘and I want you to state those words in the will. She must know that she receives the annuity, and no more, because she has persistently refused to accommodate herself to my domestic arrangements. Put it! Put it so she dwells on it for the rest of her life!'

There remained the fortune of some £40,000.

‘I have two nephews,' said Stott. ‘Now what are their names? Give me one moment, and I shall recall them. Their Christian names are definitely Thomas and Valentine. Their surname, though. What is that? I believe it is Clark. There may be an “e” on the end of the surname. I am not sure.'

*   *   *

Ely Stott died in November 1821, at the age of seventy-two. The vast bulk of his fortune was left to his nephews Thomas and Valentine Clarke, who had scarcely had any previous contact with their uncle at all.

One can imagine the joys of the two Clarkes when their uncle's will was read and they were suddenly wealthy men. Thomas Clarke, a thin, unassuming clerk, was suddenly freed from the drudgery of his working life, and he delivered his notice to his employer. He did not have extravagant tastes, but he lived a little less modestly than before. He went on long walks in the countryside, he treated himself in tea shops, he bought a second pair of shoes, he developed an interest in bindings for books, and added to a small library for personal use. He then considered the investment of the rest of his inheritance. He rejected the superficial attractions of Brazilian mining stock, and was decidedly in two minds about the fishing fleets of the South Sea. Some of the money, however, he invested in Spanish bonds.

The happiness of Thomas Clarke might have continued indefinitely. His personal library reflected his interests in the fashionable works of travel literature. He considered that, though many could only
read
about such adventures, he, in his position, might, one day,
do
. He began to contemplate the destinations that could lie in his future.

Except that in April of 1822, Stott's daughter challenged the validity of the will in the Prerogative Court. The judge gave his verdict – that Ely Stott was insane, or at least had an insane aversion to his daughter. The will was declared invalid.

Thomas Clarke, though frugal, had spent some of the money from the will. Had he invested better, his dividends might have funded these expenditures; but the certificates for Spanish bonds were now worth little more than their value as waste paper. The upshot was that he could not then, or in the foreseeable future, repay in full the money owed to Ely Stott's daughter. He was in debt.

The case was reviewed by the High Court of Delegates; there was an application for a commission of review, but this was refused by the Lord Chancellor.

Thomas Clarke's brother Valentine, who had already spent rather a large fraction of the inheritance – he was a handsome fellow, with a confident grin, an eye for the female form, and a love of rolling dice – knew what would follow next. ‘Whatever happens, I will not be taken, Thomas,' he whispered, in a dark corner of a back-alley public house where he had arranged to meet his brother. He drew from his pocket a knife. ‘This will go in the heart of any bailiff that comes for me.'

‘I will trust in the justice of the law,' said Thomas.

‘You are a fool! Come with me,' said Valentine, ‘while you are still a free man.'

‘You go if you must,' he told his brother. ‘I shall stay.'

They shook hands and Valentine Clarke caught the first ship leaving England.

Several Valentine's Days passed, and naturally on these days Thomas Clarke thought of his brother, who had been born on 14 February. As the great day of love approached, Thomas Clarke saw in the windows of the print shops an assortment of pictures, showing human hearts pierced by an arrow – and from the grim look Thomas Clarke gave, he might have been thinking of the threat his brother made to the life of a bailiff. But he never heard from his brother, and had no idea as to where he had vanished. So Thomas Clarke walked away from the print-shop window with a heavy step.

He wandered towards Fleet Market, near the debtors' prison, with its covered double row of butchers and greengrocers. The sun, to a degree, penetrated the skylights of the market, but these had never been cleaned and birds pecked away at mouldering fruits and vegetables thrown there. Rotten greengrocery was also the concern of a woman who had gone to a stall, where she complained that the potatoes she bought last week were bad within.

‘Well, then, ma'am,' said the stallholder, ‘you have deprived the prisoners of their free rations.' He offered her an apple to make amends. This man Clarke recognised: Clarke had once attended a banquet in connection with his firm, and this very greengrocer with a round, mischievous face and a bent front tooth had worked as an additional waiter. Clarke lowered his head in shame. Soon a diet of half-rotten vegetables would in all likelihood be his.

He passed a leech stall where a medical student – he was too young to be a doctor – asked for a jar of nice juicy ones, laughing as he handed over money to the poor but pretty girl serving there; and Thomas Clarke thought to himself that, had his uncle been
this
sort of student, the debtors' prison would not be beckoning.

Alongside the market was a granite wall, and when he emerged into the open, Clarke cast a doleful look at its green lichen and soot smuts. Set into this wall was a grated window with a stone slab above which was inscribed: ‘Please Remember Poor Debtors, Having No Allowance'.

Clarke peered through the grating into a small, dark room. At a wooden bench, a painfully thin figure sat. There was a small box at the window with a slot for coins, attached to a chain. The beggar croaked an appeal, and Clarke put the contents of his sovereign-case into the box. The beggar eased himself off his bench, approached the window, gave a nod, and drew in the box by the chain. He emptied the contents into his hand, and then put the box out once more. Clarke turned to walk on, and saw a man enter a gateway close by – and on his back he carried a basket, to which market traders had contributed unsaleable food like the half-rotten potatoes the woman had mentioned. On either side of this gateway was a carved numeral: number nine. For this was 9 Fleet Market, the euphemistic address of the Fleet Prison.

*   *   *

The officer who came to arrest Thomas Clarke was a small ashen-haired man, more friendly than aggressive, with a hint of a Continental accent underneath the London. Clarke invited him into his lodgings, bade him to sit down, and asked whether he would like a cup of tea.

‘Do you have green tea?'

‘I don't, I am afraid.'

‘Then I vill happily have vot you
do
have.'

The officer ran his hand through his ashen hair, and scurf fell and floated on the tea, and they chatted calmly, and the officer asked whether the neighbours were the quiet sort. Before Clarke could answer, a fly flew past, and the officer caught it in mid-air. He smiled, opened his hand, and showed the fly corpse upside down on his palm. It was the fourteenth day of May, 1827.

*   *   *

Clarke crossed the gravelled forecourt alongside the officer. Ahead was the long, stone four-storeyed building.

‘The windows are very dirty,' said Clarke.

‘Vait till you see the back jumps.'

‘The back jumps?'

‘That's vere them as gets moody goes. You ain't seen dirt till you've seen the back jumps.'

They went up half a dozen stairs into a lobby. There was a desk, and two substantial warders, one of whom stroked the shaft of a long key. There was also an iron gate which led into the recesses of the prison. Papers were passed, the officer said, ‘Good luck, sir,' shook Clarke's hand, and exited.

Clarke listened to the diminishing crunches of the gravel, while the warder with the key examined the admission papers.

‘Well now, we'll get you to sit for your portrait,' said the warder, when satisfied the papers were in order.

‘My portrait?'

‘A few minutes, and we'll know you for life, sir.'

He requested that Clarke take a seat in the middle of the lobby, and over the next quarter of an hour, a succession of turnkeys came to scrutinise his features. They walked all around, sometimes moving hands into the shape of frames, so as to know the length of Clarke's nose in comparison to the width of the mouth. One warder examined him from a low angle, as though determined to inspect the insides of Clarke's nostrils. Another looked straight into the eyes. ‘Soon be over, sir,' said the warder who had taken Clarke's papers, in an attempt at reassurance. The last turnkey was the most intrusive, for with neither warning nor ceremony, he placed his hands on Clarke's cheeks, and turned the head exactly as he required.

‘Now you'll want to know all the prices,' said the warder, taking Clarke back to the desk. ‘I would say for a gentleman like you' – he eyed Clarke up and down – ‘I would say one and thruppence a week for a room. That's my recommendation. Then you can add your garnish.'

‘Garnish?' said Clarke.

‘Candles and coals, use of a broom and suchlike. I would if I were you. Here's the current list.' He passed over a sheet of items and tariffs. ‘We're very civilised here, sir, not like Whitecross Street. We can get you almost anything you want.' Clarke looked down the sheet, which started off with beds, bolsters and three-legged stools, passed through corkscrews and nutmeg graters, and even listed a caged canary.

‘Does the canary gets its perch and sand free?' said Clarke. With an irritated gesture he pushed the list back to the warder. ‘What is the alternative to the room you mentioned?'

‘There is always Bartholomew Fair.'

‘Bartholomew Fair? What has that to do with this place?'