Death and Mr. Pickwick (86 page)

‘You are letting this lead you into wild thoughts.'

‘The more I think about it – I think that's exactly what he did. I
know
he did!'

‘Go and see Chapman and Hall. The drawing of the clown has to be done. But do it on the condition that, in future, Boz will
always
have to ask you about material he wants to insert. Please, Robert, that is the solution. The sooner the clown is drawn, the sooner you are rid of this problem.'

He did not respond, but just sat with a brooding look. She placed pencil and paper in front of him on the desk. ‘I shall sit with you while you do it.' When he still did not move, she said: ‘À Beckett got his just deserts when he treated you so badly, and this Boz will too. Please, Robert.'

So he began the picture of the dying clown. He drew the dismal man on one side of the deathbed, and on the other side, the clown's wife, carrying a child. He drew the canopy of the clown's bed like a proscenium arch, with the spotted sleeve of a clown's shirt dangling from the top. ‘I drew Wetherell in a clown's shirt like this,' he said, in a low, unenthusiastic voice.

‘So you did, Robert. There was such a demand for that issue. I remember you said the printing presses worked round the clock.'

‘Everything I did for
Figaro
was just the prelude to humiliation. It is as though Boz has deliberately chosen this scene as a reminder of à Beckett. And now I think about it – I wonder whether the two know each other?'

‘Please, just keep drawing, Robert.'

‘How long before Boz calls me a mechanical dolt with a pencil?' Above the clown's mantelpiece he drew a pinned-up print of a pantomime scene, showing a clown goose-stepping on stage. ‘I drew a scene like this for
The Book of Christmas
.'

‘I recall. And it was excellent.'

‘Hervey – another man who let me down.'

He drew the three-cornered table in the clown's hovel. Its triangular surface was not as the tiny pointed spittoon on the floor of his first
Pickwick
picture, leading the eye towards Mr Pickwick, but a vicious object of geometry in the foreground. There was no pleasing circularity with this piece of furniture; nor the stability of a rectangular table; it was a thing of sharp points, of which one pointed violently towards himself.

‘It is done,' he said. He put down his pencil.

*   *   *

The aroma of a herring, suspended from a string and cooking over a candle, drifted from the stage to the fourth row of the theatre where Boz was in the audience. He had naturally been intrigued by the subject of the production, of a poor strolling player who, to scrape a living, composed verses to advertise Warren's Blacking. The scene was of a squalid garret, where the strolling player, dressed in black trousers with holes and a threadbare dressing gown, sat at a table cooking the herring. The candle he used was stuck into a blacking bottle, and the gibbet-like frame on which the fish swung was supported by a similar receptacle. The player turned the herring, and found his poetic muse:

A man who oft had heard the jest

That real black diamonds were the best

Once thought he'd found those gems of light

So wondrous, rich and grand

But seized a pair of boots made bright

With Warren's Blacking, 30 Strand!

Boz pondered. Until now, the man with Mr Cosmogony's stuttering speech, the strolling actor who had rescued Mr Pickwick from the wrath of the cabman, had simply been referred to as ‘the stranger'. But the name of the character in this play could serve very well in
Pickwick
. It
might
be called piracy; but on the other hand, the stranger in
Pickwick
was an actor and a scoundrel – he would
certainly
steal the name of a part he played as an alias.

Thus the name of Mr Jingle was added to the roll call of characters in
Pickwick.
How this player might boast about his romantic conquests! ‘Ladies of the green room – many achievements! – sowed wild oats! – “O keep on, sir!” Ha ha ha!'

Soon, Boz's own romantic life would be extended. With the emolument from
Pickwick
, his marriage could be brought forward. In a few days, he and his fiancée Catherine would be married at St Luke's, Chelsea, and a short honeymoon in Kent would follow, while the first number of
Pickwick
was on the streets.

 

*

‘A LETTER IS USUALLY READ, FOR
the first time, as a whole,' said Mr Inbelicate. ‘It may live in the brain afterwards, in searing parts, and the branding iron reheated with additional views. The pain may be felt in silence, alone; it may be uttered aloud, in company.'

 

*

WHEN SEYMOUR RETURNED FROM A
meeting with McLean, his wife passed him a letter. It was from Boz, written after the honeymoon.

My Dear Sir

I had intended to write you, to say how much gratified I feel by the pains you have bestowed on our mutual friend Mr Pickwick, and how much the result of your labours has surpassed my expectations.

‘Surpassed his expectations. So he
expected
me to draw badly.'

I am happy to be able to congratulate you, the publishers, and myself on the success of the undertaking, which appears to have been most complete.

I have now, another reason for troubling you. It is this. I am extremely anxious about ‘The Stroller's Tale' – the more especially as many literary friends, on whose judgement I place great reliance, think it will create considerable sensation. I have seen your design for an etching to accompany it. I think it extremely good, but still, it is not quite my idea; and as I feel so very solicitous to have it as complete as possible, I shall feel personally obliged if you will make another drawing.

‘Not content to
impose
this story on me, he now wants me to do the drawing again! And who are these literary friends?'

It will give me great pleasure to see you, as well as the drawing, when it is completed. With this view, I have asked Chapman and Hall to take a glass of grog with me on Sunday evening (the only night I am disengaged), when I hope you will be able to look in.

‘He invites Chapman and Hall to ensure the drawing is completed according to
his
requirements, and he
hopes
that I shall be there.'

The alteration I want I will endeavour to explain. I think the woman should be younger – the ‘dismal man' decidedly should, and he should be less miserable in appearance.

‘
He
described him as having deeply sunken eyes.
He
described a careworn face. A sallow skin! How could I possibly associate this with youth?
And less miserable
! He even
calls
him a dismal man.'

To communicate an interest to the plate, his whole appearance should express more sympathy and solicitude …

‘To communicate an interest! So there is no interest otherwise, then?'

… and while I represented the sick man as emaciated and dying, I would not make him too repulsive.

‘But the clown
was
ghastly! I am giving him what he wanted! If anything, I have erred in the other direction – I cannot call the clown repulsive in my drawing.'

The furniture of the room, you have depicted, admirably.

‘Oh, he'll concede that I draw admirable furniture. How kind of him. What praise!'

‘Please stay calm, Robert.'

‘I conceded when he suggested altering the position of the arm. But now! He is dictating the expressions on
the faces
! He would tell me how I
myself
should look if he could. “Cheer up, Mr Seymour, put a smile on those lips of yours!” Even if I gave him exactly what he wanted, the very mirror of his descriptions, it still wouldn't be right.'

‘Robert, this will do your health no good at all.'

‘The furniture is admirable. Is that the truth about me? That I have come no further in life than my father? I make furniture. Sticks. Straight lines. That's all. No – I am
less
than my father! At least he made
real
chairs and tables!'

‘You are frightening the children. Please, for their sake.'

‘Do you know the pictures of mine that stick in my memory, Jane, out of all the
thousands
I have done? The rejected ones, the few that were considered not quite right. And now this – this dying clown – has been inserted into a work that was to be
my pride
! And I do the drawing – and he
rejects
it! And these parts must be produced month after month, like I am a clown myself, laughing and making others laugh, regardless of what I feel!'

*   *   *

He rose early the next morning, and walked around the garden. He entered the summer house and lay upon its floor, staring at the ceiling. When Jane found him, some hours later, she urged him to redraw the picture of the clown as soon as possible. ‘It is the only thing that will stop you brooding,' she said. ‘Get it done, Robert, and then it is finished.' She stretched out her hand, to help him to his feet.

He sat down in the summer house to redraw the picture.

He read again of Dismal Jemmy: ‘His jaws were so long and lank that any observer would have supposed he was drawing the flesh of the face in, for a moment, by some contraction of the muscles.'

This dismal man wasn't merely thin. It was as though he had the power to disappear within himself. Perhaps the man
was
younger than his sunken eyes indicated, perhaps they and the careworn flesh were the result of a strange self-suction. But no, that was ridiculous. But still, he drew the dismal man a little younger. He also indicated more concern, with the man leaning forward towards the clown upon the bed, rather than sitting stiffly. But the peculiar notion of self-contraction made Seymour look at his own hands, and the pudginess they had acquired in recent times.

He used to be slender. He was not now.

He came to the drawing of the clown's wife. Boz wanted her younger too. But why
should
he oblige Boz? He would
not
reduce her age. If anything, he drew her as older, so that she verged on a haggard crone.

Finally, he came to the clown. He considered the instruction that this character should not be too revolting.

Seymour's mouth tightened.

At that moment, Jane returned to the summer house.

‘I am just about to draw the clown's face,' he said.

She watched her husband's features distort into a hideous expression as he drew. On the paper emerged a picture of the younger Grimaldi at his most revolting – the face thinner, more of a horror than Boz's description.

Seymour stood up: ‘I will
not
bend my will to his. The drawing is done.'

Sunday evening, 17 April 1836

Seymour walked under the archway at Furnival's, and turned right, to the entrance for number fifteen. He gripped the banister hard. He ascended several dozen stone steps. He rapped the knocker once. Boz opened after a delay, and offered his hand, but when Seymour extended his own, there was but a brief touch of flesh on flesh, and it would be difficult to assign responsibility for the break.

Seymour smelt Boz's breath. A definite looseness in the writer's manner indicated that the evening had started in the afternoon.

Seymour passed through the little hall, of similar dimensions to a closet, into the modest sitting room where he was introduced to Boz's wife. She was curvaceous, quite pretty, with plump lips, but around her eyelids hung a leaden suggestion of sleepiness – a type of woman who nonetheless suggested the passion at whose apex the eyes would open wide and show their full blue.

Boz's brother Fred was also in attendance, and he shook Seymour's hand with great enthusiasm. ‘It is a privilege to hold
Figaro
's razor,' he said.

‘I thank you. Where are Chapman and Hall?' said Seymour, turning to Boz.

‘They send their apologies,' said Boz. ‘Shall we get the circulation going in your drawing hand?' There was a strange look on Seymour's face. ‘Grog, I meant. How do you take it?'

‘Oh … cold-without.'

As Boz poured, he said: ‘I heard you had trouble with the steel of your plates, Mr Seymour.'

‘A wholly unusual event. I hope that we can use this occasion to discuss our work, if your wife and brother do not object. I would like to discuss a fishing scene I have in mind.'

‘Fishing! Lord, no! Not tonight. Let us amuse ourselves, for goodness' sake. Fish are to be caught at fishmongers.'

‘The scene is of considerable importance to developing the story.'

‘Mr Seymour, I have lain in fishing boats on summer days doing nothing. I have walked along many a bank. But holding a rod and a line waiting for the fish to bite – no! Boz would have to get up, and do something!' He passed Seymour the glass. ‘But do you know, my brother and I were having quite a little talk about caricaturists before you arrived. We would be grateful for your opinions. Now take Gillray. Are you knowledgeable about his work, Mr Seymour?'

‘Of course I am.'

‘Do you count yourself among his admirers?'

‘What is more wonderful than a drawing by Gillray? One can call a politician by many names – but to show him as a poisonous toadstool is to fix him in the mind for ever.'

‘Well, that is your view. I confess I find Gillray disagreeable. As I was telling my brother, his drawings are like a howling mob. I think we are better off without him. If Gillray were still around, we would still be glorying in cockerels pecking out each other's eyes.'

‘It is true that the curtain has gone down on his era. But I will never escape his influence. But let us discuss the fishing scene.'