Death and Mr. Pickwick (104 page)

‘Talfourd seems a good name,' said Boz. ‘A little unusual, but that is no bad thing.'

‘My full name is Thomas
Noon
Talfourd, Noon being my mother's maiden name. When I became a serjeant-at-law, I was the last cweated on the owiginal list. It was thought dwoll to wefer to serjeants after myself as “afternoons”, and then they became “Post Mewidians”.' He breathed in heavily. ‘Such heights of subtlety can men of law weach.'

‘I am most interested in your work on behalf of copyright reform,' said Boz.

‘I have always believed that litewature is a special cweation, an owiginal thing. The author must be nurtured and pwotected.'

‘I wish your opponents in Parliament could see that,' said Forster.

‘Men find it difficult to think of litewature as pwoperty; they see the physical object, the book, as pwoperty, but words are too etheweal.'

‘People should never forget that the author is at the very heart of it all,' said Forster.

‘That is my view,' said Talfourd. ‘But I am accused of not acting in the public intewest, of waising the pwice of weading, of stopping the diffusion of knowledge. But for me – litewature is a noble calling, and should be wewarded. It is not just about wesponding to the market, and ephemewal tastes.'

‘You are doing authors a tremendous service,' said Boz.

‘It may be that I must compwomise over the question of a perpetual copywight. Warburton laughed at me after the last sitting – he said that if I had my way we would still be paying Virgil for his works, if a costermonger could pwove he was a distant welative. But in a just world, your immortal Mr Pickwick would be an immortal source of income to you and your descendants, a just wecognition of what you as an author had contwibuted to society.'

Boz basked.

 

*

‘IT IS MY BELIEF,' SAID
Mr Inbelicate, ‘that Boz formed the idea of dedicating
Pickwick
to Talfourd at that first meeting. Boz became Seymour's partner because the emolument was too tempting to resist. Think of the emolument if Talfourd got his way.'

‘Boz's descendants, into the infinite distance, would own an Ali Baba's cave.'

‘Just consider throwing the weight of
Pickwick
into the scales of public opinion, in support of Talfourd's campaign. The balance might conceivably be tipped by the dedication.'

‘Yes, if Mr Pickwick sat on the scales.'

Mr Inbelicate ignored my attempt at humour, and passed me a copy of the dedication, and as I cast my eye over the paragraphs in praise of Talfourd, he said: ‘While we are on the subject of financial matters, you will remember the bank of Smith, Payne and Smiths.'

‘Where the father of Boz's harp-playing lost-love worked in a senior position.'

‘The very responsible Mr Beadnell. It was about the time that Boz met Talfourd that rebuilding took place at the bank.'

‘Why does that concern us?'

 

*

DURING THE REBUILDING AT NUMBERS
1 and 2 Lombard Street, Smith, Payne and Smiths moved its operations to South Sea House. For such a distinguished institution, additional space was required, with the result that rooms were also rented above a nearby cobbler's shop, and with the further result that George Beadnell sometimes found himself nodding to a leather-aproned little man who normally held at least one dozen tacks in his mouth as he hammered away at a workbench.

One morning, Mr Beadnell happened to enter the cobbler's shop having just bought a copy of
Pickwick
from a stall. Upon seeing the wrapper, the cobbler spat the tacks into his palm, and began talking enthusiastically about the latest exploits of Mr Pickwick. George Beadnell was not only happy to participate in this conversation, he was induced to share a secret. He knew the mysterious Boz.

‘Do you now?' said the cobbler. ‘Do you really now?'

‘I do,' said George Beadnell. ‘Excellent fellow.' He said it as though he would be proud for such a young man to be his son-in-law – in contrast to his shudder at the very thought when it had been a genuine possibility.

It was the case that, at the end of the fourteenth number, Mr Pickwick entered the Fleet Prison. By chance, the cobbler knew an inmate of the Fleet who had bought a pair of shoes from him before being sentenced; the two men discovered an instant rapport, deriving from an evident satisfaction on the part of the shoes' purchaser and a corresponding pride in their maker, and the fact that the transaction occurred at the very time when a kettle boiled for a cup of tea. Thus, the two had stayed in touch. The cobbler knew that the inmate read
Pickwick
– for the monthly parts circulated in prison just as they did in the outside world – and had learnt that there was particular excitement in the Fleet that Mr Pickwick himself was now part of their community.

The cobbler decided to write to the inmate, imparting the extraordinary news that he had met a man who actually knew Boz. He expected the inmate to be excited, but the reply he received was unforeseen: it was a plea to be put in touch with Mr Beadnell, in the hope that he could bring the inmate's case to Boz's attention. The inmate was Thomas Clarke.

*   *   *

Clarke had felt a special bond with
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
from the moment he was persuaded to read the first number. He was struck by the date of the meeting at which Mr Pickwick addressed the club, prior to setting out on his travels: 12 May 1827. This was almost exactly – just two days before – Clarke's imprisonment began.

The expedition of the Pickwickians over England became the life Thomas Clarke might have had, a life of roaming free.

Then came Mr Pickwick's trial for breach of promise on 14 February – Valentine's Day, the very day when Clarke most craved to see his brother. How he wished he could show Valentine the trial scene. He imagined his brother saying: ‘It may be amusing, but it shows what the law is like.'

When he saw Mr Pickwick enter the Fleet, Clarke's bond to
The Posthumous Papers
reached a new level of intensity. He knew in his heart that Mr Pickwick would be released, somehow, and he felt his own hopes of freedom rise.

And when he received the letter from his friend the cobbler, Clarke realised that fate had given him an astonishing opportunity, which he must seize. He decided he would enter the pages of
Pickwick
himself.

Clarke wrote to the cobbler, proposing that if Mr Pickwick could meet a character in the Fleet whose case was the same as his own, it could draw attention to his plight. The huge public interest in
Pickwick
, he reasoned, might even – conceivably – secure his release.

When the fifteenth number was published, Clarke read it half-heartedly, having received no acknowledgement at all from Boz. He sat in the Fleet coffee room at the long, narrow table, among several inmates who all drank from pewter pots, except for one – his closest companion, a dirty-faced young fellow with long, lank hair, who preferred his ale from a cup, as he sucked hard on a brim when he drank, and he hated the taste of metal.

Clarke had developed a nervous habit of incessantly turning over a round piece of japan, upon which a pewter pot usually stood. Suddenly, his thoughts turned to the tale ‘The Convict's Return' in
Pickwick
's third number, about a man who had been transported to Australia but years later came back to England.

Without any warning he exclaimed: ‘What is the misery of a transported man compared to mine? Even a transported convict knows he will return
one day
!' The pewter drinkers got up and left, leaving only the cup-drinker. ‘A transported man has hope,' said Clarke. ‘He can pledge to himself that one day he will set foot in his native place – that whatever the difficulties, he will return to the spot where he was born. And if the people there have grown older, and no longer recognise him, there are still the trees and the church to come home to. Not for me. There is no hope for me!'

‘There is always hope,' said his fellow prisoner, sucking on his cracked china cup. ‘I heard that years ago, there was a writer in here, a poor, fallen bird in a cage like the rest of us, until the king took it into his pimple to pay off his debts, and he was set free. So have hope.'

‘I will not be helped by the monarch!' Clarke lifted and then put down
Pickwick
. ‘At times it seems that I have been falsely imprisoned, as though I am a character in some stage farce, serving the sentence of someone else who happens to share my name.'

‘Well, read your
Pickwick
, and make the most of things.'

After further persuasion, Clarke returned to
Pickwick
and said, when he had calmed: ‘I've been wondering what this means, here.' He read aloud: ‘“Ah! They're like the elephants. They feel it now and then and it makes 'em wild!”'

‘You obviously don't know about Chunee the elephant. Do you want to hear about him?'

‘If it will keep me from thinking, yes.'

‘Let me get myself another cup of ale first.'

When he returned, the dirty-faced inmate began.

*   *   *

‘Until about seven or eight years ago, on the north side of the Strand there used to be the menagerie at Exeter 'Change.'

‘I do remember hearing about that,' said Clarke. ‘Perhaps I might have gone.'

‘My father used to take me, when I was a boy. For a shilling, you could go to the upper floors and see things which you would previously only have seen in pictures. You could get right up close to a tiger and a hippopotamus. And you would hear the animals' noises on the street when you walked by. My father told me that drivers were always wary about taking a new horse down the Strand, because the horse might bolt.

‘There were even animals I had never heard of. A tapir, that was one. And there was a lion and a hyena and a panther and a jackal. Even a sixty-foot skeleton of a sperm whale. That skeleton amazed me.

‘But in one of these cages was the menagerie's greatest attraction – a huge male elephant. “Eleven feet tall and seven imperial tons!” That's what they used to shout at the entrance to attract people in. You had to pay an extra shilling to see the elephant, but it was worth it. Its tusks poked through the bars. And it would do tricks. It would take off a man's hat, or steal his wallet. If you held up a sixpenny piece, the elephant would take it from your hand and then return it to you. And there was a bell it would ring, and that would be when the meat man was about to come, and that would set the whole menagerie roaring in expectation. My father said it was like a crowd on election-day.

‘Well, the elephant was called Chunee. If I remember rightly, he had been captured in Bombay when he was very young, and shipped to London. He even used to be hired out to perform at the Theatre Royal in a show and his keeper would take him out and walk him down the Strand. When he was a young elephant, he couldn't be happier. He wouldn't mind people stroking him, and the children would touch his trunk. I did that myself, when I was very small. But as he grew older, he got into bad moods. Like it says in
Pickwick
– they feel it now and then and it makes 'em wild. And Chunee's moods got worse every year. My mother said it was because he didn't have a lady elephant for company. My father though said it was because of all the sugary foods the public had given him, which had rotted his teeth – 'cos Chunee would eat half the sugar in West India Docks on buns given half a chance. Whatever the cause, every year the moods got worse. Some people thought it funny to imitate the trumpeting sounds of an elephant near the cage – and when they did that, it got Chunee wild, and he would strike the bars with his trunk.

‘Well, the keepers started to get scared. My father once showed me a report in the newspaper about how Chunee had accidentally crushed a keeper to death. I think Chunee turned round in his cell, and he stove in a keeper's ribcage – if it
was
an accident. It's not surprising the keepers got scared – I remember seeing Chunee roll around on the floor of his cage and you imagine all that weight rolling on top of you!

‘One day, Chunee went truly wild. He started smashing the bars with his trunk, again and again. Now these bars were very strong – they were oak, and bound up with steel. I'd say they had a girth of about three feet. But Chunee was
determined
to get out. He kept on striking the bars – bash, bash, bash, without stopping. Then the keepers noticed that one of the bars was starting to become detached from a cross-beam. They were
very
scared. Well, you think about what would happen if the bars broke away from the bricks. There were other dangerous animals – lions and tigers and all sorts of beasts – and if Chunee broke his own cage and got out, who could stop him? The cage of a lion would crumple if he ran wild against it. Imagine the Strand full of all these creatures, and all the chaos that would happen! It's quite funny when you think about it.

‘So, a decision was made. Poor Chunee, who had given so much pleasure, had to die.

‘Now there was a keeper who is supposed to have loved Chunee. I heard that he believed that, one day, the elephant would come right again, and go back to being the way he used to be, nice and docile. This was the keeper who was given the task of putting poison in the elephant's hay. But, an animal with a nose that big is going to smell that there is something the matter with his food. Or perhaps Chunee just knew they were up to something. He wouldn't touch the hay. So, there was no alternative – the soldiers from Somerset House were sent for.

‘A couple of soldiers came, and they sent out a message in the neighbourhood for anyone with a gun and the courage to come along. Quite a few men did. About ten or fifteen, I believe. Now, Chunee probably wouldn't have seen a musket before. He would have seen a gentleman's walking stick, and he might have thought a musket was a stick too, and he didn't panic. So the solders and others lined up in front of his cage.