Death and Mr. Pickwick (50 page)

 

*

‘I AM AMUSED BY THE JORROCKS
pieces in the
New
,' said Seymour. ‘Though they would benefit from being illustrated.'

‘Mr Seymour,' said Barnard – who, like many of the members, was beginning to slur his words, ‘do you ever go to Putney?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Do you ever notice the men who go fishing on punts there, moored near the bridge?'

‘The notorious Putney puntites!' said Seymour. ‘Indeed I do!'

‘
They
would benefit from being illustrated.'

‘Why, Edward?' said the elegantly boned landowner. ‘There are those of us who have only fished from a bank. And I have never been to Putney in my life. What is a “Putney puntite”?'

‘Let me explain.' Barnard took another mouthful of brandy. ‘There is nothing so dull in the entire sport of angling as sitting in a punt, except at the very moment when the fish are biting.'

‘Then why do these puntites do it?' said the landowner.

‘I was coming to that. There is just one sort of angler who seeks this kind of recreation. You might think of them as a sect of piscatorial philosophers – a sect whose aim is to eat, drink and smoke to excess. The one excuse is that the quarterdeck of a punt doesn't give room for any exercise – so what can you do but stuff yourself, crack a bottle and blow a cloud when the fish aren't biting? And if the fish aren't biting, you set them an example by doing some biting yourself.'

‘So they are not serious anglers, that's what you're saying,' said the landowner.

‘
Serious
! The Putney puntite just wants to pass a few hours away from his normal business. They are rarely experts.'

‘They may catch a roach or two,' said Seymour.

‘They
may
catch a roach,' said Barnard. ‘They may catch a gudgeon, because any angler can. But I have seen what these men do afterwards. When the tide changes, they go to the nearest tavern, with other puntites, and have a plate of stewed eels. So they miss out on the great aim of fishing – which is to eat the fish one's skill has caught.'

‘That's true,' said Warburton. ‘You should just have simple fare while you're at the rod, and reserve yourself for the great meal of your catch afterwards. Angling's the greatest relish for food there is.'

There was another lull in the conversation, with Warburton effectively ending the flow of thought. Penn, unable to abide the silence, then attempted to build upon Warburton's comment.

‘Ah,' said Penn. ‘What did Addison say? All celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and drinking. And so is the Houghton. Do you know, Mr Seymour, we are rarely angry, for what is anger but something that impedes digestion?'

‘In a sporting club concerned with fowl, fish or game,' said Warburton, ‘there is, surely, a natural inclination towards good humour because a meal is the end of our endeavours. You will not find selfish jealousy in our ranks, Mr Seymour. Our practice is goodwill and unanimity. There
are
men in our club who are great thinkers, but it is rare for conversation to be deep.'

‘Especially after dinner!' said Barnard, and everyone laughed.

‘In any case,' said Penn, ‘when our stomachs are working, heads shouldn't distract them in their work. And if there are no fish we laugh. When we are together at Stockbridge, Mr Seymour, it is the oblivion of all care.'

The ornamented hour hand of the clock showed that it was approaching midnight, and therefore just the right time for a speech and the club's song. Barnard stood, somewhat unsteadily, and perhaps had forgotten some of the points he intended to raise.

‘Fellow Houghtonians – honoured guest, Mr Seymour. In this club, the good example of Izaak Walton, our patron saint, has been invariably followed, and each meeting has been the means of establishing more firmly – if possible – the friendship and good fellowship which have manifested themselves from the beginning.' He paused, and stared into the distance. Penn reached across and tugged his jacket. Then Barnard said: ‘It must be admitted that one day, it is
possible
that our society may be dissolved by circumstances over which we have no control.'

Shouts of ‘No, no!'

‘I say, that one day, it is
possible
, the last entry may be written in our chronicles.'

Shouts of ‘Never!'

‘But let us drink, and put such thoughts aside. To the Houghton Angling Club.' After the toast, they struck up the club song:

All hail to my club of good fellows

Again now, so happily met

Old Izaak himself couldn't tell us

The thing that we're wanting in yet.

Verse after verse followed, each member praised for his talents and personal qualities – this man for his skill with a rod, that man for his devotion to God, he for his wit, he for his clothing's fit. Then came a sombre verse for sadly departed members:

To their memory then let us drink, boys

Since now we can't drink to their health

And in grace to the toast let us think, boys

That heart should be ever our wealth.

There came a reprise of the first verse, which was the signal for a final, universal swallowing. Then all shook hands and slapped backs and adjourned to their beds in the Grosvenor.

*   *   *

After breakfast, the members gathered in the lobby with their rods and equipment. There was a joke they shared with Seymour that all had bad heads – not so much in the sense of an aftermath to an alcoholic binge, but because of an extraordinary profusion of eccentric hats. One member wore a large and floppy item that drooped upon his shoulders; another a hat of dog's hair with a puffy brim that turned upwards and resembled a forest fungus. But the eccentricity did not extend to colouration, as all hats were sombre, and could easily blend in with the hues of an English riverbank, for they never lost sight of their serious pursuit – angling.

‘Before we say goodbye, Mr Seymour,' said Barnard – in a top hat, of an expensive make, such as he would wear when visiting his banking associates in Lothbury, and from which various fishing lures were hanging – ‘I know you came here because you are illustrating Richard's
Maxims
– but could I trouble you to make a drawing for me?'

He handed Seymour a black leather portfolio. There were pages of manuscript within, and crude pictures of angling calamities. The first showed a man casting, but as the rod drew back, the hook sank into the cheek of a passer-by, and as the line pulled taut it produced an agonising cone of flesh. Another showed an angler jumping a stream, and was entitled:
The sudden realisation that the weight in one's pockets makes it impossible to reach the opposite bank.

‘If Richard can publish on the humorous side of angling,' said Barnard, ‘then so can I.'

He took a handful of sovereigns from his pocket and passed them discreetly to Seymour.

‘Have a look through these pages, and see if the writing inspires you. My drawings are not at your standard of course, but with a good picture from you at the front, my pictures might do for the rest. Just leave the material with Mr Sherry when you are finished. Ask him to add a sherry, or whatever you like, on my account too.'

‘Do you have a publisher in mind for this?'

‘Not exactly. There is a scientific gentleman I know, and he has been involved with publication in a small way. Well, with the
Transactions of the Geological Society of London
, at least. When the work's finished, I shall probably ask his advice.'

After he had shaken hands with the club members, Seymour sat with Barnard's papers, and a sherry. He read a statement about the behaviour of the Putney puntites, recalling the conversation of the previous day. ‘They are a sect of piscatorial philosophers whose aim is to conduct a series of experiments on solids and fluids, as well as investigating the nature of the particular gas which is evolved from the best Dutch tobacco.'

There was
something
interesting here, behind Barnard's words – the idea of the angler who was not truly captivated by fishing, but used a punt merely as a floating inn, to eat, drink and smoke. Seymour began sketching a picture of a fat man in a punt, a man of his favourite bespectacled type. The man was asleep, a bottle of liquor prominent in the hull, unaware in a drunken stupor that the rod was bent under the strain of a fish on the hook.

Then Seymour stopped. He should not waste this idea. He could do more with a Putney puntite than simply hand it over to the man with interests in the banking district of Lothbury.

Seymour looked briefly through the other pages of manuscript. How much of the material would fascinate the public? Very little, he suspected. It was the same with the Houghton Club chronicles. There
was
worthwhile material, but it would require editing to be at all readable.

Instead of the Putney puntite, he drew an angler astride a huge fish, riding it like a jockey, with a fishing rod substituting for a whip. Then he finished his sherry, handed the material to Mr Sherry, and left the hotel.

*   *   *

It was the middle of December, and the middle of the morning, when Charles Stokes, of the Geological Society of London, heard a knock when sitting, bearded and unkempt, in the middle of his study in the Verulam Buildings, Gray's Inn.

He did not appreciate the interruption. He had just added to his journal an account of a conversation with another geological gentleman on the subject of the steady accumulation of minute changes which, over the great expanse of time, had produced the layers of the Earth. He had been helped in this process by a tankard filled with the excellence of Reid's brewery, from the corner of Liquorpond Street and Leather Lane. He raised the tankard to his lips, sat poised, and waited to see whether the knock would repeat.

It did. So there was no alternative but to negotiate his way through his surroundings.

On shelves and stands were a profusion of items, many bearing labels: fossilised trilobites, coprolites and sections of tree bark; dried plants, stuffed toucans and floating animal foetuses in jars; minerals, crystals and seashells; coin cabinets with drawers left open; extensive bookshelves with works of learned societies; paintings both upon the walls and standing stacked against each other; Buddhas, elephant gods, busts of composers; and miscellaneous decorative snuffboxes. There was no apparent classificatory principle at work behind this collection – it was a collection of
everything
. There was also a stale odour present, but whether it emanated from Stokes, or from the contents of the room, is a question it would be difficult to reach a scientific consensus upon.

A fair-headed boy stood at the door, who by the look upon his face now experienced this enigmatic odour for the first time in his life. The boy handed over a parcel, his arms at full length, and two letters addressed to Charles Stokes, FSA, FLS, FGS, FRAS, saying, ‘I'm the new porter's lad.' Whereupon he departed as fast as he could.

Stokes dodged and zigzagged to his previous position. He read the two letters first. They both asked questions about geological specimens in his possession – and within an instant, Stokes had found them, as though he possessed in his mind a perfect catalogue of his study's contents. Then he opened the parcel.

It contained Barnard's work on humorous aspects of angling. Quite why this gentleman should ask Stokes's opinion on such matters puzzled Stokes himself. But as he
had
asked, Stokes would respond.

‘The account of accidents has too much the character of individuality – too much the jokes of a coterie for publication,' he wrote in his reply. Then he added: ‘Of course, you do not mean to give
all
the drawings.'

Edward Barnard's
Angling Memories and Maxims
remained unpublished, its impression upon the world no more than the traces it left in Robert Seymour's mind.

 

*

‘IT HAS BEEN SO LONG
since we mentioned that boy in Chatham, who was so fascinated by clowns, that anyone would think I had forgotten him,' said Mr Inbelicate. ‘I have decided I shall call him Chatham Charlie. It is time we talk of him again.'

 

*

HOLY WEEK, A MILD EVENING.

There was a gentle breeze among the gravestones, slightly disturbing the grass, as the boy and his father neared the porch of St Mary's. The father pointed to the curious details of a stone tablet built into the entrance of the church, showing Euphrosyne of the Three Graces – goddess of mirth, good cheer, joy, merriment and festivity.

‘She filled the earth with pleasant moments,' said the father.

The boy was absorbed by the sight of the ancient tablet, for some pleasant moments; but there were other pleasant moments urgently pressing to be enjoyed, because a stroll had been promised before the service, and he tugged his father's hand. They turned from the porch, and the boy pointed towards a ship's mast, for the church was built upon a chalk cliff overlooking Chatham Dockyard. They proceeded along an alley which ran beside St Mary's called Red Cat Lane, rumoured to be the oldest in Chatham. If anywhere in Chatham were haunted, it would be this lane – perhaps by bloody, ghostly cats, but definitely by frowsy women standing outside cottages, one of whom clicked her mouth as they passed.

‘Just keep going, Charlie,' said the father.

The alley led to the water and to fishermen's dwellings, where sun-beaten and creased faces poked from doors; but these faces were not as disturbing to the boy as one drawn in chalk
upon
a door.

The face belonged to a goblin-like figure, smoking a pipe. It wore a large hat, and had long ears that protruded parallel to the brim. The chalked mouth grinned from one ear to the other, and the goblin's eyes resembled eggs with a speck for a pupil, while the hands suggested bunches of gnarled carrots. The figure's legs were unearthly long.