Death and Mr. Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis Read Free Book Online Page A

generosity.
    Rowlandson retained enough of the session in his memory to produce his drawing The Brilliants for the print-publisher Rudolph Ackermann as soon as he had recovered from the experience. No detail was held back, no curtain drawn discreetly over events. In a corner of the picture, two members vomited into chamberpots, and the contents of one pot overspilled like a waterfall on to a man who lay passed out on the floor. The empty bottles resulting from the toasts were shown in shining array in another corner.
    Five days later, the print was up for sale in a bow window that was five minutes’ walk from the Swan Tavern. As soon as it appeared, two fashionable gentlemen, both with a man-of-the-world manner, scrutinised the print and smirked at each other in evident delight; and though they both smelt of cologne, and the print suggested the ranker odours of disgust, they promptly entered the shop to purchase copies.
    Undoubtedly the picture reminded the gentlemen of similar evenings they had passed themselves, for there were hundreds – indeed thousands – of clubs established in the upstairs rooms of taverns in and around London. In the print-shop’s window were numerous other club scenes, showing drunkenness and fights, with liquid punch pouring out of cracked bowls and a flesh-and-bone punch flying as men clashed in arguments. Adjacent to Rowlandson’s The Brilliants was Gillray’s Union Club , with its own share of bloated-face boozers gathered around a table, or passed out in a stupor on the floor in the company of overflowing chamberpots, while chairs and candlesticks flew through the air, used as missiles in a melee between the club’s members.
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    â€˜Let’s you and me go to the Swan Tavern soon, Rowly,’ said Bannister, ‘and put your pencil to work.’
    â€˜I have not finished, John. I was frustrated by the whole business, but a peculiar turn of events happened on the Sunday morning.’ He downed his ale, and signalled to the barmaid for another two. ‘Mitchell drove me and his family to a church on the edge of the moors, St Breward. I still craved to draw him – and I was half willing to take a chance on losing a patron, just to put him down on paper. Well, we took our places in the pews, and the vicar stepped up to the pulpit. His name, I had learnt from Mitchell, was the Reverend Ralph Baron. And when I saw this Reverend Baron – well, it was like a miracle, John. I saw a man who was so distinctive he made me instantly lose all desire to draw Matthew Mitchell.
    â€˜It was because he was Mitchell’s exact opposite. He was a thin, old, shrivelled-up walking corpse – so thin and so shrivelled it was as though there was not a drop of blood running in his veins. It was as if his bones were his flesh. He had a jutting chin, and a prominent nose, and with just a tiny amount of caricature from me, his profile would be a crescent moon. He was the solution to my dilemma. Let me show you.’
    Rowlandson produced from his pocket a sketch of the vicar of St Breward standing in the pulpit. An old woman sat asleep on a pew in the foreground, as an indication of the sermon’s dullness. On the left were the only members of the congregation listening like Christians.
    â€˜Evidently these are your patron and his family,’ said Bannister, pointing to this group. ‘But I agree – this vicar has something to him. If Mitchell makes fat men look thin, then this fellow makes thin men look fat.’
    â€˜I watched in utter fascination as he gestured in the pulpit – though he delivered the least fascinating sermon you will ever hear. His voice droned on, but as I sat in the pew, my mind was flooded with thoughts of how I would use Reverend Baron. I imagined sketching him as a pedantic old schoolteacher in a classroom, who teaches his poor suffering boys religious instruction and Latin grammar.’
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