They were received at the top of the gangway by a reservist, who , conducted them down below to the gun decks, and finally to the brass plate in the deck marking where Nelson fell. Uncle Charles removed his hat whilst he read the inscription. Then he wanted to know from which side of the ship had come the bullet from the marksman in the Frenchman’s rigging.
The return voyage was made swiftly and without further incident, but when again on land, Uncle Charles insisted that the mariner accompany them to the nearest pub, where the two men imbibed rum straight.
To what purpose Uncle Charles employed his notes never leaked out. The expedition to the Blue Post Inn added much information to the record. Here, of course, Midshipman Easy spent a night or so before boarding his first ship, but Uncle Charles demanded to know just where the famous midshipman slept, and on being told that this fact was not precisely known, he addressed himself severely to mine host. Having sampled several glasses of old ale–almost the colour of port wine, and hiding a dirty camel’s kick–he was conducted to the old harbour, in the shadow of which the Earl of Buckingham was assassinated. There being no one to answer his questions, he put them to Arthur.
“Why isn’t there a brass plate let into the pavement to mark the exact spot? Merely engraving the particulars high up on the wall of the building, which most probably didn’t exist at the time, is yet another horrible example of the mental slough into which the nation has fallen.”
He was satisfied by the visit to the George Hotel, in which Admiral Nelson slept his last night on shore, for there still stood the four-poster bed in the exact room. Here Uncle Charles spoke in hushed voice to the chambermaid who conducted them upstairs, and reserved his questions until drinking whisky-and-beer in the saloon bar, when he directed them to the bored landlord. What had become of the bedding? Why had not the blankets, at least, been preserved? What had become of the chamber-pots, which, in those days, were universal adjuncts to a
gentleman’s bedroom?
Charles Dickens’s house entranced him for two days, and when the time came to introduce him to the dockyard, Arthur solemnly warned him that if he produced his note-book, he would be run out by one of the enormous dockyard policemen–without his hat.
The lower end of the High Street, Old Portsmouth, was then occupied by the establishments of junk dealers, ship chandlers, marine engineers, fusty gentlemen engaged in an extraordinary variety of commerce, and a range of hostelries which in their heyday had been patronised by seafarers, from admirals to midshipmen. Here and there along the east side of the High Street there were openings in the brick and stone frontages guarded by ancient cannons partially sunk into the ground to prevent the passage of wheel traffic. Some of these ‘holes in the wall’ led to wide courtyards fronted by tall and narrow houses in which the history of twenty decades was written on the very walls. Similar exits from the High Street gave access to the stone walls and wharves of the old harbour, which was busy with small ships when Portsmouth was non-existent and Gosport merely a collection of fishermen’s huts, in the day of King Alfred.
Once he penetrated to these places Uncle Charles required a deal of shifting. It never concerned him of whom he asked his eternal questions–a woman whitening her doorstep, a retired pirate, a sailor off a Spanish onion boat, the captain of a sailing craft that had brought tulip bulbs and roses from Holland.
3
Then there was Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam was a solicitor’s managing clerk. Like Arthur’s mother, he spoke with the soft accent of Birmingham, and if Uncle Charles looked like Mr. Pickwick, Uncle Samuel was the image of Mr. Snodgrass.*
Biographer’s note: Questioned on this likeness of his relatives to Dickens’s characters, Upfield assured me that Dickens’s characters were like them, and that their counterparts could be met with almost any day of the week. He assured me that within forty miles of Gosport, that is, away from the coast, many of the people in the villages spoke what was almost a foreign language, and that to see them going to church and chapel on Sundays was to observe every character ever portrayed by Charles Dickens.
Upfield’s Uncle Sam possessed an extraordinary mind, and why he never entered politics and rose to occupy the Woolsack was matter for speculation. Uncle Sam’s great interest was literature, the ‘literary’ kind. He could read the leading article from The Times, drop the paper, and voice it word-perfect. He could recite without error Shakespeare’s every play. He could quote every proverb from the Bible. And, in conversation, one never could be quite sure of the source of much he habitually inserted as asides.
An author had to be dead at least a hundred years to find favour with Uncle Sam, yet he eagerly requested to be allowed to read the great English novel written by his nephew. On returning it, he wrote: “Continue. Let nothing deter you. Be not sidetracked by the lure of wealth through filthy commerce. Press on and write, write, write. You have a great talent, but, Great God! polish that talent with the abrasive of William Cobbett.”
4
Upfield had never heard of William Cobbett, save that he was a renegade of recent times and therefore unworthy of a place in history. Now approaching his sixteenth birthday, he had no views concerning his future and revealed no decided aptitude for a career. It was now that the aunts stepped in with the ambition of the grandparents that Arthur should become a doctor. A doctor! This goal was referred to the headmaster, who doubtless raised his superior brows and called on his own talents to be diplomatic. Frustrated, clinging to the ambition of the eldest son being one up on trade, the father was induced to article the son to a firm of estate agents, auctioneers and surveyors, for three years–and might just as well have thrown his hundred guineas into the harbour.
Thus did Arthur Upfield enter one of the professions.
The firm’s offices were on the ground floor of an office building where was the editorial office of the local newspaper, and shortly after he became sixteen Upfield wrote a long letter to the editor on the subject of Tariff Reform. That the letter was edited before publication did not lessen the thrill, and Upfield waited for indignant opposition. No irate pro bono publico taking the trouble, Upfield then wrote a strong letter, refuting the claims in his first, in favour of Free Trade. This, after severe editing, was also published.
Only now did Upfield decide what he would like to be–a newspaper reporter. But, said the aunts, there was that fee of a hundred guineas, there was that most respectable business career, a profession. A newspaper reporter! Great Heavens! Mixing with criminals and visiting public-houses and the like! In the career chosen for him he would not have to associate with such low types.
Little did they know, little could they have understood.
Observe the youth! A scrawny figure in his first long-trousered suit. Passably intelligent from the nose up, weak from the nose down. Aged sixteen; a one-hundred-thousand-word novel locked in his desk; not one examination passed; all the world opening like a glorious flower, the history of a great Empire printed on the petals, and the scent carrying the romantic essence of a dozen foreign countries to his questing mind. A youth striving to fly without wings. The first adventure into love in ruins, and the broken melody now the accompaniment to the writing of the second great opus.
His first assignment was the collection of rents, there being many hundreds of properties where rent had to be collected every week. He was inducted into this business by another youth who had served his articles, and the one overriding rule was speed.
It meant knocking on a door, waiting for the tenant to answer, signing the tenant’s rent book, giving change, and noting the entry into the firm’s rent books. After a few weeks the routine was mastered. The town and suburbs were cut into divisions, and you began at one end and carried on through street after street, into alley after alley, until you reached the other end. By then trousers and coat pockets were loaded heavily with coin, from sovereigns to halfpennies, and no filthy paper.