And each Monthly Part embellished with
four illustrations by Seymour.
"The Pickwick Club, so renowned in the annals of Huggin Lane, and so
closely entwined with the thousand interesting associations connected
with Lothbury and Cateaton Street, was founded in the year one
thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, by Samuel Pickwick--the great
traveller--whose fondness for the useful arts prompted his celebrated
journey to Birmingham in the depth of winter; and whose taste for the
beauties of nature even led him to penetrate to the very borders of
Wales in the height of summer.
"This remarkable man would appear to have infused a considerable
portion of his restless and inquiring spirit into the breasts of other
members of the Club, and to have awakened in their minds the same
insatiable thirst for travel which so eminently characterized his own.
The whole surface of Middlesex, a part of Surrey, a portion of Essex,
and several square miles of Kent were in their turns examined and
reported on. In a rapid steamer they smoothly navigated the placid
Thames; and in an open boat they fearlessly crossed the turbid Medway.
High-roads and by-roads, towns and villages, public conveyances and
their passengers, first-rate inns and road-side public houses, races,
fairs, regattas elections, meetings, market days--all the scenes that
can possibly occur to enliven a country place, and at which different
traits of character may be observed and recognized, were alike visited
and beheld by the ardent Pickwick and his enthusiastic followers.
"The Pickwick Travels, the Pickwick Diary, the Pickwick
Correspondence--in short, the whole of the Pickwick Papers'--were
carefully preserved, and duly registered by the secretary, from time
to time, in the voluminous Transactions of the Pickwick Club. These
Transactions have been purchased from the patriotic secretary, at an
immense expense, and placed in the hands of 'Boz,' the author of
"Sketches Illustrative of Every Day Life and Every Day People"--a
gentleman whom the publishers consider highly qualified for the task
of arranging these important documents, and placing them before the
public in an attractive form. He is at present deeply immersed in his
arduous labours, the first fruits of which will appear on the 31st
March.
"Seymour has devoted himself, heart and graver, to the task of
illustrating the beauties of Pickwick. It was reserved to Gibbon to
paint, in colours that will never fade, the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire--to Hume to chronicle the strife and turmoil of the two
proud houses that divided England against herself--to Napier to pen,
in burning words, the History of the War in the Peninsula--the deeds
and actions of the gifted Pickwick yet remain for 'Boz' and Seymour to
hand down to posterity.
"From the present appearance of these important documents and the
probable extent of the selections from them, it is presumed that the
series will be completed in about twenty numbers."
From this it will be seen that it was intended to exhibit all the humours
of the social amusements with which the public regaled itself. Mr.
Pickwick and friends were to be shown on board a steamer; at races,
fairs, regattas, market days, meetings--"at all the scenes that can
possibly occur to enliven a country place, and at which different traits
of character may be observed and recognized." This was a very scientific
and well drawn scheme; and it was, on the whole, most faithfully and even
brilliantly carried out. But with infinite art Boz emancipated himself
from the formal hide-bound trammels of Syntax tours and the like, when it
was reckoned that the hero and his friends would be exhibited like "Bob
Logic" and "Tom and Jerry" in a regular series of public places. "Mr.
Pickwick has an Adventure at Vauxhall," "Mr. Pickwick Goes to Margate,"
etc.: we had a narrow escape, it would seem, of this conventional sort of
thing, and no doubt it was this the publishers looked for. But "Boz"
asserted his supremacy, and made the narrative the chief element.
It was interesting thus to know that Mr. Pickwick had visited the borders
of Wales--I suppose, Chester--but what was his celebrated journey to
Birmingham, prompted by his "fondness for the useful arts"? This could
hardly refer to his visit to Mr. Winkle, sen. The Club, it will be seen,
was founded in 1822, and its place of meeting would appear to have been
this Huggin Lane, City, "so intimately associated with Lothbury and
Cateaton Street." The picture of the meeting of the Club shows us that
it consisted of the ominous number of _thirteen_. There is not room for
more. They seem like a set of well-to-do retired tradesmen; the faces
are such as we should see on the stage in a piece of low comedy: for the
one on the left Mr. Edward Terry might have sat. The secretary sits at
the bottom of the table, with his back to us, and the chairman, with
capacious stomach, at the top. Blotton, whom Mr. Pickwick rather
unhandsomely described as a "vain and disappointed haberdasher," may have
followed this business. He is an ill-looking fellow enough, with black,
bushy whiskers. The Pickwickians are decidedly the most gentlemanly of
the party. But why was it necessary for Mr. Pickwick to stand upon a
chair? This, however, may have been a custom of the day at free and easy
meetings.
"Posthumous _papers_"--moreover, did not correctly describe the character
of the Book, for the narrative did not profess to be founded on documents
at all. He was, however, committed to this title by his early
announcement, and indeed intended to carry out a device of using
Snodgrass's "Note Books," whose duty it was during the course of the
adventures to take down diligently all that he observed. But this
cumbrous fiction was discarded after a couple of numbers. "Posthumous
papers" had been used some ten years before, in another work.
Almost every page--save perhaps a dismal story or two--in the 609 pages
of Pickwick is good; but there are two or three passages which are
obscure, if not forced in humour. Witness Mr. Bantam's recognition of
Mr. Pickwick, as the gentleman residing on Clapham Green--not yet
Common--"who lost the use of his limbs from imprudently taking cold after
port wine, who could not be moved in consequence of acute suffering, and
who had the water from the King's Bath bottled at 103 degrees, and _sent
by waggon to his bedroom in Town_; when he bathed, sneezed, and same day
recovered." This is grotesque enough and farcical, but without much
meaning. On another occasion we are told that Tupman was casting certain
"_Anti_-Pickwickian glances" at the servant maids, which is unmeaning. No
doubt, _Un_-Pickwickian was intended.
Why is there no "Pickwick Club" in London? It might be worth trying, and
would be more successful than even the Johnson Club. There is surely
genuine "stuff" to work on. Our friends in America, who are Pickwickian
_quand meme_, have established the "All-Around Dickens Club." The
members seem to be ladies, though there are a number of honorary members
of the other sex, which include members of "Boz's" own family, with Mr.
Kitton, Mr. W. Hughes, Mr. Charles Kent, myself, and some more. The
device of the club is "Boz's" own book-plate, and the "flower" of the
club is his favourite geranium. The President is Mrs. Adelaide Garland;
and some very interesting papers, to judge from their titles, have been
read, such as "Bath and its Associations with Landor," "The City of
Bristol with its Literary Associations," "The Excursion to the Tea
Gardens of Hampstead," prefaced by a description of the historic old inn,
"Poem by Charles Kent," "Dickens at Gad's Hill," "A Description of
Birmingham, its Institutions, and Dickens' Interest therein"; with a
"Reading of Mr. Pickwick's Mission to Birmingham, Coventry and the
adjacent Warwickshire Country," etc. There is also a very clever series
of examination questions by the President in imitation of Calverley's.
"Had Mr. Pickwick loved?" Mr. Lang asks; "it is natural to believe that
he had never proposed, never. His heart, however bruised, was neither
broken nor embittered." His temperament was certainly affectionate--if
not absolutely amatory: he certainly never missed an opportunity where a
kiss was practicable.
But stay! has anyone noted that on the wall of his room at Dulwich, there
hangs the portrait of a lady--just over this might seem to mean
something. But on looking close, we see it is the dear filial old
fellow's mother. A striking likeness, and she has spectacles like her
celebrated son.
As all papers connected with the Pickwick era are scarce and meagre--for
the reason that no one was then thinking of "Boz"; any that have come
down to us are specially interesting. Here are a few "pieces," which
will be welcomed by all Pickwickians. The first is a letter of our
author to his publishers.
"Furnival's Inn,
"Friday Morning.
"DEAR SIR,--I am very glad to find I shall have the pleasure of
celebrating Mr. Pickwick's success with you on Sunday. When you have
sufficiently recovered from the fatigues of publication, will you just
let me know from your books how we stand. Drawing 10 pounds one day,
and 20 pounds another, and so forth, I have become rather mystified,
and jumbled up our accounts in my brain, in a very incomprehensible
state.
"Faithfully yours,
"CHARLES DICKENS."
This must have been written at the conclusion of the story in 1837, and
is in a very modest tone considering how triumphant had been the success.
Connected with this is a paper of yet more interest, a receipt for
payment for one of the early numbers.
{Manuscript of a letter by Dickens: p88.jpg}
For this Pickwickian Banquet, he had reluctantly to give up one at the
home of his new friend Forster. In an unpublished letter, he writes to
him as "Dear Sir"--the beginning of a four-and-thirty years'
friendship--"I have been so much engaged in the pleasing occupation of
moving." He was unable to go to his new friend to dinner because he had
been "long engaged to the Pickwick publishers to a dinner in honour of
that hero, which comes off to-morrow."
In an interesting letter of Dickens'--Pickwickian ones are rare--sold at
Hodgson's rooms, July, 1895, he writes: "Mr. Seymour shot himself before
the second number of the Pickwick papers, not the third as you would have
it, was published. While he lay dead, it was necessary the search should
be made in his working room for the plates to the second number, the day
for publication of which was drawing near. The plates were found
unfinished, with their faces turned to the wall." This scrap brought 12
pounds 10s. Apropos of prices, who that was present will forget the
scene at Christie's when the six "Pickwick Ladles" were sold? These were
quaint things, like enlarged Apostle Spoons, and the figures well
modelled. They had been made specially, and presented to "Boz" on the
conclusion of his story, by his publishers. The Pickwick Ladle brought
69 pounds. Jingle, 30 pounds. Winkle, 23 pounds. Sam, 64 pounds. Old
Weller, 51 pounds; and the Fat Boy, 35 pounds 14s., or over 280 pounds in
all. Nay, the leather case was put up, and brought three guineas. We
recall Andrew Halliday displaying one to us, with a sort of triumph.
Charles Dickens, the younger, got two, I think; Messrs. Agnew the others.