Here is a very pleasing and natural group of persons, in whom it is impossible not to take a deep interest. They are like some amiable family that we have known. Old Wardle, as he is called, though he was under fifty, was a widower, and had remained so, quite content with his daughters’ attachment. He had his worthy old mother to live with him, to whom he was most dutiful, tolerant, and affectionate. These two points recommend him. There was no better son than Boz himself, so he could appreciate these things. The sketch is interesting as a picture of the patriarchal system that obtained in the country districts, all the family forming one household, as in France. For here we have Wardle, his mother, and his sister, together with his two pleasing daughters, while, later on, his sons-in-law established themselves close by. The “poor relations” seem to have been always there. It is astonishing how Boz, in his short career, could have observed and noticed these things. Wardle’s fondness for his daughters is really charming, and displayed without affectation. He connected them with the image of his lost wife. There is no more natural, truly affecting passage than his display of fretfulness when he got some inkling that his second daughter was about to make a rather improvident marriage with young Snodgrass. The first had followed her inclinations in wedding Trundle—a not very good match—but he did not lose her as the pair lived beside him. He thought Emily, however, a pretty girl who ought to do better, and he had his eye on “a young gentleman in the neighbourhood”—and for some four or five months past he had been pressing her to receive his addresses favourably. This was clearly a good match. Not that he would unduly press her, but “if she could, for I would never force a young girl’s inclinations.” He never thought, he says, that the Snodgrass business was serious. But, how natural that, when Arabella, their friend, had become a regular heroine and had gone off with her Winkle, that this should fill Emily’s head with similar thoughts, and set the pair on thinking that they were persecuted, &c. What a natural scene is this between father and daughter.

“My daughter Bella, Emily having gone to bed with a headache after she had read Arabella’s letter to me, sat herself down by my side the other evening, and began to talk over this marriage affair. “Well, pa,” she says; “what do you think of it?” “Why, my dear,” I said; “I suppose it’s all very well; I hope it’s for the best.” I answered in this way because I was sitting before the fire at the time, drinking my grog rather thoughtfully, and I knew my throwing in an undecided word now and then would induce her to continue talking. Both my girls are pictures of their dear mother, and as I grow old I like to sit with only them by me; for their voices and looks carry me back to the happiest period of my life, and make me, for the moment, as young as I used to be then, though not quite so light-hearted. “It’s quite a marriage of affection, pa,” said Bella, after a short silence. “Yes, my dear,” said I; “but such marriages do not always turn out the happiest.” “I am sorry to hear you express your opinion against marriages of affection, pa,” said Bella, colouring a little. “I was wrong; I ought not to have said so, my dear, either,” said I patting her cheek as kindly as a rough old fellow like me could do it, “for your mother’s was one and so was yours.” “It’s not that, I meant, pa,” said Bella. “The fact is, pa, I wanted to speak to you about Emily.” The long and the short of it is, then, that Bella at last mustered up courage to tell me that Emily was unhappy; that she and your young friend Snodgrass had been in constant correspondence and communication ever since last Christmas; that she had very dutifully made up her mind to run away with him, in laudable imitation of her old friend and schoolfellow.

Another member of this pleasant household was “The Fat Boy.” There is nothing humorous or farcical in the mere physical exhibition of a fat person, qu his fat. It was, indeed, the fashion of the day—and on the stage particularly—to assume that fatness was associated with something comic. There are a number of stout persons in Pickwick—the hero himself, Tupman, old Weller, and all the coachmen, the turnkeys, Slammer, Wardle, Fat Boy, Nupkin’s cook, Grummer, Buzfuz, Mrs. Weller, Mr. Bagman’s uncle, and others. Thackeray attempted to work with this element in the case of Jos Sedley, and his fatness had a very close connection with his character. But, in the case of Boz, his aim was much more intellectual and, as it were, refined. For his object was to show what was a fat person’s view of this world, as seen through the medium of Fat. The Fat Boy is not a selfish, sensual being by nature—he is really helpless, and the creature of necessity who is forced by his bulk to take a certain fat view of everything round him.” If we reflect on it we shall see how clearly this is carried out. It is curious that, in the instance of the Fat Boy, Boz should have repeated or duplicated a situation, and yet contrived to impart such varied treatment, but I suspect no one has ever noticed the point. Joe, it will be remembered, witnessed the proceedings in the arbour, when Mr. Tupman declared his passion for the spinster aunt, and the subsequent embracing—to the great embarrassment of the pair. At the close of the story he also intruded on another happy pair—Mr. Snodgrass and his inamorata—at a similar delicate moment. Yet in the treatment, how different—“I wants to make yer flesh creep!”—his taking the old lady into confidence; and then he was pronounced by his master, Wardle, to be under some delusion—“let me at him”—&c., so his story and report led him into a scrape. When he intruded on the pair at Osborne’s Hotel, and Snodgrass was, later, shut up there, again he was made the scapegoat, and Wardle insisted that he was drunk, &c. So here were the incidents repeating themselves.

II.—Shooting, Riding, Driving, etc.

Boz declared in one of his Prefaces that he was so ignorant of country sports, that he could not attempt to deal with them in a story. Notwithstanding this protest, he has given us a couple of shooting scenes which show much experience of that form of field sports. There is a tone of sympathy and freshness, a keen enjoyment of going forth in the morning, which proves that he himself had taken part in such things. Rook-shooting was then an enjoyable sport, and Boz was probably thinking of the rooks at Cobham, where he had no doubt hovered round the party when a lad. As we know, Mr. Tupman, who was a mere looker-on, was “peppered” by his friend Winkle, a difficult thing to understand, as Winkle must have been firing high into the trees, and if he hit his friend at all, would have done so with much more severity. The persons who were in serious danger from Mr. Winkle’s gun were the boys in the trees, and we may wonder that one, at least, was not shot dead. But the whole is so pleasantly described as to give one a perfect envie to go out and shoot rooks. There are some delightful touches, such as Mr. Pickwick’s alarm about the climbing boys, “for he was not quite certain that the distress in the agricultural interest, might not have compelled the small boys attached to the soil to earn a precarious and hazardous existence by making marks of themselves for inexperienced sportsmen.” And again, “the boy shouted and shook a branch with a nest on it. Half-a-dozen young rooks in violent conversation flew out to ask what the matter was.” Does not this bring the whole scene before us.

The other shooting scene is near Bury St. Edmunds—on Sir Geoffrey Manning’s grounds—on September 1st, 1830, or 1827, whichever Boz pleases, when “many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble with all his finical coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little, round eye with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and, a few hours later, were laid low upon the earth.” Here we have the beginning of that delightful fashion of Dickens’s, which he later carried to such perfection, of associating human feelings and associations with the animal creation, and also inanimate objects.

Everything connected with “the shooting” is admirably touched: The old, experienced “shot,” Wardle; the keepers and their boys; the dogs; the sham amateurs; the carrying of the guns “reversed arms, like privates at a funeral.” Mr. Winkle “flashed and blazed and smoked away without producing any material results; at one time expending his charge in mid-air, and at others sending it skimming along so near the surface of the ground as to place the lives of the two dogs on a rather uncertain and precarious tenure. ‘What’s the matter with the dogs’ legs? How queer they’re standing!’ whispered Mr. Winkle. ‘Hush, can’t you! Don’t you see they are making a point?’ said Wardle. ‘Making a point?’ said Mr. Winkle, glaring about him, as if he expected to discern some particular beauty in the landscape which the sagacious animals were calling special attention to. ‘What are they pointing at?’ ‘Keep your eyes open,’ said Wardle, not heeding the question in the excitement of the moment. ‘Now then.’” How natural and humorous is all this.

This was partridge shooting, “old style”—delightful and inspiriting, as all have felt who have shared in it. Now we have “drives” on a vast scale; then you would follow the birds from field to field “marking them down.” I myself with an urchin, a dog, and a single-barrelled old gun have thus followed a few precious birds from field to field all the day and secured them at the last. That was true enjoyment.

III.—Horses and Driving in “Pickwick.”

For one who so modestly disclaimed all knowledge of sporting and country tastes, Boz shows a very familiar acquaintance with horses and their ways. He has introduced a number of these animals whose points are all distinctly emphasized: a number of persons are shown to be interested in horses, who exhibit their knowledge of and sympathise with the animals, a knowledge and sympathy which is but a reflection of his own. The cunning hand that could so discriminate between shades of humorous characters would not be at a loss to analyse traits of equine nature. There is the cab horse, said to be forty years old and kept in the shafts for two or three weeks at a time, which is depicted in Seymour’s plate. How excellently drawn are the two Rochester steeds: one “an immense brown horse, displaying great symmetry of bone,” which was to be driven by Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Winkle’s riding animal, another immense horse “apparently a near relative of the animal in the chaise.” “He don’t shy, does he?” The ostler guaranteed him quiet—“a hinfant in arms might drive him”—“He wouldn’t shy if he met a whole waggon-load of monkeys with their tails burnt off.” A far more original illustration than anything used by the Wellers, whose special form that was. I pass over the details of the driving and the riding which show a perfect knowledge of animals, such as “the tall quadruped.” Nothing is more droll than the description of the loathing with which the party came to regard the animal they were compelled to lead about all day. Then we have the post horses and all connected with them. There is Tom Smart’s “vixenish mare,” quite an intelligent character in her way. The account of the coach drive down to Muggleton shows admirable observation of the ways of the drivers.

Ben Allen’s aunt had her private fly, painted a sad green colour drawn by a “chubby sort of brown horse.” I pass over the ghostly mailcoach horses that flew through the night in “The Story of the Bagman’s Uncle,” flowing-maned, black horses. There are many post horses figuring in Mr. Pickwick’s journey from Bristol to Birmingham and thence home; horses in the rain and out of it.

Namby’s horse was “a bay, a well-looking animal enough, but with something of a flash and dog-fighting air about him.” The horses which took the hackney coach to the Fleet jolted along as hackney coaches usually do. “The horses ‘went better,’ the driver said, ‘when they had anything before them.’ They must have gone at a most extraordinary pace when there was nothing.” Visiting the Fleet with Mrs. Weller and the deputy Shepherd, Mr. Weller drove up from Dorking with the old piebald in his chaise cart, which, after long delay, was brought out for the return journey. “If he stands at livery much longer he’ll stand at nothin’ as we go back.” There is a capital scene at the opening of Chapter XLVI., when the “cabrioilet” was drawing up at Mrs. Bardell’s, and where so much that is dramatic is “got out” of such a simple incident between the contending directions.

IV.—Mr. Pickwick in Silk Stockings.

How well Boz knew how to touch the chords of human character—a power that certainly needs long experience to work—is shown by the scene at Wardle’s dance, where Mr. Pickwick is nettled by Tupman’s remarking that he was wearing “pumps” for the first time. “You in silk stockings,” said that gentleman. Mr. Pickwick had just called attention to the change which he considered a sort of public event to be admired by all. “See this great man condescending to our frivolous tastes,” and his host had noted it in a flattering way. “You mean to dance?” But Tupman did not look at it in this respectful way—he made a joke of it! “You in silk stockings.” This was insolent to the grave, great man and philosopher, so he turned sharply on his familiar: “And why not, sir—why not?” This with warmth. The foolish Tupman, still inclined to be jocose, said, “Oh, of course, there is no reason why you shouldn’t wear them”—a most awkward speech—as who should say, “This is a free country—a man can wear a night cap in public if he chooses.” “I imagine not, sir—I imagine not,” said Mr. Pickwick, in a very peremptory tone. Mr. Tupman had contemplated a laugh, but he found it was a serious matter, so he looked grave, and said they were a pretty pattern. How natural is all this! And still more so his leader’s reply. “I hope they are,” he said, fixing his eyes upon his friend, “You see nothing extraordinary in the stockings, as stockings, I trust, sir.” The frightened Tupman said, “Certainly not, Oh, certainly not,” and walked away. Mr. Pickwick’s face resumed its customary benign expression. This little picture of weakness in an eminent man is characteristic. For observe, when Tupman showed the folly of wearing a “two inch tail” to the brigand’s coat, Mr. Pickwick was furious, told him he was too old and too fat; but when someone remarks on his silk stockings he gets deeply offended. His vanity is touched, there should have been no remark, or, at least, only of admiration. He was, in fact, one of those flattered and spoiled personages who cannot see any harm in their doing what they reprove in others. Many a really great character is weak in this direction. Observe the disingenuousness of the great man; he knew, perfectly, that Tupman noticed nothing odd in the stockings, “as stockings,” he meant the oddity of his wearing them at all, and he had said so, plainly. But, ignoring this, the great man chose to assume that he was insolently reflecting on their pattern as outlandish. With his despotic pressure, he forced him to say they were of a “pretty pattern,” and thus vindicated his authority.

V.—Violent Assaults, Shooting, &c

Duelling, imprisonment for debt, intoxication, elopements, are, perhaps, the most striking social incidents in “Pickwick” that have disappeared and become all but antiquarian in their character. Yet another, almost as curious, was the ready recourse to physical force or violence—fistic correction as it might be termed. A gentleman of quiet, restrained habit, like Mr. Pickwick, was prepared, in case of call, either to threaten or execute summary chastisement on anyone who offended him. The police or magistrates seemed not to have been thought of, for the victim would not think of appealing to either—all which seems strange to us nowadays. At the Review even, the soldiers coolly overthrew Mr. Pickwick and his friends who had got in their way. Winkle was maltreated so severely that the blood streamed from his nose; this would not now be tolerated. When Jingle affronted the great man by calling his friend “Tuppy,” Mr. Pickwick, we are told, “hurled the inkstand madly forward and followed it up himself.” This hurling of things at offenders was a common incident, particularly in quarrels at table, when the decanter was frequently so used, or a glass of wine thrown in the face. After the adventure at the Boarding School, Mr. Pickwick “indented his pillow with a tremendous blow,” and announced that, if he met Jingle again, he would “inflict personal chastisement on him”; while Sam declared that he would bring “real water” into Job’s eyes. Old Lobbs, in the story, was going to throttle Pipkin. Mrs. Potts insisted that the editor of The Independent should be horsewhipped. More extraordinary still, old Weller, at a quiet tea-meeting, assaulted the Shepherd, giving him “two or three for himself, and two or three more to hand over to the man with the red nose.” Everyone set themselves right in this way and, it is clear, knew how to use their “bunch of fives.” Nor were there any summonses or police courts afterwards; the incident was closed. Sam, attempting to rescue his master at Ipswich, knocked down the “specials” right and left, knocking down some for others to lie upon, yet he was only fined two pounds for the first assault and three for the second—now he would have been sent to jail under a severe sentence. Mrs. Raddle insisted that her husband should get up and knock every one of the guests down stairs, while Jack Hopkins offered to go upstairs and “pitch into the landlord.” At the Brick Lane meeting, Brother Stiggins, intoxicated, knocked Brother Tadger down the stairs, while old Weller violently assaulted Stiggins. At Bath, Dowler hunted Winkle round the Crescent, threatening to cut his throat; and at Bristol, when the terrified Winkle tried to ring the bell, Dowler fancied that he was going to strike him. At Bristol, Ben Allen flourished the poker, threatening his sister’s rival, and when Mr. Pickwick sent Sam to capture Winkle, he instructed him to knock him down even, if he resisted; this direction was given with all seriousness. “If he attempts to run away from you, knock him down, or lock him up, you have my full authority, Sam.” The despotism of this amiable man was truly extraordinary, he ruled his “followers” with a rod of iron. That such should be exercised, or accepted even by the reader, is a note of the time. It was, however, only a logical consequence of the other summary methods.

The altercation between Mr. Pickwick and his other “follower,” Tupman, arising out of the “two-inch tail” question, was on the same lines. For the affront of being called fat and old the latter scientifically turned up his cuffs and announced that he would inflict summary chastisement on his leader. Mr. Pickwick met him with a cordial “come on,” throwing himself into a pugilistic attitude, supposed by the two bystanders to have been intended as a posture of defence. This seems to have been accepted as a natural incident, though it was deprecated. In the Fleet Prison, when Mr. Pickwick’s nightcap was snatched off, he retorted with a smart blow, and again invited everyone, “all of you,” to “come on.” When the coachmen attended Sam to the Fleet, walking eight abreast, they had to leave behind one of the party “to fight a ticket porter, it being arranged that his friends should call for him as they came back.” Even in a moment of agitation—as when Ben Allen learned that his sister had “bolted,” his impulse was to rush at Martin the groom and throttle him; the latter, in return, “felling the medical student to the ground.” Then we have the extraordinary and realistic combat between Pott and Slurk in the kitchen of the “Saracen’s Head,” Towcester—the one armed with a shovel, the other with a carpet bag—and old Weller’s chastisement of Stiggins. In short, this system of chastisement on the spot, it is clear, was a necessary equipment, and everybody, high and low, was understood to be ready to secure satisfaction for himself by the aid of violence. No doubt this was a consequence of the duel which was, of course, to be had recourse to only as the last resort.

When the wretched Jingle, and the still more wretched Job met Mr. Pickwick in the Fleet, and the latter, giving money, had said, “Take that, sir,” the author adds, “Take what? . . . As the world runs, it ought to have been a sound, hearty cuff, for Mr. Pickwick had been duped, deceived, &c.” Thus, Boz thought, as of course, that this was the suitable method of treatment in such cases. “Must we tell the truth?” he goes on; “it was a piece of money.” The unconsciousness of all this is very striking.

VI.—Winkle and Snodgrass

It has always seemed a matter of astonishment to me how such a creature as Winkle should have won the fair Arabella. Every act of this man was a deception—he could not help pretence, or, shall we say it boldly, lying. His duel was a series of tricks—his shooting, skating, etc., all a sham. Even when found out as an impostor before all the keepers and others, we find him impudently saying, “I’ll tell you what I shall do to get up my shooting again.” The fellow never had any shooting to get up. But the mere habit of untruth was ingrained in the man. His undignified race, in a dressing-gown, round the Crescent was no doubt concealed from Arabella—she would never have got over that! As a display of cowardice it was only matched by his hypocritical assumption of courage before Dowler when he found he could assume it safely. He deceived his father and Mr. Pickwick as to his marriage, and dropped on his knees to the latter to beg pardon. How mean, too, was his behaviour to Mrs. Pott in the difficulty with her husband. But nothing could shake the interest of the fair Arabella in her lover, even his ignominious and public treatment by Mr. Pickwick at the skating exhibition. How can we account for it. But Boz knew the female nature well, and here is the explanation: Winkle had been “out”—had figured in a duel with a real officer in the army. There was no mistake about that—gone out, too, in what appeared a chivalrous manner to save the honour of the club. At least it had the appearance of all that (though here was another falsehood). This had been told to all—no doubt by Winkle himself—many times over. Nothing could enfeeble that, it seemed heroic, and covered all other laches. Neither did it lose in his telling of it.

The most ridiculous feature surely in the man was his costume—meant to be of a sporting complexion—which he never abandoned: green shooting coat, plaid neckchief, and closely fitting drabs. When he returned from his honeymoon, he was still in this uniform.

We may assume, however, that this points to a custom of the time: that the sportsman was always a sportsman. Even at the club meeting, at a poorish room in a tavern, he must carry on the fiction that he has just come back from a day’s sporting, for there on the floor, conspicuous, are the fowling piece, game bag, fishing rod, &c.

Snodgrass was another incapable and quite uninteresting—a person whom we would not care to know. He posed as a poet and, to this end, wore, even at the club, “a mysterious blue cloak, with a canine skin collar”; imagine this of a warm evening—May 12—in a stuffy room in Huggin Lane! He must, however, live up to his character, at all hazards.

Snodgrass and his verses, and his perpetual “note book,” must have made him a bore of the first water. How could the charming Emily have selected him. He, too, had some of Winkle’s craft. He had been entertained cordially and hospitably by old Wardle, and repaid him by stealing his daughter’s affections in a very underhand way, actually plotting to run away with her.

There was something rather ignominious in his detection at Osborne’s Hotel. He is a very colourless being. As to his being a Poet, it would seem to be that he merely gave himself out for one and persuaded his friends that he was such. His remarks at the “Peacock” are truly sapient: “Show me the man that says anything against women, as women, and I boldly declare he is not a man!” Which is matched by Mr. Winkle’s answer to the charge of his being “a serpent”: “Prove it,” said Mr. Winkle, warmly. It is to be suspected that the marriage with the amiable Emily was not a success. The author throws out a hint to that effect: “Mr Snodgrass, being occasionally abstracted and melancholy, is to this day reputed a great poet among his acquaintance, though we do not find he has ever written anything to encourage the belief.” In other words he was carrying on the old Pickwick game of “Humbug.” So great an intellect had quite thrown itself away on poor Emily—even his abstraction and melancholy. How natural too that he should “hang on” to his father-in-law “and establish himself close to Dingly Dell”—to “sponge,” probably—while he made a sham of farming; for are we not told that he purchased and cultivated a small farm—“more for occupation than profit”—thus again making believe. Poor Emily!

I lately looked through the swollen pages of the monster London Directory to find how many of the Pickwickian names were in common use. There was not a single Snodgrass, though there was one Winkel, and one “Winkle and Co.” in St. Mary Axe. There was one Tupman, a Court dressmaker—no Nupkins, but some twenty Magnuses, and not a single Pickwick. There were, however, some twenty-four Wellers.