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PICKWICK PAPERS. “The PosthumousPapers of the Pickwick Club,” issued in 20monthly numbers, began to appear the last ofMarch 1836, and were concluded in November1837. They were the work of a young manbut 25 years old, who had hitherto written nothingmore than a group of sketches dealingmainly with London life. A firm of Londonpublishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, wasthen projecting a series of “cockney sportingplates” by Robert Seymour, a rather cleverartist. There was to be a club, the members ofwhich were to be sent on hunting and fishingexpeditions into the country. Their guns wereto go off by accident; fishhooks were to getcaught in their hats and trousers; and all theseand other misadventures were to be depictedin Seymour's comic plates. At this juncture,Charles Dickens was called in to supply theletterpress — that is, the description necessaryto explain the plates and connect them intoa sort of picture novel such as was then thefashion. Though protesting that he knew nothingof sport, Dickens nevertheless accepted thecommission; he consented to the machinery ofa club, and in accordance with the originaldesign sketched Mr. Winkle who aims at asparrow only to miss it. Seymour dying, otherartists took his place; but from the very firstDickens was the master. Only in a fewinstances did he adjust his narrative to platesthat had been prepared for him. He himselfled the way with an instalment of his story,and the artist was compelled to illustrate whatDickens had already written. The story thusbecame the prime source of interest, and theillustrations merely of secondary importance.By this reversal of interest, Dickenstransformed, at a stroke, a current type of fiction,consisting mostly of pictures, into a novel ofcontemporary London life. Simple as the processmay appear, others who had tried the planhad all failed. Pierce Egan partially succeededin his ‘Tom and Jerry,’ a novel in which thepictures and the letterpress are held in evenbalance. Dickens, his genius working silentlyand perhaps unconsciously, won a completetriumph.
To begin with, Dickens had no other aimthan to amuse the public month by month.There was in his mind no thought of a novelwith a plot to be worked out to a logicalconclusion. The first number, of which only400 copies were bound, awakened onlymoderate interest. But all was changed withthe introduction of Sam Weller in the fifthnumber; and by the time the fifteenth numberwas reached, the printer was binding40,000 copies. People of every class andevery age bought or borrowedPickwick. “Allthe boys and girls,” Miss Mitford wrote ofDickens, “talk his fun — the boys in the streets;and yet those who are of the highest taste likeit the most.” Doctors read the book while ridingfrom patient to patient, and judges read itwhile juries were deliberating. The fact is,‘Pickwick’ was the most amusing burlesqueof London life that had ever been written, andit has not since been equalled. Its author wasintimately acquainted with all the scenes andpersons that he described. He began with theHouse of Commons, which he turned into thePickwick Club, with pompous speeches, noisydebates and apologies from gentlemen whowished their abusive remarks to be understoodonly in “a Pickwickian sense,” that is, in aParliamentary sense. Then he passed on tothe law and the courts — pettifoggers who takeup civil suits “on spec,” to the examination ofwitnesses, to the judge's charge to the juryand finally to the debtors' prison. All the wayalong, he drew in careless abandon characterafter character, running back and forth betweenthe gay and the serious. ‘Pickwick’ containsmore than 150 characters, of whom two standout conspicuously among Dickens's greatestcreations. First there is Pickwick himself, ahumorous compound of benevolence andsimplicity, shrewdness and common sense, alwaysa gentleman, despite his oddities and follies,with a dash of heroism in the background. Andless fantastic, there is Sam Weller — theembodiment of all that is delightful in the Londoncockney. From the moment he enters the noveluntil the end, his gaiety pervades the whole upto the climax when he takes the stand for hismaster in the famous case of Bardell vs.Pickwick, and turns the laughter upon the defendant'scounsel. Oddly enough, here is a novelwhich did not set out to be a novel is Dickens'ssupreme achievement in humor.
