The Pickwick Papers became Dickens’s first novel, despite not beginning it’s life as one. It’s his cheeriest, cosiest and happiest books and it also owes a big debt to the eighteenth century novelists before him.
The original idea was that a man called Robert Seymour would create pictures of funny sporting mishaps surrounding a group of dim-witted Londoners who formed a club dedicated to country pursuits. In order for the punter to get their money’s worth, some young writer would cobble together a loose story from the pictures to bulk out the publication. However, that young writer was Boz, aka Charles Dickens, and he had other ideas. He decreed that the pictures should be driven by the writing and that the club should have a wider remit to allow for a greater variety of comic set-pieces. Robert Seymour presumably didn’t take it well, he killed himself (though he’d tried before).
Starting as it did, Pickwick Papers is naturally episodic but develops its themes and plot as it goes on. As such, it immediately has a more eighteenth century feeling, echoing Dickens’s own facourite authors like Smollett and Fielding. There’s also something Mr Spectator about Mr Pickwick and his Pickwickians, one of those loosely defined clubs, though nominally a scientific one. Mr Pickwick having published a very influential article on ‘tittlebats’ in the ponds of Hampstead Heath. It turns out tittlebats are sticklebats. There’s something a little Scribleran about the odd jabs at scientific societies.
Samuel Pickwick, Tracy Tupman, Alexander Snodgrass and Nathaniel Winkle are elected as roving reporters, set to go out and explore the places they can get to through the coaching network, falling into various scrapes. In many ways, this book is a celebration of the coach/post system, with many of the events happening in ludicrously well-appointed inns and the characters able to nip across the country in mere days. The downsides of such travel are also featured, and I can’t say I’d have much liked having an outside ticket for several hours in the rain - though Bob Sawyer showed it could be fun if you had the right kind of booze.
As the book continues, the themes of innocence and experience, honest dealing and trickery begin to emerge. Mr Pickwick himself becomes a more rounded character, a mad approaching old age with a youthful energy and enthusiasm, who’ll get in all sorts of scrapes to support the course of true love and will face all sorts of privations to obstinately make a point. At one point he tries to ‘call up a sneer for the first time in his life’ and fails.. I like a character that can fail to sneer. His childishness does include a big dose of naivety, and that is set-off by Samuel Weller.
Weller was a later addition to the cast of characters which coincided with The Pickwick Papers really taking off. He’s a cockney bootblack with a ‘comical’ accent, a big heart and a greater dose of street smarts than Pickwick. I was prepared to find him rather annoying but I warmed. There’s a self confidence in him that creates very funny situations when everyone else is losing their cool. I especially liked his relationship with his own father, Tony.
Tony is a coachman and my favourite character in the book. He has a skin the colour of ‘underdone roast beef’, and a dreaded fear of widows, after being ensnared by one. He did his best for his little boy Sam, turfing him out on the street to gain smarts and his mortified when Sam has been outwitted. The two have a casual, matey relationship that grows deeper as the book progresses. When Pickwick has a spot of bother in a prison, Tony suggests smuggling him up in a piano. Later, when Sam wants to be imprisoned to join Pickwick, he ‘borrows’ money from Tony and Tony ‘presses’ the charges. The scene where they all stride happily arm in arm into the Fleet brought a huge smile to my face.
There are many other memorable characters (it’s Dickens after all). These include the villainous Jingle and his servant Job Trotter. Jingle is another character with a particular way of speaking, it’s very truncated, described as ‘telegrammatic’ which works really well when he’s a conman with quick patter (his description of the woman accidentally knocking her head off had me laughing out loud), but less when he is trying on other masks. Job Trotter is defined by his supernatural ability to cry and his silent laugh, described as if he loves his joke to much to share any of it.
There’s a subplot about Shepherd Stiggens, an evangelist, temperance vicar with a fondness for pineapple rum. He lurks around Tony Weller’s wife and drives him into rages he does a terrible job to suppress. I loved the meeting of ‘The Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association’ - a very well observed name. There’s the odious lawyer, Fogg who is an “elderly, pimple-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man”. There’s the violent Wardle, the grasping Widow, the silly Bob Sawyer… oddly the characters with the least life are Pickwick’s compatriots, Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass.
I recently purchased a Toby Jug collection. It’s a small one. It consists of literary figures called Samuel. There are three Samuels and two jugs. The first is a Samuel Johnson jug, the second is one featuring Samuels Pickwick and Weller. It might not be a coincidence that Pickwick shares the same name as Johnson - as there is something Sam and Bozzy about Weller and Pickwick’s relationship (as well as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza). The quick temper and sense of righteousness also ties Pickwick and Johnson together, though I don’t see Johnson as a naive person. It’s also interesting that the closest out of the original group of Pickwickians is Nathaniel WInkle, who shares a name with Johnson’s little brother.
Pickwick Papers is a book with a wonky timeline that features a number of seasons. The spirit of the book is largely sunny and joyful (even despite surprisingly large number of references to suicide) but there is a famous set of events that have Christmas at Dingley Dell. It’s almost like a dry-run for parts of A Christmas Carol, with feasting, festivity and Christian charity. There’s also a story told about a man who learns the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas with the aid of goblins presenting him with visions of the world. I write this as Christmas songs are playing, in a room festooned with decorations and my Mum cross-stitching on the other side of the table. Christmas is coming, and if you are reading this, it’s here and been,
A merry Christmas to everyone and a happy new year.
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