There is a curious burst of Mr. Pickwick’s which seems to hint at a sort of tender appreciation on his side. When the notice of trial was sent to him, in his first vehemence, he broke out that Mrs. Bardell had nothing
to do with the business, “She hadn’t the heart to do it.” Mr. Pickwick could not speak with this certainty, unless he knew the lady’s feelings pretty well. Why hadn’t she the heart to do it? Because she was sincerely attached to him and his interests and was “a dear creature.” This, however, was a fond delusion of the worthy gentleman’s. Persons of her class are not quite so disinterested as they appear to be, especially if they have to interpret the various paternal and comforting advances made to them by their well to do lodgers.
There is another factor which can hardly be left out, when considering Mr. Pickwick’s responsibility—that is, his too frequent indulgence in liquor, and the insufficiency of his head to stand its influence. Now this was a very important day for him, the first time he was to set up a man servant. He had to break it to his landlady, who would naturally resent the change. He may have been priming himself with some of those perpetual glasses of brandy and water to which he was addicted, and who knows but that, in his ardour to propitiate, he may have gone a little too far? This fact too, of the introducing a man servant into her establishment, Mrs. Bardell may have indistinctly associated with a general change in his life. If she were to become Mrs. Pickwick her duties might be naturally expected to devolve on a male assistant.
Next morning he and his friends quitted London on their travels to Eatanswill in pursuit of adventure. He airily dismissed the matter. We may wonder whether he made any remonstrance to his landlady before his departure. Probably he did not, fancying that she had been merely in a slight fit of the “tantrums.”
At Bury, however, after the boarding-school adventure, he was to be painfully awakened. He was sitting with his friends after dinner at the “Angel,” in his happiest mood. Winkle had related his quarrel with
Pott in re Mrs. Pott, in a humorous fashion when one of the most delightful of humorous scenes followed.
Mr. Pickwick was proceeding with his scathing rebuke, when Sam enters with a letter.
‘I don’t know this hand,’ said Mr. Pickwick, opening the letter. ‘Mercy on us! what’s this? It must be a jest; it—it—can’t be true.’
‘What’s the matter?’ was the general inquiry.
‘Nobody dead, is there?’ said Wardle, alarmed at the horror in Mr. Pickwick’s countenance.
Mr. Pickwick made no reply, but, pushing the letter across the table, and desiring Mr. Tupman to read it aloud, fell back in his chair with a look of vacant astonishment quite alarming to behold.
Mr. Tupman, with a trembling voice, read the letter, of which the following is a copy:—
‘Freeman’s Court, Cornhill, August 28th, 1827.
Bardell against Pickwick.Sir,
Having been instructed by Mrs. Martha Bardell to commence an action against you for a breach of promise of marriage, for which the plaintiff lays her damages at fifteen hundred pounds, we beg to inform you that a writ has been issued against you in this suit in the Court of Common Pleas; and request to know, by return of post, the name of your attorney in London, who will accept service thereof.
We are, Sir,
Your obedient servants,
DODSON & FOGG.Mr. Samuel Pickwick.’
So Mr. Pickwick, the general mentor, the philosopher and friend—the man of high moral tone, “born to set the world aright”—the general lecturer of his “followers,” was now in for an action at law of the most awkward and unpleasant kind. To be philandering
with one’s landlady! rather low form this. But what would they say down at Manor Farm? How Isabella Wardle and her sister—and all the girls—would laugh! And the spinster aunt—she would enjoy it! But there was no help for it. It must be faced.