Of a more miscellaneous kind are “The Pickwick Songster,” “Sam Weller’s Almanac,” “Sam Weller’s Song Book,” “The Pickwick Pen,” “Oh, what a boon and a blessing to men,” etc.,—to say nothing of
innumerable careless sheets, and trifles of all kinds and of every degree. Then we have adapted advertisements. The Proprietors of Beecham’s Pills use the scene of Mr. Pickwick’s discovery of the Bill Stumps inscription. Some carpet cleaners have Sam and the pretty housemaid folding the carpet. Lastly comes the author, “Boz” himself, with letters, portraits, pictures of his homes, etc., all more or less connected with the period when he was writing this book, a facsimile of his receipt for copy money, a copy of his agreement with Chapman and Hall, and many more items. [47]
I have often wondered how it was that “the inimitable Boz,” took so little interest in his great Book. It always seemed to me
that he did not care for praise of it, or wish much that it should be alluded to. But he at once became interested, when you spoke of some of his artful plots, in Bleak House, or Little Dorrit—then his eye kindled. He may have fancied, as his friend Forster also did, that Pickwick was a rather jejune juvenile thing, inartistically planned, and thrown off, or rather rattled off. His penchant, as was the case with Liston and some of the low comedians, was for harrowing tragedy and pathos.
Once when driving with him on a jaunting car in Dublin, he asked me, did I know so-and-so, and I answered promptly in Mr. Winkle’s words, “I don’t know him, but I have seen him.” This apropos made him laugh heartily. I am now inclined to think that the real explanation of his distaste was, that the Book was associated with one of the most painful and distracting episodes of his life, which affected him so acutely, that he actually flung aside his work in the full
tumult of success, and left the eager public without its regular monthly number. “I have been so unnerved” he writes, in an unpublished letter to Harrison Ainsworth, “and hurt by the loss of the dear girl whom I loved, after my wife, more dearly and fervently than anyone on earth, that I have been compelled for once to give up all idea of my monthly work, and to try a fortnight’s rest and quiet.”
In this long book, there are found allusions to only two or three other works. What these are might form one of the questions “set” at the next Pickwick examination. Fielding is quoted once. In the dedication allusion is made to Talfourd’s three speeches in Parliament, on the copyright question; these were published in a little volume, and make, fairly enough, one of the illustrative documents of “Pickwick.” In the first number of the first edition there is an odd note, rather out of place, but it was withdrawn later—meant to ridicule Mr.
Jingle’s story of “Ponto’s” sagacity; it states that in Mr. Jesse’s gleanings, there are more amazing stories than this.
Mr. Jesse was a sort of personage living at Richmond—where I well remember him, when I was there as a boy. “Jesse’s gleanings” was then a well-known and popular book; and his stories of dogs are certainly extraordinary enough to have invoked Boz’s ridicule. We are told of the French poodle, who after rolling himself in the mud of the Seine, would rub himself against any well-polished boots that he noticed, and would thus bring custom to his master, who was a shoe black on the Pont Neuf. He was taken to London by an English purchaser, but in a few days disappeared, and was discovered pursuing his old trade on the Bridge. Other dogs, we were told, after being transported long distances, would invariably find their way back. These prodigies, however, do not appear so wonderful now, after the strange things about dogs and cats that
have been retailed in a well-known “weekly.” A third allusion is to Sterne’s Maria of Moulines, made, of all people in the world, by Sam Weller.