Pickwickian Manners and Customs

by Percy Fitzgerald

Who were Serjeant Snubbin, Skimpin, and Phunkey? No traditions have come to us as to these gentlemen. Skimpin may have been Wilkins, and Snubbin a Serjeant Arabin, a contemporary of Buzfuz. But we are altogether in the dark.

We should have liked also to have some “prehistoric peeps” at the previous biography of Mr. Pickwick before the story began. We have but a couple of indications of his calling: the allusion by Perker at the close of the story—“The agent at Liverpool said he had been obliged to you many times when you were in business.” He was therefore a merchant or in trade. Snubbin at the trial

stated that “Mr. Pickwick had retired from business and was a gentleman of considerable independent property.”

In the original announcement of the “Pickwick Papers” there are some scraps of information about Mr. Pickwick and the Club itself. This curious little screed shows that the programme was much larger than the one carried out:—

“On the 31st of March, 1836, will be published,
to be continued Monthly, price One
Shilling, the First Number of

THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS
of
THE PICKWICK CLUB;
containing a faithful record of the
Perambulations, Perils, Travels,
Adventures, and Sporting Transactions
of the Corresponding Members.

EDITED BY “BOZ.”

And each Monthly Part embellished with
four illustrations by Seymour.

“The Pickwick Club, so renowned in the annals of Huggin Lane, and so closely entwined with the thousand interesting associations connected with Lothbury and Cateaton Street, was founded in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, by Samuel Pickwick—the great traveller—whose fondness for the useful arts prompted his celebrated journey to Birmingham in the depth of winter; and whose taste for the beauties of nature even led him to penetrate to the very borders of Wales in the height of summer.

“This remarkable man would appear to have infused a considerable portion of his restless and inquiring spirit into the breasts of other members of the Club, and to have awakened in their minds the same insatiable thirst for travel which so eminently characterized his own. The whole surface of Middlesex, a part of Surrey, a portion of Essex, and several square miles of Kent were in their turns examined and reported on. In a rapid steamer they smoothly navigated the placid Thames; and in an open boat they fearlessly crossed the turbid Medway. High-roads and by-roads, towns and villages, public conveyances and their passengers, first-rate inns and road-side public houses, races, fairs, regattas elections, meetings, market days—all the scenes that can possibly occur to enliven a country place, and at which different traits of character may be observed and recognized, were alike visited and beheld by the ardent Pickwick and his enthusiastic followers.

“The Pickwick Travels, the Pickwick Diary, the Pickwick Correspondence—in short, the whole of the Pickwick Papers’—were carefully preserved, and duly registered by the secretary, from time to time, in the voluminous Transactions of the Pickwick Club. These Transactions have been purchased from the patriotic secretary, at an immense expense, and placed in the hands of ‘Boz,’ the author of “Sketches Illustrative of Every Day Life and Every Day People”—a gentleman whom the publishers consider highly qualified for the task of arranging these important documents, and placing them before the public in an attractive form. He is at present deeply immersed in his arduous labours, the first fruits of which will appear on the 31st March.

“Seymour has devoted himself, heart and graver, to the task of illustrating the beauties of Pickwick. It was reserved to Gibbon to paint, in colours that will never fade, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—to Hume to chronicle the strife and turmoil of the two proud houses that divided England against herself—to Napier to pen, in burning words, the History of the War in the Peninsula—the deeds and actions of the gifted Pickwick yet remain for ‘Boz’ and Seymour to hand down to posterity.

“From the present appearance of these important documents and the probable extent of the selections from them, it is presumed that the series will be completed in about twenty numbers.”

From this it will be seen that it was intended to exhibit all the humours of the social amusements with which the public regaled itself. Mr. Pickwick and friends were to be shown on board a steamer; at races, fairs, regattas, market days, meetings—“at all the scenes that can possibly occur to enliven a