To the Pickwick Club there was a Vice-President, named Smiggers—Joseph Smiggers, Esq., P.V.P.M.P.C., that is, Perpetual
Vice-President and Member of the Pickwick Club. Smiggers was, of course, supposed to be “Pickwick’s creature,” or he would not have been there. He was a tall, corpulent man, with a soft face—as we see him in his picture. As Mr. Pickwick speaks, it is remarkable that both Vice-President and Secretary—the two officers—have each one arm raised as if in ecstatic rapture—clear proof of their subservience to Pickwick. On Smiggers’ right is a “doddering” old fellow of between seventy and eighty—clearly a “nullity”—on his left, another member nearly as old, but with a glimmer of intelligence. Down the side of the table, facing the orator, are some odd faces—one clearly a Jew; one for whom the present Mr. Edward Terry might have sat. Blotton is at the bottom, half turned away in disgust. His neighbour looks at him with wonder, as who should say, “How can you be so insensible?” Odd to say—and significant, too—Blotton has brought into the club his dog, a ferocious looking “bull,” which sits at his feet under the table. We should say, on the whole, that Blotton could only count on—and that, with but a limited sympathy—the Terry-faced and Jew-faced men—if he could count on them. The Secretary was like a clerk—a perky fellow—and had a pen behind his ear; probably in some Bank or Counting House, so strong is habit. One member of the Club alone is invisible—the one beyond Tupman—all that is seen of him is a hand holding a tumbler as if about to drink. The Dodderer is applauding; so are the Jew, Blotton and Tupman; so is the round-faced man, just beyond the invisible one.
Mr. Pickwick and his three friends being removed or absent, and Blotton expelled, out of the fourteen members there were left but nine, whereof we reckon four or five as Pickwickians and the rest as Blottonites.
And how easily can we imagine the acrimonious discussions that went on!
“This ’ere Pickwick, who was always making the club a hend to his own glorification, had gone off on his touring to get more grist for his mill.” It was really, a “mutual admiration society,” and as for the reports, notes, &c., he was sending back “they ’ad ’ad enough of it.” The club didn’t meet to be listening to long-winded yarns to be read out by their worthy secretary, but for a glass and social intercourse.
As for the “travels and preambulations,” what were they more than visits to genteel ’ouses where Pickwick was “showing oft” at their expense? Then where were the “Sportin’ transactions?” The whole thing was “rot.” Then the Cobham stone business, at which the whole town was laughing, and which their worthy friend Blotton had exposed. Blotton was the only long-headed, creditable man they had. He ought to have been their president. But he had been turned out by the “lick-spittles” of the society.
CHAPTER X. ROADSIDE INNS
I.—The Bell at Berkeley Heath
In the animated journey, from Bristol to Birmingham, the travellers stopped at various posting-houses where the mercurial Sawyer would insist on getting down to lunch, dine, or otherwise refresh—his friends being always ready to comply after a little decent hesitation. It was thus that they drew up at The Bell at Berkeley Heath, which our writer presently sketches. It will be seen there is more of the drink at the Bell than of the Bell itself. It is, indeed, no more than cœcum nomen—much as though we read the name at the end of “Bradshaw”—yet, somehow, from the life and movement of the journey, it offers a sort of attraction: it seems familiar, and we have an interest in it. The Bell now “goes on,” as the proprietor tells me. There are travellers who come there and drink Boz’s health in the snug parlour. It is, in fact, a Pickwickian Inn, and is drawn within the glamour of the legend, and, what a marvel! the thing is done by the magic of those three or four lines. “The Bell,” says Mrs. Hooper, “lies back on the main road from Bristol to Gloucester, and is just nineteen miles from Bristol. It is a rambling old house and a good deal dilapidated, and of good age.”
With this meagre record it yet offers such Pickwickian interest that, not many months ago, a photograph was taken of it which was engraved for the Daily Graphic. There is no Mr. Pickwick’s room to be shown, as undoubtedly there would be had that gentleman only stayed the night there; but he only lunched and then went forward. There is a mistiness as to whether the Pickwickians sat in the public coffee-room or had a private “settin’-room.” It was to a certainty the