Among the professionally religious folks we have Rev. Lawrence Grills. Among the fashionables Lady FitzWillis of the Kingstreet family; Major-General and Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she had been Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry [19]); and Mrs Hook Eagles, who patronised Becky.
Names that seem to me bad are Fitzoof, Lord Heehaw’s son, Mrs Mantrap, and Lord Claude Lollypop. But there are innumerable other good ones: Macmurdo, who was to have been Rawdon’s second in a duel with Lord Steyne; Captain Papillon of the Guards, attending the young wife of old Methuselah (a bad name); young May and his bride, “Mrs Winter that was, and who had been at school with May’s grandmother.”
Viscount Paddington was a guest at Becky’s “select party” in May Fair. Finally, the Earl of Portansherry and the Prince of the house of Potztausand-Donnerwetter are good although obvious.
In Pendennis are many good names. Major Pendennis was proud of having made up the quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady Claudia. Lady John Turnbull, who spoke such bad French. Mr Kewsy, the barrister. Mr Sibwright, the luxurious young man in whose vacant chamber Laura Bell slept during Pendennis’ illness. The best of all
names must be given in Morgan’s own words, “Lord de la Pole, sir, gave him I must reluctantly leave Thackeray and consider a very different maker of names, namely Dickens. It is sometimes said that his names are not invented but discovered by research. In my son Bernard’s A Dickens Pilgrimage (Times Series, 1914), he writes, p. 22: “Other people have been before us in seeing that Mr Jasper keeps a shop in the High Street of Rochester,” and that “Dorretts and Pordages are buried under the shadow of the cathedral.” He claims as his own the discovery that in the churchyard of Chalk (near Rochester) there are “three tombstones standing almost next door to one another and bearing a trinity of immortal names, Twist, Flight, and Guppy.” He adds that “the lady in Bleak House spelt her name Flite.” I fail to believe that anybody was ever called Pumblechook, and there are others equally impossible. But the great name of Pickwick is not an invention. Mr Percy Fitzgerald [20] gives plenty of evidence on this point, in a discussion suggested by the sacred name being inscribed on the Bath coach, to Sam Weller’s indignation. There was, for instance, a Mr William Pickwick of Bath, who died in 1795. Again, in 1807, the driver of “Mr Pickwick’s coach . . . was taken suddenly and very alarmingly ill on Slanderwick Common.” One member of the family “entered the army, and for some reason changed his name to Sainsbury.” The object, as Mr Fitzgerald points out, is obvious enough. Mr Fitzgerald mentions (p. 16) the curious fact that Mr Dickens (the son of the author) once had to announce that he meant to call Mr Pickwick as a witness in a case he was conducting. The Judge made the characteristic remark, “Pickwick is a very appropriate character to be called by Dickens.” With regard to the name Winkle, I cannot agree with Mr Fitzgerald [21] that Dickens took it from Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. Among the few names taken from real people is that of Mr Justice Stareleigh, who is generally believed to be Mr Justice Gaselee. Sergeant Buzfuz in the same trial is believed on the authority of Mr Bompas to be Serjeant Bompas, the father of that eminent Q.C., but there seems to be no evidence that it is a portrait. In Pickwick some of the best names are those of various business firms, e.g., Bilson and Slum, who were Tom Smart’s employers. In the Judge’s chambers (which “are said to be of specially dirty appearance”) was a crowd of unfortunate clerks “waiting to attend summonses their employers had taken out, which it was optional to the attorney on the opposite side to attend or not, and whose business it was from time to time to cry out the opposite attorney’s name. For example, leaning against the wall . . . was an office lad of fourteen with a tenor voice; near him a common law clerk with a bass one. A clerk hurried in with a bundle of papers and stared about him.