to begin with nothing and end with something as great as pickwick is an achievement given to few men to realise. yet it seems that in this most haphazard way pickwick was created.
at the age of twenty-three charles dickens opened his door in furnival’s inn to the managing partner of the firm of “chapman and hall.”
the idea then propounded to dickens was that a monthly publication should be the vehicle for certain plates to be executed by robert seymour, an admirable humourist-artist of great popularity. these were to deal with a nimrod club and their adventures, fishing, hunting, and so forth, rendered intensely humorous by exposing the lack of experience and dexterity of the members. dickens was requested to contribute a letter-press vito these pictures, but he objected on the grounds that he was not familiar enough with sports or the sportsman’s life to produce such material and also because the idea was not fresh. he thought the results would be much happier if he wrote more freely of the english people and their customs, and, too, it would be infinitely better were the plates to be inspired by the text. the suggestions were accepted and “i then wrote,” says dickens, “the first number and from the proofsheets mr. seymour made the drawing of the pickwick club, producing that happy portrait of the founder by which he was made a reality.”
in march, 1836, the first monthly number of the “posthumous papers of the pickwick club” made its appearance and “... in less than six months from this time the whole reading world was talking about them; the names of winkle, wardle, weller, snodgrass, dodson, and fogg had become familiar in our mouths as household words. ‘pickwick chintzes’ figured in linen-drapers’ windows, and ‘weller corduroys’ in breechesmakers’ viiadvertisements; ‘boz cabs’ might be seen rattling through the streets, and the portrait of the author of pelham and crichton was scraped down or pasted over to make room for that of the new popular favourite in the omnibuses.”
it was only natural that a work so launched, with the author pressed for copy for each part, should be lacking in any definite form or plot. dickens writes in the preface to the original edition:
“the publication of the book in monthly numbers, containing only thirty-two pages in each, rendered it an object of paramount importance that, while the different incidents were linked together by a chain of interest strong enough to prevent their appearing unconnected or impossible, the general design should be so simple as to sustain no injury from this detached and desultory form of publication, extending over no fewer than twenty months. in short, it was necessary—or it appeared so to the author—that every number should be, to a certain extent, complete in viiiitself, and yet that the whole twenty numbers, when collected, should form one tolerably harmonious whole, each leading to the other by a gentle and not unnatural progress of adventure.
“it is obvious that in a work published with a view to such considerations, no artfully interwoven or ingeniously complicated plot can with reason be expected. the author ventures to express a hope that he has successfully surmounted the difficulties of his undertaking. and if it be objected to the pickwick papers, that they are a mere series of adventure, in which the scenes are ever changing, and the characters come and go like the men and women we encounter in the real world, he can only content himself with the reflection that they claim to be nothing else, and that the same objection has been made to the works of some of the greatest novelists in the english language.”
the publishers of the present volume felt that the very manner in which “pickwick” was first issued justifies the separate reprinting of those ixchapters which deal with the christmas festivities at the manor farm. aside from this there is an especial interest attached to the christmas sentiment contained in these chapters, because it marks the first formal expression of that christmas feeling to which dickens afterwards devoted a considerable series of delightful works.
it is perfectly natural that pickwick should be the character to inspire dickens to those warm, whole-souled thoughts at a season when our enthusiasm is always more perceptible. a quotation from a preface prepared for an edition of his writings, which was designated in the dedication to john forster as the best edition of his works, will allow us to realise the importance of pickwick as such a vehicle. dickens says:
“it has been observed of mr. pickwick, that there is a decided change in his character, as these pages proceed, and that he becomes more good and more sensible. i do not think this change will appear forced or unnatural to my readers, if they will reflect that in real life the xpeculiarities and oddities of a man who has anything whimsical about him generally impress us first, and that it is not until we are better acquainted with him that we usually begin to look below these superficial traits, and to know the better part of him.”
so here at the manor farm we find ourselves joining in those wholesome sports and human interests that make these christmas chapters so contagious. “as brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four pickwickians assemble on the morning of the 22nd of december.” who can resist such enthusiasm and not feel the purport of these lines.
“and numerous indeed are the hearts to which christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. how many families whose members have been dispersed and scattered, far and wide, in the restless struggles of life are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual good-will, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight and xione so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations and the rude traditions of the roughest savages alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence provided for the blessed and happy! how many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does christmas time awaken!
“we write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped have grown old; the eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! happy, happy christmas, xiithat can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; and transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and quiet home.”
what wonder that the idea to present pickwick pictorially should appeal to robert seymour and inspire that famous plate, “pickwick addressing the club”! this is a happy portrait and has fixed for all time the indelible image of its subject upon the world’s mind.
in this matter of pictorial embellishment dickens’s writings have always held a unique position. dickens himself preferred to have his works appear unadorned by pictures, but the demand made by his public called into service the most talented pencils from george cruikshank to frederick barnard. hence, beside the plates for the original editions, we have innumerable engravings for subsequent editions and for special forms of reproduction.
forster, the biographer of dickens, informs us xiiithat rarely, if ever, did anything but disappointment await the novelist so far as the illustrations were concerned; a fact easily determined by tracing the dissatisfaction he evinced through his intimate and friendly intercourse with the pictorial interpreters of his text.
the artist of the earlier part of the nineteenth century seldom resorted to the use of the living model in preparing their pictures, and this in no small way accounts for the puppet-like appearance of many of their figures. the only guide was the vivid descriptions of the author, an artist who drew all his inspiration from life.
however, in the early sixties there arose a new school of illustrators who lavished the same care upon the preparation of an illustration as a painter does upon his canvases. the result was a series of pictures filled with human interest,—pictures not relying upon exaggeration of details and facial expression to convey their meaning. the only claim that can be made for the early plates as compared to these later ones is their charm of xivassociation. work of men such as frederick barnard and charles green far surpasses technically these earlier productions and gives to us an interpretation more human and living.
in the illustration of the original edition of “pickwick” we are concerned with three artists, robert seymour, robert buss, and habl?t k. browne, better known as “phiz.”
seymour’s services were prematurely ended by his suicide. his successor, buss, was also of short duration and evidently not satisfactory to the author or publisher, for there follows a long list of applicants desiring to fill the vacant post, among them wm. m. thackeray. in responding to a toast of “literature,” at the royal academy banquet years after, the latter said, “i can remember when mr. dickens was a very young man and had commenced delighting the world with some charming humorous works, of which i cannot mention the name but which were coloured light green and came out once a month, that this young man wanted an artist to illustrate his xvwritings, and i recollect walking up to his chambers with two or three drawings in my hand, which, strange to say, he did not find suitable. but for that unfortunate blight which came over my artistical existence it would have been my pride and my pleasure to have endeavoured one day to find a place on these walls for one of my performances.” later he alluded to the rejection of his services as “mr. pickwick’s lucky escape.”
in the end browne was accepted and of all the illustrators of those early editions he is the one par excellence, excepting only luke fildes r. a., the illustrator of the first edition of “edwin drood.”
when fildes interviewed dickens preparatory to taking up this commission, he informed the author that although he appreciated the honour of being selected to illustrate “edwin drood,” he felt compelled to forego most reluctantly the pleasure of it if the designs had to be of a comic and wholly humorous nature after the manner of phiz and his predecessors. he reminded xvidickens that his writings possessed an intensely serious as well as a jocular side and would lend themselves admirably to a graver style of handling. dickens replied that he was rather tired of having his illustrators consider him entirely as a humourist and caricaturist. while there is a vast difference between “pickwick” and “edwin drood,” yet there is much of serious life depicted in the various escapades of the club, and it is the keen appreciation of this quality that seems to have escaped entirely the earlier artists.
we turn to charles green and find in his series of large water-colours one entitled, “the pickwick club,” and our intimate friend clothed, not in caricature, but in all the atmosphere of reality, losing thereby none of his jovial and comic characteristics. the real winkle, the real snodgrass, the real tupman, are listening to his address, and the unnatural elements of the first plates have given way to a more suitable form of expression though retaining the quaint humour of the text.
who does not find here the pickwick we xviihave always sought—the pickwick created by dickens?
the writer has endeavoured to produce in this series of pictures the true atmosphere, human in the blending of the serious and the comic, and to give to them the semblance of reality produced in our minds by the text.
george alfred williams.
chatham, n. j.
