Pickwick - No. IV - chs. IX-XI

[Denise]

Mr. Jingle and Miss Rachael have eloped! Mr. Wardle and Mr. Pickwick set out after them in a breakneck chase. Just as they have them in sight, their coach overturns. Jingle stops long enough to ask if they are all right, and then speeds off. The pursuers, along with Mr. Wardle's lawyer Mr. Perker, discover the fugitive couple at the White Hart in London, just as Jingle arrives with the marriage license. Perker takes Jingle aside, tells him that the inheritance he anticipates from old Mrs. Wardle will likely not materialize soon, as her family is exceptionally long-lived, and buys him off for 120 pounds. After they bring Rachael back to Dingley Dell, Pickwick is informed by his friends that Tupman has gone, so they leave to follow him, after Mr. Snodgrass parts from his new love, Emily Wardle, and the clergyman has given Mr. Pickwick a manuscript story. While walking with Tupman, Mr. Pickwick is excited to find an ancient-looking stone with a mysterous inscription. He buys the archeological discovery, and decides that they must return to London with it. In the meantime, he reads the clergyman's manuscript - a creepy tale by a madman. The Pickwickians return to London, where the stone is the toast of the antiquarian world, and Pickwick is celebrated as its discoverer. One member of the club (who had quarreled with Pickwick during the meeting in the first chapter) tries to debunk it, and is expelled from the club.

In this section, we are introduced to Sam Weller, a servant at the White Hart, who will become a very important character in the story.

[Michaela]

I just love the word eloped. I wonder why Mr. Pickwick was given the manuscript of the Madman. And I wonder about Mr. Pickwick: is he the great man the narrator keeps calling him? It appears his greatness is tinged with a layer of sarcasm. I have been having this idea from the beginning, but the final pages of the ninth chapter convinced me of it. It appears he mistook a simple stone (which is naturally ancient as all stones are) with an inscription made by a simple man, for an antiquity. His greatness appears to be derived from the support he gets from society, not from his having made a great discovery.

[Michaela]

Ninth chapter = eleventh chapter, this confirms it, is is really time to go to bed.

[Denise]

I think they're all a bit of a humbug. Although Pickwick is usually kind and benevolent, he also seems to have quite a temper, and not always rationally. Winkle is far from being the expert sportsman he pretends to be, Snodgrass never seems to write any poetry, and Tupman has bad luck with the ladies.

[Denise]

I also loved the story about the old stone! How all the experts wrote so many papers about it. I have to admit that I was mystified by the inscription myself, until Pickwick's rival pointed out what it really said. Of course, even though he must have been right, especially as the man who carved it told him, he was reviled and kicked out, for going against the great Pickwick!