The Old Curiosity Club discussion
The Pickwick Papers
>
Pickwick Papers - Chapter 3 - 5
Ch. 4-5. NotesWell here we go! This chapter introduces Mr. Wardle, owner of Manor Farm, the Garden of Eden in Dickens’ world. I suspect when a good character dies in any Dickens text their spirit migrates backwards through all the chapters and novels that have come before, leaping across pages like literary salmon, eventually taking a carriage down a sun-shady road to this inexpressibly cozy setting. But nay, I shan’t gush overmuch, for there’s much to come in that vein, and we are leaving Mr. Pickwick and company on the army fields near Rochester.
Ditto my delight in the description of Mr. Pickwick chasing his hat; there’s something so modern in how observational humor-y this is (and what’s the deal with chasing your hat?) that I was quite charmed when I first read it. The illustration accompanying it is equally wonderful; it would make a lovely bookmark.
I was equally interested in the discussion of why some characters make it into Dickensiana—in other words, into merchandise which makes use of Dickens characters. Mrs. Gamp, Oliver Twist, Miss Havisham, the Fat Boy, Mr. Pickwick, and so forth. And then there was something—I couldn’t find the quote, but someone in last week’s discussion mentioned Winnie-the-Pooh, and how PP reminded them of that book...the illustration of Mr. Pickwick chasing his hat somehow overlapped in my mind with Pooh holding his balloon as he attempted to convince the bees he was just a part of the sky.
And what a perfect introduction to Miss “She’s a miss—and yet she ain’t!” Wardle. I loved the back-and-forth between Miss Rachel and her nieces; there’s something in her character at this very first appearance that suggests her eventual fate; makes it so very likely. I could see Jane Austen, in one of her feistier moods, taking Miss Rachel and her nieces and the rest of the inmates of Manor Farm and turning them into a wonderful comic novel (or novella).
And the Fat Boy! There’s so LITTLE to him, really—just some fat and narcolepsy and one unforgettable line-to-come...but he’s like Jingle, he’s so vivid he’s practically scrambling down from the page and wandering off to my pantry looking for snacks. There’s something very theatrical about the back and forth between Wardle and the Fat Boy; I can imagine if this was staged (I’m sure it was, just not under Dickens’ auspices) that a rowdy Victorian crowd would yell, along with the actor playing Wardle, “Drat the lad! He’s gone to sleep again.”
I wonder how Mr. Wardle came to encounter the Pickwickians in London? The way he mentions their club makes it seem more like a proper gentlemen’s club, like White’s or Brooks, where you could drop in for lunch or dinner, a rubber of whist, or a collection of news and periodicals (along with booze and a big leather armchair to compliment said periodicals).
Do you think Wardle is being sincere or ironic when he says he had the “honor” of visiting the club? He’s such a good-natured fellow I can’t help but believe he means it, but then again he doesn’t miss much. Perhaps he hadn’t the luck to witness any atttacks on the club’s founder (in a Pickwickian or any other sense).
In college we were obligated to take a semester of sports, and since bowling filled up too fast I decided to take horseback riding. I must say I wasn’t a fan. I love animals, but horses—looking into those pill-shaped pupils, and struggling with their stubborn jitteriness—just didn’t capture my heart. It’s a ton of muscle lit up with vast coils of nervous tissue, and if the brain happens to get involved, no one’s the wiser.
...which is a long way of saying I empathized so very much with the Pickwickians’ long trip to Manor Farm. There was something so modern and appealing in Mr. Pickwick’s lament (“It’s like a nightmare...a man walking around with a horse he can’t be rid of”) that I could see it turn into an entire episode of a sitcom. It also made me appreciate how well Dickens could create episodic bits of story suitable for a serialized format, where you need to have not only a “to be continued” at the end, but also an internal beginning, climax, and resolution. I can’t help wonder if a popular author attempted a serialized format today, whether or not it’d succeed. A weekly thriller in the grocery checkout line, with illustrations and ads, would be a nice change of pace from Soap Opera Digest. Even if it’s not Dickens-quality, perhaps it might encourage future Dickenses to pursue the format.
Andrew wrote: " I can’t help wonder if a popular author attempted a serialized format today, whether or not it’d succeed. A weekly thriller in the grocery checkout line, with illustrations and ads, would be a nice change of pace from Soap Opera Digest. Even if it’s not Dickens-quality, perhaps it might encourage future Dickenses to pursue the format. ..."I so enjoyed your comments, Andrew! They made me want to go back and read this section all over again.
As for a popular author doing a serial, Steven King did it in the 90s with "The Green Mile". It was published in six parts, released in monthly intervals. I remember the inevitable references to Dickens at the time. Being Steven King, I'm assuming it sold quite well, though I honestly don't recall if I read it in the original, serial format, or if I waited until it came out in novel form. In retrospect, it would seem that people saw it as a gimmick, and it obviously didn't catch on. I think the 20th/21st century audience is much too hooked on instant gratification (done any binge watching lately?) to have the patience to wait for "next week's exciting episode!"
Tristram wrote (on The Stroller's Tale): "But now, I also think that the story fits well into the chapter right there and right then in that it unfolds the range of possible moods and voices, thus making PP such a veritable microcosm of real life. Dickens introduces a very tragic story but he does it in the form of a story within the story in order to preserve the comic potential of our four friends and to keep the "real" world as such, the world Mr Pickwick walks and drinks brandy in, colourful and carefree."Yes, exactly! I didn't mind the hard left turn into the sombre when I read it, but couldn't say exactly WHY I thought it was a good fit for an otherwise jolly atmosphere.
Mod
Well here we go! This chapter introduces Mr. Wardle, owner of Manor Farm, the Garden of Eden in Dickens’ world. I suspect when a good character dies in any Dickens text their spirit..."
Andrew
Thanks for the rollicking and insightful commentary. There is something very infectious in the early chapters of PP. The stand alone nature of some of the adventures really doesn’t matter does it? A good read is a good read.
Heaven as Manor Farm. That works for me.
Mary Lou wrote: "Andrew wrote: " I can’t help wonder if a popular author attempted a serialized format today, whether or not it’d succeed. A weekly thriller in the grocery checkout line, with illustrations and ads,..."I have that series!--in the original installment bindings. I remember at one point during its release King was on the NYT bestseller list three times, since each installment counted as a separate book.
So it sold pretty well (of course it was King, and everything he writes is a bestseller)--but he said he'd never do it again: "if only because the critics get to kick your a** six times instead of just the once." He also talked about having to work fast and thus having to live with mistakes you couldn't fix: "I wrote in a hurry because the format demanded I write in a hurry. That was part of the exhilaration, but it also may have produced a number of anachronisms."
I don't remember anyone else doing this with freestanding installments (embedded in a magazine seems a different thing to me, though Dickens did both) before the internet took off, but the internet is producing a bit of a boom in this kind of publishing, for instance this group, which not only produces novels in serial but has them authored by a team rather than individuals, like a television series: https://www.serialbox.com/
Some authors are also using serialized works to build a following on crowd-sourcing sites like Patreon. If you subscribe to their account, you get each new number of a continuing work when it comes out.
We live in interesting times, publishing-wise.
Mod
Thanks a lot for your insightful comments! I can sympathize with you because I never felt quite at ease on the back of a horse but my grandfather always thought that riding would be good for me when I was a boy. Why, I can't undertake to say. Probably for no other reason but that he liked horseriding himself. You idea of a sitcom episode about somebody wanting to get rid of a horse is fabulous; to me, it looks like a typical Seinfeld dilemma, and it would probably be Kramer who would trade in the horse, which might be pestering George, for something that at first sight seems harmless enough but would eventually prove more cumbersome and hard to get rid of than the horse. Maybe, it would be Kramer's mysterious but fateful power of Kavorka?
Mary Lou,
I did not know that Stephen King once published a book in instalments. He also published one novel on the INternet, if I am not mistaken, making his readers pay whatever they thought proper and adequate. I do not know whether this idea was very successful at all. But I think the Internet book also appeared in instalments. And yes, Julie, the big drawback is that you cannot change things once you have published them. That also explains the first-person narrator dropping from The Old Curiosity Shop.
Tristram wrote: "Andrew,Thanks a lot for your insightful comments! I can sympathize with you because I never felt quite at ease on the back of a horse but my grandfather always thought that riding would be good f..."
King's pay-as-you-go novel published on the internet was not, he felt, successful. He said he would continue publishing it as long as he received payments from half the people who downloaded it, and he didn't, so he cut it off, unfinished.
I seem to remember he might have ended up publishing the whole thing later, in traditional form. I'll have to look it up again.
Interesting guy, King.
Mod
Here you go. I had my numbers wrong. King wanted a dollar per installment from at least 75% of his readers of The Plant and was getting 46%, and readership was dropping. This year 2000 article says some specialists "blamed the serial format... 'It is increasingly difficult to get people to go out and download the next chapter.'" Seems to me this is not such a huge issue any more since so many of us spend so much time downloading on the web; plus there are all kinds of systems that download automatically.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/29/bus...
Tristram wrote: "Thanks for the information, Julie! In Germany, the Internet is a serious threat to newspapers because many people feel that it would be strange to buy a newspaper when they can read many articles f..."Yes, it's a real threat here in the US, too. A reporter told me recently that local newspapers especially are in serious jeopardy partly because they used to rely on classified ads for income, and now people advertise instead on sites like Craigslist.
Fiction writers are also worried about piracy: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Sorry this is something of a hobby horse of mine. :)
Mod
Tristram wrote: "This reminds me of Dickens's bitter fight against piracy. You might remember the hack George Reynolds, who tried to cash in on PP as well by publishing a book called Pickwick Abroad, in which he ta..."Yes! The laws hadn't really caught up yet to Dickens's media innovations (or really the novelists before him, either). I think we're in a similar period now--Dickens was figuring out what to do with cheap print technology and authors now are figuring out what to do with the internet, and it can be a very bumpy process, with some winners and sadly also some losers.
Julie wrote: "Mary Lou wrote: "Andrew wrote: " I can’t help wonder if a popular author attempted a serialized format today, whether or not it’d succeed. A weekly thriller in the grocery checkout line, with illus..."That’s right!—I totally forgot about King. It’s interesting that he disliked writing at some speed. I checked his book “On Writing” out from the library and was intrigued to find that he does NOT plot out his works. He basically thinks up an idea (for Misery, for example, it was “author trapped with crazy fan”) and gets to work. He compared plots to fossils trapped in the earth, and said the author’s job was to dig them up as carefully as possible. Interesting, at the very least.
Julie wrote: "Tristram wrote: "This reminds me of Dickens's bitter fight against piracy. You might remember the hack George Reynolds, who tried to cash in on PP as well by publishing a book called Pickwick Abroa..."Yes, it must have been insanely frustrating! In the intro to the Annotated Christmas Carol, editor Michael Patrick Hearn wrote about Dickens’s attempt to bring these plagiarists to justice. It didn’t go well: while their defense (something along the lines of “But I am actually more creative than Mr. Dickens, for I went farther and created even more than he did! Just look at my song, ‘Mr. Shmickwick goes to Liverpool!’”) was mocked by judges even then, the sorts of people who resorted to ripping off popular serials weren’t exactly stuffed with gold and silver. So they would declare bankruptcy, and the costs of bringing the lawsuit would bounce back to Dickens. He would try and bring the lawsuits to a halt, but by the middle of a case apparently the whole thing had taken on a certain unstoppable inertia. Perhaps it’s no wonder that Bleak House was so withering towards the court system...
Mod
Fascinating conversation and insights into writing and publishing and how they both connect, sooner or later, to the public and how it chooses to read the novel.
King and Dickens. Now wouldn’t that be a pair to give a seminar on the process of writng a novel.
Peter—I’d give a huge sum of money to sit through that seminar—but I suspect Dickens would give different advice depending on how old he was!
Also, Tristram mentioned the sequel to PP, “Pickwick Abroad”—has anyone read this work? I’m googling it now and it appears to be free online, so I may dip my toe into the hackery...since it entails a visit to France as written by a 19th century Englishman I’m sure it’ll be riddled with guillotines and references to frogs...Anyone want to guess how impenetrable zee attampts ate ze Frahnch dyuhlahkt ahr? Sacre bleu!
Mod
I once downloaded the "Pickwick Abroad" book on my Kindle but I found that the edition, which was not for free, contained so many spelling and layout mistakes that it was practically unreadable. I had never seen such a carelessly edited e-book before, and that's why, after reading two or three pages, I sent it back to Amazon, and they refunded me. In a way, that was a pity - not the reimbursement, but the fact I had to send the book back - because I was very curious about what Reynolds came up with.
I don't know about 19th century Englishmen's travelogues about France, but Mr Smollett wrote a rather crusty account of his journey through France, which even earned him the appearance as Smelfungus in Sterne's Sentimental Journey.
What do you guys think about the notion of adding screwball comedy to works that have darker subject matter as well? It seems to me that most readers today want one thing or another in any given work. I myself am a bit of a writer and have found that additions of crazy antics in an otherwise serious piece receive vetoes at writing workshops. Of course Shakespeare added all sorts of comic relief to his dark tragedies. But it seems that the way genres have evolved today has serious drama partitioned off from light comedy. I suppose readers are in the mood for one thing or the other and don't want something else polluting their mental state during the given read.
Admittedly I have not gotten into the Pickwick Papers the way I did the Mystery of Edwin Drood. I wonder if that has to do with style or treatment.
Stephen wrote: "What do you guys think about the notion of adding screwball comedy to works that have darker subject matter as well? It seems to me that most readers today want one thing or another in any given wo..."I tend to agree about the partitioning of fiction, and things tend to get walled off, as if, in your term, it pollutes it. There are some works of fiction that are so serious that you would be hard-pressed to find one sentence of comic relief.
I did note from the studies I have read that Pickwick is "picaresque." I actually had to look into that a little more to make sure I understood properly what it is. The one definition I liked, which seems to fit Pickwick, is "the anti-hero on the road."
Mod
Dostoevsky is another writer who always manages to introduce the ludicrous into the bleakest of plots, and I tend to find this also in Melville. Somebody without a vivid, impish sense of humour I find it very difficult to take seriously, be they ever so keen on appearing serious.
Mod
Here are a few Dicken's was not pleased with, notice they are edited by Bos not Boz:
Mod
I cannot stand this person, whoever it is.
Mod
You get the idea of what Dickens was fighting against.
Mod
Thank you for digging up all the Boz pretenders. What the material proves is the immense popularity of The Pickwick Papers and the author named “Boz.” As a relatively unknown author, Dickens certainly made his presence felt.
It is amazing how so many writers jumped on the bandwagon and tried to profit from PP. Without strict controls, Dickens must have fumed at how much he was losing in royalties.
I’ll just add my thanks to Peter’s, Kim; I’ve never even heard of the “Penny Pickwick,” but I loved the side-by-side comparison of Boz and...(sigh)...”Bos”. Where did you find this wonderful book? Did a search for “Pickwick in America”...the first result was a map of the town of Pickwick, Minnesota (dare I hope it was named for that noble surveyor of the ponds of Hempstead?), but I could not find an online edition of the text. More’s the pity...Tristram, Google has a scanned version of Pickwick Abroad (I think it’s from the Bodleian) which seems to be free from any errors that I came across—has illustrations as well. I haven’t read more than a page or two but I was amused to see that the table of contents not only featured chapters and illustrations, it also listed songs, poems, and music, for those Victorians who really demanded more bang for their literary buck. Said Victorians must also have been pleased that Sam Weller shows up so early, and begins flinging Wellerisms with so much vigor that I can’t help but suspect that Reynolds was determined to exhaust the public’s infatuation with the character (never mind that 9/10 of his Wellerisms land with all the zest of a week-old glass of lukewarm champagne)
Mod
Hi Andrew, I didn't find the book, hopefully they are all gone by now. I found a web site that gives me glimpses of all the people who found it ok to get wealthy from Dickens works. Most of the time they only show me the opening title pages, some with a preface. I can give you the link to the website, but be very careful while on it, just about everything on it is a spoiler. Let me know if you want it.
Mod
Well, since the Pickwick Club obviously cherishes scientific research (tittlebats indeed), it would seem that it would important to them to classify what this work is. Isn't that what science does? Classify?
Mod
I've often had the same thought. They seem so out of place in PP; don't even involve any of the main characters.
Mod
Mod
One thing it has done is create the materials out of which artificial Christmas trees can be made.
Another is to create the technology which allows the playing of Christmas music by record, tape, CD, MP3 player, or any other way than by singing.
But I agree with you that these are both bad things, so maybe you're right that science itself is a bad thing.
Everyman wrote: "so maybe you're right that science itself is a bad thing."Science provides me with a paycheck. So that's a good thing. :)
Stephen wrote: "What do you guys think about the notion of adding screwball comedy to works that have darker subject matter as well? It seems to me that most readers today want one thing or another in any given wo...""Screwball" comedy? Maybe not, at least not if the darker story is meant to be taken seriously. But, always catching the wave much later than everyone else, I recently started watching "Breaking Bad" and I never realized that it's funny! It's dark and gruesome, and most of the characters aren't really sympathetic, but every episode has some subtle, dark humor that makes me laugh out loud. It can be so very subtle, though, that I wonder if some viewers even caught it. But that's what's so brilliant about it -- the dark humor fits in with the dark nature of the subject matter. If it shifted to slapstick, it just wouldn't work.
Mod
But once something is classified, one is not supposed to talk or know about it, and that would put an end to our Pickwick discussion.
Mod
But once something is classified, one is not supposed to talk or know about it, and that would put an end to our Pickwick discussion."
Please tell me math is classified.
Mod
Mod
Mod
You must live in a very ugly part of Germany if you see beauty in math.
Mod
You must live in a very ugly part of Germany if you see beauty in math."
Let's just say I am a friend of fearful symmetry, a word, whose spelling looks very strange now that I see it.
Tristram wrote: "Andrew,I once downloaded the "Pickwick Abroad" book on my Kindle but I found that the edition, which was not for free, contained so many spelling and layout mistakes that it was practically unrea..."
Tristram,
They have several pdf versions of the book at archive.org in case you still want to explore... :)
https://ia600200.us.archive.org/24/it...
Mod
If you think only people who live in ugly places can see beauty in math, then you must think the San Juan Islands are ugly, which shows terrible taste on your part since they're considered one of the more beautiful areas in the US.
There is a lot more beauty in Euclid than in any artificial Christmas tree.
Mod
If you think only people who live in ugly places can see beauty in math, then you must think the San Juan Isla..."
I'm not listening to you. I had to go look up who or what Euclid was, read the words "Greek mathematician, founder of geometry" and knew I should never listen to you.
Mod
I once downloaded the "Pickwick Abroad" book on my Kindle but I found that the edition, which was not for free, contained so many spelling and layout mistakes that it was ..."
Thank you, Haaze! I'll check it out.
Tristram wrote: "Thank you, Haaze! I'll check it out."Love that site...
Mod
HOW Mr. PICKWICK UNDERTOOK TO DRIVE, AND MR. WINKLE TO RIDE, AND HOW THEY BOTH DID IT
Chapter 5
Cecil Charles Aldin
1910
Text Illustrated:
It was a curious little green box on four wheels, with a low place like a wine-bin for two behind, and an elevated perch for one in front, drawn by an immense brown horse, displaying great symmetry of bone. An hostler stood near, holding by the bridle another immense horse—apparently a near relative of the animal in the chaise—ready saddled for Mr. Winkle.
‘Bless my soul!’ said Mr. Pickwick, as they stood upon the pavement while the coats were being put in. ‘Bless my soul! who’s to drive? I never thought of that.’
‘Oh! you, of course,’ said Mr. Tupman.
‘Of course,’ said Mr. Snodgrass.
‘I!’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
‘Not the slightest fear, Sir,’ interposed the hostler. ‘Warrant him quiet, Sir; a hinfant in arms might drive him.’
‘He don’t shy, does he?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘Shy, sir?-he wouldn’t shy if he was to meet a vagin-load of monkeys with their tails burned off.’
The last recommendation was indisputable. Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass got into the bin; Mr. Pickwick ascended to his perch, and deposited his feet on a floor-clothed shelf, erected beneath it for that purpose.
‘Now, shiny Villiam,’ said the hostler to the deputy hostler, ‘give the gen’lm’n the ribbons.’
Shiny Villiam’—so called, probably, from his sleek hair and oily countenance—placed the reins in Mr. Pickwick’s left hand; and the upper hostler thrust a whip into his right.
‘Wo-o!’ cried Mr. Pickwick, as the tall quadruped evinced a decided inclination to back into the coffee-room window.
‘Wo-o!’ echoed Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass, from the bin.
‘Only his playfulness, gen’lm’n,’ said the head hostler encouragingly; ‘jist kitch hold on him, Villiam.’ The deputy restrained the animal’s impetuosity, and the principal ran to assist Mr. Winkle in mounting.
‘T’other side, sir, if you please.’
‘Blowed if the gen’lm’n worn’t a-gettin’ up on the wrong side,’ whispered a grinning post-boy to the inexpressibly gratified waiter.
Mr. Winkle, thus instructed, climbed into his saddle, with about as much difficulty as he would have experienced in getting up the side of a first-rate man-of-war.
‘All right?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick, with an inward presentiment that it was all wrong.
‘All right,’ replied Mr. Winkle faintly.
‘Let ‘em go,’ cried the hostler.—‘Hold him in, sir;’ and away went the chaise, and the saddle-horse, with Mr. Pickwick on the box of the one, and Mr. Winkle on the back of the other, to the delight and gratification of the whole inn-yard.
Commentary:
Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin, was a British artist and illustrator best known for his paintings and sketches of animals, sports, and rural life. Aldin executed village scenes and rural buildings in chalk, pencil and also wash sketching. He was an enthusiastic sportsman and a Master of Fox Hounds, and many of his pictures illustrated hunting. Aldin's early influences included Randolph Caldecott and John Leech.
At the invitation of the fine genre painter, Walter Dendy Sadler Aldin stayed at Chiddingstone where he made close friends with Phil May, John Hassall and Lance Thackeray and along with them, Dudley Hardy and Tom Browne, founded the London Sketch Club. The birth of his son and daughter inspired a series of nursery pictures which together with his large sets of the Fallowfield Hunt, Bluemarket Races, Harefield Harriers and Cottesbrook Hunt prints brought him much popularity. This was enhanced by his ever expanding book and magazine illustrative work. He joined the Chelsea Arts Club and held his first exhibition in Paris in 1908. An exhibition in Paris in 1909 was received with much acclaim and extended his fame to a wider audience. He illustrated the 1910 edition of Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers.
Mod
Sorry, I can't find the artist.
Text Illustrated:
Now whether the tall horse, in the natural playfulness of his disposition, was desirous of having a little innocent recreation with Mr. Winkle, or whether it occurred to him that he could perform the journey as much to his own satisfaction without a rider as with one, are points upon which, of course, we can arrive at no definite and distinct conclusion. By whatever motives the animal was actuated, certain it is that Mr. Winkle had no sooner touched the reins, than he slipped them over his head, and darted backwards to their full length.
‘Poor fellow,’ said Mr. Winkle soothingly—‘poor fellow—good old horse.’ The ‘poor fellow’ was proof against flattery; the more Mr. Winkle tried to get nearer him, the more he sidled away; and, notwithstanding all kinds of coaxing and wheedling, there were Mr. Winkle and the horse going round and round each other for ten minutes, at the end of which time each was at precisely the same distance from the other as when they first commenced—an unsatisfactory sort of thing under any circumstances, but particularly so in a lonely road, where no assistance can be procured.
‘What am I to do?’ shouted Mr. Winkle, after the dodging had been prolonged for a considerable time. ‘What am I to do? I can’t get on him.’
‘You had better lead him till we come to a turnpike,’ replied Mr. Pickwick from the chaise.
‘But he won’t come!’ roared Mr. Winkle. ‘Do come and hold him.’
Mr. Pickwick was the very personation of kindness and humanity: he threw the reins on the horse’s back, and having descended from his seat, carefully drew the chaise into the hedge, lest anything should come along the road, and stepped back to the assistance of his distressed companion, leaving Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the vehicle.
Mod
I still can’t get used to colourized illustrations. They do, however, expand even further our gallery of pictures and allow us to broaden our visual experience.
I always enjoy the commentaries. Something to learn, have confirmed, or to correct my earlier held thoughts.
I just hope that the first illustrations never fell victim to a child with nothing to do, access to crayons, and parents with their backs turned. Yikes.
As always, thank you for providing us with such delightful material.
The Stroller’s Tale—Like several other readers, I wonder what Dickens’s motivation was in introducing this tale. It has little to do with anything that has come so far, or that comes after, and doesn’t even have much in the way of plot—it borders on being a simple vignette; 2 Nights in the Chambers of a Dying Alcoholic (and his abused family.) True, we come across quite a few tales in the course of the book, and I’m always a fan of the Arabian Nights tale-within-a-tale motif (one of my all-time favorite books is the humorous and picaresque Mason and Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon), but this one seems a bit more out of place than usual. Could it be that Dickens was already yearning to break into something in the melodramatic tragedy line? Feeling his powers, picking up speed, he dashes a bit of tragedy into the works just because he can...Again I think of the theater of the time, when even the gravest Shakespearean tragedies were boxed in by follies and humorous bits, almost like a palate cleanser between courses during a fancy dinner. Even so, there are things that rise above what you’d find in comparable tales of woe: the dying man’s notion that only a supernatural creature could tolerate what he has subjected her to, and that she is victimizing him, is a neat bit of psychological analysis—I definitely agree with Tristram on the nice Poeishness (Poesy?) of it all. The first of many persecutors in the pages of Dickens who will avoid taking blame for their actions.
I think theatrical characters—that is people involved in the theater—offer to Dickens a more grandiose form of emotion. It’s dramatic people! And they’re feeling big dramatic things! They’re manic sprites like Jingle, or Eeyores like Jemmy... I would have loved for Dickens to set an entire novel around the goings-on of a traveling theater company, or even a London theater. He acted in several amateur productions for charity, and co-wrote with Wilkie Collins a drama involving something to do with Arctic exploration which...and I may be confusing this with another performance of his...he was asked to show to Queen Victoria.
Apparently the subject of Jemmy’s tale was based on J.S. Grimaldi, son of a famous 18th/19th century clown in London, Joseph Grimaldi. The elder Grimaldi pushed his son into the clowning biz but, regrettably, the son lacked the abilities of the father, and fell into drink, decay, delirium tremens and death.
Isn’t it interesting how Dickens comes in and out of his ironic, detached way of treating Mr. Pickwick and his friends? “Some lingering irritability appeared to find its way into Mr. Winkle’s bosom, occasioned by the temporary abstraction of his coat—though it is scarcely reasonable to suppose, that so slight a circumstance can have excited even a passing feeling of anger in a Pickwickian breast.”
It’s as though Dickens gets more and more attached to them as the tale progresses, and then suddenly thinks “Oh yes—it’s ironic, a parody, these men are all to be made ridiculous!” ....and we get statements like the above.