The Pickwick Papers
There is no disguising the fact that Mr. Pickwick felt very low-spirited
and uncomfortable--not for lack of society, for the prison was very
full, and a bottle of wine would at once have purchased the utmost good-
fellowship of a few choice spirits, without any more formal ceremony of
introduction; but he was alone in the coarse, vulgar crowd, and felt the
depression of spirits and sinking of heart, naturally consequent on the
reflection that he was cooped and caged up, without a prospect of
liberation. As to the idea of releasing himself by ministering to the
sharpness of Dodson & Fogg, it never for an instant entered his
thoughts.
In this frame of mind he turned again into the coffee-room gallery, and
walked slowly to and fro. The place was intolerably dirty, and the smell
of tobacco smoke perfectly suffocating. There was a perpetual slamming
and banging of doors as the people went in and out; and the noise of
their voices and footsteps echoed and re-echoed through the passages
constantly. A young woman, with a child in her arms, who seemed scarcely
able to crawl, from emaciation and misery, was walking up and down the
passage in conversation with her husband, who had no other place to see
her in. As they passed Mr. Pickwick, he could hear the female sob
bitterly; and once she burst into such a passion of grief, that she was
compelled to lean against the wall for support, while the man took the
child in his arms, and tried to soothe her.
Mr. Pickwick’s heart was really too full to bear it, and he went
upstairs to bed.
Now, although the warder’s room was a very uncomfortable one (being, in
every point of decoration and convenience, several hundred degrees
inferior to the common infirmary of a county jail), it had at present
the merit of being wholly deserted save by Mr. Pickwick himself. So, he
sat down at the foot of his little iron bedstead, and began to wonder
how much a year the warder made out of the dirty room. Having satisfied
himself, by mathematical calculation, that the apartment was about equal
in annual value to the freehold of a small street in the suburbs of
London, he took to wondering what possible temptation could have induced
a dingy-looking fly that was crawling over his pantaloons, to come into
a close prison, when he had the choice of so many airy situations--a
course of meditation which led him to the irresistible conclusion that
the insect was insane. After settling this point, he began to be
conscious that he was getting sleepy; whereupon he took his nightcap out
of the pocket in which he had had the precaution to stow it in the
morning, and, leisurely undressing himself, got into bed and fell
asleep.
‘Bravo! Heel over toe--cut and shuffle--pay away at it, Zephyr! I’m
smothered if the opera house isn’t your proper hemisphere. Keep it up!
Hooray!’ These expressions, delivered in a most boisterous tone, and
accompanied with loud peals of laughter, roused Mr. Pickwick from one of
those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half-hour, seem to
the sleeper to have been protracted for three weeks or a month.
The voice had no sooner ceased than the room was shaken with such
violence that the windows rattled in their frames, and the bedsteads
trembled again. Mr. Pickwick started up, and remained for some minutes
fixed in mute astonishment at the scene before him.
On the floor of the room, a man in a broad-skirted green coat, with
corduroy knee-smalls and gray cotton stockings, was performing the most
popular steps of a hornpipe, with a slang and burlesque caricature of
grace and lightness, which, combined with the very appropriate character
of his costume, was inexpressibly absurd. Another man, evidently very
drunk, who had probably been tumbled into bed by his companions, was
sitting up between the sheets, warbling as much as he could recollect of
a comic song, with the most intensely sentimental feeling and
expression; while a third, seated on one of the bedsteads, was
applauding both performers with the air of a profound connoisseur, and
encouraging them by such ebullitions of feeling as had already roused
Mr. Pickwick from his sleep.
This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never
can be seen in full perfection but in such places--they may be met with,
in an imperfect state, occasionally about stable-yards and Public-
houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds,
which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature
for the sole purpose of rearing them.
He was a tall fellow, with an olive complexion, long dark hair, and very
thick bushy whiskers meeting under his chin. He wore no neckerchief, as
he had been playing rackets all day, and his open shirt collar displayed
their full luxuriance. On his head he wore one of the common
eighteenpenny French skull-caps, with a gaudy tassel dangling therefrom,
very happily in keeping with a common fustian coat. His legs, which,
being long, were afflicted with weakness, graced a pair of Oxford-
mixture trousers, made to show the full symmetry of those limbs. Being
somewhat negligently braced, however, and, moreover, but imperfectly
buttoned, they fell in a series of not the most graceful folds over a
pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to display a pair of very soiled
white stockings. There was a rakish, vagabond smartness, and a kind of
boastful rascality, about the whole man, that was worth a mine of gold.
This figure was the first to perceive that Mr. Pickwick was looking on;
upon which he winked to the Zephyr, and entreated him, with mock
gravity, not to wake the gentleman.
‘Why, bless the gentleman’s honest heart and soul!’ said the Zephyr,
turning round and affecting the extremity of surprise; ‘the gentleman is
awake. Hem, Shakespeare! How do you do, Sir? How is Mary and Sarah, sir?
and the dear old lady at home, Sir? Will you have the kindness to put my
compliments into the first little parcel you’re sending that way, sir,
and say that I would have sent ‘em before, only I was afraid they might
be broken in the wagon, sir?’
‘Don’t overwhelm the gentlemen with ordinary civilities when you see
he’s anxious to have something to drink,’ said the gentleman with the
whiskers, with a jocose air. ‘Why don’t you ask the gentleman what he’ll
take?’
‘Dear me, I quite forgot,’ replied the other. ‘What will you take, sir?
Will you take port wine, sir, or sherry wine, sir? I can recommend the
ale, sir; or perhaps you’d like to taste the porter, sir? Allow me to
have the felicity of hanging up your nightcap, Sir.’
With this, the speaker snatched that article of dress from Mr.
Pickwick’s head, and fixed it in a twinkling on that of the drunken man,
who, firmly impressed with the belief that he was delighting a numerous
assembly, continued to hammer away at the comic song in the most
melancholy strains imaginable.
Taking a man’s nightcap from his brow by violent means, and adjusting it
on the head of an unknown gentleman, of dirty exterior, however
ingenious a witticism in itself, is unquestionably one of those which
come under the denomination of practical jokes. Viewing the matter
precisely in this light, Mr. Pickwick, without the slightest intimation
of his purpose, sprang vigorously out of bed, struck the Zephyr so smart
a blow in the chest as to deprive him of a considerable portion of the
commodity which sometimes bears his name, and then, recapturing his
nightcap, boldly placed himself in an attitude of defence.
‘Now,’ said Mr. Pickwick, gasping no less from excitement than from the
expenditure of so much energy, ‘come on--both of you--both of you!’ With
this liberal invitation the worthy gentleman communicated a revolving
motion to his clenched fists, by way of appalling his antagonists with a
display of science.
It might have been Mr. Pickwick’s very unexpected gallantry, or it might
have been the complicated manner in which he had got himself out of bed,
and fallen all in a mass upon the hornpipe man, that touched his
adversaries. Touched they were; for, instead of then and there making an
attempt to commit man-slaughter, as Mr. Pickwick implicitly believed
they would have done, they paused, stared at each other a short time,
and finally laughed outright.
‘Well, you’re a trump, and I like you all the better for it,’ said the
Zephyr. ‘Now jump into bed again, or you’ll catch the rheumatics. No
malice, I hope?’ said the man, extending a hand the size of the yellow
clump of fingers which sometimes swings over a glover’s door.
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Pickwick, with great alacrity; for, now that
the excitement was over, he began to feel rather cool about the legs.
‘Allow me the H-onour,’ said the gentleman with the whiskers, presenting
his dexter hand, and aspirating the h.
‘With much pleasure, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick; and having executed a very
long and solemn shake, he got into bed again.
‘My name is Smangle, sir,’ said the man with the whiskers.
‘Oh,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Mine is Mivins,’ said the man in the stockings.
‘I am delighted to hear it, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Hem,’ coughed Mr. Smangle.
‘Did you speak, sir?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘No, I did not, sir,’ said Mr. Smangle.
All this was very genteel and pleasant; and, to make matters still more
comfortable, Mr. Smangle assured Mr. Pickwick a great many more times
that he entertained a very high respect for the feelings of a gentleman;
which sentiment, indeed, did him infinite credit, as he could be in no
wise supposed to understand them.
‘Are you going through the court, sir?’ inquired Mr. Smangle.
‘Through the what?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Through the court--Portugal Street--the Court for Relief of--you know.’
‘Oh, no,’ replied Mr. Pickwick. ‘No, I am not.’
‘Going out, perhaps?’ suggested Mr. Mivins.
‘I fear not,’ replied Mr. Pickwick. ‘I refuse to pay some damages, and
am here in consequence.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Smangle, ‘paper has been my ruin.’
‘A stationer, I presume, Sir?’ said Mr. Pickwick innocently.
‘Stationer! No, no; confound and curse me! Not so low as that. No trade.
When I say paper, I mean bills.’
‘Oh, you use the word in that sense. I see,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Damme! A gentleman must expect reverses,’ said Smangle. ‘What of that?
Here am I in the Fleet Prison. Well; good. What then? I’m none the worse
for that, am I?’
‘Not a bit,’ replied Mr. Mivins. And he was quite right; for, so far
from Mr. Smangle being any the worse for it, he was something the
better, inasmuch as to qualify himself for the place, he had attained
gratuitous possession of certain articles of jewellery, which, long
before that, had found their way to the pawnbroker’s.
‘Well; but come,’ said Mr. Smangle; ‘this is dry work. Let’s rinse our
mouths with a drop of burnt sherry; the last-comer shall stand it,
Mivins shall fetch it, and I’ll help to drink it. That’s a fair and
gentlemanlike division of labour, anyhow. Curse me!’
Unwilling to hazard another quarrel, Mr. Pickwick gladly assented to the
proposition, and consigned the money to Mr. Mivins, who, as it was
nearly eleven o’clock, lost no time in repairing to the coffee-room on
his errand.
‘I say,’ whispered Smangle, the moment his friend had left the room;
‘what did you give him?’
‘Half a sovereign,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘He’s a devilish pleasant gentlemanly dog,’ said Mr. Smangle;--‘infernal
pleasant. I don’t know anybody more so; but--’ Here Mr. Smangle stopped
short, and shook his head dubiously.
‘You don’t think there is any probability of his appropriating the money
to his own use?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Oh, no! Mind, I don’t say that; I expressly say that he’s a devilish
gentlemanly fellow,’ said Mr. Smangle. ‘But I think, perhaps, if