The Pickwick Papers
Man is but mortal; and there is a point beyond which human courage
cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant
on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and--we will not
say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because
Mr. Pickwick’s figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat--
he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him; so
quickly, indeed, that he did not perceive the awkwardness of his
situation, to the full extent, until too late.
The opposite troops, whose falling-in had perplexed Mr. Pickwick a few
seconds before, were drawn up to repel the mimic attack of the sham
besiegers of the citadel; and the consequence was that Mr. Pickwick and
his two companions found themselves suddenly inclosed between two lines
of great length, the one advancing at a rapid pace, and the other firmly
waiting the collision in hostile array.
‘Hoi!’ shouted the officers of the advancing line.
‘Get out of the way!’ cried the officers of the stationary one.
‘Where are we to go to?’ screamed the agitated Pickwickians.
‘Hoi--hoi--hoi!’ was the only reply. There was a moment of intense
bewilderment, a heavy tramp of footsteps, a violent concussion, a
smothered laugh; the half-dozen regiments were half a thousand yards
off, and the soles of Mr. Pickwick’s boots were elevated in air.
Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle had each performed a compulsory somerset
with remarkable agility, when the first object that met the eyes of the
latter as he sat on the ground, staunching with a yellow silk
handkerchief the stream of life which issued from his nose, was his
venerated leader at some distance off, running after his own hat, which
was gambolling playfully away in perspective.
There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so
much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable
commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat. A vast deal of
coolness, and a peculiar degree of judgment, are requisite in catching a
hat. A man must not be precipitate, or he runs over it; he must not rush
into the opposite extreme, or he loses it altogether. The best way is to
keep gently up with the object of pursuit, to be wary and cautious, to
watch your opportunity well, get gradually before it, then make a rapid
dive, seize it by the crown, and stick it firmly on your head; smiling
pleasantly all the time, as if you thought it as good a joke as anybody
else.
There was a fine gentle wind, and Mr. Pickwick’s hat rolled sportively
before it. The wind puffed, and Mr. Pickwick puffed, and the hat rolled
over and over as merrily as a lively porpoise in a strong tide: and on
it might have rolled, far beyond Mr. Pickwick’s reach, had not its
course been providentially stopped, just as that gentleman was on the
point of resigning it to its fate.
Mr. Pickwick, we say, was completely exhausted, and about to give up the
chase, when the hat was blown with some violence against the wheel of a
carriage, which was drawn up in a line with half a dozen other vehicles
on the spot to which his steps had been directed. Mr. Pickwick,
perceiving his advantage, darted briskly forward, secured his property,
planted it on his head, and paused to take breath. He had not been
stationary half a minute, when he heard his own name eagerly pronounced
by a voice, which he at once recognised as Mr. Tupman’s, and, looking
upwards, he beheld a sight which filled him with surprise and pleasure.
In an open barouche, the horses of which had been taken out, the better
to accommodate it to the crowded place, stood a stout old gentleman, in
a blue coat and bright buttons, corduroy breeches and top-boots, two
young ladies in scarfs and feathers, a young gentleman apparently
enamoured of one of the young ladies in scarfs and feathers, a lady of
doubtful age, probably the aunt of the aforesaid, and Mr. Tupman, as
easy and unconcerned as if he had belonged to the family from the first
moments of his infancy. Fastened up behind the barouche was a hamper of
spacious dimensions--one of those hampers which always awakens in a
contemplative mind associations connected with cold fowls, tongues, and
bottles of wine--and on the box sat a fat and red-faced boy, in a state
of somnolency, whom no speculative observer could have regarded for an
instant without setting down as the official dispenser of the contents
of the before-mentioned hamper, when the proper time for their
consumption should arrive.
Mr. Pickwick had bestowed a hasty glance on these interesting objects,
when he was again greeted by his faithful disciple.
‘Pickwick--Pickwick,’ said Mr. Tupman; ‘come up here. Make haste.’
‘Come along, Sir. Pray, come up,’ said the stout gentleman. ‘Joe!--damn
that boy, he’s gone to sleep again.--Joe, let down the steps.’ The fat
boy rolled slowly off the box, let down the steps, and held the carriage
door invitingly open. Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle came up at the
moment.
‘Room for you all, gentlemen,’ said the stout man. ‘Two inside, and one
out. Joe, make room for one of these gentlemen on the box. Now, Sir,
come along;’ and the stout gentleman extended his arm, and pulled first
Mr. Pickwick, and then Mr. Snodgrass, into the barouche by main force.
Mr. Winkle mounted to the box, the fat boy waddled to the same perch,
and fell fast asleep instantly.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the stout man, ‘very glad to see you. Know you
very well, gentlemen, though you mayn’t remember me. I spent some
ev’nin’s at your club last winter--picked up my friend Mr. Tupman here
this morning, and very glad I was to see him. Well, Sir, and how are
you? You do look uncommon well, to be sure.’
Mr. Pickwick acknowledged the compliment, and cordially shook hands with
the stout gentleman in the top-boots.
‘Well, and how are you, sir?’ said the stout gentleman, addressing Mr.
Snodgrass with paternal anxiety. ‘Charming, eh? Well, that’s right--
that’s right. And how are you, sir (to Mr. Winkle)? Well, I am glad to
hear you say you are well; very glad I am, to be sure. My daughters,
gentlemen--my gals these are; and that’s my sister, Miss Rachael Wardle.
She’s a Miss, she is; and yet she ain’t a Miss--eh, Sir, eh?’ And the
stout gentleman playfully inserted his elbow between the ribs of Mr.
Pickwick, and laughed very heartily.
‘Lor, brother!’ said Miss Wardle, with a deprecating smile.
‘True, true,’ said the stout gentleman; ‘no one can deny it. Gentlemen,
I beg your pardon; this is my friend Mr. Trundle. And now you all know
each other, let’s be comfortable and happy, and see what’s going
forward; that’s what I say.’ So the stout gentleman put on his
spectacles, and Mr. Pickwick pulled out his glass, and everybody stood
up in the carriage, and looked over somebody else’s shoulder at the
evolutions of the military.
Astounding evolutions they were, one rank firing over the heads of
another rank, and then running away; and then the other rank firing over
the heads of another rank, and running away in their turn; and then
forming squares, with officers in the centre; and then descending the
trench on one side with scaling-ladders, and ascending it on the other
again by the same means; and knocking down barricades of baskets, and
behaving in the most gallant manner possible. Then there was such a
ramming down of the contents of enormous guns on the battery, with
instruments like magnified mops; such a preparation before they were let
off, and such an awful noise when they did go, that the air resounded
with the screams of ladies. The young Misses Wardle were so frightened,
that Mr. Trundle was actually obliged to hold one of them up in the
carriage, while Mr. Snodgrass supported the other; and Mr. Wardle’s
sister suffered under such a dreadful state of nervous alarm, that Mr.
Tupman found it indispensably necessary to put his arm round her waist,
to keep her up at all. Everybody was excited, except the fat boy, and he
slept as soundly as if the roaring of cannon were his ordinary lullaby.
‘Joe, Joe!’ said the stout gentleman, when the citadel was taken, and
the besiegers and besieged sat down to dinner. ‘Damn that boy, he’s gone
to sleep again. Be good enough to pinch him, sir--in the leg, if you
please; nothing else wakes him--thank you. Undo the hamper, Joe.’
The fat boy, who had been effectually roused by the compression of a
portion of his leg between the finger and thumb of Mr. Winkle, rolled
off the box once again, and proceeded to unpack the hamper with more
expedition than could have been expected from his previous inactivity.
‘Now we must sit close,’ said the stout gentleman. After a great many
jokes about squeezing the ladies’ sleeves, and a vast quantity of
blushing at sundry jocose proposals, that the ladies should sit in the
gentlemen’s laps, the whole party were stowed down in the barouche; and
the stout gentleman proceeded to hand the things from the fat boy (who
had mounted up behind for the purpose) into the carriage.
‘Now, Joe, knives and forks.’ The knives and forks were handed in, and
the ladies and gentlemen inside, and Mr. Winkle on the box, were each
furnished with those useful instruments.
‘Plates, Joe, plates.’ A similar process employed in the distribution of
the crockery.
‘Now, Joe, the fowls. Damn that boy; he’s gone to sleep again. Joe!
Joe!’ (Sundry taps on the head with a stick, and the fat boy, with some
difficulty, roused from his lethargy.) ‘Come, hand in the eatables.’
There was something in the sound of the last word which roused the
unctuous boy. He jumped up, and the leaden eyes which twinkled behind
his mountainous cheeks leered horribly upon the food as he unpacked it
from the basket.
‘Now make haste,’ said Mr. Wardle; for the fat boy was hanging fondly
over a capon, which he seemed wholly unable to part with. The boy sighed
deeply, and, bestowing an ardent gaze upon its plumpness, unwillingly
consigned it to his master.
‘That’s right--look sharp. Now the tongue--now the pigeon pie. Take care
of that veal and ham--mind the lobsters--take the salad out of the
cloth--give me the dressing.’ Such were the hurried orders which issued
from the lips of Mr. Wardle, as he handed in the different articles
described, and placed dishes in everybody’s hands, and on everybody’s
knees, in endless number.
‘Now ain’t this capital?’ inquired that jolly personage, when the work
of destruction had commenced.
‘Capital!’ said Mr. Winkle, who was carving a fowl on the box.
‘Glass of wine?’
‘With the greatest pleasure.’
‘You’d better have a bottle to yourself up there, hadn’t you?’
‘You’re very good.’
‘Joe!’
‘Yes, Sir.’ (He wasn’t asleep this time, having just succeeded in
abstracting a veal patty.)
‘Bottle of wine to the gentleman on the box. Glad to see you, Sir.’
‘Thank’ee.’ Mr. Winkle emptied his glass, and placed the bottle on the
coach-box, by his side.
‘Will you permit me to have the pleasure, Sir?’ said Mr. Trundle to Mr.
Winkle.
‘With great pleasure,’ replied Mr. Winkle to Mr. Trundle, and then the
two gentlemen took wine, after which they took a glass of wine round,
ladies and all.
‘How dear Emily is flirting with the strange gentleman,’ whispered the
spinster aunt, with true spinster-aunt-like envy, to her brother, Mr.
Wardle.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said the jolly old gentleman; ‘all very natural, I
dare say--nothing unusual. Mr. Pickwick, some wine, Sir?’ Mr. Pickwick,
who had been deeply investigating the interior of the pigeon-pie,
readily assented.
‘Emily, my dear,’ said the spinster aunt, with a patronising air, ‘don’t
talk so loud, love.’
‘Lor, aunt!’
‘Aunt and the little old gentleman want to have it all to themselves, I