Pickwickian Studies

e Old

gaiety of the nation. The scenes at the old city are more minute and vivid than any yet offered. But, if it owe much to Boz, it repaid him by furnishing him wi

Here, many years ago, at the time of the story, was "Pickwick House, the seat of C. N. Loscombe, Esq.," and also "Pickwick Lodge," where dwelt Captain Fenton. Boz had never seen or heard of such places, but all the same they indirectly furnished him with the name. A mail-coach guard found an infant on the road in this place, and ga

that part of the door on which the proprietor's name usually appears, and there, sure enough, in gilt letters of a goodly size, was the magic name of Pickwick. "Dear me," said Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence, "what a very extraordinary thing!" "Yes; but that ain't all," said Sam, again directing his master's attention to the coach-door. "Not content with writin' up 'Pickwick,' the

s, assemblies, and sedans. His own connection with the place is a personal, and a very interesting one. He was there in 1835 on election business hurrying after Lord John Russell, all over the country, to report his speeches-a young fellow of three and twenty, full of "dash," "go," and readiness of resource, of

adian Circus. There is a tone of mournful grandeur about it-something forlorn. Had it, in some freak of fashion, been abandoned, and suffered, for a time at least, to go to neglect and be somewhat overgrown with moss and foliage, it would pass for some grand Roman ruin. There is a solemn, greyish gloom about it; the grass in the enclosure is rank, long, and very green. Pulteney Street, too: what a state and nobility there is about it! So wide and so spacious; the houses with an air of grand solidity, with no carvings or frittering work, but relying on their fine lines and proportion. To lo

he "Historic Houses of Bath;" and Mr. T. Sturge Cotterell has prepared a singularly interesting map of Bath, in which all the spots

the old mail-coach passengers in his telling ghost story-the sombre grey of the walls, the brightness of the windows: these elements join to leave an extraordinary impression. The houses on these Parades are charming from their solid proportions, adapted, as it were, to the breadth of the Parade. Execrable, by the way, are the modern attempts seen side by side; feeble and incapable, not attempting any expression at all. There is a row of meag

Room and As

-room, with the ambitious hotel and the solemn Abbey rising solemnly behind. Then there is the delightful Promenade opposite, under the arcades-a genuine bit of old fashion-under whose shadow the capricious Fanny Burney had often strolled. Everything about this latter conglomeration

w Boz and the Sketches have receded and are little thought of. Boz and Pickwick go far better together than do Pickwick and Dickens. There is an old-fashioned solemnity over this Pump-room which speaks of the old classical taste over a hundred years ago. How quaint and suitable the inscription, "'Αριστον yεν υδορ," in faded gilt characters. Within it is one st

Bath. One looks on it with a mysterious reverence: it seems charged with all sorts of memories of old, bygone state. For here all the rank and fashion of Bath used to make its way of Assembly nights. Many years ago, there was here given a morning concert to which I found my way, mainly for the purpose of calling up ghostly memories of the Thrales, and Doctor Johnson, and Miss Burney, and, above all, of Mr. Pickwick. Though the music was the immortal "Passion" of Bach, my eyes were travelling all the while from one piece of faded rococo work and decoration. Boz never fails to secure the tone of any strange place he is describing. We all, for instance, have that pleased, elated feeling on the first morning after our arrival over night at a new place-the general brightness, surprise, and air of novelty. We are willing to be pleased with everything, and pass from object to object with enjoyment. Now all this is di

the Circus in Mr. Winkle's escapade. It will be remembered that Boz was rather particular about this picture, and suggested some minute alterations. Bantam, the M.C., or "the Grand Master" as Boz oddly calls him, was drawn from life from an eccentric functionary named Jervoise. I have never been quite able to understand his odd hypothesis about Mr. Pickwick being "the gentleman who had the waters bottled and sent to Clapham." But how characteristic the dialogue on the occasion! It will be seen that this M.C. cannot credit the notion of anyone of such importance as Mr. Pickwick "never having been in Ba-ath." His ludicrous and absurd, "Not bad-not bad! Good-good. He, he, re-markable!" showed how it struck him. A man of such a position, too; it was incredible. With a delightful sense of this theory, he began: "It is long-very long, Mr. Pickwick, since you drank the waters-it appears an age." Mr. Pickwick protested

ay so," said

Pickwick. He'll speak to me." Particular aw

possible. "Stay in the tea room and take your sixpennorths." Mr. Dowler's advice was after a regulation "that everyone admitted to the tea-rooms on dress nights shall pay 6d. for tea." The M.C.'s visit to Mr. Pickwick was a r

nce, the writer went down to the good old city for the pleasant duty of "preaching Pickwick," as he had done in a good many places. There is an antique building or temple not far from where an old society of the place-the Bath Literary and Scientific Institute-holds its meetings, and here, to a crowded gathering under the presidency of Mr. Austen King, the subject was gone into. It was delightful for the Pickwickian stranger to meet so appreciati

o. 14 was his house, and this, it was ascertained, was the actual residence of the living M.C. How bold, therefore, of Boz to send up Sam to the very Square! Everyone, too, knew Mrs. Craddock's house in the Circus-at least it was one of two. It was N

greengrocer's shop," and is firmly believed to be the scene of "the Swarry" on the substantial ground that the Bath footmen used to assemble here regularly as at their club. The change from a public to a greengrocer's scarcely affects the point. The uniforms of these gentlemen's gentlemen were really splendid, as we learn from the text-rich plushes, velvets, gold lace, canes, &c. There is no exaggeration in this, for natives of Bath have assured me they can recall similar displays at the fashionable church-of Sundays-when these noble creatures, arrayed gorgeously as "generals

inkle's escapade here is extraordinarily vivid, and so protracted, while Mrs. Dowler was waiting in her sedan for the door to be opened, that it has the effect of imprinting the very air, look

he drawing-room window "just as Mr. Winkle was rushing into the chair." She ran and called Mr. Dowler, who rushed in just as Mr. Pickwick threw up the other window, "when the first object that met the gaze of both was Mr. Winkle bolting into the sedan chair" into which he had bolted a minute before. The late Charles Dickens the younger, in the notes to his father's writings, affects to have discovered an oversight in the account of the scene in the Circus. It is described how he "took to his heels and tore round the Crescent,

n expense or at that of Mr. Dowler? If Dowler were supposed to have gone in pursuit of him, then Mr. Winkle must have fled, and if he were supposed to have gone to seek

e, perform. The Bath Theatre is in the Saw Close, next door to Beau Nash's picturesque old house. The old grey front, with its blackened mouldings and sunk windows, is still there; but a deep vestibule, or entrance, with offices has been built out in front, which, as it were, thrusts the old wall back-an uncongenial mixture. Within, the house has been reconstructed, as

Boz a

" And yet, what ghostly recollections must have come back on him as he walked those streets, or as he passed by into Walcot, the Saracen's Head, where he had put up in those old days, full of brightness, ardour, and enthusiasm; but not yet the famous Boz! Bath folk set down this jaundiced view of their town to a sort of pique at the comparative failure of the Guild dramatic performance at the Old Assembly Rooms, w

ere that the image of his "Little Nell" first suggested itself. The enthusiastic Landor used, in his "tumultuous" fashion, to proclaim that he would set fire to the house and burn it to the grou

y." And such company! "Brilliant eyes, lighted up with pleasurable expectation, gleamed from every side, and, look where you would, some exquisite form glided gracefully through the throng, and was no sooner lost than it was replaced by another as dainty and bewitching"; the warmth of which description showing how delighted was the young man with all he saw. But how did he secure admission? For it was a highly fashionable company; there were vouchers and tickets to be secured. But these were slight difficulties for our brilliant "pushful" young man. He could make his way, and his mission found him interest. He certainly saw as mu

is a yellow, well-worn little building. And you enter through darkened tunnels, as it were, cut through the house, coming into a strange yard of evident antiquity, with a steep, ladder-like flight of stone steps that leads up to a window much like the old Canongate houses. Here, then, it was that Boz put up, and here are preserved traditions and relics of his stay. One of the tales is th

drawer of the inkstand to put it carefully away." How particular-how real all this is! This it is that gives the living force to the book, and a persuasion-irresistible almost-that it is all about some living person. I have often wondered how it is that this book of Boz's has such an astounding power of development, such a fertility in engendering other books, and what is the secret of it. Scott's astonishing Waverley series, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," Boz's own "Nicholas Nickleby," "Oliver Twist," in fact, not one of the whole series save "the immortal 'Pickwick'" has produced anything in the way of books or commentaries. I believe it is really owing to this. Boz was a great admirer of Boswell's equally immortal boo

n taken out and published separately. They were no doubt written for magazines, and were lying by him, but his Bath story-"The True Legend of Prince Bladud"-was written specially. It is quite in the vein of Elia's Roast Pig story, and very gaily told. He had probably been reading some local guide-book, with the mythical account of Prince Bladud, and this suggested to him his own humorous version. At the close, he sets Mr. Pickwick a-yawning several times, who, when he had arrived at the end of this little manuscript-which certainly could not have been compressed into "a couple of sheets of

the most busy street in Bristol; but it was taken down in 1864, and the present Wiltshire Bank erected on the site. Mr. Pickwick broke off his stay at Bath somewhat too abruptly; he left it and all its festivities on this sudden chase after Winkle. But he may have had a reason. Nothing is more wonderful than Boz's propriety in dealing with his incidents, a propriety that is really instinctive. Everything falls out in the correct, natural way. For instance, Mr. Pickwick having received such a shock at the Bush-the announcement of the Bardell action-was s

his was a passage from a biography of some one that had lived? How carefully minute and yet how naturally the time is acco