Predatory Social Institutions Theme Analysis

‘You have seen much trouble, Sir,’ said Mr Pickwick, compassionately.

‘I have,’ said the dismal man, hurriedly; ‘I have. More than those who see me now would believe possible.’ He paused for an instant, and then said, abruptly,

‘Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace?’

‘God bless me, no!’ replied Mr Pickwick, edging a little from the balustrade, as the possibility of the dismal man’s tipping him over, by way of experiment, occurred to him rather forcibly.

‘I have thought so, often,’ said the dismal man, without noticing the action. ‘The calm, cool water seems to me to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes for ever.’

‘That depends – ’ said Mrs Bardell, approaching the duster very near to Mr Pickwick’s elbow, which was planted on the table; ‘that depends a good deal upon the person, you know, Mr Pickwick; and whether it’s a saving and careful person, Sir.’

‘That’s very true,’ said Mr Pickwick, ‘but the person I have in my eye (here he looked very hard at Mrs Bardell) I think possesses these qualities; and has, moreover, a considerable knowledge of the world, and a great deal of sharpness, Mrs Bardell; which may be of material use to me.’

‘La, Mr Pickwick,’ said Mrs Bardell; the crimson rising to her cap-border again.

‘I do,’ said Mr Pickwick, growing energetic, as was his wont in speaking of a subject which interested him, ‘I do, indeed; and to tell you the truth, Mrs Bardell, I have made up my mind.’

‘Dear me, Sir,’ exclaimed Mrs Bardell.’

It appears, then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town – the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting, Town-Hall, fair, or market, disputes and high words arose between them. With these dissensions it is almost superfluous to say that every thing in Eatanswill was made a party-question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity.

‘Is everything ready?’ said the honourable Samuel Slumkey to Mr Perker.

‘Everything, my dear Sir,’ was the little man’s reply.

‘Nothing has been omitted, I hope?’ said the honourable Samuel Slumkey.

‘Nothing has been left undone, my dear Sir – nothing whatever. There are twenty washed men at the street door for you to shake hands with; and six children in arms that you’re to pat on the head, and inquire the age of; be particular about the children, my dear Sir, – it has always a great effect, that sort of thing.’

‘Can I view thee panting, lying

On thy stomach, without sighing;

Can I unmoved see thee dying

On a log

Expiring frog!’

‘Beautiful!’ said Mr Pickwick.

‘Fine,’ said Mr Leo Hunter; ‘so simple.’

‘Very,’ said Mr Pickwick.

In the ground-floor front of a dingy house, at the very furthest end of Freeman’s Court, Cornhill, sat the four clerks of Messrs Dodson and Fogg, two of His Majesty’s Attorneys of the Courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas at Westminster, and solicitors of the High Court of Chancery—the aforesaid clerks catching about as favourable glimpses of Heaven’s light and Heaven’s sun, in the course of their daily labours, as a man might hope to do, were he placed at the bottom of a reasonably deep well; and without the opportunity of perceiving the stars in the day-time, which the latter secluded situation affords.

The clerks’ office of Messrs Dodson and Fogg was a dark, mouldy, earthy-smelling room, with a high wainscotted partition to screen the clerks from the vulgar gaze: a couple of old wooden chairs, a very loud-ticking clock, an almanack, an umbrella-stand, a row of hat pegs, and a few shelves, on which were deposited several ticketed bundles of dirty papers, some old deal boxes with paper labels, and sundry decayed stone ink bottles of various shapes and sizes.

“Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers, Sir,’ said Dodson. ‘Pray do, Sir, if you feel disposed – now pray do, Sir.’

‘I do,’ said Mr Pickwick. ‘You are swindlers.’

‘Very good,’ said Dodson. ‘You can hear down there, I hope, Mr Wicks.’

‘Oh yes, Sir,’ said Wicks.

‘You had better come up a step or two higher, if you can’t,’ added Mr Fogg.

‘Go on, Sir; do go on. You had better call us thieves, Sir; or perhaps you would like to assault one of us. Pray do it, Sir, if you would; we will not make the smallest resistance. Pray do it, Sir.”

‘He is a vagabond, Mr. Jinks,’ said the magistrate. ‘He is a vagabond on his own statement,—is he not, Mr. Jinks?’

‘Certainly, Sir.’

‘Then I’ll commit him—I’ll commit him as such,’ said Mr. Nupkins.

‘This is a wery impartial country for justice, ‘said Sam.’ There ain’t a magistrate goin’ as don’t commit himself twice as he commits other people.’

‘It’s only a subpœna in Bardell and Pickwick on behalf of the plaintiff,’ replied Jackson, singling out one of the slips of paper, and producing a shilling from his waistcoat-pocket. ‘It’ll come on, in the settens after Term; fourteenth of Febooary, we expect; we’ve marked it a special jury cause, and it’s only ten down the paper. That’s yours, Mr Snodgrass.’ As Jackson said this, he presented the parchment before the eyes of Mr Snodgrass, and slipped the paper and the shilling into his hand.

‘I wonder what the foreman of the jury, whoever he’ll be, has got for breakfast,’ said Mr Snodgrass, by way of keeping up a conversation on the eventful morning of the fourteenth of February.

‘Ah!’ said Perker, ‘I hope he’s got a good one.’

‘Why so?’ inquired Mr Pickwick.

‘Highly important – very important, my dear Sir,’ replied Perker. ‘A good, contented, well-breakfasted juryman, is a capital thing to get hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen, my dear Sir, always find for the plaintiff.’

‘Of this man Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen, the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness, and of systematic villany.’

Here Mr Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence for some time, gave a violent start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Sergeant Buzfuz, in the august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to his mind. An admonitory gesture from Perker restrained him, and he listened to the learned gentleman’s continuation with a look of indignation, which contrasted forcibly with the admiring faces of Mrs Cluppins and Mrs Sanders.

‘No, Perker,’ said Mr Pickwick, with great seriousness of manner, ‘my friends here, have endeavoured to dissuade me from this determination, but without avail. I shall employ myself as usual, until the opposite party have the power of issuing a legal process of execution against me; and if they are vile enough to avail themselves of it, and to arrest my person, I shall yield myself up with perfect cheerfulness and content of heart. When can they do this?’

Although this custom has been abolished, and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers by; but we still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow-prisoners.

Mr Pickwick felt a great deal too much touched by the warmth of Sam’s attachment, to be able to exhibit any manifestation of anger or displeasure at the precipitate course he had adopted, in voluntarily consigning himself to a debtors’ prison for an indefinite period. The only point on which he persevered in demanding any explanation, was, the name of Sam’s detaining creditor, but this Mr Weller as perseveringly withheld.

At three o’clock that afternoon, Mr Pickwick took a last look at his little room, and made his way as well as he could, through the throng of debtors who pressed eagerly forward to shake him by the hand, until he reached the lodge steps. He turned here to look about him, and his eye lightened as he did so. In all the crowd of wan emaciated faces, he saw not one which was not the happier for his sympathy and charity.

In compliance with this unceremonious invitation, Jingle and Job walked into the room, but, seeing Mr Pickwick, stopped short in some confusion.

‘Well,’ said Perker, ‘don’t you know that gentleman?’

‘Good reason to,’ replied Jingle, stepping forward. ‘Mr Pickwick – deepest obligations – life preserver – made a man of me – you shall never repent it, Sir.’

‘I am happy to hear you say so,’ said Mr Pickwick. ‘You look much better.’