Characters in The Pickwick Papers
Chapter Twenty-Six
Syllabus topic 1.3, "The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens"
Pages 132 to 135 of 406
In one line
Pickwick is an innocent who learns what the world is and refuses to be changed by it; Sam Weller is the shrewdness Pickwick lacks; Mrs Bardell is a woman who misunderstands one conversation and is destroyed by professionals; and Dodson and Fogg are the professionals.
Mr Samuel Pickwick
Placing. Samuel Pickwick is the founder of the Pickwick Club, a retired gentleman of independent property, and the defendant in Bardell against Pickwick.
He begins as a figure of fun and ends as the moral centre of the book. In the early chapters he is a comic scientist observing the world and getting it wrong. By the Fleet chapters he is the person whose judgment the reader trusts.
He is innocent in the exact sense. He does not see what other people are doing. He talks to Mrs Bardell about engaging a servant without noticing what she is hearing. He goes to Dodson and Fogg's office to explain the mistake, and does not understand that he is giving them evidence.
He is obstinate on principle, and the principle is a real one. He tells the attorneys after the verdict that not one farthing will they ever get from him if he spends the rest of his existence in a debtor's prison, and he means it. He refuses to pay because paying would reward the people who manufactured the case.
He gives way for the right reason. He does not weaken. He pays only when he learns that Mrs Bardell is herself in the Fleet and that his money alone can free her. Dickens's chapter title says it: his benevolence proves stronger than his obstinacy.
He changes what he knows without changing what he is. After the Fleet he is quieter and sadder, and no less kind. That is Dickens's answer to the question the novel asks: what happens to a good man who is shown how the world works.
Sam Weller
Placing. Sam Weller is a boot-cleaner at the White Hart when Pickwick meets him, becomes his servant, and is the most popular character Dickens ever invented.
He supplies the worldly knowledge Pickwick has not got. He knows what attorneys are, what a sponging house is, how the Fleet works, and what people are likely to be doing when they say something else.
He is the best witness in the book because he understands what a witness is for. Called by the plaintiff, he answers every question truthfully, volunteers the one fact that damages the attorneys most, and gives away nothing about his master. Dickens says exactly that: he did Dodson and Fogg's case as much harm as he conveniently could and said as little about Mr Pickwick as might be, which was precisely his object all along.
Characters in The Pickwick Papers
He talks in a manner that has a name. A Wellerism is a saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the form "as the soldier said when he polished his boots". They are his signature and are worth a line in a sketch.
His loyalty is the plot's best act. He arranges with his own father to be arrested for a debt of twenty-five pounds so that he can be imprisoned in the Fleet alongside Pickwick, and refuses to name his detaining creditor.
Mrs Martha Bardell
Placing. Mrs Bardell is a widow, the relict and sole executrix of a custom-house officer, who keeps lodgings in Goswell Street and is the plaintiff in the action.
She is not a schemer. Dickens gives her a genuine misunderstanding, in a scene where every word Pickwick says is capable of the meaning she takes, and he tells us she had long worshipped Pickwick at a distance.
She is taken over. From chapter 18 the action belongs to Dodson and Fogg. They stage her in court with an umbrella, a pair of pattens and her child on the floor in front of the judge.
She ends worse off than the man she sued. She signs a cognovit for her attorneys' costs, calling it a matter of form, and is taken to the Fleet on it. Her release is bought by the defendant.
What she is for. She is the proof of the novel's argument. If the litigation had been about her wrong, it would not have ended with her in prison.
Dodson and Fogg
Placing. Attorneys of Freeman's Court, Cornhill, for the plaintiff.
They are a pair, and Dickens never separates them. They speak almost interchangeably, and Dickens has Dodson answer "for self and partner".
They take the case on speculation. No costs unless recovered from Pickwick, which is Sam's evidence at the trial and the fact that explains their conduct.
They are professionals of effect. The umbrella and the pattens are their idea, and Perker, their opponent, admires it: "excellent ideas of effect, my dear Sir, excellent."
They break no rule. Everything they do is lawful. That is the charge.
The rest, in short
Mr Perker. Pickwick's attorney, a small brisk man with a snuff-box, cynical and competent. He explains that hungry jurymen find for the plaintiff and that an honest defence sounds like a guilty one, and he pays the court fees while Pickwick is still stunned.
Serjeant Buzfuz. The plaintiff's counsel, red-faced, who greets his opponent pleasantly and then calls the defendant a systematic villain. He is the novel's picture of advocacy as performance.
Serjeant Snubbin. Pickwick's counsel, overworked and detached, who has to be reminded of the case and whose truthful speech Dickens declines to report.
Characters in The Pickwick Papers
Mr Justice Stareleigh. The judge: short, fat, irritable, asleep for much of the trial, and unable to get counsel's name right.
Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass. Pickwick's companions, whose function in the action is to be the witnesses whose truthful evidence convicts an innocent man.
Tony Weller. Sam's father, a coachman, whose contribution to jurisprudence is the last line of the trial chapter: "vy worn't there a alleybi!"
Mrs Cluppins and Mrs Sanders. Mrs Bardell's friends and witnesses, whose evidence is that they overheard things they were not supposed to hear.
Distinctions worth a table
| Perker | Dodson and Fogg | |
|---|---|---|
| Side | Defendant | Plaintiff |
| How paid | By a client who can pay | On speculation, out of the other side |
| Attitude to the case | Advises settlement; thinks it a nuisance | Runs it hard, and stages it |
| Attitude to the opponent's methods | Professional admiration | Not shown |
| End of the novel | Paid, unchanged | Paid, unchanged |
What beginners get wrong
They call Mrs Bardell a liar. Dickens is careful to show that she believed what she said.
They treat Sam as comic relief. He is the practical intelligence of the book, and his evidence is the most effective thing anybody does in court.
They say Pickwick is defeated. He loses the action and wins the argument, and Dickens gives him the last word by making him pay for his opponent's freedom.
A worked answer
Question. "Write a short note on Sam Weller."
A model answer. Sam Weller is the boot-cleaner whom Mr Pickwick engages as his servant, and he is the practical intelligence the novel's hero entirely lacks. He knows what attorneys are, what a sponging house is and how the Fleet works, and he supplies that knowledge without ever appearing to instruct his master. His loyalty is the strongest thing in the book: he arranges with his own father to be arrested for a debt of twenty-five pounds so that he can follow Pickwick into the debtors' prison, and refuses to name his detaining creditor. His finest moment is in the witness box, where, called by the plaintiff, he answers every question truthfully and volunteers that the ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case on speculation and charging nothing for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick, at which Buzfuz abandons the cross-examination and calls him impenetrably stupid. Dickens's own summary is exact: Sam went down after doing the attorneys' case as much harm as he conveniently could and saying as little about his master as might be, which was precisely his object all along. His speech is famous for the Wellerism, a saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the pattern "as the soldier said when he polished his boots".
Characters in The Pickwick Papers
Why it scores. It gives a placing sentence, three qualities each proved by an incident, and one technical term correctly used.
Quick revision
Pickwick: innocent, obstinate on principle, imprisoned by choice, pays only to free Mrs Bardell.
Sam Weller: worldly, loyal to the point of imprisoning himself, best witness in the book, speaks in Wellerisms.
Mrs Bardell: honest misunderstanding, taken over by her attorneys, ends in the Fleet on a cognovit for their costs.
Dodson and Fogg: on speculation, masters of effect, never censured.
Perker, Buzfuz, Snubbin, Stareleigh, the three friends, Tony Weller, Cluppins and Sanders.
Test yourself
1. Why does Pickwick refuse to pay? Because paying would put money into the hands of Dodson and Fogg, who manufactured the action, and he tells them so in the side room after the verdict: not one farthing if he spends the rest of his life in a debtor's prison.
2. What finally makes him pay, and why is it not a defeat? Learning that Mrs Bardell has been imprisoned by her own attorneys on a cognovit for their costs and that only his money can release her. He abandons the principle for a person, which Dickens presents as the stronger impulse.
3. What is a Wellerism? A saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the pattern "as the soldier said when he polished his boots", and it is Sam Weller's characteristic form of speech.
4. How does Sam damage the plaintiff's case while being called as her witness? By answering truthfully that the ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case on speculation and charging nothing for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick, which tells the court whose action it really is.
5. Why does Dickens make Mrs Bardell sympathetic? Because the satire is aimed at the profession and not at her. If she were a fraud the trial would be about a liar being caught; because she is honest, the trial is about a system that can turn an honest mistake into a judgment and then imprison the person who won.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.