The Pickwick Papers: the Road to the Trial
Chapter Twenty-Two
Syllabus topic 1.3, "The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens"
Pages 113 to 116 of 406
In one line
Pickwick decides to hire a manservant, asks his landlady a series of questions about the expense of keeping two people instead of one, and she thinks he is proposing marriage and throws her arms round his neck at the exact moment his three friends walk in.
Chapter 12: the proposal that is not a proposal
The setting. Pickwick lodges at Mrs Bardell's house in Goswell Street. She is a widow, "the relict and sole executrix of a deceased custom-house officer", with a small boy. Pickwick has decided to engage Sam Weller as a servant and has sent the boy out on an errand so that he can raise it.
The conversation, in its real order. He asks whether she thinks it a much greater expense to keep two people than to keep one. She says that depends on the person. He says the person he has in his eye possesses the right qualities, and adds that this person has a considerable knowledge of the world and a great deal of sharpness which may be of material use to him. She colours. He says he has made up his mind, and that she will think it strange that he never consulted her and never mentioned it until he sent her little boy out that morning.
Every sentence is true of hiring a servant. Every sentence is also what a man might say if he were proposing, and Mrs Bardell, who has "long worshipped Mr Pickwick at a distance", hears the second meaning.
The two lines that seal it. He says it will save her a good deal of trouble. Then, of her son: "He, too, will have a companion, a lively one, who'll teach him, I'll be bound, more tricks in a week than he would ever learn in a year."
She rises from her chair and flings her arms round his neck. He struggles, hears somebody on the stairs, and begs her not to. The door opens on Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass.
Why this matters legally. The three friends are the "three of his own friends, most unwilling witnesses" whom Buzfuz will call, and their evidence is that they found the plaintiff in the defendant's arms. That is the whole of the direct evidence of a promise, and it is true as far as it goes.
Chapter 18: the writ
Mrs Bardell, in a state of hysterics, tells her friends what she believes has happened. A writ follows: Pickwick receives notice that an action has been commenced against him by Dodson and Fogg on behalf of Mrs Bardell. The chapter's own title is worth quoting, because it tells you Dickens's view of the case: it is "briefly illustrative of two points; first, the power of hysterics, and, secondly, the force of circumstances".
The Pickwick Papers: the Road to the Trial
Chapter 20: Dodson and Fogg
Pickwick, who cannot believe the action is serious, goes to the attorneys' office in Freeman's Court to tell them there has been a mistake.
What he finds. A firm that treats him with elaborate courtesy while writing everything down. When he says the whole thing is a fabrication, Dodson and Fogg are careful to have witnesses to what he says. They will not discuss the merits. They know, and he does not, that the merits are not the point.
The professional facts that come out later. Sam Weller tells the court in chapter 34 that the two ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case "on spec", that is, on speculation, and charging nothing at all for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick. That single answer is the most damaging evidence in the trial, and it comes from a witness called by the other side.
Chapter 26: the progress of the action
A short chapter that follows the case as a piece of machinery. Sam Weller visits Mrs Bardell's house, hears the ladies talking about the trial, and reports back. The action moves forward on its own, with neither party doing anything, which is Dickens's point: once started, litigation runs.
Chapter 31: all about the law
Pickwick's own preparation. He goes with Perker to consult Serjeant Snubbin, who has to be reminded what the case is, and who advises settlement in the mildest possible terms. Dickens's description of the profession here is unsentimental: a barrister with more work than he can read, a clerk who manages access to him, and a client who is a file.
The scene worth remembering. Perker tells Pickwick that his defence, being that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, is exactly what any guilty defendant would say. Truth is not, in itself, a strategy.
The two letters
Buzfuz will produce two notes at the trial, and it is worth having them here because they are the documentary evidence of an engagement.
"Garraways, twelve o'clock. Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick."
"Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home till to-morrow. Slow coach." and then: "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan."
What they actually are. Notes from a lodger to his landlady about his dinner and his return. Snubbin says exactly that at the trial.
What Buzfuz makes of them. That they are covert, sly and underhanded, designed to mislead any third party into whose hands they might fall, and that "warming-pan" is a mere cover for hidden fire, a substitute for some endearing word, agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence.
The Pickwick Papers: the Road to the Trial
Why it is the best-known joke in English legal fiction. Because the method is real. A document with an innocent meaning is read aloud in a tone that supplies a guilty one, and the jury is invited to supply the rest. Any law student who has watched a cross-examination will recognise it.
What beginners get wrong
They say Pickwick proposed and changed his mind. He never proposed. He was engaging a servant, and every word he used was true of that.
They say Mrs Bardell lied. She did not. She misheard, and by the time attorneys were involved the misunderstanding had a life of its own.
They forget the friends. The only eyewitness evidence of an embrace comes from Pickwick's own friends, who are called by the plaintiff.
A worked answer
Question. Reference to context: "Do you think it a much greater expense to keep two people, than to keep one?"
The two-sentence answer. Spoken by Mr Pickwick to his landlady Mrs Bardell in her parlour in Goswell Street in chapter 12 of Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, at the moment he is working up to telling her that he intends to engage Sam Weller as a manservant. Mrs Bardell, who has long admired him, understands the question as the opening of a proposal of marriage, and the misunderstanding that follows is the whole foundation of the action of Bardell against Pickwick.
The follow-up you should be ready for. Every sentence Pickwick speaks in the scene is literally true of hiring a servant, including the promise that her son will have a companion who will teach him more tricks in a week than he would learn in a year, and that is why neither party is lying when the case comes to trial.
Quick revision
Chapter 12: the two-people conversation, the companion for the boy, the embrace, and the three friends in the doorway.
Chapter 18: hysterics, and the writ from Dodson and Fogg.
Chapter 20: Pickwick calls at Freeman's Court and is carefully recorded; the firm acts on speculation and charges nothing unless it recovers from him.
Chapter 26: the action moves on its own.
Chapter 31: the consultation with Serjeant Snubbin, and Perker's warning that an innocent defence sounds exactly like a guilty one.
The letters: chops and tomato sauce, and the warming-pan.
Test yourself
1. What was Pickwick actually talking about in chapter 12? Engaging Sam Weller as his manservant. Every question he asks, about the expense of two people, about the person's sharpness and knowledge of the world, about a companion for the boy, is true of a servant.
2. What is the only direct evidence of a promise of marriage? That Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass walked in and found Mrs Bardell in Pickwick's arms. Buzfuz calls them "three of his own friends, most unwilling witnesses".
The Pickwick Papers: the Road to the Trial
3. What do the two letters really say, and what does Buzfuz say they mean? They are notes from a lodger to his landlady about chops and tomato sauce and about not troubling herself over a warming-pan. Buzfuz calls them covert and underhanded and treats the warming-pan as a code word standing in for an endearment.
4. Why is Sam Weller's answer about "on spec" so damaging? Because it tells the court, from the plaintiff's own side of the case, that the attorneys are running the action for their own costs and will charge nothing unless they recover from Pickwick.
5. What does Perker warn Pickwick about his defence? That saying the whole thing was a misunderstanding is precisely what a guilty defendant would say, so the truth of it gives him no advantage in the eyes of a jury.
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.