Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers. 1836-1837; Amazon, 2012.

The Pickwick Papers was Charles Dickens’ first novel, if you want to call it a novel. If this were the only novel he wrote, it would probably still be remembered. It certainly does not have the force of some of his later work, but it has a cast of appealing characters and some tight fixes. However, do not expect a plot to run through the whole book.

Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers as a series for a magazine with each episode of two or three chapters coming out every month for over a year. Most of the same characters, notably Mr. Samuel Pickwick, appear throughout and have an array of interesting and usually humorous experiences as they travel around the English countryside. It would be comparable to a television situation comedy in which most episodes stand by themselves, though there are some plot threads that run through several episodes. And like many such comedies, the writers will throw in a few serious episodes as well.

The reason that it would still be remembered today even if it were Dickens’ only work is that it sketches everyday life of Englishmen during the time it was written. Mr. Pickwick is a retired middle class and middle aged businessman who gathers a few mostly younger men around him to enjoy life. They travel from place to place through Kent, north to Birmingham west to Bath, and to various places in the vicinity of London. Usually they stay in inns or taverns. I was reminded of a line from A Tale of Two Cities: “Those were drinking days.”

We meet various people in these different places from paupers to nobles. Mr. Pickwick seems mostly to be a good judge of character, but even that virtue can get him into scrapes. Dickens clearly was drawing somewhat on his experience as a court reporter as well as his father’s experience with debtors’ prison. Most of the lawyers in the story do not come across especially well.

One lawyer explains that in a court of law, especially with juries, “much depends upon effect.” (6449) We think of various trials in Dickens’ later work such as the trials of Magwich and Compeyson in Great Expectations or the various trials in A Tale of Two Cities, among other works of Dickens.

One episode seems especially noteworthy in today’s political climate. They visit a town where two men are standing for election to parliament. The two newspapers in town take opposing views—not just on the candidates but on everything. The two parties, called the Blue and the Buff, both claim the other is far too extreme and stand for the end of civilization as we know it. A Blue politician refers to his opponents as “ultra Buff.” (10811) In other words, things have not changed much.

Besides politicians and lawyers, there are people from a variety of other occupations. The stingy beadle in The Pickwick Papers, for example, may remind some readers of Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist.

While much of the tale propels Pickwick and his buddies forward, there are also chapters where people tell stories, some allegedly true, others clearly more parabolic. While the whole novel is sometimes called picaresque because it is a tale about travels from place to place, the inserted stories suggest part of The Pickwick Papers could be called a frame story. Indeed, one chapter is titled “The Stroller’s Tale,” a nod to The Canterbury Tales.

One character in one of the tales is guilt-wracked and imagines insects and all kinds of tortures upon himself. We are told “he struggled madly for life.” (654) I recall in college being told that Dickens would influence Dostoyevsky. While the Russian’s works are much more serious than The Pickwick Papers, reading episodes like this tells us not only that Dickens understood people, but we can see the influence of such novelistic psychology in most of the works of Dostoyevsky. Think of Svidrigailov’s vision of hell as being full of spiders in Crime and Punishment.

There are at least two stories of evildoers repenting and changing their lives. While they might not be as well known as Ebenezer Scrooge, we can see that Dickens did hold out hope for the possibility of change. In one case the change comes about because Mr. Pickwick treats one of the criminals in a manner which he does not deserve but which surprises him and brings about a change of heart.

One character, who ultimately has no change of heart, sounds a lot like the pre-conversion Scrooge: “[H]e’s a malicious, bad-disposed, vorldly-minded, spiteful, windictive creetur, with a hard heart as there ain’t no soft’nin” (9205). Still two of Pickwick’s converts “became, in time, worthy members of society” (11949). (Like Joe Gargery, some of the characters here have Kentish accents.)

One sketch describes someone trying to explain the game of cricket. I had to laugh because I do not understand it, and neither did the listeners in the Dickens story. But many folks do not understand baseball or American football, either. I did note that even back then, cricket players from the West Indies were admired, though I suspect that the term Windies for them came later.

There are also a couple of ghost stories. One is a very wild one about a man’s uncle who is taken for a ride on a ghostly stagecoach and saves the life of a beautiful woman. I suspect this may have been some part of English or Scottish oral tradition that Dickens picked up on. Dickens’ most famous ghost story would come later—and it involves the change of heart of a wicked man, but he is taken on some ghostly rides as well.

There is at least one episode with a tender, moving—some would say exploitative—scene of a dying child, something Dickens would become known—or notorious—for.

There is also one scene that may have been inspired by an earlier novel. There is a somewhat wild card party. While the Pickwick Club often has parties to eat and drink, the card party was exceptional. It may have echoes of the card party in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, though scandalous in a different way.

Because the Pickwick Club spends a lot of time eating and drinking, we hear some likely exaggerated stories about food and drink. There is the story of a sausage maker that sounds a lot like it could have been based on the oral tradition of the Johnny Brubeck” song. Another man is described as “purveyor of cat’s meat to the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs.” (6894)

The Pickwick Papers also satirizes the medical profession. Going back at least to Chaucer, it seems as though physicians are not always portrayed well in literature, at least until the twentieth century. That may well be because a lot of medicine was hit or miss. One of the medical professionals was known as Nockemorf (“knock ‘em off”).

Another “scientist” is flattened in a humorous attempt of one of the Pickwick Club members to meet a sheltered young lady. The scientist would later ascribe this as a new discovery about the properties of lightning which “which caused him to be considered a light of science ever since” (8382). This reader was reminded of Mark Twain’s satires of science such as we find in Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

While there is much good humor, we can see there is also quite a bit of seriousness as well. After all, we come across injustice, death, crime, con artists, and even false accusation and imprisonment. Still the drama ends happily, not unlike a Shakespeare comedy. After all, by the end of the approximately two year span of the novel three young couples have been married. Because it is a novel and not a play, they do not all get married at the same time as the couples in As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream do, but it is still fun, and we are happy for them.

If the reader accepts the serial format of The Pickwick Papers, there is a lot to enjoy from this tale. It might remind us that in spite of the hardships, even prison time, there is a lot to enjoy in life.

N.B.: References are Kindle locations, not page numbers.