proportions seated on the front bench and apparently weighing some thirteen or fourteen stone, with a vast coarse face. This is surely an unfair presentment of the worthy landlady; besides, Dodson and Fogg were too astute practitioners to imperil their chances by exhibiting to his Lordship and the Jury so ill-favoured a plaintiff. Indeed, we are told that they arranged a rather theatrical exhibition in this scene, with a view of creating an impression in their favour.

Many find pleasure in reading the Bookseller’s Catalogues, and a vast number are showered on me in the course of the year. But on one of these I always gaze with a special interest, and even tenderness. For it comes from one Herbert, who lives in Goswell Road. Only think, Goswell Road—erst Goswell Street, where just seventy years ago Mrs. Bardell was letting lodgings and Mr. Pickwick himself was lodging: and on the cover I read, furthur attraction, “Goswell Road, near the ‘Angel,’” whence the “stage” which took the party p. 6to the “Spaniard” at Hampstead started! Sometimes I am drawn to the shop, crowded with books; but one’s thoughts stray away from the books into speculations as to which house it was. But the indications are most vague, though the eye settles on a decent range of shabby-looking faded tenements—two storeys high only—and which look like lodging houses. Some ingenious commentators have indeed ventured to identify the house itself, arguing from the very general description in the text.

p. 6

We should note, however, Mr. Pickwick’s lack of caution. He came in the very next day, having apparently made no enquiries as to the landlady. Had he done so, he would have learned of the drunken exciseman who met his death by being knocked on the head with a quart pot. He might have heard of the friends, Cluppins, Raddle, etc., who seemed to have been charwomen or something of the sort; also that there was a sort of working man as a fellow lodger. Above all, that there was no servant in the house. All which boded ill, and made it likely that Mr. Pickwick would be the easy victim of some crafty scheme.

All went well until the unluckly morning in July, 1827, when Mr. Pickwick’s friends, coming to pay a morning call, and entering unexpectedly, surprised Mr. Pickwick with his landlady fainting in his arms in an hysterical condition. This was a very awkward business. The delinquent, however, did not at once grasp the situation, and could not “make head or tail of it, or what the lady meant.” His friends, however, had their doubts:

 Prev. P 4/82 next