A prescription for glum times

The Pickwick Papers, Dickens’ first proper novel, is gloriously funny and yet, wears its social concerns on its sleeve.

On March 30, 1836, the first instalment of The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club was published and promptly sold 500 copies. The publisher, Chapman & Hall, were right to be pleased — they had taken the strategic decision to ask Charles Dickens, then just starting out in his career, to write amusing texts to accompany illustrations by Robert Seymour (who committed suicide after the first two stories were published and illustration duties were eventually taken up by Hablot Knight Browne).

These were meant, at first, to be fictional reports on “cockney sporting scenes” — but somehow, the combination of Dickensian wit, the eyebrow-raising shenanigans reported by the protagonist Samuel Pickwick and his cohort, and the charming sketches propelled them to a nationwide pop culture craze. You could get Pickwick-ian china figurines, songbooks and other merchandise — an illustrious precursor to this era’s Pixar and Happy Meal tie-ins. Composer Claude Debussy even created a humorous piano piece for Samuel Pickwick.

The Pickwick Papers would be Dickens’ first proper novel. In the time he wrote and published the story, he would get married and welcome his first child and be well on his way to building a career as arguably, the most popular writer in Victorian England.

The novel, which was published in book form in 1837, is at its core, a series of comic (mis)adventures involving Samuel Pickwick and his friends Nathaniel Winkle, Augustus Snodgrass and Tracy Tupman. None of this crew can shoot straight or fish or hunt or ride horses even if their lives were at stake (which was often the case due to outright bumbling or an almost childlike belief in every obvious conman they meet). Pickwick also has a loyal manservant in Sam Weller, a proto-Jeeves figure, who helps extricate his master from the various traps he inevitably falls into.

While The Pickwick Papers is decidedly Dickens’ most enjoyably humorous writing, it did wear its social concerns on its sleeve. In Samuel Pickwick’s trials and tribulations, you will find the criticism of the justice system that so often animated Dickens’ works.

Little less than two centuries after it was published, The Pickwick Papers still brings great joy to the reader. For those who are aware of Dickens’ more serious works, it may come as a surprise to read something by the author that is so gloriously funny and charming as this book. My own personal favourite among the Pickwick Club’s stories is the one about Tom Smart who finds himself talking to a chair in his room in the inn on the Marlborough Downs. I remember reading it the first time and cackling through a summer evening (and slapping away the bloodthirsty mosquitoes) as Tom, aided by sheer luck and talking furniture, is able to rescue the genial widow, who runs the inn, from making a disastrous marriage.

So here’s a prescription for these glum times; take a load off your feet, open up a copy of The Pickwick Papers and enjoy the adventures of Samuel and co. You can thank me later (with a whimsical china figurine).

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

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