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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
presented to the Royal Antiquarian Society, and other
learned bodies: that heart-burnings and jealousies without
number were created by rival controversies which were penned
upon the subject; and that Mr. Pickwick himself wrote a
pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and
twenty-seven different readings of the inscription: that three old
gentlemen cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for
presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment; and that one
enthusiastic individual cut himself off prematurely, in despair at
being unable to fathom its meaning: that Mr. Pickwick was
elected an honorary member of seventeen native and foreign
societies, for making the discovery: that none of the seventeen
could make anything of it; but that all the seventeen agreed it
was very extraordinary.
Mr. Blotton, indeed--and the name will be doomed to the
undying contempt of those who cultivate the mysterious and the
sublime--Mr. Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling
peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a view of the case, as
degrading as ridiculous. Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to
tarnish the lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actually
undertook a journey to Cobham in person, and on his return,
sarcastically observed in an oration at the club, that he had seen
the man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man
presumed the stone to be ancient, but solemnly denied the
antiquity of the inscription--inasmuch as he represented it to
have been rudely carved by himself in an idle mood, and to
display letters intended to bear neither more or less than the
simple construction of--BILL STUMPS, HIS MARK; and
that Mr. Stumps, being little in the habit of original composition,
and more accustomed to be guided by the sound of words than
by the strict rules of orthography, had omitted the concluding
L of his Christian name.
The Pickwick Club (as might have been expected from so
enlightened an institution) received this statement with the contempt
it deserved, expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned
Blotton from the society, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair of gold
spectacles, in token of their confidence and approbation: in
return for which, Mr. Pickwick caused a portrait of himself to
be painted, and hung up in the club room.
Mr. Blotton was ejected but not conquered. He also wrote a
pamphlet, addressed to the seventeen learned societies, native
and foreign, containing a repetition of the statement he had
already made, and rather more than half intimating his opinion
that the seventeen learned societies were so many humbugs.
Hereupon, the virtuous indignation of the seventeen learned
societies being roused, several fresh pamphlets appeared; the
foreign learned societies corresponded with the native learned
societies; the native learned societies translated the pamphlets of
the foreign learned societies into English; the foreign learned
societies translated the pamphlets of the native learned societies
into all sorts of languages; and thus commenced that celebrated
scientific discussion so well known to all men, as the Pickwick
controversy.
But this base attempt to injure Mr. Pickwick recoiled upon the
head of its calumnious author. The seventeen learned societies
unanimously voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant
meddler, and forthwith set to work upon more treatises than
ever. And to this day the stone remains, an illegible monument
of Mr. Pickwicks greatness, and a lasting trophy to the littleness
of his enemies.
CHAPTER XII DESCRIPTIVE OF A VERY IMPORTANT PROCEEDING ON THE PART OF Mr. PICKWICK; NO LESS AN EPOCH IN HIS LIFE, THAN IN THIS HISTORY Mr. Pickwicks apartments in Goswell Street, although on a limited scale, were not only of a very neat and comfortable description, but peculiarly adapted for the residence of a man of his genius and observation. His sitting-room was the first-floor front, his bedroom the second-floor front; and thus, whether he were sitting at his desk in his parlour, or standing before the dressing- glass in his dormitory, he had an equal opportunity of contemplating human nature in all the numerous phases it exhibits, in that not more populous than popular thoroughfare. His landlady, Mrs. Bardell-- the relict and sole executrix of a deceased custom-house officer--was a comely woman of bustling manners and agreeable appearance, with a natural genius for cooking, improved by study and long practice, into an exquisite talent. There were no children, no servants, no fowls. The only other inmates of the house were a large man and a small boy; the first a lodger, the second a production of Mrs. Bardells. The large man was always home precisely at ten oclock at night, The Pickwick Papers page 72 The Pickwick Papers page 74 |