Delphi complete works of.., p.107
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 107
So sat they, the unreal lawyers of the unreal books of the Master, and as they sat betokened by their very presence a greater power of life and truth than life itself.
Sergeant Buzfuz rose. We wish it were within our power to present to our readers a full report of the magnificent oration delivered by that learned man. The introduction alone in which the Sergeant, with the aid of books and documents, handed to him by Mr. Stryver, rapidly reviewed the history of literature from Plato to Chesterton, was of such singular merit that Mr. Solomon Pell was heard to remark that not even his intimate friend the Lord Chancellor could have made a better presentation. They had before them, said the learned Sergeant, not merely a question of art, but a question of reality, and of the relation between the two. Of the nature of reality he would not leave them long in doubt. Witnesses would be called (witnesses of unimpeachable character) who should establish the nature of reality to an iota. Nor should they long remain in doubt as to the nature and meaning of art. He would, if need be, call to the witness box a gentleman of unexcelled antiquarian learning who should establish to their satisfaction the fact of the existence of art among the Romans (here all eyes were turned for a moment towards Dr. Blimber). He would, if it were necessary, further establish the point from the lips of the consort of that distinguished scholar who would testify that there were distinct traces of art even in the writings of Cicero. He would have the word itself examined, searched and impounded by one of the greatest lexicographers of the age (here the Sergeant bowed politely in the direction of Dr. Strong), — a lexicographer, he would add, whose labours had now long since overpassed the question of Art, and all other questions beginning with the noble letter A and were now rapidly traversing the letter D.
“But, gentlemen,” continued the Sergeant, and at this point we are able to reproduce his words verbatim, “we need here something more than mere definitions. It is ours to enquire how far ART, — which in this instance is represented by FICTION, — is at one with reality: how far the picture of life presented must correspond lineament for lineament with the literal aspect of the thing itself. The accusation has been made in the affidavits of Mr. Blotton of Aldgate that the art of the Great Master is false: that it shows life and character not as they are but distorted into a series of caricatures. The fatal word ‘exaggeration’ has been launched upon an unsuspecting world. Charles Dickens,” — here the Sergeant for the first time and with an intense majesty of bearing and expression, uttered that noble name before the company,— “Charles Dickens exaggerates. That is the charge of which he stands accused. That is the foul calumny by which his fair name is rapidly being overcast. He has made each of us here present represent and typify (so runs the allegation) merely a single characteristic, and that, too, distorted and magnified beyond its natural shape. I, myself, gentlemen, as presented in the laudable, though I admit somewhat too impartial pages of the Pickwick Papers, represent (so it is said) a mere abstraction of forensic eloquence (I believe the word ‘bombast’ is used in the allegation before us) — —”
The Sergeant paused for the fraction of a second, and something like an expression of doubt, of uncertainty was seen to rest upon his features. But it passed as rapidly as it had come and he resumed:
“My good friend, Mr. Pickwick, is mere benevolence, sheer insipid benevolence, nothing else — —”
At this point, somewhat to the distraction of the speaker, the genial countenance of the chairman, from his spectacles to his double chin, was seen to beam with an expression of such utter and complete benevolence that the Sergeant thought it well to leave that item of his argument incomplete.
“Our friend, William Sykes (he is not in this gathering, but I understand that he is at present engaged in crawling about the roof of this building), — our worthy colleague, Mr. Carker, our esteemed ally, Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewit, these are said to impersonate sheer malice of disposition and nothing else — nay, even my good friend, Mr. Pecksniff, whom I believe I see at the end of the hall warming his back at the fire in a manner I think familiar to all, is said to stand for sheer hypocrisy and for no other conceivable characteristic.”
At this point Mr. Pecksniff, for he indeed it was, was seen to lift a deprecating hand and those who stood or sat nearest to him were able to hear him enjoin his daughter Mercy in an audible whisper that she should remind him that night to make explicit mention of all literary critics in his prayers.
“Or to come down to mere particulars and idiosyncracies,” went on Sergeant Buzfuz, “it is said that our good friend, Mr. Uriah Heep, is always ‘rubbing his hands.’ ” (“I admit,” said the Sergeant glancing with a slight frown at the lawyer’s table where Uriah sat, “that he is doing so, — happens to be doing so, — at this particular moment.”) “But the allegation runs that he is always and perpetually doing so beyond the verge of human credence. It is similarly charged that Mr. Micawber is always and perpetually brewing punch (Mr. Micawber’s guilty hand was seen to retreat noiselessly from the punch bowl as the Sergeant’s eye turned to him), that he also is always waiting for something to turn up, that Mr. Mark Tapley is always ‘jolly,’ that my honoured friend Mr. Wardle owns and conducts a country house where it is always and perpetually Christmas, that Mr. Jingle only speaks in monosyllables and broken phrases and has never been known to make a sentence in his life — —”
“Stop, there” — interrupted the voice of the dilapidated Alfred Jingle, “damn lie — sentence once — Fleet Street sentence — never forget — noble conduct — everlasting gratitude — —”
“Tut, tut,” interrupted the chairman, “I am sure there are lots of things that we all had better agree to forget.”
The Sergeant’s unhappy introduction of the word “sentence” seemed to occasion so peculiar a feeling of discomfort in a number of the auditors (the lively agitation of Mr. Heep, Mr. Micawber and others was especially noticeable) that the speaker with the instinctive feeling of the orator realised that it was impossible to resume his suspended period.
“But, gentlemen,” he continued, “the hour waxes already late. I will no longer expatiate upon the nature of the charge before us. I will proceed at once in its rebuttal.”
Here the Sergeant consulted for a moment a list of names that was handed to him by Mr. Phunkey.
“Call Sarah Gamp,” he cried.
There was a sudden stir in a distant part of the hall, as of a heavy body being set into motion, and to the evident satisfaction of everybody the familiar form of Mrs. Gamp, who had apparently resumed her shawl and her pattens, was seen to approach the table. She presently brought up alongside it with as much majesty of movement as that of a full-rigged coal barge coming to anchor beside the Embankment.
The Sergeant now turned to the lawyers’ table and addressed one of the members of the panel whose rusted black attire, whose pale, indeed ghastly, face and whose uncertain eyes and ambiguous expression left no doubt of his identity.
“Mr. Vholes,” he said, “I understand from the Chairman that it is the general desire of the assemblage that you should act, as it were, as the advocatus diaboli, in other words, should have the privilege of appearing for the prosecution. You are at liberty to question the witness.”
Mr. Vholes arose. Accustomed as he was to the more leisurely procedure and the congenial delays of the Court of Chancery, he may well have felt somewhat ill at ease in the summary methods of investigation here adopted by the Sergeant. But his courage was fortified by the presence of sundry volumes of literary criticism that lay heaped before him, written in various languages, mostly other than English, on which he relied to establish his case.
“Your name,” he said, “is Sarah Gamp?”
“Widge I scorn to deny it,” answered that lady.
“Your profession, I understand, is that of a nurse.”
“Widge it is,” said Mrs. Gamp, “and as I was saying only yesterday to Mrs. Harris, which I don’t see here to-night owing to the fact of her being unable to come, and it being the third time, poor soul, in as many years — —”
Mr. Pickwick coughed.
“I must beg you, Mrs. Gamp,” he said, “to realise that in the lapse of eighty years a certain change in public taste has dictated — a — has prescribed certain forms of reticence — —”
“Retigence!” said Mrs. Gamp, bridling, “don’t talk to me of retigence as if I was a Betsy Prigg that couldn’t be trusted within sight of a brandy bottle. Widge I abhor,” she added, “except it might be for a chill and being overtired after sitting up with a demise — —”
“Very good, Mrs. Gamp,” broke in Mr. Vholes, delighted to find his witness developing immediately and without guidance the very characteristics and no others which he wished to elucidate,— “now tell us, please, Mrs. Gamp, and remember that you are virtually under oath — Are you real?”
“Am I widge?” said Mrs. Gamp.
“Are you real?” said the rusty lawyer. “Do you mean to tell this court, — this assembly, — that there ever have been or could be women like you; are you willing to assert that you are anything more than an abstraction? Have you ever, in the eighty years of retrospect laid open to us, ever really lived?”
Mrs. Gamp might have answered. We say advisedly “might have,” in the course of time, although to all intent and purpose she seemed suddenly to be rooted immovable, her mouth half open, her features fixed in a stare of mingled surprise and contempt at her interlocutor. But her answer was not needed. For at this moment a very singular thing happened. Whether it was due to the necromancy of Mr. Micawber’s punch, or to the lateness of the hour, or to the growing absorption of the assembled auditors, we cannot say. But the truth is that as they sat gazing fixedly at the witness, a strange and wonderful phenomenon made itself felt. The face and form of Mrs. Gamp were multiplied before their eyes into not one but a thousand forms. It was as if the bounds of space and time were pushed aside and the eye could see through the long vista of the years, and through the broad expanse of space from country to country, not one but a thousand, — a hundred thousand Gamps. Here were Gamps in London garrets tending dying fires beside the already dead, — Gamps moving to and fro in area kitchens, their mysterious pattens clicking on the stone floor — Gamps with monstrous umbrellas staggering in the rain, — Gamps tending market stalls in the London fog, — nay, it was as if Mr. Vholes’ words had acted like a talisman to call forth a legion of Gamps to prove the existence of a single one. Nor were the Sarah Gamps confined to a single time or country: there were mid-Victorian Gamps and Gamps of the closing century, Australian Gamps vigorously washing clothes beneath the gum trees, Canadian Gamps scrubbing stone steps regardless of the thermometer, French Gamps busily checking umbrellas in the theatres, American Gamps superintending ladies’ withdrawing rooms in railroad stations, nay, I will swear it, — Gamps that in form and fashion were negro, negroid or mulatto, but still evidently and indisputably Sarah Gamp. Strangest of all, no two of the figures in the vision seemed quite alike: the red shawl might or might not be present, the brandy bottle might or might not be there, the clicking of the pattens might or might not be heard, — and yet indisputably and undeniably each of the figures was the same illustrious undying, ever repeating Sarah Gamp.
Mr. Vholes, aghast at the vision that he had summoned, sank into his seat.
“I think, Mrs. Gamp,” said Mr. Pickwick, “that we need not question you further. You, at least, exist.”
Sergeant Buzfuz rose again to his feet.
“Call Mr. Pecksniff,” he said.
That gentleman, who was carefully attired in his customary long black coat and irreproachable white tie and who had by this time warmed his back until it had attained to that comfortable sensation demanded by his altruistic feelings, drew near to the lawyers’ table.
“Perhaps, Mr. Fogg,” continued the Sergeant, “as our friend Mr. Vholes appears to be incapacitated for further effort, you will yourself be good enough to examine this witness.”
Mr. Fogg rose in his place, bowed to the Sergeant and the Chairman, and directed his attention to Mr. Pecksniff.
“Your name, I believe,” he said, “is Mr. Pecksniff.”
The latter gentleman bowed.
“Will you kindly tell the assembled company,” went on Mr. Fogg, looking about him with a great assumption of sharpness, “what is the nature of your profession?”
“I am,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “in my humble capacity an architect.”
“And will you please tell us,” pursued Mr. Fogg, “what principal buildings you have designed?”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Pecksniff with great urbanity, “none at all.”
“None at all!” repeated Mr. Fogg, surprised.
“None at all,” reiterated Mr. Pecksniff. “To be quite frank and candid,” he continued, “as we are speaking here purely among friends and I presume under the seal of confidence, I may say that the buildings which I am supposed to have designed were all the work of other people.”
“Do you see any of them here?” queried the lawyer.
“One or two,” said Mr. Pecksniff unabashed. “I think I see my young friend Thomas Pinch, whose talent was for many years invaluable to me, and, I believe, Mr. Martin Chuzzlewit, whose design for a grammar school has always been considered one of my most successful inspirations.”
“In other words, sir,” said Mr. Fogg, with great severity, “you are an arrant hypocrite.”
“I am,” said Mr. Pecksniff, with a bow.
“And a fraud, sir.”
“At your service,” said Mr. Pecksniff.
“You pocket money that you never earned.”
“I do,” assented Mr. Pecksniff.
“And you cover it up with a cloak of religion and family affection?”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Pecksniff, smiling urbanely and placing his hands beneath his coat tails with his familiar gesture of self-satisfaction, “that is exactly my policy.”
“And do you mean, sir,” said Mr. Fogg, swelling visibly with the importance of his inquiry, “do you mean to tell this sensible, this sagacious company that in face of these facts, — of your carrying on business in this fashion, that you are a real person? Have you the assurance, sir, to state in the face of this damning evidence, that there are real people such as you in actual business in actual life?”
Mr. Fogg, to judge by the way in which he here drew himself up, apparently expected that the result of his enquiry would be so to crush and annihilate both the witness and the auditors as to explode the very existence of Mr. Pecksniff into the thinnest nothingness of the most impossible fiction. If so, his expectation was doomed to disappointment. For he had no sooner propounded his question as to whether real business by real people was carried on in this fashion than the entire audience broke into loud and uncontrolled laughter. It may have been that the seventy years that have elapsed since the first earthly incarnation of Mr. Pecksniff have accentuated the character of modern business. But certain it is that the notion that the existence of Mr. Pecksniff and his methods was a thing unheard of in the present business world convulsed the assembly with spontaneous merriment. We will not say that the same strange phenomenon repeated itself as in the case of Mrs. Gamp. But it is undoubted that before the minds of the auditors there might well have arisen the vision of an unending, undying series of Pecksniffs, — English, American, and Continental — Pecksniffs of the old world and Pecksniffs of the new — Pecksniffs in little white ties sitting at board meetings of corporations, Pecksniffs in long black coats presiding at funerals, Pecksniffs interviewing delegations of workingmen and refusing with deep reluctance all suggestions of increases of wages, Pecksniffs presiding over colleges, Pecksniffs elected into senates, Pecksniffs in city councils — till from the very length and extension of the series it appeared as if Mr. Pecksniff expressed within himself the whole spirit and essence of modern business and modern politics. Indeed it appeared not merely as if Mr. Pecksniff were extremely real and actually existed, but as if there existed more of him than of any other human being.
Small wonder then that when Mr. Fogg resumed his seat and Mr. Pecksniff complacently returned to his place in front of the fire, there was a general feeling that the reality of at least his character had been more than vindicated.
We could only wish that the limits of space before us would allow of an extended description of the examination of the succeeding witnesses. We could wish that we might convey to our readers some notion of the genial warmth with which Mr. Wardle met the accusation that his house at Dingley Dell was an impossible place such as could only have existed in the grossest and most exaggerated fiction: of how he took his oath, with perhaps unnecessary emphasis, that it was just the kind of house that might be found by those who had the eyes to see it, especially at Christmas time, throughout the length and breadth of England: of how he met the accusation that it was always Christmas time at his house by the simple but convincing statement that it always was: of how he met the charge that his young medical friends, Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Benjamin Allen, were not possible or actual people by offering to turn any two dozen distinguished modern doctors inside out and find a Bob Sawyer and a Ben Allen coiled up in the composition of any one of them: and of how he presently retired triumphant from the witness stand amid the uproarious applause of Mr. Weller, Mr. Tapley and even the excitable Mr. Sawyer himself.
