dressed so peculiarly--"like Westminster boys." We have no serjeants now
like Buzfuz or Snubbin: their Inn is abolished, and so are all the
smaller Inns--Clement's or Clifford's--where the queer client lived.
Neither are valentines in high fashion. Chatham Dockyard, with its
hierarchy, "the Clubbers," and the rest, has been closed. No one now
gives _dejeunes_, not _dejeuners_; or "public breakfasts," such as the
authoress of the "Expiring Frog" gave. The "delegates" have been
suppressed, and Doctors' Commons itself is levelled to the ground. The
"Fox under the Hill" has given place to a great hotel. The old familiar
"White Horse Cellars" has been rebuilt, made into shops and a restaurant.
There are no "street keepers" now, but the London Police. The
_Eatanswill Gazette_ and its scurrilities are not tolerated. Special
constables are rarely heard of, and appear only to be laughed at: their
staves, tipped with a brass crown, are sold as curios. Turnpikes, which
are found largely in "Pickwick," have been suppressed. The abuses of
protracted litigation in Chancery and other Courts have been reformed. No
papers are "filed at the Temple"--whatever that meant. The Pound, as an
incident of village correction has, all but a few, disappeared.
Then for the professional classes, which are described in the chronicle
with such graphic power and vivacity. As at this time "Boz" drew the
essential elements of character instead of the more superficial ones--his
later practice--there is not much change to be noted. We have the
medical life exhibited by Bob Sawyer and his friends; the legal world in
Court and chambers--judges, counsel, and solicitors--are all much as they
are now. Sir Frank Lockwood has found this subject large enough for
treatment in his little volume, "The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick." It
may be thought that no judge of the pattern of Stareleigh could be found
now, but we could name recent performances in which incidents such as,
"Is your name Nathaniel Daniel or Daniel Nathaniel?" have been repeated.
Neither has the blustering of Buzfuz or his sophistical plaintiveness
wholly gone by. The "cloth" was represented by the powerful but
revolting sketch of Stiggins, which, it is strange, was not resented by
the Dissenters of the day, and also by a more worthy specimen in the
person of the clergyman at Dingley Dell. There are the mail-coach
drivers, with the "ostlers, boots, countrymen, gamekeepers, peasants, and
others," as they have it in the play-bills. Truly admirable, and
excelling the rest, are "Boz's" sketches--actually "living pictures"--of
the fashionable footmen at Bath, beside which the strokes in that
diverting piece "High Life below Stairs" seem almost flat. The
simperings of these gentry, their airs and conceit, we may be sure,
obtain now. Once coming out of a Theatre, at some fashionable
performance, through a long lane of tall menials, one fussy aristocrat
pushed one of them out of his way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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