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"No, I don't, my Lord," replied Sam, staring right up into the lantern at the roof of the court
Thomas Nast
1873
composite woodblock engraving
4 1⁄8 inches wide by 5 ¼ inches high (10.3 cm wide by 13.3 cm high), vignetted, full-page;
Chapter XXXIV, "Is Wholly Devoted to a Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick," page 207, in the Pickwick Papers.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"What’s your name, sir?" inquired the judge.
"Sam Weller, my Lord," replied that gentleman.
"Do you spell it with a "V" or a "W," inquired the judge.
"That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord," replied Sam; "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life, but I spells it with a 'V.'"
Here a voice in the gallery exclaimed aloud, "Quite right too, Samivel, quite right. Put it down a 'we,' my Lord, put it down a 'we'."
"Who is that, who dares address the court?" said the little judge, looking up. "Usher."
"Yes, my Lord."
"Bring that person here instantly."
"Yes, my Lord."
But as the usher didn't find the person, he didn’t bring him; and, after a great commotion, all the people who had got up to look for the culprit, sat down again. The little judge turned to the witness as soon as his indignation would allow him to speak, and said —
"Do you know who that was, sir?"
"I rayther suspect it was my father, my lord," replied Sam.
"Do you see him here now?" said the judge.
"No, I don't, my Lord," replied Sam, staring right up into the lantern at the roof of the court.
"If you could have pointed him out, I would have committed him instantly," said the judge. Sam bowed his acknowledgments and turned, with unimpaired cheerfulness of countenance, towards Serjeant Buzfuz. [Chapter XXXIV, "Is Wholly Devoted to a Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick," page 206]
The passage which Thomas Nast has chosen for realisation occurs a little later in "The Trial of Pickwick," when, after Mr. Winkle and Mrs. Cluppins have ineptly testified, Sam Weller takes the stand to give evidence regarding the fainting of Mrs. Bardell in Mr. Pickwick's arms. The prosecutor seems intent upon proving that Sam was an eye-witness to Mr. Pickwick's marriage proposal. To the modern reader, especially given the precedent of Phiz's The Trial (February 1837) in the original serial program, the choice of Sam as the subject may seem problematic since the principals and their attorneys in the breach-of-promise suit ought logically be the illustrator's subjects, whereas here Nast shows only Pickwick with foggy glasses listening to Sam — and even Perker, Pickwick's attorney, is not in evidence.
However, in Dickens's American tour of 1867-68, in his dramatic reading of "The Trial from Pickwick," his very mention of Sam's name caused audiences to erupt into applause, so beloved was the irrepressible Cockney to Dickens's American afficiandos. Perhaps, then, Nast in choosing Sam Weller's testimony to epitomise the farcical trial visually was recalling the response of contemporary audiences just six years earlier (when Dickens, impersonating Sergeant Buzfuz, intoned, "Call Samuel Weller.") and recounted in the Nation for 12 December 1867 for Dickens's first New York reading in the second tour. Questioned by the Judge as to the spelling of "Weller," since Sam uses the Cockney pronunciation of "V" for "W," Sam indicates it is spelled with a "V," when his father, somewhere at the back of the courtroom, cries out a response, although in truth neither he nor his equally illiterate son "spell" it at all.
Rather than looking "remarkably cheerful and lively" (206), Sam plays his role in Nast's full-page illustration without breaking into a smile as he facetiously looks up to see where his father might be; strictly speaking, Sam is telling the truth, for looking up into the Guildhall's lantern he cannot "see" his father in the students' section, and therefore the Judge cannot commit Tony Weller for contempt of court. Sam's striped waistcoat renders him almost as instantly recognisable as Pickwick with his characteristic baldness, stoutness, white waistcoat, and inevitable glasses. Unlike Phiz in the equivalent British Household Edition illustration, Nast represents the assembled barristers by just five heads wearing rather rudimentary wigs — as opposed to Phiz's much more accurate representation of eleven legal wigs in the 1874 woodcut.
The other illustrator who elected to use this scene — and use it in a most conspicuous manner, as the frontispiece to Volume Two of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910) — Harry Furniss, depicted both Sam and the courtroom, pitting the witty and facetious Cockney against a room full of lawyers and avoiding the snares in which the self-important magistrate and prosecuting attorney, Sergeant Buzfuz, attempt to entangle him. Indeed, as a witness to Pickwick's supposed crime Sam proves utterly useless to the forces arrayed against Samuel Pickwick.
Left: Phiz's original conception of the scene in the Guildhall, The Trial (March 1837); right: Harry Furniss's frontispiece immediately focusses upon the trial as the central event in the narrative: Sam Weller in the Witness-Box fails to recognise his Father (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: Phiz revises his approach to the trial scene to present the trial of Pickwick from the perspective of the magistrate's bench, showing a surprised Pickwick with his barrister, Mr. Perker, making a cautionary gesture, to the left and Mrs. Bardell and her female supporters to the right: An admonitory gesture from Perker restrained him, and he listened to the learned gentleman's continuation with a look of indignation" (1874). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall, 1836-37.
__________. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Edited by Boz. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1836. 5 vols.
__________. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The Household Edition. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. New York: Harper and Brothers 1873.
__________. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The Household Edition. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
__________. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Volume 2.
Last modified 25 July 2019