The first Interview with Mr. Serjeant Snubbin
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
February 1837
Steel Engraving
Dickens's Pickwick Papers
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Details
See below for passage illustrated.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The full force of the law that Mrs. Martha Bardell brings to bear upon the hapless bachelor cannot be mitigated even by so gifted a pleader as Serjeant Snubbin. The satirical elements in Dickens's treatment of the eminent attorney in his sanctum sanctorum undoubtedly takes its origin in his own work in the Doctors' Commons as a freelance reporter, an experience that the novelist later mined for David Copperfield. The passage realised is this:
Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was a lantern-faced, sallow-complexioned man, of about five-and-forty, or — as the novels say — he might be fifty. He had that dull-looking, boiled eye which is often to be seen in the heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been sufficient, without the additional eyeglass which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forensic wig which hung on a block beside him. The marks of hairpowder on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed and worse tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure since he left the court to make any alteration in his dress; while the slovenly style of the remainder of his costume warranted the inference that his personal appearance would not have been very much improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps of papers, and opened letters, were scattered over the table, without any attempt at order or arrangement; the furniture of the room was old and rickety; the doors of the book-case were rotting in their hinges; the dust flew out from the carpet in little clouds at every step; the blinds were yellow with age and dirt; the state of everything in the room showed, with a clearness not to be mistaken, that Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was far too much occupied with his professional pursuits to take any great heed or regard of his personal comforts.
The Serjeant was writing when his clients entered; he bowed abstractedly when Mr. Pickwick was introduced by his solicitor; and then, motioning them to a seat, put his pen carefully in the inkstand, nursed his left leg, and waited to be spoken to.
"Mr. Pickwick is the defendant in Bardell and Pickwick, Serjeant Snubbin," said Perker. [chapter 31]
This illustration first appeared in monthly part 11 (February 1837).
References
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co.,1910.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37). Il. Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
Last modified 10 December 2011