Mr. Alfred Jingle. — Job Trotter

Sol Eytinge

Wood engraving, approximately 10 cm high by 7.5 cm wide (framed)

Illustration for Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in the Ticknor and Fields (Boston, 1867) Diamond Edition, facing p. 135.

In this fourth full-page dual character study for the last novel in the compact American publication, Eytinge introduces the unemployed actor turned confidence man, Alfred Jingle, and his partner in crime, his valet Job Trotter, whose unsavoury partnership functions as a foil for Pickwick's relationship that with the Sam Weller. But neither "master-servant" relationship is purely a product of the cash nexus, for the servants are genuinely interested in the welfare of their employers — both, we later note, accompany their employers into the Fleet Prison. We can be sure that the shared adventures of Jingle and Trotter continue well past their emigration at the end of the novel.