“We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped have grown old; the eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; and transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and quiet home.”
What wonder that the idea to present Pickwick pictorially should appeal to Robert Seymour and inspire that famous plate, “Pickwick addressing the Club”! This is a happy portrait and has fixed for all time the indelible image of its subject upon the world’s mind.
In this matter of pictorial embellishment Dickens’s writings have always held a unique position. Dickens himself preferred to have his works appear unadorned by pictures, but the demand made by his public called into service the most talented pencils from George Cruikshank to Frederick Barnard. Hence, beside the plates for the original editions, we have innumerable engravings for subsequent editions and for special forms of reproduction.
Forster, the biographer of Dickens, informs us that rarely, if ever, did anything but disappointment await the novelist so far as the illustrations were concerned; a fact easily determined by tracing the dissatisfaction he evinced through his intimate and friendly intercourse with the pictorial interpreters of his text.
The artist of the earlier part of the nineteenth century seldom resorted to the use of the living model in preparing their pictures, and this in no small way accounts for the puppet-like appearance of many of their figures. The only guide was the vivid descriptions of the author, an artist who drew all his inspiration from life.