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Cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout the house, and in it Mr. Pickwick's will was law. To anyone acquainted with these things and with Mr. Pickwick's admirably regulated mind, his conduct on the morning previous to his setting out for Eatanswill seemed most mysterious and unaccountable. He paced the room, popped his head out of the window, and constantly referred to his watch.
In Thackeray's "Newcomes," the writer had some reminiscences of a place like Eatanswill, for we are told of the rival newspapers, "The Newcome Independent" and "The Newcome Sentinel," the former being edited by one Potts. These journals assailed each other like their brethren in "Pickwick." "Is there any man in Newcome except, perhaps, our twaddling old contemporary, the Sentinel," &c.
Allow me, sir, to introduce you to my fellow-travellers, the other corresponding members of the club I am proud to have founded. 'I shall be delighted, said Mr. Pott. Mr. Pickwick withdrew, and returning with his friends, presented them in due form to the editor of the Eatanswill GAZETTE. 'Now, my dear Pott, said little Mr. Perker, 'the question is, what are we to do with our friends here?
As might have been expected, this soon brought him into the usual newspaper war with other editors, and especially with Casey, and epithets a la "Eatanswill" were soon bandying back and forth between them. One evening of May, 1856, King published, in the Bulletin, copies of papers procured from New York, to show that Casey had once been sentenced to the State penitentiary at Sing Sing.
Pott, therefore, has been overlooked by the managers of the Times, but it is not yet too late for them to call attention to his system. It is of interest to all at Eatanswill. Pott was in advance of his time. His paper was not wholly the sort of scurrilous organ it has been shown to be.
It is as if Dickens, when the whole English-reading world judges on the bench and bishops in their studies, cobblers in their stalls and grooms in the stables were all laughing over Pickwick, should have sued the Eatanswill Gazette for calling him a clown. Thackeray pronounces Cooper's Long Tom Coffin one of the prizemen of fiction. That is a final judgment by the chief-justice.
He answers by making another mistake exactly of the same kind. He says that Eatanswill was not a busy, important place. And his odd reason is that Mrs. Pott said she was dull there. But obviously Mrs. Pott would have said she was dull anywhere. She was setting her cap at Mr. Winkle. Moreover, it was the whole point of her character in any case. Mrs. Pott was that kind of woman.
It seems to me to be a new and odd kind of controversy. Naturally, an outsider feels inclined to ask why Eatanswill should be either one or the other. As a matter of fact, I fear Eatanswill was every town in the country. It is surely clear that when Dickens described the Eatanswill election he did not mean it as a satire on Sudbury or a satire on Ipswich; he meant it as a satire on England.
But after a very few sentences of figurative eloquence, the pink-faced gentleman got from denouncing those who interrupted him in the mob, to exchanging defiances with the gentlemen on the hustings; whereupon arose an uproar which reduced him to the necessity of expressing his feelings by serious pantomime, which he did, and then left the stage to his seconder, who delivered a written speech of half an hour's length, and wouldn't be stopped, because he had sent it all to the Eatanswill GAZETTE, and the Eatanswill GAZETTE had already printed it, every word.
'This this, said he, 'determines me. We return to town to-morrow. 'To-morrow! exclaimed his admiring followers. 'To-morrow, said Mr. Pickwick. 'This treasure must be at once deposited where it can be thoroughly investigated and properly understood. I have another reason for this step. In a few days, an election is to take place for the borough of Eatanswill, at which Mr.
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