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This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's plug hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office. An office of trust. And from time to time there is found an official to fill it. He is a public man. The least prominent of public men, the most unobtrusive, the most obscure if not the most modest.
It is present in Our Mutual Friend just as it is present in Pickwick, or Martin Chuzzlewit; just as it is not present in Little Dorrit or in Hard Times. Many tests might be employed. One is the pleasure in purely physical jokes jokes about the body. The general dislike which every one felt for Mr. Stiggins's nose is of the same kind as the ardent desire which Mr. Lammle felt for Mr.
'Oh yes, I've seen them all; but the evening papers don't amount to much. Stiggins's article was terrible. I am afraid he has killed the piece. 'Don't you think it will run, then? 'Well, that depends upon the public, of course. If they like it, I'll keep it on. 'How's the booking? 'Not good. Montague Ford moved his papers absent-mindedly.
An old stage-coachman who lived years ago at Dorking is said to have been Dickens's original for this celebrated character, and the townsfolk still talk of the venerable horse-trough that stood in front of the inn wherein the bereaved landlord immersed Mr. Stiggins's head after kicking him out of the bar.
But then M. Jules Lemaitre is a man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine conscience not an obscure hollow Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr. Stiggins's plug hat and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother the State. Frankly, is it not time to knock the improper object off its shelf? It has stood too long there. It is outlandish. It is not venerable. It does not belong here.
'It's them, were Mr. Stiggins's words, 'as combines useful instruction with wood-cuts. Poverty might co-exist with, or be associated with, any mental qualities you please, but assuredly it cannot correctly be said to enter into combination with any. As for odd and ridiculous epitaphs, their number is great, and every one has the chief of them at his fingers' ends.
Old Tony Weller does not tell his shrewish wife that she is already a white-winged angel; he speaks to her with an admirable good nature and good sense: "'Susan, I says, 'you've been a wery good vife to me altogether: keep a good heart, my dear, and you'll live to see me punch that 'ere Stiggins's 'ead yet. She smiled at this, Samivel ... but she died arter all."
Weller's grasp, and his whole frame quivering with anguish as kick followed kick in rapid succession; it was a still more exciting spectacle to behold Mr. Weller, after a powerful struggle, immersing Mr. Stiggins's head in a horse-trough full of water, and holding it there, until he was half suffocated. 'There! said Mr.
As a rule this fascinating quality in the mere fantastic figures of the tale was inseparable from their farcical quality in the tale. Stiggins's red nose is distinctly connected with the fact that he is a member of the Ebenezer Temperance Association; Quilp is little, because a little of him goes a long way. Mr. Carker smiles and smiles and is a villain; Mr.
Phiz's picture, forming the vignette on the title-page, hardly does justice to this description, although the incident of old Weller performing the "beautiful and exhilarating" act of immersing Mr. Stiggins's head in the horse-trough full of water, is spirited enough.
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