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'Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers, sir', said Dodson,
'Pray do, sir, if you feel disposed; now pray do, sir'.
'I do', said Mr Pickwick. 'You are swindlers'.
'Very good', said Mr Dodson. 'You can hear down there, I
hope, Mr Wicks?'
'Oh yes, sir', said Wicks.
'You had better come up a step or two higher, if you can't',
added Mr Fogg. 'Go on, do go on. You had better call us thieves,
sir; or perhaps you would like to assault one of us. Pray do, sir, if
you would; we will not make the smallest resistance. Pray do it, sir'.
As Fogg put himself very temptingly within the reach of Mr
Pickwick's clenched fist, there is little doubt that that gentleman
would have complied with his earnest entreaty, but for the interposition
of Sam, who, hearing the dispute, emerged from the office, mounted
the stairs and seized his master by the arm.
'You just come away', said Mr Weller. "Battledore and
shuttlecock is a wery good game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and
two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be
pleasant. Come away, sir. If you want to ease you mind by blowing
up somebody, come out into the court and blow up me; but it's rather
too expensive work to be carried on here'.
We tend to regard Dodson and Fogg as examples of gross caricature, but the
following anecdote about legal practices in the early years of the Nineteenth Century should
make us pause and consider that Dickens may, in fact, have been quite truthful in his
presentation of the two attornies. It is related by the printer Henry Vizettelly in his
autobiography Glances Back Through Seventy Years
It seems that one day a London tradesman, to his great
astonishment, was served with a writ for a considerable sum of money,
pretended to have been lent to him by the plaintiff, whom he had
never before heard of, and, so far as he knew had never seen. He
hurried off to his lawyer, and explained to him his ignorance of the
whole affair, which the lawyer readily believed, as soon as he had
glanced at the attorneys' names endorsed on the writ. "It's no use,
however", said he, "denying the claim; Quirk, Gammon Snap will
prove beyond a doubt that you have had the money, and you will
lose the case, unless we, too can prove beyond a doubt that you have
paid the money back again".
The client thereupon began to protest, but the lawyer
interposed. "Now don't be impatient, but hear me out. Our only plan
is to meet roguery by roguery, and we must be prepared with half-
a-dozen good men and true, who will swear that they saw you repay
the amount. To account for so many people being present on the
occasion, we had better arrange for the repayment to have been made
after a dinner you had been giving at you own house to celebrate
you birthday, or any other event that can be made to fit in with
the particular date. Of course none of our witnesses will know the
plaintiff, but as he is a notorious sharper who attends all the races
and prize fights, and is to be met with of an evening at the sporting
public-houses, there will be no difficulty in pointing him out to such
witnesses as we arrange to call; so that, if required, they may be
able to describe him, and, if need be, swear to his identity.
"Now you go and talk the matter over with any intimate friends
whom you can implicitly trust; candidly tell them everything, and
appeal to them to help us to play this game of diamond cut diamond
that has been forced upon us, and what is more, to win it. If you
cannot persuade them, bribe them to come up and swear they saw
