THE ADVENTURES OF MR. DOBBS AND HIS FRIEND MR. POTTS.*
THESE is a certain type of young men which has afforded to humourists a frequent target for their shafts. We mean that class of young men, usually from the lower-middle ranks, with some limited though regular income, of moderately well-meaning and tolerably amiable dispositions, who seem to take life and all its wonders as in nowise more remarkable facts than a field admirably adapted to suit their various tastes, and they disport themselves accordingly. Throughout Dickens's writings this class of young men figure away, greatly to the amusement of the reader ; not that there is much of exact wit or pleasantry in them and their doings, but their strictly ordinary character, and hum- drum dry or flippant nature, always enclosing a feeling of perfect self-content in their own notions of things and acquirements, come in again and again, with a fund of quiet ludicrousness, in the jar and wear-and-tear of the more highly-strung characters of the book.
Studies of them in every kind exist in Dickens, and their remarks and characteristics, being noted down with plainness and veracity, are sufficient for ample amusement. They are not devoid of aims and interests even in great themes, yet their con- tact instantly brings a littleness and a dryness over all their views of them. "'God bless me,' exclaimed Tomkins, who had been looking out at the window,—' Here, 1Visbottle, pray come here ; make haste.' Mr. Wisbottle started from the table, and every one looked up. Do you see ? ' said the connoisseur, placing 1Visbott1e in the right position,—' a little more this way ; there. Do you see how splendidly the light falls upon the left side of that broken chimney-pot at No. 48 ?'—' Dear me ! face,' replied Wisbottle, in a tone of admiration ; never saw an object stand out so beautifully against the clear sky in my life,' ejaculated Tomkins." And so this thoroughly good intention on his part urges his weak nature into the funniest positions, and from the lameness of the man's tact and procedure, the expression of one of his better feelings drops to the ridiculous. In glancing through Dickens's catalogue of this class of human creature, the different varieties never fail in provoking laughter ; the large-headed young man in the black wig, the scorbutic youth in the long stock, and the gentleman whose shirt was emblazoned with pink anchors, are a few specimens of the class. Mr. Toots is an instance of one whose bent is a little more romantic and refined than the majority, while the youngest gentleman in company, who so suddenly developes into Mr. Moddle, exemplifies his tribe in its darker moods and more tragic light. His sensitive soul expresses itself, in relation to the crises of life and problems that torment men, in such strains as, "Oh, what a day this has been ! I can't go back to the office this afternoon. Oh, what a trying day this has been ! Good Gracious !"
Anthony Trollope has also given us some line specimens of these much enduring gentry ; and his readers will not easily for- get Mr. Cradell, in "The Small House at Allington," his "peculiar position" in relation to Mrs. Lupex ; and—a precise note of the character of the class—that fine bit where he goes out to consult his friend Fisher, when Mr. Lupex is angry, and stays away from the boarding-house all night. Boarding-houses are, par excellence, the selected quarters of our friends in question.
Artemus Ward, in a paragraph of the paper of which he was editor, gives us a glimpse of their proceedings in connection with a subject that Dickens wrote about very sarcastically—private thea- tricals. It runs thus :—" He declined Biling.1—The students of the Conneaut Academy gave a theatrical entertainment a few winters ago. They ' executed ' Julius Cmsar. Everything went off satisfactorily until Caesar was killed in the market-place. The stage accommodations were limited, and Cmsar fell nearly under the stove, in which there was a roaring fire. And when Brutus said,—
'People and Senators! be not afflighted ; Fly not; stand still,—ambition's debt is paid !'
A Week at the Lakes, and What Came of It or, the Adventures of Mr. Dobbs and of
his Friend Mr. Potts. A Series of Sketches, by J. P. Atkinson. London: Macmillan and Co. he was amazed to see Cmsar rise upon his feet, and nervously examine his scorched garments. Lay down, you fool!' shouted Brutus wildly. 'Do you want to break up the whole thing ?'— ' No,' returned Cmsar, in an excited manner, 'I don't ! I want to act out Gineral Cmsar in good style, but I ain't goin' to bile under that cussed old stove for nobody !' This stopped the play, and the students abandoned theatricals forthwith."
The inimitable American usually wrote about ordinary people and things, but always in a much more farcical spirit than even Dickens. It requires a master-spirit to record truly the quaint- ness of ordinary matters (who indeed has so wonderfully illustrated common-place nature as Shakespeare), and in this line Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope certainly are master-spirits ; on the other hand, the author with whom we are now concerned, Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson, is distinctly not one. Yet in this com- pilation, in addition to making a brace of these ordinary gents his lugubrious heroes, he has called in the help of the pencil ; and collected into a book a long series of the feeblest sketches of the antics and pranks of these two snobs, on their tour through one of the finest parts of England,—the Lake Country.
We are bound to declare that we consider the production of this book to betray an unequivocally vulgar spirit. Vulgarity in a decidedly offensive form occurs in one of the incidents. All the sketches are drawn in the weak, vapid, nerveless manner peculiar to the youthfullest amateur ; excusable enough if concealed when finished, in the hope of excelling them some day, and then to be burned outright ; but if put between two large, flat boards, pressed clean, well priced, published by a prominent firm, deserving of no kind of treatment but complete condemnation by the critic, and rigid eschewal by all the public.
When John Leech gave us the delightful delineation of Mr. Briggs in the Highlands, he yet touched upon those every-day doings in beautiful solitudes with a true human feeling, and a thorough mastery over pen, pencil, and perception of the bounds of extravagance and the limits of good-taste. But Mr. Atkinson, under the heading, "They climb a mountain," and beneath a scrappiest, sketchiest depiction of two thin snobs and a lot of little boys, introduces us to this most pungent dialogue :—" Now what shall we do first ? ' said Dobbs.—' Behold yonder mountain ! Let us scale its frowning side,' said Potts. 0 Billy ! here's the play-actors ! ' said the natives.'" But it is needless (though needful for Mr. Atkinson's sake) to point out that the imagina- tions of the children who can see a resemblance between the two snobs with alpenstocks and violently chequed "knickerbockers." and the "Play Actors," must be forcible enough to make one know that they come from a part of the country which has not the honour of claiming our funny author.
We conjecture that Mr. Potts—or rather, Mr. Atkinson— possesses a certain quaintness of disposition that has occasioned sufficient flashes on some such tour as this to make him or his friend believe that humour is his strong point. But he is quite mistaken. For though we would willingly search for many merits and qualities of a nature he will think too subtle for our dense capacity, we frankly give over the quest, with a feeling akin ta one of unmitigated weariness, when we find a large white page spoiled by a series of seven illustrations of the following absorbing incidents, under the heading, "Alarms—Excursions ;" and be it remembered, all touched in the masterly way we have already specified :—" Said the fair Alice, 0 Mr. Dobbs ! what a love of a water-lily.'—' Not fairer than that lily-white,' began Dobbs, gallantly. Exit Dobbs. Dobbs hooked. Dobbs landed. 'Take it quickly, Sir, at once. I mixed it for you myself.'—'Dobbs, you villain,' said Potts, 'confess that you tumbled in on purpose.' (1)
Don't be an ass !' said Dobbs." And so say we.
But before altogether dismissing the book, which hardly deserves so much of our space, it is only fair to give a specimen. or two of the few ebullitions of fun that would have been pleasant in a walking tour, but expanded into a bookful be- come insipid, and quite deficient in any character whatsoever. The satire on the "celebrated waterfall," to see which one goes through a wicket and pays a fee, is what many will in some way have felt. The illustration shows us the watercourse nearly dry, and among the huge boulders a thin trickle of water threads its way. "'Why Potts,' said Dobbs, 'there must be nearly a pint of water coming down!' ' I see the guide-book calls it a gill,' re- marked Potts." Brevity being the soul of wit, a little of that quality is observable in three sketches, when the friends are in broken ground, and Dobbs (much to our relief, we uncharitably add) has fallen on his back. "He, he !" remarked Dobbs feebly. "Ha, ha!" roared Potts. "Potts is sorry he spoke." But this is not the kind of thing, of which much is endurable.
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