A whimsical and delightful recollection comes back to the writer of these pages at the moment of inscribing as the title of this Reading the name of the preposterous old lady who is the real heroine of “Martin Chuzzlewit.” It is the remembrance of Charles Dickens’s hilarious enjoyment of a casual jest thrown out, upon his having incidentally mentioned as conspicuous among the shortcomings of the first acting version of that story upon the boards of the Lyceum the certainly surprising fact that Mrs. Gamp’s part, as originally set down for Keeley, had not a single “which” in it. “Why, it ought actually to have begun with one!” was the natural exclamation of the person he was addressing, who added instantly, with affected indignation, “Not one? Why, next they’ll be playing Macbeth without the Witches!” The joyous laugh with which this ludicrous conceit was greeted by the Humorist, still rings freshly and musically in our remembrance. And the recollection of it is doubtless all the more vivid because of the mirthful retrospect having relation to one of the most recent of Dickens’s blithe home dinners in his last town residence immediately before his hurried return to Gad’s Hill in the summer of 1870. Although we were happily with him afterwards, immediately before the time came when we could commune with him no more, the occasion referred to is one in which we recall him to mind as he was when we saw him last at his very gayest, radiant with that sense of enjoyment which it was his especial delight to diffuse around him throughout his life so abundantly.

Among all his humorous creations, Mrs. Gamp is perhaps the most intensely original and the most thoroughly individualised. She is not only a creation of character, she is in herself a creator of character. To the Novelist we are indebted for Mrs. Gamp, but to Mrs. Gamp herself we are indebted for Mrs. Harris. That most mythical of all imaginary beings is certainly quite unique; she is strictly, as one may say, sui generis in the whole world of fiction. A figment born from a figment; one fancy evolved from another; the shadow of a shadow. If only in remembrance of that one daring adumbration from Mrs. Gamp’sinner consciousness, that purely supposititious entity “which her name, I’ll not deceive you, is Harris,” one would say that Mr. Mould, the undertaker, has full reason for exclaiming, in regard to Mrs. Gamp, “I’ll tell you what, that’s a woman whose intellect is immensely superior to her station in life. That’s a woman who observes and reflects in a wonderful manner.” Mr. Mould becomes so strongly impressed at last with a sense of her exceptional merits, that in a deliciously ludicrous outburst of professional generosity he caps the climax of his eulogium by observing, “She’s the sort of woman, now, that one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing and do it neatly, too!” Thoroughly akin, by the way, to which exceedingly questionable expression of goodwill on the part of Mr. Mould, is Mrs. Gamp’s equally confiding outburst of philanthropy from her point of view, where she remarks of course to her familiar, as Socrates when communing with his Daemon “‘Mrs. Harris,’ I says to her, ’don’t name the charge, for if I could afford to lay my fellow-creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears ’em.’”

A benevolent unbosoming, or self-revelation, that last, on the part of Mrs. Gamp, so astoundingly outspoken of its kind, that it forces upon one, in regard to her whole character, the almost inevitable reflection that her grotesque and inexhaustible humour, like Falstaff’s irrepressible and exhilarating wit, redeems what would be otherwise in itself utterly irredeemable. For, as commentators have remarked, in regard to Shakspere’s Fat Knight, that Sir John is an unwieldy mass of every conceivable bad quality, being, among other things, a liar, a coward, a drunkard, a braggart, a cheat, and a debauchee, one might bring, if not an equally formidable, certainly an equally lengthened, indictment against the whole character of Mrs. Gamp, justifying the validity of each disreputable charge upon the testimony of her own evidence.

In its way, the impersonation of Mrs. Gamp by her creator was nearly as surprising as his original delineation of her in his capacity as Novelist. Happily, to bring out the finer touches of the humorous in her portraiture, there were repeated asides in the Reading, added to which other contrasting characters were here and there momentarily introduced. Mr. Pecksniff hardly recognisable, by the way, as Mr. Pecksniff took part, but a very subordinate part, in the conversation, as did Mr. Mould also, and as, towards the close of it, likewise did Mrs. Prig of Bartlemy’s. But, monopolist though Mrs. Gamp showed herself to be in her manner of holding forth, her talk never degenerated into a monologue.

Mr. Pecksniff setting forth in a hackney cabriolet to-arrange, on behalf of Jonas Chuzzlewit, for the funeral of the latter’s father, in regard to which he is enjoined to spare no expense, arrives, in due course, in Kings-gate-street, High Holborn, in quest of the female functionary “a nurse and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about the dead, whom the undertaker had recommended.” His destination is reached when he stands face to face with the lady’s lodging over the bird-fancier’s, “next door but one to the celebrated mutton-pie shop, and directly opposite to the original cats’-meat warehouse.” Here Mr. Pecksniff’s performance upon the knocker naturally arouses the whole neighbourhood, it, the knocker, being so ingeniously constructed as to wake the street with ease, without making the smallest impression upon the premises to which it was addressed. Everybody is at once under the impression that, as a matter of course, he is “upon an errand touching not the close of life, but the other end” the married ladies, especially, crying out with uncommon interest, “Knock at the winder, sir, knock at the winder! Lord bless you, don’t lose no more time than you can help, knock at the winder!” Mrs. Gamp herself, when roused, is under the same embarrassing misapprehension. Immediately, however, Mr. Pecksniff has explained the object of his mission, Mrs. Gamp, who has a face for all occasions, thereupon putting on her mourning countenance, the surrounding matrons, while rating her visitor roundly, signify that they would be glad to know what he means by terrifying delicate females with “his corpses!” The unoffending gentleman eventually, after hustling Mrs. Gamp into the cabriolet, drives off “overwhelmed with popular execration.”

Here it is that Mrs. Gamp’s distinctive characteristics begin to assert themselves conspicuously. Her labouring under the most erroneous impressions as to the conveyance in which she is travelling, evidently confounding it with mail-coaches, insomuch that, in regard to her luggage, she clamours to the driver to “put it in the boot,” her absorbing anxiety about the pattens, “with which she plays innumerable games of quoits upon Mr. Pecksniff’s legs,” her evolutions in that confined space with her most prominently visible chattel, “a species of gig umbrella,” prepare the way for her still more characteristic confidences. Then in earnest she had spoken twice before that from her window over the bird-fancier’s but then in earnest, on their approaching the house of mourning, her voice, in the Reading, became recognisable. A voice snuffy, husky, unctuous, the voice of a fat old woman, one so fat that she is described in the book as having had a difficulty in looking over herself a voice, as we read elsewhere in the novel, having borne upon the breeze about it a peculiar fragrance, “as if a passing fairy had hiccoughed, and had previously been to a wine-vaults.”

“’And so the gentleman’s dead, sir! Ah! the more’s the pity!’ (She didn’t even know his name.) ’But it’s as certain as being born, except that we can’t make our calc’lations as exact. Ah, dear!’”

Simply to hear those words uttered by the Reader especially the interjected words above italicised was to have a relish of anticipation at once for all that followed. Mrs. Gamp’s pathetic allusion, immediately afterwards, to her recollection of the time “when Gamp was summonsed to his long home,” and when she “see him a-laying in the hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm,” not only confirmed the delighted impression of the hearers as to their having her there before them in her identity, but was the signal for the roars of laughter that, rising and falling in volume all through the Reading, terminated only some time after its completion.

Immediately after came the first introduction by her of the name of Mrs. Harris. “At this point,” observed the narrator, “she was fain to stop for breath. And,” he went on directly to remark, with a combination of candour and seriousness that were in themselves irresistibly ludicrous, “advantage may be taken of the circumstance to state that a fearful mystery surrounded this lady of the name of Harris, whom no one in the circle of Mrs. Gamp’s acquaintance had ever seen; neither did any human being know her place of residence the prevalent opinion being that she was a phantom of Mrs. Gamp’s brain, created for the purpose of holding complimentary dialogues with her on all manner of subjects.” Eminently seasonable, as a preliminary flourish in this way, is the tribute paid by her to Mrs. Gamp’s abstemiousness, on the understanding that is, that the latter’s one golden rule of life, is complied with “’Leave the bottle on the chimbley-piece, and don’t ast me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then, Mrs. Harris, I says, I will do what I am engaged to, according to the best of my ability.’ ‘Mrs. Gamp’ she says, in answer, ’if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteen-pence a day for working people, and three-and-six for gentlefolks, night-watching being a extra charge, you are that inwallable person. Never did I think, till I know’d you, as any woman could sick-nurse and monthly likeways, on the little that you takes to drink.’ ‘Mrs. Harris, ma’am,’ I says to her, ’none on us knows what we can do till we tries; and wunst I thought so too. But now,’ I says, ‘my half a pint of porter fully satisfies; perwisin’, Mrs. Harris, that it’s brought reg’lar, and draw’d mild.’” Not but occasionally even that modest “sip of liquor” she finds so far “settling heavy on the chest” as to necessitate, every now and then, a casual dram by way of extra quencher.

It was so arranged in the Reading that, immediately upon the completion of Mrs. Gamp’s affecting narrative of the confidential opinions of her sobriety entertained by Mrs. Harris, Mr. Mould, the undertaker, opportunely presented to the audience his well-remembered countenance “a face in which a queer attempt at melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satisfaction.” The impersonation, here, was conveyed in something better than the unsatisfactory hint by which that attempted in regard to Mr. Pecksniff was alone to be expressed. Speaking of Old Chuzzlewit’s funeral, as ordered by his bereaved son, Mr. Jonas, with “no limitation, positively no limitation in point of expense,” the undertaker observes to Mr. Pecksniff, “This is one of the most impressive cases, sir, that I have seen in the whole course of my professional experience. Anything so filial as this anything so honourable to human nature, anything so expensive, anything so calculated to reconcile all of us to the world we live in never yet came under my observation. It only proves, sir, what was so forcibly expressed by the lamented poet, buried at Stratford, that there is good in everything.” Even the very manner of his departure was delicious: “Mr. Mould was going away with a brisk smile, when he remembered the occasion,” we read in the narrative and saw on the platform. “Quickly becoming depressed again, he sighed; looked into the crown of his hat, as if for comfort; put it on without finding any; and slowly departed.”

The spirit and substance of the whole Reading, however, were, as a matter of course, Mrs. Gamp and her grotesque remembrances, drawn, these latter from the inexhaustible fund of her own personal and mostly domestic experiences. “Although the blessing of a daughter,” she observed, in one of her confiding retrospects, “was deniged me, which, if we had had one, Gamp would certainly have drunk its little shoes right off its feet, as with one precious boy he did, and arterwards sent the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for any liquor it would fetch as matches in the rough; which was truly done beyond his years, for ev’ry individgie penny that child lost at tossing for kidney pies, and come home arterwards quite bold, to break the news, and offering to drown’d himself if such would be a satisfaction to his parents.” At another moment, when descanting upon all her children collectively in one of her faithfully reported addresses to her familiar: “’My own family,’ I says, ’has fallen out of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps settled on their lungs, and one was turned up smilin’ in a bedstead unbeknown. And as to husbands, there’s a wooden leg gone likeways home to its account, which in its constancy of walking into public-’ouses, and never coming out again till fetched by force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker.”

Somehow, when those who were assisting at this Reading, as the phrase is, had related to them the manner in which Mrs. Gamp entered on her official duties in the sick chamber, they appeared to be assisting also at her toilette: as, for example, when “she put on a yellow nightcap of prodigious size, in shape resembling a cabbage, having previously divested herself of a row of bald old curls, which could scarcely be called false they were so innocent of anything approaching to deception.” One missed sadly at this point in the later version of this Reading what was included in her first conversation on the doormat as to her requirements for supper enumerated after this fashion, “in tones expressive of faintness,” to the housemaid: “I think, young woman, as I could peck a little bit of pickled salmon, with a little sprig of fennel and a sprinkling o’ white pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat o’ fredge butter and a mossel o’ cheese. With respect to ale, if they draws the Brighton Tipper at any ’ouse nigh here, I takes that ale at night, my love; not as I cares for it myself, but on accounts of its being considered wakeful by the doctors; and whatever you do, young woman, don’t bring me more than a shilling’s worth of gin-and-water, warm, when I rings the bell a second time; for that is always my allowange, and I never takes a drop beyond. In case there should be sich a thing as a cowcumber in the ’ouse, I’m rather partial to ’em, though I am but a poor woman.” Winding all up, with one of those amazing confusions of a Scriptural recollection which prompts her at another time in the novel to exclaim, in regard to the Ankworks package, “‘I wish it was in Jonadge’s belly, I do,’ appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in that mysterious aspiration,” by observing at this point, Rich folks may ride on camels, but it aint so easy for em to see out of a needles eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it. One whole chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit, with the exception of the merest fragment of it the chapter pre-eminently in relation to Mrs. Gamp we always regretted as having been either overlooked or purposely set aside in the compilation both of the earlier and the later version of this Reading, the chapter, that is, in which Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig converse together in the former’s sleeping apartment.

The mere description of the interior of that chamber, related by the Author’s lips, would have been so irresistibly ridiculous the tent bedstead ornamented with pippins carved in timber, that tumbled down on the slightest provocation like a wooden shower-bath the chest of drawers, from which the handles had long been pulled off, so that its contents could only be got at either by tilting the whole structure until all the drawers fell out together, or by opening each of them singly with knives like oysters the miscellaneous salad bought for twopence by Betsey Prig on condition that the vendor could get it all into her pocket (including among other items a green vegetable of an expansive nature, of such magnificent proportions that before it could be got either in or out it had to be shut up like an umbrella), which was happily accomplished in High Holborn, to the breathless interest of a hackney-coach stand.

One inestimable portion, however, of this memorable occasion of festivity between those frequend pardners, Betsey Prig and Sairey Gamp, was, by a most ingenious dovetailing together of two disjointed parts, incorporated with the adroitly compacted materials of a Reading that was as brief as the laughter provoked by it was boisterous and inextinguishable. As to the manner of the dovetailing, it will be readily recalled to recollection. Immediately upon Mrs. Gamps awaking at the close of her night watch, we were told that Mrs. Prig relieved punctually, but that she relieved in an ill temper. The best among us have their failings, and it must be conceded of Mrs. Prig, observed the Reader with a hardly endurable gravity of explanation, that if there were a blemish in the goodness of her disposition, it was a habit she had of not bestowing all its sharp and acid properties upon her patients (as a thoroughly amiable woman would have done), but of keeping a considerable remainder for the service of her friends. Looking offensively at Mrs. Gamp, and winking her eye, as Mrs. Prig does immediately upon her entrance, it is felt by the former to be necessary that Betsey should at once be made sensible of her exact station in society; wherefore Mrs. Gamp prefaced a remonstrance with

“Mrs. Harris, Betsey”

“Bother Mrs. Harris!”

Then it was that the Reader added:

Mrs. Gamp looked at Betsey with amazement, incredulity, and indignation. Mrs. Prig, winking her eye tighter, folded her arms and uttered these tremendous words:

“‘I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!’

“With these expressions, she snapped her fingers, once, twice, thrice, each time nearer to Mrs. Gamp, and then turned away as one who felt that there was now a gulf between them that nothing could ever bridge across.”

The most comic of all the Readings closed thus abruptly with a roar.