Castle, etc., etc."

I must reluctantly leave Thackeray and consider a very different maker of
names, namely Dickens. It is sometimes said that his names are not
invented but discovered by research. In my son Bernard's _A Dickens
Pilgrimage_ (_Times_ Series, 1914), he writes, p. 22: "Other people have
been before us in seeing that Mr Jasper keeps a shop in the High Street
of Rochester," and that "Dorretts and Pordages are buried under the
shadow of the cathedral." He claims as his own the discovery that in the
churchyard of Chalk (near Rochester) there are "three tombstones standing
almost next door to one another and bearing a trinity of immortal names,
Twist, Flight, and Guppy." He adds that "the lady in _Bleak House_ spelt
her name Flite." I fail to believe that anybody was ever called
Pumblechook, and there are others equally impossible. But the great name
of Pickwick is not an invention. Mr Percy Fitzgerald {20} gives plenty
of evidence on this point, in a discussion suggested by the sacred name
being inscribed on the Bath coach, to Sam Weller's indignation. There
was, for instance, a Mr William Pickwick of Bath, who died in 1795.
Again, in 1807, the driver of "Mr Pickwick's coach . . . was taken
suddenly and very alarmingly ill on Slanderwick Common." One member of
the family "entered the army, and for some reason changed his name to
Sainsbury." The object, as Mr Fitzgerald points out, is obvious enough.
Mr Fitzgerald mentions (p. 16) the curious fact that Mr Dickens (the son
of the author) once had to announce that he meant to call Mr Pickwick as
a witness in a case he was conducting. The Judge made the characteristic
remark, "Pickwick is a very appropriate character to be called by
Dickens."

With regard to the name Winkle, I cannot agree with Mr Fitzgerald {21}
that Dickens took it from Washington Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_.

Among the few names taken from real people is that of Mr Justice
Stareleigh, who is generally believed to be Mr Justice Gaselee.

Sergeant Buzfuz in the same trial is believed on the authority of Mr
Bompas to be Serjeant Bompas, the father of that eminent Q.C., but there
seems to be no evidence that it is a portrait. In _Pickwick_ some of the
best names are those of various business firms, _e.g._, Bilson and Slum,
who were Tom Smart's employers. In the Judge's chambers (which "are said
to be of specially dirty appearance") was a crowd of unfortunate clerks
"waiting to attend