GEMS FROM PICKWICK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

GEMS FROM PICKWICK.

DINGLEY DELL PORTRAITS. | SAVED FROM THE SPOILERS. MASTERPIECES OF ART. Mr. Pickwick has been saved from the pick-axe. " Dingley Dell " is not to be destroyed after all. Such is the tiiumphant outcome of the impending demolition of the Duncannon Tavern, in London, close to Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross, where were to be found, painted on the walls, the finest Dickens caricatures in existence. Nothing like these caricatures had ever been painted before, or may ever be achieved again, says tho Daily Express. Like so many things artistic, it has needed the threat of destruction for them to be appreciated at their true worth. In wit, rollicking humour, vitality, and facial versatility these paintings can almost rank -with Hogarth, though they have been depicted pn fading wall-paper and in the smoke-fillec! atmosphere of a public house. They are amazingly faithful in their characterisation. As illustrations they aie inimitable. /

Some years ago the proprietor of the Duncannon Inn decided to surprise his customers by substituting pictorial inteipretations of the creations of the greatest of London's literary mirthmakers, Charles Dickens, for ordinary wailpaper. The experiment proved a great success. 1 lie Pickwick panels soon surrounded the lounge like one gigantic smile. In between the windows, ready to welcome the newcomer, stood such old friends as Tracy Tupman, Winkle, Sam Weller, and the Fat Boy. Other scenes adorned the walls. Christmas at " Dingley Dell," with spinsters as stift as samplers; a donkey braying at an appalled Mr. Pickv. irk ; Bob Sawyer, grinning from the roof of his coach, and many others. Nothing, it was thought, could be done to preserve these comic masterpieces from their approaching fate. All the houses in the crescent in which the tavern stands ore doomed, and are to be superseded by new ones. But, at the .eleventh hour, the British Museum stepped in and saved the r;;hiatiori. By an almost unheard-of process these mural paintings have been rolled off !he walls in perfect preservation, lhe ■whole work of house demolition was held iij> for a time for Mr. Pickwick. Tho future of these "Pickwick Papers port iaits is as vet uncertain. They may go to the Tate Gallery or to America, or thev runv go back to the painter himself, vhose fame they made. An added interest in 'hose drawings lies in the fact that Mr. Thomson, the artist, who is and dumb, was a pnpil of the celebrated Cruiks)i:mk.

Kight years ago. when Mr. r lhomson executed 'his order, he was unknown. Now lip has a number of works in the late Gallery, and this year he had a picture hung at the Academy. Few people, even Londoners, realised how his talent had made Dickens talk, or that there was a tavern in the town where old fireside favourites could be seen life-size and life like.

The Dnncnnnon Inn adjoins the Golden Cioss Hotel, from the yard of which Pickwick started from London on his famous coaching trip with Alfred Jingle.