DECLINE AND FALL IN OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

I have just been reading Dickens - one has to from time to time - and, as luck would have it, picked up 'Our Mutual Friend' in which, Dickens is self-consciously trying to be funny in his descriptions of people and places and, fortunately for moi, succeeds handsomely in this endeavour.

Consider the comment about the cheese in Mr Wilfer's house: "This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch-cheese at ten o'clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed the modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the family in a state of nervous perspiration."

Greater, comedy is, however, to be found in the wooden-legged, 'literary' gent, Silas Wegg, who has struck a bargain with the illiterate Mr Boffin to read through the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which Mr Boffin originally thinks to be the Rooshan Empire. (Mr Wegg explans that the difference between the two empires should be 'dropped' until such time as Mrs Boffin is not present.)

"Then Mr Wegg in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going straight across country at everything that came before him; taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan and the Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs Boffin to be responsible for dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with Commodus; who, under the appelation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and "not to have acted up to his name" in his government of the Roman people."

And that whole ride in one sentence!