Sam Weller (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Sam Weller is the fictional Cockney bootblack who turned a struggling serialised novel into one of the great publishing phenomena of the nineteenth century. When Dickens first began releasing The Pickwick Papers in monthly parts, sales hovered around a thousand copies per issue. Then, in the fourth episode, a quick-witted servant named Sam Weller stepped onto the page. By late autumn of 1837, monthly sales had climbed to forty thousand copies. The Paris Review would later call that turnaround arguably the most historic bump in English publishing.

  Who was this character, and what gave him such power over readers? How did a bootblack from a London inn become the engine of Dickens's fame? And what does Sam Weller's peculiar way of speaking tell us about the city he came from, and the one Dickens was trying to capture on the page?

• 2. The White Hart Inn

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  In chapter ten of the novel, Mr. Pickwick walks into the White Hart Inn in The Borough and finds Sam Weller at work. Pickwick takes him on as a personal servant, and the arrangement begins practically enough: Sam accepts because the job offers a good salary and a new set of fine clothes. Nothing about that first meeting suggests the bond that will follow.

  As the story progresses, the relationship between the idealistic, unworldly Pickwick and the astute, street-wise Sam draws comparisons to one of literature's most famous pairings. Critics have likened Pickwick and Weller to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: one man older, passive, and nearly childlike in his innocence; the other younger but far more experienced at navigating the world. Where Pickwick is quick to lose his temper, Sam holds his composure. Where Pickwick has no interest in romance, Sam courts a "well-shaped female servant" named Mary, who becomes his Valentine.

  That loyalty is tested most sharply when Pickwick is sent to the Fleet Prison for debt. Sam has himself arrested so he can follow Pickwick inside and continue to protect him. He even refuses to marry Mary, believing the marriage will pull him away from his duties. Pickwick eventually makes arrangements that allow Sam to serve him and still wed.

• 3. A Cockney Voice

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  Sam is the son of Tony Weller, a coachman, and together the two men speak a form of Cockney English rooted in London's East End as it existed in 1836. Their dialect swaps "v" and "w" in both directions: "very" becomes "wery" and "away" becomes "avay." Dickens wrote it with such precision that the speech was already described as outdated just forty years after the novel appeared.

  The scene in which Sam tries to write a Valentine's Card to Mary is one of the novel's most quoted exchanges. Struggling over a word, Sam tells his father he can see a "c", an "i", and a "d" but cannot make it out. Tony Weller suggests "circumwented." Sam corrects him: the word is "circumscribed." Tony Weller replies, gravely, that "circumwented" would have been the better word. The joke works because Tony is wrong about the meaning but right, in a sideways fashion, about the feel of a love letter. That small collision between bluster and sincerity captures something Dickens returned to throughout his career: the dignity and comedy that coexist in working-class London speech.

• 4. The Wellerism

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  Sam Weller's habit of illustrating a point by quoting an anonymous person in an absurd situation gave the English language a new word: the Wellerism. The form follows a simple pattern. Sam states a sentiment, then attributes it to someone caught in a darkly comic predicament, twisting the sentiment sideways.

  A few examples from the novel show the range. "There; now we look compact and comfortable, as the father said ven he cut his little boy's head off, to cure him o' squintin'." Or: "Vich I call addin' insult to injury, as the parrot said ven they not only took him from his native land, but made him talk the English langwidge arterwards." The humour is unnerving in a way that feels almost accidental. Sam delivers each line with complete sincerity, which is most of why they land. These phrases became a recognisable literary device, studied and catalogued long after the novel's first readers had turned the last page.

• 5. Fame and Its Aftermath

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  The cultural machinery that Sam Weller set in motion moved quickly. Merchandise bearing his name appeared while Dickens was still writing the book: Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish, and Weller joke books found buyers across Britain. William Thomas Moncrieff staged a burletta in 1837 called Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians, naming it after the servant rather than the novel's eponymous hero, Samuel Pickwick. One of the first actors to play Sam on stage was W. J. Hammond, performing in that same production while Dickens was still releasing new instalments.

  Portrayals of Sam Weller continued across more than a century of stage and screen. Sam Kydd played the role in the BBC television serial in 1952 and again in Bardell V. Pickwick in 1955. The character moved to the West End musical Pickwick in 1963, where Teddy Green took the part. Roy Castle played Sam both in the Broadway version in 1965 and in a television musical version in 1969. Phil Daniels brought him to a 1985 television adaptation. Each generation found something usable in the character: the loyalty, the wit, the voice that refuses to be smoothed over.