Mr. Justice Stareleigh by J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") for the 1910 watercolour series: reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 14: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Pickwick Papers. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
MR. JUSTICE STARELEIGH (The Pickwick Papers)
We learn, during the course of the memorable trial "Bardell against Pickwick," that Mr. Justice Stareleigh (who presides) has "a broad pink face, surmounted by a big and very comical-looking wig," and that "his temper borders on the irritable and brooks no contradiction" — which latter fact is quite believable and in due accordance with the best traditions pf the Bench. [Verso of Card No. 14]
Passage Illustrated: Sergeant Buzfuz for the Plaintiff in Bardell v. Pickwick
Left: Phiz's The Trial (March 1837).
Mr. Justice Stareleigh (who sat in the absence of the Chief Justice, occasioned by indisposition) was a most particularly short man, and so fat, that he seemed all face and waistcoat. He rolled in, upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the Bar, who bobbed gravely to him, put his little legs underneath his table, and his little three-cornered hat upon it; and when Mr. Justice Stareleigh had done this, all you could see of him was two queer little eyes, one broad pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very comical-looking wig. [Chapter XXXIV of The Household Edition, "Is Wholly Devoted to a Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick," 235]
Comment: A Rarely Depicted Figure in the Trial for Breach of Promise
Given the specificity of the court and the trial, Dickens's original serial readers, if Londoners, would likely have associated this irritable magistrate in full regalia with the picaresque novel's famous Trial scene, Chapter 34 (March 1837 part), a comic figure based on an irascible, little judge named Sir Stephen Gazelee whom young Dickens saw in action in the Court of Common Pleas. Harry Furniss in his frontispiece for the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, Volume Two, the be-spectacled, disapproving, elderly justice to the left in Sam Weller in the Witness-Box fails to recognise his Father is presumably Stareleigh. Paul Davis succinctly notes that Dickens's indictment of Gazelee is said "to have influenced his retirement from the bench" (365).
Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910
- Robert Seymour (1836)
- Thomas Onwhyn (1837)
- Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1861)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (1867)
- Thomas Nast (1873)
- Harry Furniss (1910)
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by “Kyd.” Lonodn, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, nd. [1910?]
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman & Hall: April 1836 through November 1837.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. 1.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 22 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 2.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 5.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.
Created 6 January 2015
Last updated 10 July 2025