Pickwick * I TURN BACK THROUGH THE PAGES I have already written, and have pleasure in quoting myself: ‘For there is no Don Quixote without his squire Sancho Panza, and Seymour in his painting of Sancho surely knew this. And perhaps even then, as a young man at work on this canvas, portraying the thin knight and a fat squire – I say, perhaps even then – his mind wondered playfully about reversing fat and thin. What if, he might have asked, what if there were a fat knight and a thin squire?’ At the heart of Seymour’s pet idea was a man who travelled throughout the kingdom, whose natural gullibility filled his head with mad stories; this, it must be agreed, is much in the manner of Don Quixote’s delusions. I might use an image from a later generation of graphic artists, of a light bulb over Seymour’s head – of Seymour realising that the Quixote could be recreated in England. Of course, if there was a Don Quixote, he needed a Sancho. And what if, instead of a thin Quixote…?
