Dickens – Quid Plura?

The Pickwickians had no sooner dismounted than they were surrounded by a branch mob of the honest and independent, who forthwith set up three deafening cheers, which being responded to by the main body (for it’s not at all necessary for a crowd to know what they are cheering about), swelled into a tremendous roar of triumph, which stopped even the red-faced man in the balcony.

“Hurrah!” shouted the mob, in conclusion.

“One cheer more,” screamed the little fugleman in the balcony, and out shouted the mob again, as if lungs were cast-iron, with steel works.

“Slumkey for ever!” roared the honest and independent.

“Slumkey for ever!” echoed Mr. Pickwick, taking off his hat.

“No Fizkin!” roared the crowd.

“Certainly not!” shouted Mr. Pickwick. “Hurrah!” And then there was another roaring, like that of a whole menagerie when the elephant has rung the bell for the cold meat.

“Who is Slumkey?” whispered Mr. Tupman.

“I don’t know,” replied Mr. Pickwick, in the same tone. “Hush. Don’t ask any questions. It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.”

“But suppose there are two mobs?” suggested Mr. Snodgrass.

“Shout with the largest,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

— Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 13

I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this while.

[. . .]

When my thoughts go back now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and sordid things.

— David Copperfield, chapter 11