I had all but completed the task of organising the archive into due date order when there occur a very odd incident indeed, and proved to me once and for all that nothing was as it seemed, not even my own insecurities.  Warren Whatmore, the Claims Clerk, appeared at the door to my dungeon on a day that until that moment seemed quite like all the others, but wasn’t.
 “There’s a woman suing us for denial of claim. A Mrs Joe Hamilton. Here’s the policy number. She alleges there was an amendment to her original proposal that has not carried through to the current policy due to our oversight. A matter of ten thousand pounds, no less.”

“Oh, vermin!” said Mr. Peckinsnuff. “Oh, bloodsuckers! Is it not enough that you have embittered the existence of an individual, wholly unparalleled in biographical records of amiable persons; but must you now, even now, when he has made his election, and reposed his trust in a Nimble, but at least sincere and disinterested relative; must you now, vermin and swarmers (I regret to make use of these strong expressions, my dear sir, but there are times when honest indignation cannot be controlled), must you now, vermin and swarmers (for I WILL repeat it), taking advantage of his unprotected state, assemble around him from all quarters, as wolves and vultures, and other animals of feathered tribe assemble round—I will not say carrion or a carcass, for Mr. Chuzzlewit is quite the contrary—but round their prey—to rifle and despoil; gorging their voracious maws, and staining their offensive beaks, with every description of carnivorous enjoyment.”
  As he stopped to fetch breath he waved them off in a solemn manner, with his hand.
“Horde of unnatural plunderers and robbers!” he continued; “leave him! Leave him, I say! Begone. Abscond! You had better be off! Wander over the face of the earth, young sirs, like vagabonds as you are, and do not presume to remain in a spot which is hallowed by the grey hairs of the patriarchal gentleman to whose tottering limbs I have the honour to act as an unworthy, but I hope unassuming, prop and staff. And you, my tender sir,” said Mr. Peckinstaff, addressing himself in a tone of gentle remonstrance to the old man. “how could you ever leave me, though even for this short period! You have absented yourself, I do not doubt, upon some act of kindness to me; bless you for it; but you must not do it; you must not be so venturesome. I should really be angry with you if I could be, my friend!”
  He advanced with outstretched hands to take the old man’s hand. But he had not seen how the hand clasped and clutched the stick within its grasp. As he came smiling, and got within his reach, Old Martin, with his burning indignation crowded into one vehement burst, and flashing out every line and wrinkle in his face, rose up, and struck him down upon the ground.

  When he wrote The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit in 1843, Charles Dickens was having publisher problems. It was a flop (although only in terms of the high sales expected from a Dickens work) and generally his reputation and sales were declining, although still far higher than that of anyone else. He was a worried man and it shows in the book, but, as he admitted himself, he felt his power returning, indeed, felt it more than he ever had and had more confidence in himself than he had ever experienced. And this is true, the book is in some ways almost his best, in others only equal to his weakest. And there is that long American sequence that seems to belong to some other book altogether. But it gave the world that astonishingly ghastly sycophant Mr Peckensniff, along with Mrs Todgers, Tom Pinch and the helpless Chuzzlewit family, all of which clearly showed that Dickens was returning to his best, unseen really since Pickwick Papers.