SML-59  SAM WELLER

SML-59  Sam Weller

GENERAL INFORMATION.  Samuel Weller is the center of comic interest in the Pickwick Papers.  He is a bootblack a the White Hart and afterward servant to Mr. PIckwick, to whom he becomes devotedly attached.  When Pickwick is sent tot he Fleet Prison, Weller, rather than leave his master, gets his father to arrest him for debt.  "Bless his old gaiters," Weller cries out about Pickwick, "I never seen such a fine creature in my days.  Blessed if I don't think his heart must ha' been born 25 years arter his body, at least."
     Baston portrays him polishing boots while seated on a pile of hay.  Weller is saying, "Ask him if he wants them now, or will he wait until he gets them."

Note: Baston designed a six-sided (hexagonal) base (SML-347) for his Dickens characters, locking them mechanically to a cottage background (SML-61) display. In 1946 he applied for a patent to protect this design motif and he cast the term "Patent Pending" into the base of each Dickens figurine.  In 1953 he was informed that the patent was denied.  All Dickens production form 1946 to 1953 bears the term "Patent Pending."

From Dr. Glenn Johnson's book, The Sebastian Miniature Collection.