Pickwick’s picnic on a hunt in Dingley Dell is part of an abortive hunting expedition. It’s famous for Pickwick getting drunk and Sam Weller’s discussion of veal pies, pronounced “weal” in Weller’s Cockney accent. This picnic is served under the welcome shade of an old oak to make it easy for Pickwick, who suffers from rheumatism and is lugged in a wheelbarrow. He’s parked next to a basket of “eatables,” that Weller explains is ‘Wery good thing is weal pie, when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it ain’t kittens; and arter all though, where’s the odds, when they’re so like weal that the wery piemen themselves don’t know the difference?
‘Don’t they, Sam?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
See Charles Dickens. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, aka The Pickwick Papers (1837); Fred Barnard. Mr. Pickwick’s Picnic in Dingley Dell, Chapter XIX, A pleasant day with an unpleasant termination. 1870-1 71c. Barnard’s Pickwick is in Character Sketches from Dickens: Six Lithographs. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1879c.