ABSTRACT
A brief election scene seems to reference Pickwick Papers' Eatanswill election sequence, and G. W. M. Reynolds will develop this topic in The Mysteries of London. Reynolds will return, in a somewhat more serious mood, to business corruption in The Mysteries of London, and the energy and color he brings to Crashem/Sugden predict the vigor of his future work in this mode. The skills which will appear fully developed in The Mysteries of London are already present to a substantial degree in Robert Macaire. London is celebrated, as so often in Reynolds, as a "mighty Babylon" with a dark side: when Bertrand is out drinking, two gentlemen pay a man to drink as much as he can and he dies. The familiar Reynolds theme of disreputable London develops as Victor and Tibbatts visit a gambling hell, a pawnbroker, then a hall where forty very poor people are dining for nine-pence a head – and Victor drinks heavily.
