Uncle Jack

Definition and stakes

Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton,  The Caxtons: A Family Picture…

“ No doubt Uncle Jack's philanthropy is sincere when he cuts the string and soars up out of sight; but the sincerity will not much mend their bruises when himself and fellow-creatures come tumbling down neck and heels. It must be a very wide heart that can take in all mankind,—and of a very strong fibre to bear so much stretching. Such hearts there are, Heaven be thanked! and all praise to them. Jack's is not of that quality. He is a scalene triangle. He is not a circle! ”
Source: Gutenberg

Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton,  The Caxtons: A Family Picture…

“ My uncle retreated quite into the corner and drew the dumb-waiter after him, so as to establish a complete fortification. Mr. Squills seized the pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mending it furiously,—that is, cutting it into slivers,—thereby denoting, symbolically, how he would like to do with Uncle Jack, could he once get him safe and snug under his manipular operations. I bent over the pedigree, and my father rubbed his spectacles.
The silence would have been appalling to another man: nothing appalled Uncle Jack.
”
Source: Gutenberg

Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton,  The Caxtons: A Family Picture…

“ You never saw a more charming man than Uncle Jack.
All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! What conspiracy could succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow, like Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was as plump as a partridge,—not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not vastus, which Cicero objects to in an orator, but every crevice comfortably filled up.
”
Source: Gutenberg

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