The text of the Pickwick Paper of 19th June 1997 reads:

"When Richard, Viscount Fitzwilliam died he left the University his paintings, books and about £100,000 - now that was about", and here (Henry) (John) Fynn, did a swift calculation, "about twenty-two years ago, yes I remember, 1816 - the year of them riots at Littleport when everybody thought there would be real trouble - but that's another story. Anyway they brought all the stuff up to Cambridge and had to find somewhere to put it. They decided on the Perse School buildings, just behind Corpus, in Free School Lane. Well that didn't have many scholars and they'd got a large room which was all right just for a temporary matter - and that's were it still is.

"As I told you they came up with one idea and then another as to where to put a new building and then in 1821 they hit on the site, beside Peterhouse. But the problem was the land was held on leases by various people who knew how the University wanted it and asked so much in compensation that the

University refused to pay it and so decided to wait till all the leases ran out. They'd still be waiting but that the Perse School people asked for their building back in 1834. About the same time the University got another collection of about 200 paintings from a Daniel Mesman, which they've put in the new Pitt Press for the time being.

"So they put out advertisements for people to come up with designs and twenty-seven architects sent in thirty-six designs - well nobody really knew quite what the University was thinking of, not that they did either. They finally selected one by George Basevi but then there's been all sorts of changes and debates and alterations. They drew up plans and put them out to tender, but the contractor who they chose then said how he’d miscalculated and could he put the price up by £2,500.

They finally got round to laying the main foundation stone only last November. It was a massive block of Portland stone weighing nearly five tons and was laid by the Master of Pembroke College. So you see what with that and the new University Library - with its Mineralogy and Geology museums as well, being started in the September we shall soon have more new museums and libraries than we know what to do with. And it will be good for the guide-book makers too for in a few years Cambridge will have changed out of all recognition. Provided that is they ever finish any of them", and here he produced a sketch of the proposed Museum.

Their conversation was interrupted by the return of Henry Bowd, complete with a most wonderful bath-chair. Pickwick was helped into it and pushed sedately down Bene't Street (keeping an eye open for the apple-seller in front of Mortlock’s Bank), along Petty Cury, passing the Wrestlers Inn where he had lost his money, and back to the Castle Inn. As they bumped along the rutted paths and roads, covered in dust from passing wagons, squeezed into alleys when two vehicles needed to pass each other he wondered that if this were the new improved Cambridge what must the old have been like!

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