2 10 85 https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Street_Sketches_No._V_Brokers_and_Marine_Store_Shops/1834-12-15-Street_Sketches_No5_Brokers_and_Marine_Store_Shops.pdf 50501d9a23f7ce945022f9dcdcf39aec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Morning Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18341215 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. When we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we make use of the term "brokers’ shops," the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate fore-ground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers’ shops, where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at full speed, or a strange animal, supposed to have been originally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers. This, by-the-bye, is a tempting article to young wives in the humbler ranks of life, who have a first-floor front to furnish; they are lost in admiration, and hardly know which to admire most. The dog is very beautiful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tray, and two more on the mantel piece. Then there is something so genteel about that mail-coach; and the passengers outside (who are all hat) give it such an air of reality! There are some of the most beautiful looking Pembroke tables that ever were beheld: the wood as green as the trees in the Park, and the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of a year. There is also a most extensive assortment of tent and turn-up bedsteads, made of stained wood; and innumerable specimens of that base Imposition on society—a sofa bedstead. A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer, and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a book-case; ornament it as you will, however, the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist on having it distinctly understood that he is a turn-up bedstead, and nothing else; that he is indispensably necessary; and that, being so useful, he disdains to be ornamental. How different is the demeanour of a sofa-bedstead! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility, an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa-bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud—we question whether you could insult him more than by insinuating that you entertain the least suspicion of its real use. To return from this digression, we beg to say, that neither of these classes of brokers’ shops forms the subject of our fifth sketch. The shops to which we advert, are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward appearance we have slightly touched. Our readers must often have observed in some bye-street in a poor neighbourhood, a small, dirty shop, exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined. Our wonder at their ever having been bought, is only to be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of their ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about twenty books—all odd volumes, and as many wine-glasses—all different patterns; several locks, an old earthen-ware pan, full of rusty keys; two or three gaudy chimney-ornaments—cracked, of course; the remains of a lustre, without any drops, a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a mirror; a flute, complete, with the exception of the middle joint; a pair of curling-irons, and a tinder-box. In front of the shop-window, are ranged some half-dozen high-backed chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs; a corner cupboard; two or three very dark mahogany tables, with flaps like mathematical problems; some pickle jars, some surgeons’ ditto, with gilt labels, and without stoppers; an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the beginning of the thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished at all; an incalculable host of miscellanies of every description; including bottles and cabinets, rags and bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door. Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white frock with two faces, one looking up the street, and the other looking down, swinging over the door; a board with the squeezed-up inscription "Dealer in Marine Stores," in lanky white letters, whose height is strangely out of proportion to their width; and you have before you precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention. Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things which we have attempted to describe, will be found at all these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of the minor articles which are exposed for sale—articles of wearing apparel, for instance—mark the character of the neighbourhood. Take Drury-Lane and Covent-garden for example. This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood. There is not a pot-boy in the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic character. The errand-boys and chandler’s-shop-keepers’ sons, are all stage-struck; they "get up" plays in back kitchens hired for the purpose, and will stand before a shop window for hours, contemplating a great staring portrait of Mr. Somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg Theatre, "as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denouncer." The consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the neighbourhood which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a "fourth robber" or "fifth mob;" a pair of rusty broad swords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent ornaments, which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office. There are several of these shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many near our national Theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this description; with the addition, perhaps, of a lady’s pink dress, covered with spangles, white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp-reflector. They have been purchased of some wretched supernumeraries, or sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising generation, who, on condition of making certain weekly payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail themselves of such desirable bargains. Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to the test. Look at a marine store-dealer’s in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness, and drabs, thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled salmon—Ratcliff-highway. Here, the wearing-apparel is all nautical: rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oilskin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvass trousers, that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. Then there are large bunches of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The furniture is much the same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships, and some old prints of naval engagements, in still older frames. In the window are a few compasses, and a small tray containing silver watches, in clumsy thick cases, and tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship or an anchor, or some such trophy. A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore; and if he does not, some favoured companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either case it is an even chance that he afterwards unconsciously re-purchases the same things at a higher price than he gave for them at first. Again; pay a visit with a similar object, to a part of London, as unlike both of these as they are to each other. Cross over to the Surrey side, and look at such shops of this description as are to be found near the King’s Bench Prison, and in "The Rules." How different, and how strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate residents in this part of the metropolis! Imprisonment and neglect have done their work: there is contamination in the profligate denizens of a debtor’s prison; old friends have fallen off; the recollection of former prosperity has passed away, and with it all thought of the past, all care for the future. First, watches and rings, then cloaks, coats, and all the more expensive articles of dress, have found their way to the pawnbroker’s. That miserable resource has failed at last, and the sale of some trifling article at one of these shops, has been the only mode left of raising a shilling or two, to meet the urgent demands of the moment. Dressing-cases, and writing-desks, too old to pawn, but too good to keep, guns, fishing-rods, musical instruments, in the same condition, have been first sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly felt. But hunger must be allayed, and what has already become a habit is easily resorted to when an emergency arises. Light articles of clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, at last of their children, even of the youngest, have been parted with piece-meal. There they are, thrown carelessly together, until a purchaser presents himself; old and patched, and repaired, it is true, but the make and materials tell of better days; and the older they are, the greater the misery and destitution of those whom they once adorned. We had intended to sketch this subject less in outline than is customary with us. We are, however, unwilling to exceed our ordinary limits, or to trespass at greater length than usual on the patience of our readers. We have more of these imperfect sketches to submit for their perusal; and as we hope to have many opportunies—when the partial absence of matter of pressing and absorbing interest again enables us to occupy a column occasionally—of laying our pen-and-ink drawings before them, we postpone the further consideration of this subject until a future time. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Street Sketches, No. V, Brokers and Marine Store Shops' Description An account of the resource Published in The Morning Chronicle on 15 December 1834. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000082/18341215/021/0006">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000082/18341215/021/0006</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1834-12-15 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1834-12-15-Street_Sketches_No5_Brokers_and_Marine_Store_Shops Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Street Sketches, No. V, Brokers and Marine Store Shops' (15 December 1834). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1834-12-15-Street_Sketches_No5_Brokers_and_Marine_Store_Shops">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1834-12-15-Street_Sketches_No5_Brokers_and_Marine_Store_Shops</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. When we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we make use of the term "brokers’ shops," the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate fore-ground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers’ shops, where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at full speed, or a strange animal, supposed to have been originally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers. This, by-the-bye, is a tempting article to young wives in the humbler ranks of life, who have a first-floor front to furnish; they are lost in admiration, and hardly know which to admire most. The dog is very beautiful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tray, and two more on the mantel piece. Then there is something so genteel about that mail-coach; and the passengers outside (who are all hat) give it such an air of reality! There are some of the most beautiful looking Pembroke tables that ever were beheld: the wood as green as the trees in the Park, and the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of a year. There is also a most extensive assortment of tent and turn-up bedsteads, made of stained wood; and innumerable specimens of that base Imposition on society—a sofa bedstead. A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer, and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a book-case; ornament it as you will, however, the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist on having it distinctly understood that he is a turn-up bedstead, and nothing else; that he is indispensably necessary; and that, being so useful, he disdains to be ornamental. How different is the demeanour of a sofa-bedstead! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility, an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa-bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud—we question whether you could insult him more than by insinuating that you entertain the least suspicion of its real use. To return from this digression, we beg to say, that neither of these classes of brokers’ shops forms the subject of our fifth sketch. The shops to which we advert, are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward appearance we have slightly touched. Our readers must often have observed in some bye-street in a poor neighbourhood, a small, dirty shop, exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined. Our wonder at their ever having been bought, is only to be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of their ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about twenty books—all odd volumes, and as many wine-glasses—all different patterns; several locks, an old earthen-ware pan, full of rusty keys; two or three gaudy chimney-ornaments—cracked, of course; the remains of a lustre, without any drops, a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a mirror; a flute, complete, with the exception of the middle joint; a pair of curling-irons, and a tinder-box. In front of the shop-window, are ranged some half-dozen high-backed chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs; a corner cupboard; two or three very dark mahogany tables, with flaps like mathematical problems; some pickle jars, some surgeons’ ditto, with gilt labels, and without stoppers; an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the beginning of the thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished at all; an incalculable host of miscellanies of every description; including bottles and cabinets, rags and bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door. Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white frock with two faces, one looking up the street, and the other looking down, swinging over the door; a board with the squeezed-up inscription "Dealer in Marine Stores," in lanky white letters, whose height is strangely out of proportion to their width; and you have before you precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention. Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things  which we have attempted to describe, will be found at all these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of the minor articles which are exposed for sale—articles of wearing apparel, for instance—mark the character of the neighbourhood. Take Drury-Lane and Covent-garden for example. This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood. There is not a pot-boy in the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic character. The errand-boys and chandler’s-shop-keepers’ sons, are all stage-struck; they "get up" plays in back kitchens hired for the purpose, and will stand before a shop window for hours, contemplating a great staring portrait of Mr. Somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg Theatre, "as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denouncer." The consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the neighbourhood which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a "fourth robber" or "fifth mob;" a pair of rusty broad swords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent ornaments, which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office. There are several of these shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many near our national Theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this description; with the addition, perhaps, of a lady’s pink dress, covered with spangles, white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp-reflector. They have been purchased of some wretched supernumeraries, or sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising generation, who, on condition of making certain weekly payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail themselves of such desirable bargains. Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to the test. Look at a marine store-dealer’s in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness, and drabs, thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled salmon—Ratcliff-highway. Here, the wearing-apparel is all nautical: rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oilskin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvass trousers, that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. Then there are large bunches of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The furniture is much the same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships, and some old prints of naval engagements, in still older frames. In the window are a few compasses, and a small tray containing silver watches, in clumsy thick cases, and tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship or an anchor, or some such trophy. A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore; and if he does not, some favoured companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either case it is an even chance that he afterwards unconsciously re-purchases the same things at a higher price than he gave for them at first. Again; pay a visit with a similar object, to a part of London, as unlike both of these as they are to each other. Cross over to the Surrey side, and look at such shops of this description as are to be found near the King’s Bench Prison, and in "The Rules." How different, and how strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate residents in this part of the metropolis! Imprisonment and neglect have done their work: there is contamination in the profligate denizens of a debtor’s prison; old friends have fallen off; the recollection of former prosperity has passed away, and with it all thought of the past, all care for the future. First, watches and rings, then cloaks, coats, and all the more expensive articles of dress, have found their way to the pawnbroker’s. That miserable resource has failed at last, and the sale of some trifling article at one of these shops, has been the only mode left of raising a shilling or two, to meet the urgent demands of the moment. Dressing-cases, and writing-desks, too old to pawn, but too good to keep, guns, fishing-rods, musical instruments, in the same condition, have been first sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly felt. But hunger must be allayed, and what has already become a habit is easily resorted to when an emergency arises. Light articles of clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, at last of their children, even of the youngest, have been parted with piece-meal. There they are, thrown carelessly together, until a purchaser presents himself; old and patched, and repaired, it is true, but the make and materials tell of better days; and the older they are, the greater the misery and destitution of those whom they once adorned. We had intended to sketch this subject less in outline than is customary with us. We are, however, unwilling to exceed our ordinary limits, or to trespass at greater length than usual on the patience of our readers. We have more of these imperfect sketches to submit for their perusal; and as we hope to have many opportunies—when the partial absence of matter of pressing and absorbing interest again enables us to occupy a column occasionally—of laying our pen-and-ink drawings before them, we postpone the further consideration of this subject until a future time. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Street_Sketches_No._I_Omnibuses/1834-09-26-Street_Sketches_No1_Omnibuses.pdf b902685245521b5789772d5c915716c3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Morning Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18340926 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. It is very generally allowed that public conveyances afford an extensive field for amusement and observation. Of all the public conveyances that have been constructed since the days of the Ark—we think that is the earliest on record—to the present time, commend us to an omnibus. A long stage is not to be despised; but there you have only six insides, and the chances are, that the same people go all the way with you—there is no change, no variety. Besides, after the first twelve hours or so people get cross and sleepy, and after you have seen a man in his nightcap you lose all respect for him—at least that it is the case with us. Then on smooth roads people frequently get prosy, and tell long stories, and even those who don't talk may have very unpleasant predilections. We once travelled four hundred miles, inside a stage-coach with a stout man who had a glass of rum and water, warm, handed in at the window at every place where we changed horses. This was decidedly unpleasant. We have also travelled occasionally with a small boy of a pale aspect with light hair, and no perceptible neck, coming up to town from school under the protection of the guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for. This is perhaps even worse than rum and water in a close atmosphere. Then there is the whole train of evils consequent on a change of the coachman; and the misery of the discovery—which the guard is sure to make the moment you begin to doze—that he wants a brown-paper parcel, which he distinctly remembers to have deposited under the seat on which you are reposing. A great deal of bustle and groping takes place, and when you are thoroughly awakened, and severely cramped by holding your legs up by an almost supernatural exertion while he is looking behind them, it suddenly occurs to him that he put it in the fore-boot. Bang goes the door, the parcel is immediately found, off starts the coach again, and the guard plays the key-bugle as loud as he can play it, as if in mockery of your wretchedness. Now you meet with none of these afflictions in an omnibus: sameness there can never be; the passengers change as often in the course of one journey as the figures in a kaleidoscope, and though not so glittering, are far more amusing. We believe there is no instance upon record of a man's having gone to sleep in one of these vehicles. As to long stories; would any man venture to tell a long story in an omnibus? And even if he did, where would be the harm? Nobody could possibly hear what he was talking about. Again; children, though occasionally, are not often to be found in an omnibus, and even when they are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the case, somebody sits upon them, and we are unconscious of their presence. Yes, after mature reflection, and considerable experience, we are decidedly of opinion that of all known vehicles, from the glass coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus. We will back the machine in which we make our daily peregrination from the top of Oxford-street to the City, against any "bus" on the road, whether it be for the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity of its interior, or the native coolness of its cad. This young gentleman is a singular instance of self-devotion; his somewhat intemperate zeal on behalf of his employers, is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally into the House of Correction. He is no sooner emancipated, however, than he resumes the duties of his profession with unabated ardour. His principal distinction is his activity. His great boast is, "that he can chuck an old gen'lm'n into the bus, shut him in, and rattle off, afore he knows where it's a-going to"—a feat which he frequently performs to the infinite amusement of every one but the old gentleman concerned, who, somehow or other, never can see the joke of the thing. We are not aware that it has ever been precisely ascertained, how many passengers our omnibus will contain. The impression on the cad's mind evidently is, that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of any number of persons that can be enticed into it. "Any room?" cries a very hot pedestrian. "Plenty o' room, sir," replies the conductor, gradually opening the door, and not disclosing the real state of the case till the wretched man is on the steps. "Where?" inquires the entrapped individual, with an attempt to back out again. "Either side, sir," rejoins the cad, shoving him in, and slamming the door. "All right, Bill." Retreat is impossible; the new comer rolls about, till he falls down somewhere, and there he stops. As we get into the city, a little before ten, four or five of our party are regular passengers. We always take them up at the same places, and they generally occupy the same seats; they are always dressed in the same manner, and invariably discuss the same topics—the increasing rapidity of cabs, and the disregard of moral obligations evinced by omnibus men. There is a little testy old man, with a powdered head, who always sits on the right-hand side of the door as you enter, with his hands folded on the top of his umbrella. He is extremely impatient, and sits there for the purpose of keeping a sharp eye on the cad, with whom he generally holds a running dialogue. He is very officious in helping people in and out, and always volunteers to give the cad a poke with his umbrella, when any one wants to alight. He usually recommends ladies to have sixpence ready to prevent delay; and if anybody puts a window down, that he can reach, he immediately puts it up again. "Now, what are you stopping for?" says the little man every morning, the moment there is the slightest indication of pulling up at the corner of Regent-street, when some such dialogue as the following takes place between him and the cad:—"What are you stopping for?" Here the cad whistles, and affects not to hear the question. "I say [a poke], what are you stopping for?" "For passengers, sir. Ba—nk.—Ty." "I know you're stopping for passengers; but you've no business to do so. Why are you stopping?" "Vy, sir, it's rayther a difficult question. I think it is because we prefer stopping here to going on." "Now mind," exclaims the little old man with great vehemence, "I'll pull you up to-morrow; I've often threatened to do it; now I will." "Thankee, sir," replies the cad, touching his hat with a mock expression of gratitude;—"werry much obliged to you indeed, sir." Here the young men in the omnibus laugh very heartily, and the old gentleman gets very red in the face, and seems highly exasperated. The stout gentleman in the white neckcloth, at the other end of the vehicle, looks very prophetic, and says that something must shortly be done with these fellows, or there's no saying where all this will end; and the shabby-genteel man with the green bag, expresses his entire concurrence in the opinion, as he has done regularly every morning for the last six months. A second omnibus now comes up, and stops immediately behind us. Another old gentleman elevates his cane in the air, and runs with all his might towards our omnibus; we watch his progress with great interest; the door is opened to receive him, he suddenly disappears—he has been spirited away by the opposition. Hereupon the driver of the opposition taunts our people with his having "regularly done 'em out of that old swell," and the voice of the "old swell" is heard, vainly protesting against this unlawful detention. We rattle off, the other omnibus rattles after us, and every time we stop to take up a passenger, they stop to take him too; sometimes we get him; sometimes they get him; but whoever don't get him say they ought to have had him, and the cads of the respective vehicles abuse one another accordingly. As we arrive in the vicinity of Lincoln's Inn-fields, Bedford-row, and other legal haunts, we drop a great many of our original passengers, and take up fresh ones, who meet with a very sulky reception. It is rather remarkable, that the people already in an omnibus always look at new comers, as if they entertained some undefined idea that they have no business to come in at all. We are quite persuaded the little old man has some notion of this kind—that he considers their entry as a sort of negative impertinence. Conversation is now entirely dropped; each person gazes vacantly through the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbour is staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane and another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter that if he had got out at Shoo-lane too, he would have saved them the delay of another stoppage; whereupon the young men laugh again, and the old gentleman looks very solemn, and says nothing more till he gets to the Bank, when he trots off as fast as he can, leaving us to do the same, and to wish, as we walk away, that we could impart to others any portion of the amusement we have derived for ourselves. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Street Sketches, No. I, Omnibuses' Description An account of the resource Published in The Morning Chronicle (26 September 1834), p.3. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000082/18340926/016/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000082/18340926/016/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 18340926 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1834-09-26-Street_Sketches_No1_Omnibuses Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Street Sketches, No. I, Omnibuses' (26 September 1834). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1834-09-26-Street_Sketches_No1_Omnibuses">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1834-09-26-Street_Sketches_No1_Omnibuses</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. It is very generally allowed that public conveyances afford an extensive field for amusement and observation. Of all the public conveyances that have been constructed since the days of the Ark—we think that is the earliest on record—to the present time, commend us to an omnibus. A long stage is not to be despised; but there you have only six insides, and the chances are, that the same people go all the way with you—there is no change, no variety. Besides, after the first twelve hours or so people get cross and sleepy, and after you have seen a man in his nightcap you lose all respect for him—at least that it is the case with us. Then on smooth roads people frequently get prosy, and tell long stories, and even those who don't talk may have very unpleasant predilections. We once travelled four hundred miles, inside a stage-coach with a stout man who had a glass of rum and water, warm, handed in at the window at every place where we changed horses. This was decidedly unpleasant. We have also travelled occasionally with a small boy of a pale aspect with light hair, and no perceptible neck, coming up to town from school under the protection of the guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for. This is perhaps even worse than rum and water in a close atmosphere. Then there is the whole train of evils consequent on a change of the coachman; and the misery of the discovery—which the guard is sure to make the moment you begin to doze—that he wants a brown-paper parcel, which he distinctly remembers to have deposited under the seat on which you are reposing. A great deal of bustle and groping takes place, and when you are thoroughly awakened, and severely cramped by holding your legs up by an almost supernatural exertion while he is looking behind them, it suddenly occurs to him that he put it in the fore-boot. Bang goes the door, the parcel is immediately found, off starts the coach again, and the guard plays the key-bugle as loud as he can play it, as if in mockery of your wretchedness. Now you meet with none of these afflictions in an omnibus: sameness there can never be; the passengers change as often in the course of one journey as the figures in a kaleidoscope, and though not so glittering, are far more amusing. We believe there is no instance upon record of a man's having gone to sleep in one of these vehicles. As to long stories; would any man venture to tell a long story in an omnibus? And even if he did, where would be the harm? Nobody could possibly hear what he was talking about. Again; children, though occasionally, are not often to be found in an omnibus, and even when they are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the case, somebody sits upon them, and we are unconscious of their presence. Yes, after mature reflection, and considerable experience, we are decidedly of opinion that of all known vehicles, from the glass coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus. We will back the machine in which we make our daily peregrination from the top of Oxford-street to the City, against any "bus" on the road, whether it be for the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity of its interior, or the native coolness of its cad. This young gentleman is a singular instance of self-devotion; his somewhat intemperate zeal on behalf of his employers, is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally into the House of Correction. He is no sooner emancipated, however, than he resumes the duties of his profession with unabated ardour. His principal distinction is his activity. His great boast is, "that he can chuck an old gen'lm'n into the bus, shut him in, and rattle off, afore he knows where it's a-going to"—a feat which he frequently performs to the infinite amusement of every one but the old gentleman concerned, who, somehow or other, never can see the joke of the thing. We are not aware that it has ever been precisely ascertained, how many passengers our omnibus will contain. The impression on the cad's mind evidently is, that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of any number of persons that can be enticed into it. "Any room?" cries a very hot pedestrian. "Plenty o' room, sir," replies the conductor, gradually opening the door, and not disclosing the real state of the case till the wretched man is on the steps. "Where?" inquires the entrapped individual, with an attempt to back out again. "Either side, sir," rejoins the cad, shoving him in, and slamming the door. "All right, Bill." Retreat is impossible; the new comer rolls about, till he falls down somewhere, and there he stops. As we get into the city, a little before ten, four or five of our party are regular passengers. We always take them up at the same places, and they generally occupy the same seats; they are always dressed in the same manner, and invariably discuss the same topics—the increasing rapidity of cabs, and the disregard of moral obligations evinced by omnibus men. There is a little testy old man, with a powdered head, who always sits on the right-hand side of the door as you enter, with his hands folded on the top of his umbrella. He is extremely impatient, and sits there for the purpose of keeping a sharp eye on the cad, with whom he generally holds a running dialogue. He is very officious in helping people in and out, and always volunteers to give the cad a poke with his umbrella, when any one wants to alight. He usually recommends ladies to have sixpence ready to prevent delay; and if anybody puts a window down, that he can reach, he immediately puts it up again. "Now, what are you stopping for?" says the little man every morning, the moment there is the slightest indication of pulling up at the corner of Regent-street, when some such dialogue as the following takes place between him and the cad:— "What are you stopping for?" Here the cad whistles, and affects not to hear the question. "I say [a poke], what are you stopping for?" "For passengers, sir. Ba—nk.—Ty." "I know you're stopping for passengers; but you've no business to do so. Why are you stopping?" "Vy, sir, it's rayther a difficult question. I think it is because we prefer stopping here to going on." "Now mind," exclaims the little old man with great vehemence, "I'll pull you up to-morrow; I've often threatened to do it; now I will." "Thankee, sir," replies the cad, touching his hat with a mock expression of gratitude;—"werry much obliged to you indeed, sir." Here the young men in the omnibus laugh very heartily, and the old gentleman gets very red in the face, and seems highly exasperated. The stout gentleman in the white neckcloth, at the other end of the vehicle, looks very prophetic, and says that something must shortly be done with these fellows, or there's no saying where all this will end; and the shabby-genteel man with the green bag, expresses his entire concurrence in the opinion, as he has done regularly every morning for the last six months. A second omnibus now comes up, and stops immediately behind us. Another old gentleman elevates his cane in the air, and runs with all his might towards our omnibus; we watch his progress with great interest; the door is opened to receive him, he suddenly disappears—he has been spirited away by the opposition. Hereupon the driver of the opposition taunts our people with his having "regularly done 'em out of that old swell," and the voice of the "old swell" is heard, vainly protesting against this unlawful detention. We rattle off, the other omnibus rattles after us, and every time we stop to take up a passenger, they stop to take him too; sometimes we get him; sometimes they get him; but whoever don't get him say they ought to have had him, and the cads of the respective vehicles abuse one another accordingly. As we arrive in the vicinity of Lincoln's Inn-fields, Bedford-row, and other legal haunts, we drop a great many of our original passengers, and take up fresh ones, who meet with a very sulky reception. It is rather remarkable, that the people already in an omnibus always look at new comers, as if they entertained some undefined idea that they have no business to come in at all. We are quite persuaded the little old man has some notion of this kind—that he considers their entry as a sort of negative impertinence. Conversation is now entirely dropped; each person gazes vacantly through the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbour is staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane and another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter that if he had got out at Shoo-lane too, he would have saved them the delay of another stoppage; whereupon the young men laugh again, and the old gentleman looks very solemn, and says nothing more till he gets to the Bank, when he trots off as fast as he can, leaving us to do the same, and to wish, as we walk away, that we could impart to others any portion of the amusement we have derived for ourselves. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Passage_in_the_Life_of_Mr._Watkins_Tottle_[Chapter_the_First]/1835-01-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_I.pdf d5317ecd4eac111c5bbffe5c8e3e5f35 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Periodical Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Monthly Magazine Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350101 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an over-weening predilection for brandy and water, it is a misfortune into which a man easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself. It is no use telling a man who is timorous on these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other. Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and three-quarters in his socks—for he never stood in stockings at all—plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one of Richardson’s novels, and had a clean cravatish formality of manner, and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the individual who received it, in one respect—it was rather small. He received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he ran himself out about a day after the expiration of the first week as regularly as an eight-day clock, and then, to make the comparison complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick. Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think, but the idea of matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in Cecil-street into a neat house in the suburbs—the half-hundred weight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the best Walls-End—his small French bedstead was converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster—and in the empty chair on the opposite side of the fireplace imagination seated a beautiful young lady with a very little independence or will of her own, and a very large independence under a will of her father’s. "Who’s there?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his room-door disturbed these meditations one evening. "Tottle, my dear fellow, how do you do?" said a short elderly gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying to the question by asking another, and then they shook hands with a great deal of solemnity. "Told you I should drop in some evening," said the short gentleman, as he delivered his hat into Tottle’s hand, after a little struggling and dodging. "Delighted to see you, I’m sure," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing internally that his visitor had ‘dropped in’ to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour. The fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up. "How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons?" inquired Tottle. "Quite well, thank you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the name the short gentleman revelled in. Here there was a pause; the short gentleman looked at the left hob of the fire-place; Mr. Watkins Tottle stared vacancy out of countenance. "Quite well," repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had expired. "I may say remarkably well," and he rubbed the palms of his hands together as hard as if he were going to strike a light by friction. "What will you take?" inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of a man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave he stood very little chance of taking any thing else. "Oh, I don’t know.—Have you any whiskey?" "Why," replied Tottle very slowly, for all this was gaining time, "I had some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week; but it’s all gone—and therefore its strength—" "Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impossible to be proved," said the short gentleman; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad the whiskey had been drank. Mr. Tottle smiled—but it was the smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he delicately insinuated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be averse to brandy. And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very ostentatiously, and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the street-door—but which, for the sake of appearances, occasionally did duty in an imaginary wine-cellar, left the room to entreat his landlady to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The application was successful—the spirits were speedily called;—not from "the vasty deep," but the adjacent wine-vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their grog; and then sat cosily down before the fire—a pair of shorts, airing themselves. "Tottle," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "you know my way—off-hand, open, say what I mean, and mean what I say, damn reserve, and can’t bear affectation. One is a bad domino which only hides what good-people have about ’em, without making the bad look better; and the other is much about the same thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one.—Now listen to what I’m going to say." Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the fire, and assumed an air of profound attention. "It’s of no use humming and ha’ing about the matter," resumed the short gentleman.—"You want to get married—don't you?" "Why," —replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively; for he trembled violently, and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame—"why—I should certainly—at least, I think I should like it." "Won’t do," said the short gentleman.—"Plain and free—or there’s an end of the matter. Do you want money?" "You know I do." "You admire the sex?" "I do." "And you’d like to be married?" "Certainly." "Then you shall be.—There’s an end of that." And thus saying, Mr. Gabriel Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass. "Let me entreat you to be more explanatory," said Tottle. —"Really, as the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of in this way." "I’ll tell you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject, and the brandy-and-water—"I know a lady—she’s stopping with my wife now—who is just the thing for you. Well educated; talks French; plays the piano; knows a good deal about flowers and shells—and all that sort of thing; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it by her last will and testament." "I’ll pay my addresses to her," said Mr. Watkins Tottle.—"She isn’t very young—is she?" "Not very; just the thing for you.—I’ve said that already." "What coloured hair has the lady?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Egad, I hardly recollect," replied Gabriel, with great coolness. "Perhaps I ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front." "A what!" ejaculated Tottle. "One of those things with curls along here," said Parsons, drawing a straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration of his meaning. —"I know the front’s black; I can’t speak quite positively about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind her, and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it; but I should say that it was rather lighter than the front—a shade of a greyish tinge, perhaps." Mr. Watkins Tottle, looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind. Mr. Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the next attack without delay. "Were you ever in love, Tottle?" he inquired. Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and exhibited a most extensive combination of colours, as he confessed the soft impeachment. "I suppose you popped the question more than once, when you were a young—,I beg your pardon—a younger—man," said Parsons. "Never in my life," replied his friend, apparently indignant at being suspected of such an act. "Never! the fact is, that I entertain, as you know, peculiar opinions on these subjects. I am not afraid of ladies, young or old—far from it; but, I think, that in compliance with the custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and manner to marriageable men. Now the fact is, that any thing like this easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am always afraid of going too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered formal and cold." "I shouldn’t wonder if you were," replied Parsons, gravely; "I shouldn’t wonder. However, you’ll be all right in this case; for the strictness and delicacy of this lady’s ideas, greatly exceed your own. Lord bless you, why when she came to our house, there was an old portrait of some man or other, with two large black staring eyes, hanging up in her bed-room; she positively refused to go to bed there till it was taken down, considering it decidedly improper." "I think so too," said Mr. Watkins Tottle; "certainly." "And then the other night—I never laughed so much in my life," resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons; :I had driven home in a strong easterly wind, and caught a devil of a face-ache. Well; as Fanny—that’s Mrs. Parsons, you know—and this friend of hers, and I, and Frank Ross, were playing a rubber, I said, jokingly, that when I went to bed I should wrap my head up in Fanny’s flannel petticoat. She instantly threw up her cards and left the room." "Quite right!" said Mr. Watkins Tottle, "she couldn't possibly have behaved in a more dignified manner. What did you do?" "Do?—Frank took dummy; and I won sixpence." "But, didn’t you apologize for hurting her feelings?" "Devil a bit. Next morning at breakfast we talked it over. She contended that any reference to a flannel petticoat was highly improper;—men ought not to be supposed to know that such things were. I pleaded my coverture; being a married man." "And what did the lady say to that?" inquired Tottle; deeply interested. "Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a single man, its impropriety was obvious." "Noble-minded creature!" exclaimed the enraptured Tottle. "Oh! both Fanny and I, said at once, that she was regularly cut out for you." A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular face of Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he heard the prophecy. "There’s one thing I can’t understand," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he rose to depart, "I cannot for the life and soul of me, imagine how the deuce you’ll ever contrive to come together. The lady would certainly go into convulsions if the subject were mentioned." Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat down again, and laughed until he was weak. Tottle owed him money: so he had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle’s expense. Mr. Watkins Tottle, feared in his own mind, that this was another characteristic which he had in common with this modern Lucretia. He, however, accepted the invitation to dine with the Parsons' on the next day but one, with great firmness; and looked forward to the introduction, when again left alone, with tolerable composure. The sun that rose on the next day but one, had never beheld a sprucer personage on the outside of the Norwood-stage than Mr. Watkins Tottle, and when the coach drew up before a cardboard-looking house with disguised chimnies, and a lawn like a large sheet of green letter paper, he certainly had never lighted to his place of destination a gentleman who felt more awkward or uncomfortable. The coach stopped and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped—we beg his pardon—alighted with great dignity. "All right!" said he, and away went the coach up the hill with that beautiful equanimity of pace for which "short" stages are generally remarkable. Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faultering jerk to the handle of the garden-gate bell, in shape something like a gigantic note of admiration, and he stood for some minutes like the Duke of Wellington waiting in vain for a peal. He essayed a more energetic tug, and his previous nervousness was not at all diminished by hearing the bell ringing like a fire alarum. "Is Mr. Parsons at home?" inquired Tottle of the man who opened the gate. He could hardly hear himself speak, for the bell had not yet done tolling. "Here I am," shouted a voice on the lawn,—and there was Mr. Gabriel Parsons in a flannel jacket, running backwards and forwards from a wicket to two hats piled on each other, and from the two hats to the wicket, in the most violent manner, while another gentleman with his coat off was getting down the area of the house, after a ball. When the gentleman without the coat had found it—which he did in less than ten minutes—he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up. Then, the gentleman without the coat called out "play" very loudly and bowled; Mr. Gabriel Parsons knocked the ball several yards and took another run. Then the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and didn’t hit it; and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished running on his own account, laid down the bat and ran after the ball which went into a neighbouring field. They called this cricket. "Tottle, will you 'go in?'" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he approached him, wiping the perspiration off his face. Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of accepting which, made him even warmer than his friend. "Then we’ll go into the house as it’s past four, and I shall have to wash my hands before dinner," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Here, I hate ceremony, you know! Timson, that is Tottle—Tottle, that’s Timson, bred for the church, which I fear will never be bread for him," and he chuckled at the old joke. Mr. Timson bowed carelessly; Mr. Watkins Tottle bowed stiffly, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sincerity. Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most graciously on the steps, and preceded them to the drawing-room. On the sofa was seated a lady of very prim appearance, and remarkably inanimate. She was just one of those persons at whose age it is impossible to make any reasonable guess—her features might have been remarkably pretty when she was younger, and they might always have presented the same appearance. Her complexion—with a slight trace of powder here and there—was as clear as that of a well-made wax doll, and her face as expressive. She was handsomely dressed, and was winding up a gold watch for effect. "Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr. Watkins Tottle; a very old acquaintance I assure you," said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the Strephon of Cecil-street, Strand. The lady rose, and made a deep courtesy; Mr. Watkins Tottle made a serio-comic bow. "Splendid, majestic creature!" thought Tottle. She was his beau idéal of a desirable female. Mr. Timson advanced, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began to hate him. Men generally discover a rival instinctively, and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt that his hate was deserved. "May I beg," said the reverend gentleman—"May I beg to call upon you, Miss Lillerton, for some trifling donation to my soup, coals, and blanket distribution society?" "Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you please," responded the automaton-like Miss Lillerton. "You are truly charitable, madam," said the Reverend Mr. Timson, "and we know that charity will cover a multitude of sins. Let me beg you to understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have many sins which require palliation; believe me when I say that I never yet met any one who had fewer to atone for than Miss Lillerton." Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted up the lady’s face, as she acknowledged the compliment. Watkins Tottle incurred the sin of wishing that the ashes of the Rev. Charles Timson were quietly deposited in the churchyard of his curacy, wherever it might be. "I’ll tell you what," interrupted Parsons, who had just appeared with clean hands, and a black coat, "it’s my private opinion Timson, that your 'distribution society' is rather a humbug." "You are so severe," replied Timson, with a christian smile;—he disliked Parsons, but liked his dinners. "So positively unjust," said Miss Lillerton. "Certainly," observed Tottle. The lady looked up; her eyes met those of Mr. Watkins Tottle. She withdrew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins Tottle did the same—the confusion was mutual. "Why," urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections, "what on earth is the use of giving a man coals who has nothing to cook; or giving him blankets when he hasn’t a bed; or giving him soup when he requires substantial food—like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt. Why not give ’em a trifle of money, as I do, when I think they deserve it, and let them purchase what they think best? Why?—because your subscribers wouldn’t see their names flourishing in print on the church-door—that’s the reason." "Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that I wish to see my name in print, on the church-door," interrupted Miss Lillerton, indignantly. "I hope not," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in another word, and getting another glance. "Certainly not," replied Parsons. "I dare say you wouldn’t mind seeing it in writing though, in the church register—eh?" "Register! What register?" enquired the lady gravely. "Why, the register of marriages, to be sure," replied Parsons, chuckling at the sally, and glancing at Tottle. Mr. Watkins Tottle thought he should have fainted for very shame, and it is quite impossible to imagine what effect the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner had not been that moment announced. Mr. Watkins Tottle, with an unprecedented effort of gallantry, offered the tip of his little finger; Miss Lillerton accepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty; and they proceeded in due state to the dinner table, where they were soon deposited side by side. The room was very snug, the dinner very good, and the little party in tolerable spirits. The conversation became pretty general, and when Mr. Watkins Tottle had extracted one or two cold observations from his neighbour, and taken wine with her, he began to acquire confidence rapidly. The cloth was removed; Mrs. Gabriel Parsons drank four glasses of port, on the plea of being a nurse just then; and Miss Lillerton took about the same number of sips, on the plea of not wanting any at all. At length the ladies retired, to the great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Parsons, who had been coughing and frowning at his wife, for half an hour previously—signals which Mrs. Parsons never happened to observe, until she had been pressed to take her ordinary quantum, which, to avoid giving trouble, she always did at once. "What do you think of her?" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons of Mr. Watkins Tottle, in an under tone. "I dote on her with enthusiasm already," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Gentlemen, pray let us drink 'the ladies,'" said the Reverend Mr. Timson. "The ladies!" said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his glass. In the fullness of his confidence he felt as if he could make love to a dozen ladies, off hand. "Ah!" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "I remember when I was a younger man—fill your glass, Timson." "I have this moment emptied it." "Then fill again." "I will," said Timson, suiting the action to the word. "I remember," resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "when I was a younger man, with what a strange compound of feelings I used to drink that toast, and how I used to think every woman was an angel—quite a superior being." "Was that before you were married?" mildly inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Oh! certainly," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons. I have never thought so since; and a precious milksop I must have been, ever to have thought so at all. Why, you know, I married Fanny under the oddest, and most ridiculous circumstances possible." "What were they, if one may inquire?" asked Timson, who had heard the story, on an average twice a week for the last six months. Mr. Watkins Tottle listened attentively, in the hope of picking up some suggestion that might be useful to him in his new undertaking. "I spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chimney," said Parsons, by way of a beginning. "In a back-kitchen chimney!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle. "How dreadful!" "Yes, it wasn’t very pleasant," replied the small host. "The fact is, that Fanny’s father and mother liked me well enough as an individual, but had a decided objection to my becoming a husband. You see, I hadn’t any money in those days, and they had; and so they wanted Fanny to pick up somebody else. However, we managed to discover the state of each other’s affections somehow. I used to meet her at some mutual friends’ parties; at first we danced together, and talked, and flirted, and all that sort of thing; then I used to like nothing so well as sitting by her side—we didn’t talk so much then, but I remember I used to have a great notion of looking at her out of the extreme corner of my left eye, and then I got very miserable and sentimental, and began to write verses, and use macassar. At last I couldn’t bear it any longer, and after I had walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-street, in tight boots for a week—and a devilish hot summer it was too—in the hope of meeting her, I sat down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage to see me clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision from her own mouth. I said I had discovered, to my perfect satisfaction, that I couldn’t live without her, and that if she didn’t have me, I had made up my mind to take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate so as to take myself off in some way or other. Well, I borrowed a pound, and bribed the housemaid to give her the note which she did." "And what was the reply?" enquired Timson, who had found before, that to encourage the repetition of old stories, is sure to end in a general invitation. "Oh, the usual way you know—Fanny expressed herself very miserable; hinted at the possibility of an early grave; said that nothing should induce her to swerve from the duty she owed her parents; and implored me to forget her, and find out somebody more deserving, and all that sort of thing. She said she could on no account think of meeting me unknown to her pa and ma; and entreated me, as she should be in a particular part of Kensington Gardens at eleven o’clock next morning, not to attempt to meet her there." "You didn’t go, of course?" said Watkins Tottle. "Didn’t I?—Of course I did. There she was, with the identical housemaid in perspective, in order that there might be no interruption. We walked about for a couple of hours; made ourselves delightfully miserable; and were regularly engaged. Then we began to 'correspond'—that is to say, we used to exchange about four letters a day: what we used to say in ’em I can’t imagine. And I used to have an interview in the kitchen, or the cellar, or some such place, every evening. Well, things went on in this way for some time; and we got fonder of each other every day. At last, as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my salary had been raised too shortly before, we determined on a secret marriage. Fanny arranged to sleep at a friend’s the night before; we were to be married early in the morning, and then we were to return to her home and be pathetic. She was to fall at the old gentleman’s feet, and bathe his boots with her tears; and I was to hug the old lady, and call her 'mother,' and use my pocket-handkerchief as much as possible. Married we were the next morning; two girls—friends of Fanny’s—acting as brides's-maids; and a man, who was hired for five shillings and a pint of porter, officiating as father. Now, the old lady unfortunately put off her return from Ramsgate, where she had been paying a visit, until the next morning; and as we placed great reliance on her, we agreed to postpone our confession for four-and-twenty hours. My newly-made wife returned home, and I spent my wedding-day in strolling about Hampstead-heath, and damning my father-in-law. Of course I went to comfort my dear little wife at night as much as I could, with the assurance that our troubles would soon be over. I opened the garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was shewn by the servant to our old place of meeting—a back kitchen, with a stone-floor, and a dresser, upon which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit, and make love." "Make love upon a kitchen-dresser!" interrupted Mr. Watkins Tottle, whose ideas of decorum were greatly outraged. "Ah!—on a kitchen-dresser!" replied Parsons. —"And let me tell you, old fellow, that, if you were really over head-and-ears in love, and had no other place to make love in, you’d be devilish glad to avail yourself of such an opportunity. However, let me see;—where was I?" "On the dresser," suggested Timson. "Oh—ah! Well, here I found poor Fanny—quite disconsolate, and uncomfortable. The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her feel still more lonely; and she was quite out of spirits. So I put a good face on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should enjoy the pleasures of a matrimonial life more by contrast; and, at length, poor Fanny brightened up a little. I stopped there, till about eleven o’clock; and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the girl came running down stairs, without her shoes, in a great fright, to tell us that the old villain—God forgive me for calling him so! for he is dead and gone now—prompted I suppose by the prince of darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper—a thing he had not done before for six months, to my certain knowledge; for the cask stood in that very back kitchen. If he discovered me there, explanation would have been out of the question; for he was so outrageously violent, when at all excited that he never would have listened to me. There was only one thing to be done.—The chimney was a very wide one: it had been originally built for an oven; went up perpendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward, and formed a sort of small cavern. My hopes and fortune—the means of our joint existence almost—were at stake. I scrambled in like a squirrel; coiled myself up in this recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious father-in-law carried in his hand. I heard him draw the beer; and I never heard beer run so slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board with a tremendous crash. He stopped, and put down the candle and the jug of beer on the dresser: he was a nervous old fellow; and any unexpected noise annoyed him. He, coolly observed that the fire-place was never used, and sending the frightened servant into the next kitchen for a hammer and nails, actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on the outside. So there was I, on my wedding night, in the light kerseymere trousers, fancy waistcoat, and blue coat, that I had been married in in the morning, in a back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of which was nailed up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some fifteen feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the neighbours. And there," added Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he passed the bottle—"there I remained till half-past seven o'clock next morning, when the housemaid’s sweetheart, who was a carpenter, unshelled me. The old dog had nailed me up so securely, that, to this very hour, I firmly believe that no one but a carpenter could ever have got me out." "And what did Mrs. Parsons’s father say, when he found you were married?" enquired Watkins Tottle, who, although he never saw a joke, was not satisfied until he heard a story to the very end. "Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy, that he pardoned us off-hand, and allowed us something to live upon, till he went the way of all flesh. I spent the next night in his second-floor front much more comfortably than I did the preceding one; for, as you will probably guess—" "Please Sir, missis has made tea," said a middle-aged female servant, bobbing into the room. "That’s the very housemaid that figures in my story," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. —"She went into Fanny’s service when we were first married, and has been with us ever since; but I don’t think she has felt one atom of respect for me since the morning she saw me released, when she went into violent laughing hysterics, to which she has been subject ever since. Now, shall we join the ladies?" "If you please," said Mr. Watkins Tottle. "By all means," added the obsequious Mr. Timson; and the trio made for the drawing-room accordingly. Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having been duly handed, and occasionally upset, by Mr. Watkins Tottle, a rubber was proposed' They cut for partners—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons; and Mr. Watkins Tottle and Miss Lillerton. Mr. Timson being a clergyman, and having conscientious scruples on the subject of card-playing, drank brandy-and-water, and kept up a running spar with Mr. Watkins Tottle. The evening went off well; Mr. Watkins Tottle was in high spirits, having some reason to be gratified with his reception by Miss Lillerton; and before he left, a small party was made up to visit the Beulah Spa on the following Saturday. "It’s all right, I think," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he opened the garden-gate for him. "I hope so," he replied, squeezing his friend’s hand. "You’ll be down by the first coach on Saturday," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Certainly," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Undoubtedly." But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle should not be down by the first coach on Saturday. His adventures on that day, however, and the success of his wooing, are subjects which must be reserved for another chapter. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle' (Chapter the First) Description An account of the resource Published in The Monthly Magazine (January 1835), pp. 15-24. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-01-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_I Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. (January 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_I">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_I</a>. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Biodiversity Heritage Library, (National History Museum): <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19851#page/29/mode/1up">https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19851#page/29/mode/1up</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking.  Like an over-weening predilection for brandy and water, it is a misfortune into which a man easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself. It is no use telling a man who is timorous on these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other. Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and three-quarters in his socks—for he never stood in stockings at all—plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one of Richardson’s novels, and had a clean cravatish formality of manner, and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the individual who received it, in one respect—it was rather small. He received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he ran himself out about a day after the expiration of the first week as regularly as an eight-day clock, and then, to make the comparison complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick. Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think, but the idea of matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in Cecil-street into a neat house in the suburbs—the half-hundred weight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the best Walls-End—his small French bedstead was converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster—and in the empty chair on the opposite side of the fireplace imagination seated a beautiful young lady with a very little independence or will of her own, and a very large independence under a will of her father’s. "Who’s there?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his room-door disturbed these meditations one evening. "Tottle, my dear fellow, how do you do?" said a short elderly gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying to the question by asking another, and then they shook hands with a great deal of solemnity. "Told you I should drop in some evening," said the short gentleman, as he delivered his hat into Tottle’s hand, after a little struggling and dodging. "Delighted to see you, I’m sure," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing internally that his visitor had ‘dropped in’ to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour. The fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up. "How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons?" inquired Tottle. "Quite well, thank you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the name the short gentleman revelled in. Here there was a pause; the short gentleman looked at the left hob of the fire-place; Mr. Watkins Tottle stared vacancy out of countenance. "Quite well," repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had expired. "I may say remarkably well," and he rubbed the palms of his hands together as hard as if he were going to strike a light by friction. "What will you take?" inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of a man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave he stood very little chance of taking any thing else. "Oh, I don’t know.—Have you any whiskey?" "Why," replied Tottle very slowly, for all this was gaining time, "I had some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week; but it’s all gone—and therefore its strength—" "Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impossible to be proved," said the short gentleman; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad the whiskey had been drank. Mr. Tottle smiled—but it was the smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he delicately insinuated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be averse to brandy. And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very ostentatiously, and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the street-door—but which, for the sake of appearances, occasionally did duty in an imaginary wine-cellar, left the room to entreat his landlady to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The application was successful—the spirits were speedily called;—not from "the vasty deep," but the adjacent wine-vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their grog; and then sat cosily down before the fire—a pair of shorts, airing themselves. "Tottle," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "you know my way—off-hand, open, say what I mean, and mean what I say, damn reserve, and can’t bear affectation. One is a bad domino which only hides what good-people have about ’em, without making the bad look better; and the other is much about the same thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one.—Now listen to what I’m going to say." Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the fire, and assumed an air of profound attention. "It’s of no use humming and ha’ing about the matter," resumed the short gentleman.—"You want to get married—don't you?" "Why," —replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively; for he trembled violently, and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame—"why—I should certainly—at least, I think I should like it." "Won’t do," said the short gentleman.—"Plain and free—or there’s an end of the matter. Do you want money?" "You know I do." "You admire the sex?" "I do." "And you’d like to be married?" "Certainly." "Then you shall be.—There’s an end of that." And thus saying, Mr. Gabriel Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass. "Let me entreat you to be more explanatory," said Tottle. —"Really, as the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of in this way." "I’ll tell you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject, and the brandy-and-water—"I know a lady—she’s stopping with my wife now—who is just the thing for you. Well educated; talks French; plays the piano; knows a good deal about flowers and shells—and all that sort of thing; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it by her last will and testament." "I’ll pay my addresses to her," said Mr. Watkins Tottle.—"She isn’t very young—is she?" "Not very; just the thing for you.—I’ve said that already." "What coloured hair has the lady?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Egad, I hardly recollect," replied Gabriel, with great coolness. "Perhaps I ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front." "A what!" ejaculated Tottle. "One of those things with curls along here," said Parsons, drawing a straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration of his meaning. —"I know the front’s black; I can’t speak quite positively about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind her, and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it; but I should say that it was rather lighter than the front—a shade of a greyish tinge, perhaps." Mr. Watkins Tottle, looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind. Mr. Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the next attack without delay. "Were you ever in love, Tottle?" he inquired. Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and exhibited a most extensive combination of colours, as he confessed the soft impeachment. "I suppose you popped the question more than once, when you were a young—,I beg your pardon—a younger—man," said Parsons. "Never in my life," replied his friend, apparently indignant at being suspected of such an act. "Never! the fact is, that I entertain, as you know, peculiar opinions on these subjects. I am not afraid of ladies, young or old—far from it; but, I think, that in compliance with the custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and manner to marriageable men. Now the fact is, that any thing like this easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am always afraid of going too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered formal and cold." "I shouldn’t wonder if you were," replied Parsons, gravely; "I shouldn’t wonder. However, you’ll be all right in this case; for the strictness and delicacy of this lady’s ideas, greatly exceed your own. Lord bless you, why when she came to our house, there was an old portrait of some man or other, with two large black staring eyes, hanging up in her bed-room; she positively refused to go to bed there till it was taken down, considering it decidedly improper." "I think so too," said Mr. Watkins Tottle; "certainly." "And then the other night—I never laughed so much in my life," resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons; :I had driven home in a strong easterly wind, and caught a devil of a face-ache. Well; as Fanny—that’s Mrs. Parsons, you know—and this friend of hers, and I, and Frank Ross, were playing a rubber, I said, jokingly, that when I went to bed I should wrap my head up in Fanny’s flannel petticoat. She instantly threw up her cards and left the room." "Quite right!" said Mr. Watkins Tottle, "she couldn't possibly have behaved in a more dignified manner. What did you do?" "Do?—Frank took dummy; and I won sixpence." "But, didn’t you apologize for hurting her feelings?" "Devil a bit. Next morning at breakfast we talked it over. She contended that any reference to a flannel petticoat was highly improper;—men ought not to be supposed to know that such things were. I pleaded my coverture; being a married man." "And what did the lady say to that?" inquired Tottle; deeply interested. "Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a single man, its impropriety was obvious." "Noble-minded creature!" exclaimed the enraptured Tottle. "Oh! both Fanny and I, said at once, that she was regularly cut out for you." A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular face of Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he heard the prophecy. "There’s one thing I can’t understand," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he rose to depart, "I cannot for the life and soul of me, imagine how the deuce you’ll ever contrive to come together. The lady would certainly go into convulsions if the subject were mentioned." Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat down again, and laughed until he was weak. Tottle owed him money: so he had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle’s expense. Mr. Watkins Tottle, feared in his own mind, that this was another characteristic which he had in common with this modern Lucretia. He, however, accepted the invitation to dine with the Parsons' on the next day but one, with great firmness; and looked forward to the introduction, when again left alone, with tolerable composure. The sun that rose on the next day but one, had never beheld a sprucer personage on the outside of the Norwood-stage than Mr. Watkins Tottle, and when the coach drew up before a cardboard-looking house with disguised chimnies, and a lawn like a large sheet of green letter paper, he certainly had never lighted to his place of destination a gentleman who felt more awkward or uncomfortable. The coach stopped and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped—we beg his pardon—alighted with great dignity. "All right!" said he, and away went the coach up the hill with that beautiful equanimity of pace for which "short" stages are generally remarkable. Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faultering jerk to the handle of the garden-gate bell, in shape something like a gigantic note of admiration, and he stood for some minutes like the Duke of Wellington waiting in vain for a peal. He essayed a more energetic tug, and his previous nervousness was not at all diminished by hearing the bell ringing like a fire alarum. "Is Mr. Parsons at home?" inquired Tottle of the man who opened the gate. He could hardly hear himself speak, for the bell had not yet done tolling. "Here I am," shouted a voice on the lawn,—and there was Mr. Gabriel Parsons in a flannel jacket, running backwards and forwards from a wicket to two hats piled on each other, and from the two hats to the wicket, in the most violent manner, while another gentleman with his coat off was getting down the area of the house, after a ball. When the gentleman without the coat had found it—which he did in less than ten minutes—he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up. Then, the gentleman without the coat called out "play" very loudly and bowled; Mr. Gabriel Parsons knocked the ball several yards and took another run. Then the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and didn’t hit it; and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished running on his own account, laid down the bat and ran after the ball which went into a neighbouring field. They called this cricket. "Tottle, will you 'go in?'" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he approached him, wiping the perspiration off his face. Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of accepting which, made him even warmer than his friend. "Then we’ll go into the house as it’s past four, and I shall have to wash my hands before dinner," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Here, I hate ceremony, you know! Timson, that is Tottle—Tottle, that’s Timson, bred for the church, which I fear will never be bread for him," and he chuckled at the old joke. Mr. Timson bowed carelessly; Mr. Watkins Tottle bowed stiffly, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sincerity. Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most graciously on the steps, and preceded them to the drawing-room. On the sofa was seated a lady of very prim appearance, and remarkably inanimate. She was just one of those persons at whose age it is impossible to make any reasonable guess—her features might have been remarkably pretty when she was younger, and they might always have presented the same appearance. Her complexion—with a slight trace of powder here and there—was as clear as that of a well-made wax doll, and her face as expressive. She was handsomely dressed, and was winding up a gold watch for effect. "Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr. Watkins Tottle; a very old acquaintance I assure you," said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the Strephon of Cecil-street, Strand. The lady rose, and made a deep courtesy; Mr. Watkins Tottle made a serio-comic bow. "Splendid, majestic creature!" thought Tottle. She was his beau idéal of a desirable female. Mr. Timson advanced, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began to hate him. Men generally discover a rival instinctively, and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt that his hate was deserved. "May I beg," said the reverend gentleman—"May I beg to call upon you, Miss Lillerton, for some trifling donation to my soup, coals, and blanket distribution society?" "Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you please," responded the automaton-like Miss Lillerton. "You are truly charitable, madam," said the Reverend Mr. Timson, "and we know that charity will cover a multitude of sins. Let me beg you to understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have many sins which require palliation; believe me when I say that I never yet met any one who had fewer to atone for than Miss Lillerton." Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted up the lady’s face, as she acknowledged the compliment. Watkins Tottle incurred the sin of wishing that the ashes of the Rev. Charles Timson were quietly deposited in the churchyard of his curacy, wherever it might be. "I’ll tell you what," interrupted Parsons, who had just appeared with clean hands, and a black coat, "it’s my private opinion Timson, that your 'distribution society' is rather a humbug." "You are so severe," replied Timson, with a christian smile;—he disliked Parsons, but liked his dinners. "So positively unjust," said Miss Lillerton. "Certainly," observed Tottle. The lady looked up; her eyes met those of Mr. Watkins Tottle. She withdrew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins Tottle did the same—the confusion was mutual. "Why," urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections, "what on earth is the use of giving a man coals who has nothing to cook; or giving him blankets when he hasn’t a bed; or giving him soup when he requires substantial food—like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt. Why not give ’em a trifle of money, as I do, when I think they deserve it, and let them purchase what they think best? Why?—because your subscribers wouldn’t see their names flourishing in print on the church-door—that’s the reason." "Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that I wish to see my name in print, on the church-door," interrupted Miss Lillerton, indignantly. "I hope not," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in another word, and getting another glance. "Certainly not," replied Parsons. "I dare say you wouldn’t mind seeing it in writing though, in the church register—eh?" "Register! What register?" enquired the lady gravely. "Why, the register of marriages, to be sure," replied Parsons, chuckling at the sally, and glancing at Tottle. Mr. Watkins Tottle thought he should have fainted for very shame, and it is quite impossible to imagine what effect the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner had not been that moment announced. Mr. Watkins Tottle, with an unprecedented effort of gallantry, offered the tip of his little finger; Miss Lillerton accepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty; and they proceeded in due state to the dinner table, where they were soon deposited side by side. The room was very snug, the dinner very good, and the little party in tolerable spirits. The conversation became pretty general, and when Mr. Watkins Tottle had extracted one or two cold observations from his neighbour, and taken wine with her, he began to acquire confidence rapidly. The cloth was removed; Mrs. Gabriel Parsons drank four glasses of port, on the plea of being a nurse just then; and Miss Lillerton took about the same number of sips, on the plea of not wanting any at all. At length the ladies retired, to the great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Parsons, who had been coughing and frowning at his wife, for half an hour previously—signals which Mrs. Parsons never happened to observe, until she had been pressed to take her ordinary quantum, which, to avoid giving trouble, she always did at once. "What do you think of her?" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons of Mr. Watkins Tottle, in an under tone. "I dote on her with enthusiasm already," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Gentlemen, pray let us drink 'the ladies,'" said the Reverend Mr. Timson. "The ladies!" said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his glass. In the fullness of his confidence he felt as if he could make love to a dozen ladies, off hand. "Ah!" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "I remember when I was a younger man—fill your glass, Timson." "I have this moment emptied it." "Then fill again." "I will," said Timson, suiting the action to the word. "I remember," resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "when I was a younger man, with what a strange compound of feelings I used to drink that toast, and how I used to think every woman was an angel—quite a superior being." "Was that before you were married?" mildly inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Oh! certainly," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons. I have never thought so since; and a precious milksop I must have been, ever to have thought so at all. Why, you know, I married Fanny under the oddest, and most ridiculous circumstances possible." "What were they, if one may inquire?" asked Timson, who had heard the story, on an average twice a week for the last six months. Mr. Watkins Tottle listened attentively, in the hope of picking up some suggestion that might be useful to him in his new undertaking. "I spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chimney," said Parsons, by way of a beginning. "In a back-kitchen chimney!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle. "How dreadful!" "Yes, it wasn’t very pleasant," replied the small host. "The fact is, that Fanny’s father and mother liked me well enough as an individual, but had a decided objection to my becoming a husband. You see, I hadn’t any money in those days, and they had; and so they wanted Fanny to pick up somebody else. However, we managed to discover the state of each other’s affections somehow. I used to meet her at some mutual friends’ parties; at first we danced together, and talked, and flirted, and all that sort of thing; then I used to like nothing so well as sitting by her side—we didn’t talk so much then, but I remember I used to have a great notion of looking at her out of the extreme corner of my left eye, and then I got very miserable and sentimental, and began to write verses, and use macassar. At last I couldn’t bear it any longer, and after I had walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-street, in tight boots for a week—and a devilish hot summer it was too—in the hope of meeting her, I sat down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage to see me clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision from her own mouth. I said I had discovered, to my perfect satisfaction, that I couldn’t live without her, and that if she didn’t have me, I had made up my mind to take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate so as to take myself off in some way or other. Well, I borrowed a pound, and bribed the housemaid to give her the note which she did." "And what was the reply?" enquired Timson, who had found before, that to encourage the repetition of old stories, is sure to end in a general invitation. "Oh, the usual way you know—Fanny expressed herself very miserable; hinted at the possibility of an early grave; said that nothing should induce her to swerve from the duty she owed her parents; and implored me to forget her, and find out somebody more deserving, and all that sort of thing. She said she could on no account think of meeting me unknown to her pa and ma; and entreated me, as she should be in a particular part of Kensington Gardens at eleven o’clock next morning, not to attempt to meet her there." "You didn’t go, of course?" said Watkins Tottle. "Didn’t I?—Of course I did. There she was, with the identical housemaid in perspective, in order that there might be no interruption. We walked about for a couple of hours; made ourselves delightfully miserable; and were regularly engaged. Then we began to 'correspond'—that is to say, we used to exchange about four letters a day: what we used to say in ’em I can’t imagine. And I used to have an interview in the kitchen, or the cellar, or some such place, every evening. Well, things went on in this way for some time; and we got fonder of each other every day. At last, as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my salary had been raised too shortly before, we determined on a secret marriage. Fanny arranged to sleep at a friend’s the night before; we were to be married early in the morning, and then we were to return to her home and be pathetic. She was to fall at the old gentleman’s feet, and bathe his boots with her tears; and I was to hug the old lady, and call her 'mother,' and use my pocket-handkerchief as much as possible. Married we were the next morning; two girls—friends of Fanny’s—acting as brides's-maids; and a man, who was hired for five shillings and a pint of porter, officiating as father. Now, the old lady unfortunately put off her return from Ramsgate, where she had been paying a visit, until the next morning; and as we placed great reliance on her, we agreed to postpone our confession for four-and-twenty hours. My newly-made wife returned home, and I spent my wedding-day in strolling about Hampstead-heath, and damning my father-in-law. Of course I went to comfort my dear little wife at night as much as I could, with the assurance that our troubles would soon be over. I opened the garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was shewn by the servant to our old place of meeting—a back kitchen, with a stone-floor, and a dresser, upon which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit, and make love." "Make love upon a kitchen-dresser!" interrupted Mr. Watkins Tottle, whose ideas of decorum were greatly outraged. "Ah!—on a kitchen-dresser!" replied Parsons. —"And let me tell you, old fellow, that, if you were really over head-and-ears in love, and had no other place to make love in, you’d be devilish glad to avail yourself of such an opportunity. However, let me see;—where was I?" "On the dresser," suggested Timson. "Oh—ah! Well, here I found poor Fanny—quite disconsolate, and uncomfortable. The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her feel still more lonely; and she was quite out of spirits. So I put a good face on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should enjoy the pleasures of a matrimonial life more by contrast; and, at length, poor Fanny brightened up a little. I stopped there, till about eleven o’clock; and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the girl came running down stairs, without her shoes, in a great fright, to tell us that the old villain—God forgive me for calling him so! for he is dead and gone now—prompted I suppose by the prince of darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper—a thing he had not done before for six months, to my certain knowledge; for the cask stood in that very back kitchen. If he discovered me there, explanation would have been out of the question; for he was so outrageously violent, when at all excited that he never would have listened to me. There was only one thing to be done.—The chimney was a very wide one: it had been originally built for an oven; went up perpendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward, and formed a sort of small cavern. My hopes and fortune—the means of our joint existence almost—were at stake. I scrambled in like a squirrel; coiled myself up in this recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious father-in-law carried in his hand. I heard him draw the beer; and I never heard beer run so slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board with a tremendous crash. He stopped, and put down the candle and the jug of beer on the dresser: he was a nervous old fellow; and any unexpected noise annoyed him. He, coolly observed that the fire-place was never used, and sending the frightened servant into the next kitchen for a hammer and nails, actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on the outside. So there was I, on my wedding night, in the light kerseymere trousers, fancy waistcoat, and blue coat, that I had been married in in the morning, in a back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of which was nailed up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some fifteen feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the neighbours. And there," added Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he passed the bottle—"there I remained till half-past seven o'clock next morning, when the housemaid’s sweetheart, who was a carpenter, unshelled me. The old dog had nailed me up so securely, that, to this very hour, I firmly believe that no one but a carpenter could ever have got me out." "And what did Mrs. Parsons’s father say, when he found you were married?" enquired Watkins Tottle, who, although he never saw a joke, was not satisfied until he heard a story to the very end. "Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy, that he pardoned us off-hand, and allowed us something to live upon, till he went the way of all flesh. I spent the next night in his second-floor front much more comfortably than I did the preceding one; for, as you will probably guess—" "Please Sir, missis has made tea," said a middle-aged female servant, bobbing into the room. "That’s the very housemaid that figures in my story," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. —"She went into Fanny’s service when we were first married, and has been with us ever since; but I don’t think she has felt one atom of respect for me since the morning she saw me released, when she went into violent laughing hysterics, to which she has been subject ever since. Now, shall we join the ladies?" "If you please," said Mr. Watkins Tottle. "By all means," added the obsequious Mr. Timson; and the trio made for the drawing-room accordingly. Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having been duly handed, and occasionally upset, by Mr. Watkins Tottle, a rubber was proposed' They cut for partners—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons; and Mr. Watkins Tottle and Miss Lillerton. Mr. Timson being a clergyman, and having conscientious scruples on the subject of card-playing, drank brandy-and-water, and kept up a running spar with Mr. Watkins Tottle. The evening went off well; Mr. Watkins Tottle was in high spirits, having some reason to be gratified with his reception by Miss Lillerton; and before he left, a small party was made up to visit the Beulah Spa on the following Saturday. "It’s all right, I think," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he opened the garden-gate for him. "I hope so," he replied, squeezing his friend’s hand. "You’ll be down by the first coach on Saturday," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Certainly," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Undoubtedly." But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle should not be down by the first coach on Saturday. His adventures on that day, however, and the success of his wooing, are subjects which must be reserved for another chapter. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._I_Hackney-Coach_Stands/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.1__Hackney_Coach_Stands.pdf cce2bfad73cb3b81b96620f03386578e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350131 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We commence our "London Sketches" with this subject, because we maintain that hackney-coach stands—properly so called—belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, "and other large towns" (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession of certain vehicles which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny. Take a regular, ponderous, ricketty, London hackney-coach of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembled it—unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands—and we say it with deep regret—rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach; whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other mis-called improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean?—our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to "keep moving," desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land—they were settled by the Legislature—plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament. Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? —or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eight-pence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph. Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves half bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We take great interest in hackney-coaches; but we seldom drive, having a knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as great friends to horses— hackney-coach and otherwise—as the renowned Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes-horse—enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of mutton— and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of depositing one's-self upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach stands we take our stand. There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy-yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat; the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking cloths; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the "double shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm. The smart servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and scream "coach!" with all their might and main. The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather bottom of his voice—for its a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room—the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it—and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children are in perfect extasies of delight. What a commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded, and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is no doubt kissing them all round in the back-parlour. She appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a small black bottle and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps—bang goes the door—"Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom," says the waterman—"Good bye, Grandma," cry the children—off jingles the coach at the rate of three miles an hour—and the mamma and children retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the smart servant, not ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way, which are either intended for us or the pot-boy (we are not quite certain which), shuts the door—and the hackney-coach stand is again at a stand still. We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which "a servant of all work," who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside; and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed of course in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had no doubt brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was worth five, at least, to them. What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body. The auto-biography of a broken-down hackney-coach would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hacknied dramatist; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief! Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition; when it’s a matter of neck or nothing— life or death—your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab from his first entry into public life, whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility—a victim to fashion—a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery—stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office—progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to—a stand! Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands.' The Evening Chronicle (31 January 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350131/036/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350131/036/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-01-31 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands' (31 January 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (31 January 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We commence our "London Sketches" with this subject, because we maintain that hackney-coach stands—properly so called—belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, "and other large towns" (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession of certain vehicles which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny. Take a regular, ponderous, ricketty, London hackney-coach of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembled it—unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands—and we say it with deep regret—rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach; whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other mis-called improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean?—our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to "keep moving," desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land—they were settled by the Legislature—plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament. Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? —or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eight-pence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph. Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves half bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We take great interest in hackney-coaches; but we seldom drive, having a knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as great friends to horses— hackney-coach and otherwise—as the renowned Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes-horse—enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of mutton— and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of depositing one's-self upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach stands we take our stand. There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy-yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat; the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking cloths; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the "double shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm. The smart servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and scream "coach!" with all their might and main. The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather bottom of his voice—for its a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room—the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it—and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children are in perfect extasies of delight. What a commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded, and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is no doubt kissing them all round in the back-parlour. She appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a small black bottle and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps—bang goes the door—"Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom," says the waterman—"Good bye, Grandma," cry the children—off jingles the coach at the rate of three miles an hour—and the mamma and children retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the smart servant, not ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way, which are either intended for us or the pot-boy (we are not quite certain which), shuts the door—and the hackney-coach stand is again at a stand still. We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which "a servant of all work," who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside; and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed of course in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had no doubt brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was worth five, at least, to them. What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body. The auto-biography of a broken-down hackney-coach would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hacknied dramatist; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief! Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition; when it’s a matter of neck or nothing— life or death—your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab from his first entry into public life, whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility—a victim to fashion—a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery—stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office—progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to—a stand! https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Passage_in_the_Life_of_Mr._Watkins_Tottle_[Chapter_the_Second]/1835-02-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_II.pdf 651df8bbe41da75694de8685066fbe2c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Periodical Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Monthly Magazine Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350201 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. "The first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom?" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he very complacently paced up and down the fourteen feet of gravel which bordered the "lawn," on the Saturday morning which had been fixed upon for the Beulah Spa jaunt. "No, Sir; I haven’t seen it," replied a gardener in a blue apron, who let himself out to do the ornamental for half-a-crown a day and his "keep." "Time Tottle was down," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ruminating—"Oh, here he is, no doubt," added Gabriel, as a cab drove rapidly up the hill; and he buttoned his dressing-gown, and opened the gate to receive the expected visitor. The cab stopped, and out jumped a man in a coarse Petersham great coat, whitey-brown neckerchief, faded black suit, gamboge-coloured top-boots, and one of those large crowned hats, formerly seldom met with, but now very generally patronised by gentlemen and costermongers. "Mr. Parsons?" said the man, looking at the superscription of a note he held in his hand, and addressing Gabriel with an inquiring air. "My name is Parsons," responded the sugar-baker. "I’ve brought this here note," replied the individual in the painted tops, in a hoarse whisper, "I’ve brought this here note from a gen’lm’n as come to our house this mornin’." "I expected the gentleman at my house," said Parsons, as he broke the seal, which bore the impression of his majesty’s profile, as it is seen on a sixpence. "I’ve no doubt the gen’lm’n would ha’ been here," replied the stranger, "if he hadn’t happened to call at our house first; but we never trusts no gen’lm’n furder nor we can see him—no mistake about that there"—added the unknown, with a facetious grin; "beg your pardon, Sir, no offence meant, only—once in, and I wish you may—catch the idea, Sir?" Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching anything suddenly, but a cold. He therefore only bestowed a glance of profound astonishment on his mysterious companion, and proceeded to unfold the note of which he had been the bearer. Once opened, and the idea was caught with very little difficulty. Mr. Watkins Tottle had been suddenly arrested for 33l. 10s. 4d., and dated his communication from a lock-up house in the vicinity of Chancery-lane. "Unfortunate affair this!" said Parsons, refolding then ote. "Nothin’ ven you’re used to it," coolly observed the man in the Petersham. "Tom!" exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes’ consideration, "just put the horse in, will you?—Tell the gentleman that I shall be there almost as soon as you are," he continued, addressing the sheriff officer’s Mercury. "Werry well," replied that important functionary; adding in a confidential manner, "I’d adwise the gen’lm’n’s friends to settle. You see it’s a mere trifle; and, unless the gen’lm’n means to go up afore the court, it’s hardly worth while waiting for detainers, you know. Our governor’s wide awake, he is. I’ll never say nothin’ agin him, nor no man; but he knows what’s o’clock, he does, uncommon." Having delivered this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible harangue, the meaning of which was eked out by divers nods and winks, the gentleman in the boots reseated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off, and was soon out of sight. Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued to pace up and down the pathway for some minutes, apparently absorbed in deep meditation. The result of his cogitations seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to himself, for he ran briskly into the house; said that business had suddenly summoned him to town; that he had desired the messenger to inform Mr. Watkins Tottle of the fact; and that they would return together to dinner. He then hastily equipped himself for a drive, and mounting his gig, was soon on his way to the establishment of Mr. Solomon Jacobs, situate (as Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him) in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane. When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has a specific object in view, the attainment of which depends on the completion of his journey, the difficulties which interpose themselves in his way appear not only to be innumerable, but to have been called into existence especially for the occasion. The remark is by no means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons had practical and painful experience of its justice in the course of his drive. There are three classes of animated objects which prevent your driving with any degree of comfort or celerity through streets which are but little frequented—they are pigs, children, and old women. On the occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks, and the shuttlecocks fluttered from the little deal battledores, and the children played in the road; and women, with a basket in one hand and the street-door key in the other, would cross just before the horse’s head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons was perfectly savage with vexation, and quite hoarse with hoi-ing and imprecating. Then, when he got into Fleet-street, there was "a stoppage," in which people in vehicles have the satisfaction of remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying the slowest pedestrians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold of horses’ bridles, and back them into shop windows, by way of clearing the road and preventing confusion. At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned into Chancery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to, Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant), he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs. Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the chance of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the road and knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was glass, grated like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron bars, painted white, to look comfortable. The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who, after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass applied a large key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts. "I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle," said Parsons. "It’s the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem," screamed a voice from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor. "The gentleman’s in the coffee-room." "Up stairs, Sir," said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment he had made his way through the aperture—"First floor—door on the right." Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the uncarpeted and ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the before-mentioned "door on the right," which were rendered inaudible by the hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on some frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the handle, and entered the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate object of his visit had just gone up stairs to write a letter, he had leisure to sit down and observe the scene before him. The room—which was a small, confined den—was partitioned off into boxes, like the common room of some inferior eating-house. The dirty floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as to carpet or floor-cloth; and the ceiling was completely blackened by the flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night. The grey ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully accounted for the intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place; and the empty glasses, and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations in which the individuals who honoured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary residence in his house indulged. Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece; but, by way of a counterpoise, the ashes were confined, by a rusty fender, about twice as long as the hearth. From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some with green, and some with red backs—selections from decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some ingenious visitor, with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been made in the table at proper distances for the reception of the wooden pegs. In another box a stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some dinner, which his wife—an equally comfortable-looking personage—had brought him in a basket; and in a third, a genteel-looking young man was talking earnestly and in a low tone to a young female, whose face was concealed by a thick veil, but whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind as the debtor’s wife. A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed in the very extremity of the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying with much apparent relish to a pint pot, the contents of which were "chilling" on the hob. "Fourpence more, by G-d!" exclaimed one of the cribbage-players, lighting a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game; "one ’ud think you’d got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when you wanted it." "Well, that a’n’t a bad un," replied the other, who was a horse-dealer from Islington. "No; I’m blessed if it is," interposed the jolly-looking fellow, who, having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy. "You’re a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker—will you dip your beak into this, Sir?" "Thank’ee, Sir," replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to the other to accept the proffered glass. "Here’s your health, Sir, and your good ’ooman’s here. Gentlemen all—your's, and better luck still. Well, Mr. Willis," continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the young man with the cigar, "you seem rather down to-day—floored, as one may say. What’s the matter, Sir? Never say die, you know." "Oh! I’m all right," replied the smoker. "I shall be bailed out to-morrow." "Shall you, though?" enquired the other. "Damme, I wish I could say the same. I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George; and stand about as much chance of being bailed out. Ha! ha! ha!" "Why," said the young man, stopping short, and speaking in a very loud key, "Look at me. What d’ye ye think I’ve stopped here two days for?" "'Cause you couldn’t get out, I suppose," interrupted Mr. Walker, winking to the company. "Not that you’re exactly obliged to stop here, only you can’t help it. No compulsion, you know, only you must—eh?" "A’n’t he a rum un?" inquired the delighted individual, who had offered the gin-and-water, of his wife. "Oh, he just is!" replied the lady, who was quite overcome by these flashes of imagination. "Why, my case," frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire, and illustrating his argument by knocking the bottom of the pot on the table, at intervals,—"my case is a very singular one: my father’s a man of large property, and I am his son." "That’s a very strange circumstance," interrupted the jocose Mr. Walker, en passant. "—I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don’t owe no man nothing—not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to put my name to some bills for a friend—bills to a large amount. I may say a very large amount, for which I didn’t receive no consideration. What’s the consequence?" "Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The acceptances were'nt taken up, and you were, eh?" inquired Walker. "To be sure," replied the liberally educated young gentleman. "To be sure; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred pound." "Why don’t you ask your old governor to stump up?" inquired Walker, with a somewhat sceptical air. "Oh! bless you, he’d never do it," replied the other, in a tone of expostulation—"Never!" "Well, it is very odd to—be—sure," interposed the owner of the flat bottle, mixing another glass, "but I’ve been in difficulties, as one may say, now for thirty year. I went to pieces when I was in a milk-walk, thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept a spring wan; and arter that again in the coal and ’tatur line—but all that time, I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who wasn’t going out again directly, and who hadn’t been arrested on bills which he’d given a friend, and for which he’d received nothing whatsomever—not a fraction." "Oh! it’s always the cry," said Walker. "I can’t see the use on it; that’s what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much better opinion of an individual, if he’d say at once, in an honourable and gentlemanly manner, as he’d done everybody he possibly could." "Ay, to be sure," interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, "so should I." The young gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, was on the point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising of the young man before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting by him, to leave the room, interrupted the conversation. She had been weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon her excited feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her companion necessary as they quitted it together. There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was observed until the whirr—r—bang of the spring door announced that they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the ex-fruiterer. "Poor creetur!" said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin-and-water. "She’s very young." "She’s a nice-loooking ’ooman, too," added the horse-dealer. "What’s he in for, Ikey?" inquired Walker, of an individual who was spreading a cloth, with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recognizing as the man who had called upon him in the morning. "Vy," responded the factotum, "it’s one of the rummiest rigs you ever heard on. He come in here last Vensday, which, by the bye, he’s a-going over the water to-night—hows’ever that’s neither here nor there. You see I’ve been a going back’ards and for’ards about his business, and ha’ managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them; and so far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here effect—" "Cut it short, old fellow," interrupted Walker, who knew from former experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor intelligible in his narratives. "Let me alone," replied Ikey, "and I’ll ha’ vound up, and made my lucky in five seconds. This here young gen’lm’n’s father—so I’m told, mind ye—and the father o’ the young voman, have always been on very bad, out-and-out, rig’lar knock-me-down, sort o’ terms; but somehow or another when he was a wisitin’ at some gentlefolk’s house, as he know'd at college, he came into contract with the young lady. He seed her several times; and then he up and said he’d keep company with her, if so be as she vos agreeable. Vell, she vos as sweet upon him as he vos upon her, and so I s’pose they made it all right: for they got married ’bout six months arterwards, unbeknown mind ye to the two fathers—leastways so I’m told. When they heard on it—my eyes, there was such a combustion! Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to ’em. The young gen’lm’n’s father cut him off vith a bob, ’cos he’d cut himself off vith a wife; and the young lady’s father he behaved even worser and more unnat’ral, for he not only blow’d her up dreadful, and swore he’d never see her again, but he employed a chap as I knows—and as you knows, Mr. Valker, a precious sight too well—to go about and buy up the bills and them things on which the young husband, thinking his governor ’ud come round agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself on vith for a time; besides vich, he made all the interest he could to set other people agin him. Consequence vos, that he paid as long as he could; but things he never expected to have to meet till he’d had time to turn himself round, come fast upon him, and he vos nabbed. He vos brought here, as I said afore, last Vensday, and I think there’s about—ah half-a-dozen detainers agin him down stairs now. I have been," added Ikey,"‘in the purfession these fifteen year, and I never met vith such windictiveness afore!" "Poor creeturs!" exclaimed the coal-dealer’s wife once more: again resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the bud; "Ah! when they’ve seen as much trouble as I and my old man here have, they’ll be as comfortable under it, as we are." "The young lady’s a pretty creature," said Walker, "only she’s a little too delicate for my taste—there an’t enough of her. As to the young cove, he may be very respectable and what not, but he’s too down in the mouth for me—he an’t game." "Game!" exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times in order that he might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do. "He’s game enough ven there’s anything to be fierce about; but who could be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that, hanging about him?—It’s enough to drive any man’s heart into his boots, to see ’em together—and no mistake at all about it. I never shall forget her first comin’ here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to come—I know he did ’cos I took the letter. Uncommon fidgetty he was all day to be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to Jacobs, says he 'Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few minutes this evening, without incurring any additional expense—just to see my wife in?' says he. Jacobs looked as much as to say—'Strike me bountiful if you an’t one of the modest sort;' but as the gen’lm’n who had been in the back parlour, had just gone out, and had paid for it for that day, he says—werry grave—'Sir,' says he, 'it’s agin our rules to let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but,' says he, 'for a gentleman, I don’t mind breaking through them, for once.' So then he turns round to me and says, 'Ikey, put two mould candles in the back parlour, and charge ’em to this gen’lm’n’s account,' vich I did. Vell, by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough, was the young lady wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all alone. I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach came, and he vos a watin’ at the parlour door—wasn’t he a trembling neither? The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him. 'Oh, Harry!' she says, 'that it should have come to this! and all for my sake,' says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder. So he puts his arm round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and soft-like—'Why, Kate,' says he—" "Here’s the gentleman you want, Sir," said Ikey abruptly breaking off in his story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins Tottle, who at that moment entered the room. Watkins advanced with a wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr. Gabriel Parsons held out. "I want to speak to you," said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive of his dislike of the company. "This way," replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at the rate of a couple of guineas a day. "Well, here I am," said Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa; and placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his friend’s countenance. "Yes; and here you’re likely to be," said Gabriel coolly, as he rattled the money in his unmentionable-pockets, and looked out of the window. "What’s the amount with the costs?" inquired Parsons after an awkward pause. "37l. 3s. 10d." "Have you any money?" "Nine and sixpence," Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds before he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed; he was accustomed to drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to conceal his avarice; at length he stopped short, and said,—"Tottle, you owe me fifty pounds." "I do." "And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it me." "I fear I am." "Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could?" "Certainly." "Then," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "listen; here’s my proposition. You know my way of old. Accept it—yes or no—I will or I won’t. I’ll pay the debt and costs, and I’ll lend you 10l. more (which, added to your annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you’ll give me your note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six months after you are married to Miss Lillerton." "My dear—" "Stop a minute—on one condition; and that is, that you propose to Miss Lillerton at once." "At once! My dear Parsons, consider.' "It’s for you to consider, not me. She knows you well from reputation, though she did not know you personally, until lately. Notwithstanding all her maiden modesty, I think she’d be devilish glad to get married, out of hand, with as little delay as possible. My wife has sounded her on the subject, and she has confessed." "What—what?" eagerly interrupted the enamoured Watkins." "Why," replied Parsons, "to say exactly what she has confessed, would be rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth; but my wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what she had confessed was as good as to say, that she was not insensible of your merits—in fact, that no other man should have her." Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell. "What’s that for?" inquired Parsons. "I want to send the man for the bill stamp," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Then you’ve made up your mind?" "I have,"—and they shook hands most cordially. The note of hand was given—the debt and costs were paid—Ikey was satisfied for his trouble, and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon Jacobs’ establishment, on which most of his visitors were very happy when they found themselves once again—to wit, the outside. "Now," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to Norwood together—"you shall have an opportunity to make the disclosure to-night, and mind you speak out, Tottle." "I will—I will!" replied Watkins, valorously. "How I should like to see you together," ejaculated Mr. Gabriel Parsons.—"What fun!"— and he laughed so long and so loudly, that he disconcerted Mr. Watkins Tottle, and frightened the horse. "There’s Fanny and your intended walking about on the lawn," said Gabriel, as they approached the house.—"Mind your eye, Tottle." "Never fear," replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made his way to the spot where the ladies were walking. "Here’s Mr. Tottle, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, addressing Miss Lillerton. The lady turned quickly round, and acknowledged his courteous salute with the same sort of confusion that Watkins had noticed on their first interview, but with something like a slight expression of disappointment or carelessness. "Did you see how glad she was to see you?" whispered Parsons to his friend. "Why, I really thought she looked as if she would rather have seen somebody else," replied Tottle. Pooh, nonsense!" whispered Parsons again—"It’s always the way with women, young or old. They never show how delighted they are to see those whose presence makes their hearts beat. It’s the way with the whole sex, and no man should have lived to your time of life without knowing it. Fanny confessed it to me, when we were first married, over and over again—see what it is to have a wife." "Certainly," whispered Tottle, whose courage was vanishing fast. "Well, now, you’d better begin to pave the way," said Parsons; who, having invested some money in the speculation, assumed the office of director. "Yes, yes, I will—presently," replied Tottle, greatly flurried. "Say something to her, man," urged Parsons again. "Damn it! pay her a compliment, can’t you?" "No! not till after dinner," replied the bashful Tottle, anxious to postpone the evil moment. "Well, gentlemen," said Mrs. Parsons, "you are really very polite; you stay away the whole morning, after promising to take us out, and when you do come home, you stand whispering together and take no notice of us." "We were talking of the business, my dear, which detained us this morning," replied Parsons, looking significantly at Tottle. "Dear me! how very quickly the morning has gone," said Miss Lillerton, referring to the gold watch, which was wound up on state occasions, whether it required it or not. "I think it has passed very slowly," mildly suggested Tottle. ("That’s right—bravo!") whispered Parsons. "Indeed!" said Miss Lillerton, with an air of majestic surprise. "I can only impute it to my unavoidable absence from your society, Madam," said Watkins, "and that of Mrs. Parsons." During this short dialogue, the ladies had been leading the way to the house. "What the deuce did you stick Fanny into that last compliment for?" enquired Parsons, as they followed together! "it quite spoilt the effect." "Oh! it really would have been too broad without," replied Watkins Tottle, "much too broad!" "He’s mad!" Parsons whispered his wife, as they entered the drawing-room, "mad from modesty." "Dear me!" ejaculated the lady, "I never heard of such a thing." "You’ll find we have quite a family dinner, Mr. Tottle," said Mrs. Parsons, when they sat down to table: "Miss Lillerton is one of us, and, of course, we make no stranger of you." Mr. Watkins Tottle expressed a hope that the Parsons family never would make a stranger of him, and wished internally that his bashfulness would allow him to feel a little less like a stranger himself. "Take off the covers, Martha," said Mrs. Parsons, directing the shifting of the scenery with great anxiety. The order was obeyed, and a pair of boiled fowls, with tongue and et ceteras, were displayed at the top, and a fillet of veal at the bottom. On one side of the table two green sauce-tureens, with ladles of the same, were setting to each other in a green dish; and on the other was a curried rabbit, in a brown suit, turned up with lemon. "Miss Lillerton, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "shall I assist you?" "Thank you, no; I think I’ll trouble Mr. Tottle." Watkins started—trembled—helped the rabbit—and broke a tumbler. The countenance of the lady of the house, which had been all smiles previously, underwent an awful change. "Extremely sorry," stammered Watkins, assisting himself to currie, and parsley and butter, in the extremity of his confusion. "Not the least consequence," replied Mrs. Parsons, in a tone which implied that it was of the greatest consequence possible, directing aside the researches of the boy, who was groping under the table for the bits of broken glass. "I presume," said Miss Lillerton, "that Mr. Tottle is aware of the interest which bachelors usually pay in such cases; a dozen glasses for one is the lowest penalty." Mr. Gabriel Parsons gave his friend an admonitory tread on the toe. Here was a clear hint that the sooner he ceased to be a bachelor and emancipated himself from such penalties, the better. Mr. Watkins Tottle viewed the observation in the same light, and challenged Mrs. Parsons to take wine, with a degree of presence of mind, which, under all the circumstances, was really extraordinary. "Miss Lillerton," said Gabriel, "may I have the pleasure?" "I shall be most happy." "Tottle, will you assist Miss Lillerton, and pass the decanter. Thank you." (The usual pantomimic ceremony of nodding and sipping gone through)— "Tottle, were you ever in Suffolk?" enquired the master of the house, who was burning to tell one of his seven stock stories. "No," responded Watkins, adding, by way of a saving clause, "but I’ve been in Devonshire." "Ah!" replied Gabriel, "it was in Suffolk that a rather singular circumstance happened to me, many years ago. Did you ever happen to hear me mention it?" Mr. Watkins Tottle had happened to hear his friend mention it some four hundred times. Of course he expressed great curiosity, and evinced the utmost impatience to hear the story again. Mr. Gabriel Parsons forthwith attempted to proceed, in spite of the interruptions to which, as our readers must frequently have observed, the master of the house is often exposed in such cases. We will attempt to give them an idea of our meaning. "When I was in Suffolk—" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons — "Take off the fowls first, Martha," said Mrs. Parsons. "I beg your pardon, my dear." "When I was in Suffolk," resumed Mr. Parsons, with an impatient glance at his wife, who pretended not to observe it, "which is now some years ago, business led me to the town of Bury St. Edmunds. I had to stop at the principal places in my way, and therefore, for the sake of convenience, I travelled in a gig. I left Sudbury one dark night—it was winter time—about nine o’clock; the rain poured in torrents, the wind howled among the trees that skirted the road-side, and I was obliged to proceed at a foot-pace, for I could hardly see my hand before me, it was so dark—" "John," interrupted Mrs. Parsons, in a low, hollow, voice, "don’t spill that gravy." "Fanny," said Parsons impatiently, "I wish you’d defer these domestic reproofs to some more suitable time. Really, my dear, these constant interruptions are very annoying." "My dear, I didn’t interrupt you," said Mrs. Parsons. "But, my dear, you did interrupt me," remonstrated Mr. Parsons. "How very absurd you are, my love! I must give directions to the servants; I am quite sure that if I sat here and allowed John to spill the gravy over the new carpet, you’d be the first to find fault when you saw the stain to-morrow morning." "Well," continued Gabriel, with a resigned air, as if he knew there was no getting over the point about the carpet, "I was just saying, it was so dark that I could hardly see my hand before me. The road was very lonely, and I assure you, Tottle (this was a device to arrest the wandering attention of that individual, which was distracted by a confidential communication between Mrs. Parsons and Martha, accompanied by the delivery of a large bunch of keys), I assure you, Tottle, I became somehow impressed with a sense of the loneliness of my situation—" "Pie to your master," interrupted Mrs. Parsons, again directing the servant. "Now, pray, my dear," remonstrated Parsons once more, very pettishly. Mrs. P. turned up her hands and eyebrows, and appealed in dumb show to Miss Lillerton. "As I turned a corner of the road," resumed Gabriel, "the horse stopped short, and reared tremendously. I pulled up, jumped out, ran to his head, and found a man lying on his back in the middle of the road, with his eyes fixed on the sky. I thought he was dead; but no, he was alive, and there appeared to be nothing the matter with him. He jumped up, and putting his hand to his chest, and fixing upon me the most earnest gaze you can imagine, exclaimed—" "Pudding here," said Mrs. Parsons. "Oh! it’s no use," exclaimed the host, who was now rendered desperate. "Here, Tottle; a glass of wine. It’s useless to attempt relating any thing when Mrs. Parsons is present." This attack was received in the usual way. Mrs. Parsons talked to Miss Lillerton and at her bette half; expatiated on the impatience of men generally; hinted that her husband was peculiarly vicious in this respect, and wound up by insinuating that she must be one of the best tempers that ever existed, or she never could put up with it. Really what she had to endure sometimes, was more than any one who saw her in every-day life could by possibility suppose.—The story was now a painful subject, and therefore Mr. Parsons declined to enter into any details, and contented himself by stating that the man was a maniac, who had escaped from a neighbouring mad-house. The cloth was removed; the ladies soon afterwards retired, and Miss Lillerton played the piano in the drawing-room over head very loudly, for the edification of the visitor. Mr. Watkins Tottle and Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat chatting comfortably enough, until the conclusion of the second bottle, when the latter, in proposing an adjournment to the drawing-room, informed Watkins that he had concerted a plan with his wife, for leaving him and Miss Lillerton alone, soon after tea. "I say," said Tottle, as they went up stairs, "don’t you think it would be better if we put it off till—till—to-morrow?" "Don’t you think it would have been much better if I had left you in that wretched hole I found you in this morning?" retorted Parsons, bluntly. "Well—well—I only made a suggestion," said poor Watkins Tottle, with a deep sigh. Tea was soon concluded, and Miss Lillerton drawing a small work-table on one side of the fire, and placing a little wooden frame upon it, something like a miniature clay-mill without the horse, was soon busily engaged in making a watch-guard with brown silk. "God bless me!" exclaimed Parsons, starting up with well-feigned surprise, "I’ve forgotten those confounded letters. Tottle, I know you’ll excuse me." If Tottle had been a free agent, he would have allowed no one to leave the room on any pretence, except himself. As it was, however, he was obliged to look cheerful when Parsons quitted the apartment. He had scarcely left, when Martha put her head into the room, with—"please, Ma’am, you’re wanted." Mrs. Parsons left the room, shut the door carefully after her, and Mr. Watkins Tottle was left alone with Miss Lillerton. For the first five minutes there was a dead silence.—Mr. Watkins Tottle was thinking how he should begin, and Miss Lillerton appeared to be thinking of nothing. The fire was burning low; Mr. Watkins Tottle stirred it, and put some coals on. "Hem!" coughed Miss Lillerton; Mr. Watkins Tottle thought the fair creature had spoken— "I beg your pardon," said he. "Eh!" "I thought you spoke." "No." "Oh!" "There are some books on the sofa, Mr. Tottle, if you would like to look at them," said Miss Lillerton, after the lapse of another five minutes. "No, thank you," returned Watkins; and then he added, with a courage which was perfectly astonishing, even to himself, "Madam, that is Miss Lillerton, I wish to speak to you." "To me!" said Miss Lillerton, letting the silk drop from her hands, and sliding her chair back a few paces.—"Speak—to me!" "To you, Madam—and on the subject of the state of your affections." The lady hastily rose, and would have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle gently detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from him as the joint length of their arms would permit, he thus proceeded— "Pray do not misunderstand me, or suppose that I am led to address you, after so short an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits—for merits I have none which could give me a claim to your hand. I hope you will acquit me of any presumption when I explain that I have been acquainted through Mrs. Parsons, with the state—that is, that Mrs. Parsons has told me—at least, not Mrs. Parsons, but—" here Watkins began to wander, but Miss Lillerton relieved him. "Am I to understand, Mr. Tottle, that Mrs. Parsons has acquainted you with my feeling—my affection—I mean my respect, for an individual of the opposite sex?" "She has." "Then, what," inquired Miss Lillerton, averting her face, with a girlish air, "what could induce you to seek such an interview as this? What can your object be? How can I promote your happiness, Mr. Tottle?" Here was the time for a flourish—"By allowing me," replied Watkins, falling bump on his knees, and breaking two brace-buttons and a waistcoat-string, in the act—"By allowing me to be your slave, your servant—in short, by unreservedly making me the confidant of your heart’s feelings—may I say for the promotion of your own happiness—may I say, in order that you may become the wife of a kind and affectionate husband?" "Disinterested creature!" exclaimed Miss Lillerton, hiding her face in a white pocket-handkerchief with an eyelet-hole border. Mr. Watkins Tottle thought that if the lady knew all, she might possibly alter her opinion on this last point. He raised the tip of her middle finger ceremoniously to his lips, and got off his knees, as gracefully as he could. "My information was correct?" he tremulously inquired, when he was once more on his feet. "It was." Watkins elevated his hands, and looked up to the ornament in the centre of the ceiling, which had been made for a lamp, by way of expressing his rapture. "Our situation, Mr. Tottle," resumed the lady, glancing at him through one of the eyelet-holes, "is a most peculiar and delicate one." "It is," said Mr. Tottle. "Our acquaintance has been of so short duration," said Miss Lillerton. "Only a week," assented Watkins Tottle. "Oh! more than that,' exclaimed the lady, in a tone of surprise. "Indeed!" said Tottle. "More than a month—more than two months!" said Miss Lillerton. Rather odd, this, thought Watkins. "Oh!" he said, recollecting Parsons’ assurance that she had known him from report, "I understand. But, my dear madam, pray consider. The longer this acquaintance has existed, the less reason is there for delay now. Why not at once fix a period for gratifying the hopes of your devoted admirer?" "It has been represented to me again and again that this is the course I ought to pursue," replied Miss Lillerton, "but—pardon my feelings of delicacy, Mr. Tottle—pray excuse this embarrassment—I have peculiar ideas on such subjects, and I am quite sure that I never could summon up fortitude enough to name the day to my future husband." "Then allow me to name it," said Tottle eagerly. "I should like to fix it myself," replied Miss Lillerton, bashfully, "but I cannot do so without at once resorting to a third party." "A third party!" thought Watkins Tottle, "who the deuce is that to be, I wonder!" "Mr. Tottle," continued Miss Lillerton, "you have made me a most disinterested and kind offer—that offer I accept. Will you at once be the bearer of a note from me to—to Mr. Timson?" "Mr. Timson!" said Watkins. "After what has passed between us," responded Miss Lillerton, still averting her head, "you must understand whom I mean; Mr. Timson, the—the—clergyman." "Mr. Timson, the clergyman!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle, in a state of inexpressible beatitude, and positive wonder at his own success. "Angel! Certainly—this moment!" "I’ll prepare it immediately," said Miss Lillerton, making for the door; "the events of this day have flurried me so much, Mr. Tottle, that I shall not leave my room again this evening; I will send you the note by the servant." "Stay,—stay," cried Watkins Tottle, still keeping a most respectful distance from the lady; "when shall we meet again?" "Oh! Mr. Tottle," replied Miss Lillerton, coquettishly, "when we are married, I can never see you too often, nor thank you too much;" and she left the room. Mr. Watkins Tottle flung himself into an arm-chair, and indulged in the most delicious reveries of future bliss, in which the idea of "Five hundred pounds per annum, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it, by her last will and testament," was somehow or other the foremost. He had gone through the interview so well, and it had terminated so admirably, that he almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for the settlement of the annual five hundred on himself. "May I come in?" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peeping in at the door. "Come in," replied Watkins. "Well, have you done it?" anxiously inquired Gabriel. "Have I done it!" said Watkins Tottle. "Hush—I’m going to the clergyman." "No!" said Parsons. "How well you have managed it." "Where does Timson live?" inquired Watkins. "At his uncle’s," replied Gabriel, "just round the lane. He’s waiting for a living, and has been assisting his uncle here for the last two or three months. But how well you have done it—I didn’t think you could have carried it off so." Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate that the Richardsonian principle was the best on which love could possibly be made, when he was interrupted by the entrance of Martha with a little pink note folded like a fancy cocked-hat. "Miss Lillerton’s compliments," said Martha, as she delivered it into Tottle’s hands, and vanished. "Do you observe the delicacy?" said Tottle, appealing to Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Compliments, not love, by the servant, eh?" Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn’t exactly know what reply to make, so he poked the forefinger of his right hand between the third and fourth ribs of Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Come," said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth, consequent on this practical jest, had subsided, "we’ll be off at once—let’s lose no time." "Capital!" echoed Gabriel Parsons; and in five minutes they were at the garden-gate of the villa tenanted by the uncle of Mr. Timson. "Is Mr. Charles Timson at home?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle of Mr. Charles Timson’s uncle’s man. "Mr. Charles is at home," replied the man, stammering; "but he desired me to say he couldn’t be interrupted, Sir, by any of the parishioners." "I am not a parishioner," replied Watkins. "Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom?" inquired Parsons, thrusting himself forward. "No, Mr. Parsons, sir; he’s not exactly writing a sermon, but he is practising the violoncello in his own bedroom, and gave strict orders not to be disturbed." "Say I’m here," replied Gabriel, leading the way across the garden; "Mr. Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on private and particular business." They were shewn into the parlour, and the servant departed to deliver his message. The distant groaning of the violoncello ceased; footsteps were heard on the stairs, and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook hands with Parsons with the utmost cordiality. "How do you do, Sir?" said Watkins Tottle with great solemnity. "How do you do, sir?" replied Timson, with as much coldness as if it were a matter of perfect indifference to him how he did, as it very likely was. "I beg to deliver this note to you," said Watkins Tottle, producing the cocked hat. "From Miss Lillerton!" said Timson, suddenly changing colour. "Pray sit down." Mr. Watkins Tottle sat down, and while Timson perused the note, fixed his eyes on an oyster-sauce-coloured portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which hung over the fire-place. Mr. Timson rose from his seat when he had concluded the note, and looked dubiously at Parsons. —"May I ask," he inquired, appealing to Watkins Tottle, "whether our friend here is acquainted with the object of your visit?" "Our friend is in my confidence," replied Watkins, with considerable importance. "Then, Sir," said Timson, seizing both Tottle’s hands, "allow me in his presence to thank you most unfeignedly and cordially, for the noble part you have acted in this affair." "He thinks I recommended him," thought Tottle. "Confound these fellows! they never think of anything but their fees." "I deeply regret having misunderstood your intentions, my dear Sir," continued Timson. "Disinterested and manly indeed! There are very few men who would have acted as you have done." Mr. Watkins Tottle could not help thinking that this last remark was anything but complimentary. He therefore inquired rather hastily, "When is it to be?" "On Thursday," replied Timson,—"on Thursday morning at half-past-eight." "Uncommonly early," observed Watkins Tottle, with an air of triumphant self-denial. "I shall hardly be able to get down here by that hour." (This was intended for a joke.) "Never mind, my dear fellow," replied Timson, all suavity, shaking hands with Tottle again most heartily, "so long as we see you to breakfast, you know—" "Eh!" said Parsons, with one of the most extraordinary expressions of countenance that ever appeared on the human face. "What!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle, at the same moment. "I say that so long as we see you to breakfast," replied Timson, "we will excuse your being absent from the ceremony, though of course your presence at it would give us the utmost pleasure." Mr. Watkins Tottle staggered against the wall, and fixed his eyes on Timson with apalling perseverance. "Timson," said Parsons, hurriedly brushing his hat with his left arm, "when you say “us,” whom do you mean?" Mr. Timson looked foolish in his turn, when he replied, "Why—Mrs. Timson that will be this day week: Miss Lillerton that is"— "Now don’t stare at that idiot in the corner," angrily exclaimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle’s countenance excited the wondering gaze of Timson, "but have the goodness to tell me in three words the contents of that note?" "This note," replied Timson, "is from Miss Lillerton, to whom I have been for the last five weeks regularly engaged. Her singular scruples and strange feeling on some points have hitherto prevented my bringing the engagement to that termination which I so anxiously desire. She informs me here, that she sounded Mrs. Parsons with the view of making her her confidante and go-between, that Mrs. Parsons informed this elderly gentleman, Mr. Tottle, of the circumstance, and that he, in the most kind and delicate terms, offered to assist us in any way, and even undertook to convey this note, which contains the promise I have long sought in vain—an act of kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful." "Good night, Timson," said Parsons hurrying off, and lugging the bewildered Tottle with him. "Won’t you stay—and have something?" said Timson. "No, thank ye," replied Parsons, "I’ve had quite enough;" and away he went, followed by Watkins Tottle in a state of stupefaction. Mr. Gabriel Parsons whistled until they had walked some quarter of a mile past his own gate, when he suddenly stopped, and said, "You are a clever fellow, Tottle, an’t you?" "I don’t know," said the unfortunate Watkins. "I suppose you’ll say this is Fanny’s fault, won’t you?" inquired Gabriel. "I don’t know anything about it," replied the bewildered Tottle. "Well," said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home, "the next time you make an offer, you had better speak plainly, and don’t throw a chance away. And the next time you’re locked up in a spunging-house, just wait there till I come and take you out, there’s a good fellow." How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned to Cecil-street is unknown. His boots were seen outside his bedroom-door next morning, but we have the authority of his landlady for stating that he neither emerged therefrom, or accepted sustenance for four-and-twenty hours; at the expiration of that period, and when a council of war was being held in the kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial beadle to break his door open, he rang his bell, and demanded a cup of milk-and-water. The next morning he went through the formalities of eating and drinking as usual, but a week afterwards he was seized with a relapse, while perusing the list of marriages in a morning paper, from which he never perfectly recovered. A few weeks since, the body of a gentleman unknown was found in the Regent’s canal. In the trousers-pockets were four shillings and three-pence-halfpenny; a matrimonial advertisement from a lady, which appeared to have been cut out of the Sunday Times; a tooth-pick, and a card-case, which it is confidently believed would have led to the identification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the circumstance of there being none but blank cards in it. Mr. Watkins Tottle absented himself from his lodgings shortly before. A bill which has not been taken up, was presented next morning; and a bill which has not been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his parlour-window. He left a variety of papers in the hands of his landlady—the materials collected in his wanderings among different classes of society—which that lady has determined to published, to defray the unpaid expenses of his board and lodging. They will be carefully arranged, and presented to the public from time to time, with all due humility, by BOZ. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle' (Chapter the Second) Description An account of the resource Published in The Monthly Magazine (February 1835), pp. 121-137. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_2 Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. (February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/02-1835-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_2">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/02-1835-Watkins_Tottle_Chapter_2</a>. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Biodiversity Heritage Library (National History Museum): <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19851#page/135/mode/1up">https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19851#page/135/mode/1up</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. "The first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom?" inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he very complacently paced up and down the fourteen feet of gravel which bordered the "lawn," on the Saturday morning which had been fixed upon for the Beulah Spa jaunt. "No, Sir; I haven’t seen it," replied a gardener in a blue apron, who let himself out to do the ornamental for half-a-crown a day and his "keep." "Time Tottle was down," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ruminating—"Oh, here he is, no doubt," added Gabriel, as a cab drove rapidly up the hill; and he buttoned his dressing-gown, and opened the gate to receive the expected visitor. The cab stopped, and out jumped a man in a coarse Petersham great coat, whitey-brown neckerchief, faded black suit, gamboge-coloured top-boots, and one of those large crowned hats, formerly seldom met with, but now very generally patronised by gentlemen and costermongers. "Mr. Parsons?" said the man, looking at the superscription of a note he held in his hand, and addressing Gabriel with an inquiring air. "My name is Parsons," responded the sugar-baker. "I’ve brought this here note," replied the individual in the painted tops, in a hoarse whisper, "I’ve brought this here note from a gen’lm’n as come to our house this mornin’." "I expected the gentleman at my house," said Parsons, as he broke the seal, which bore the impression of his majesty’s profile, as it is seen on a sixpence. "I’ve no doubt the gen’lm’n would ha’ been here," replied the stranger, "if he hadn’t happened to call at our house first; but we never trusts no gen’lm’n furder nor we can see him—no mistake about that there"—added the unknown, with a facetious grin; "beg your pardon, Sir, no offence meant, only—once in, and I wish you may—catch the idea, Sir?" Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching anything suddenly, but a cold. He therefore only bestowed a glance of profound astonishment on his mysterious companion, and proceeded to unfold the note of which he had been the bearer. Once opened, and the idea was caught with very little difficulty. Mr. Watkins Tottle had been suddenly arrested for 33l. 10s. 4d., and dated his communication from a lock-up house in the vicinity of Chancery-lane. "Unfortunate affair this!" said Parsons, refolding then ote. "Nothin’ ven you’re used to it," coolly observed the man in the Petersham. "Tom!" exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes’ consideration, "just put the horse in, will you?—Tell the gentleman that I shall be there almost as soon as you are," he continued, addressing the sheriff officer’s Mercury. "Werry well," replied that important functionary; adding in a confidential manner, "I’d adwise the gen’lm’n’s friends to settle. You see it’s a mere trifle; and, unless the gen’lm’n means to go up afore the court, it’s hardly worth while waiting for detainers, you know. Our governor’s wide awake, he is. I’ll never say nothin’ agin him, nor no man; but he knows what’s o’clock, he does, uncommon."  Having delivered this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible harangue, the meaning of which was eked out by divers nods and winks, the gentleman in the boots reseated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off, and was soon out of sight. Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued to pace up and down the pathway for some minutes, apparently absorbed in deep meditation. The result of his cogitations seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to himself, for he ran briskly into the house; said that business had suddenly summoned him to town; that he had desired the messenger to inform Mr. Watkins Tottle of the fact; and that they would return together to dinner. He then hastily equipped himself for a drive, and mounting his gig, was soon on his way to the establishment of Mr. Solomon Jacobs, situate (as Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him) in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane. When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has a specific object in view, the attainment of which depends on the completion of his journey, the difficulties which interpose themselves in his way appear not only to be innumerable, but to have been called into existence especially for the occasion. The remark is by no means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons had practical and painful experience of its justice in the course of his drive. There are three classes of animated objects which prevent your driving with any degree of comfort or celerity through streets which are but little frequented—they are pigs, children, and old women. On the occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks, and the shuttlecocks fluttered from the little deal battledores, and the children played in the road; and women, with a basket in one hand and the street-door key in the other, would cross just before the horse’s head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons was perfectly savage with vexation, and quite hoarse with hoi-ing and imprecating. Then, when he got into Fleet-street, there was "a stoppage," in which people in vehicles have the satisfaction of remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying the slowest pedestrians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold of horses’ bridles, and back them into shop windows, by way of clearing the road and preventing confusion. At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned into Chancery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to, Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant), he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs. Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the chance of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the road and knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was glass, grated like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron bars, painted white, to look comfortable. The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who, after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass applied a large key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts. "I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle," said Parsons. "It’s the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem," screamed a voice from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor.  "The gentleman’s in the coffee-room." "Up stairs, Sir," said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment he had made his way through the aperture—"First floor—door on the right." Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the uncarpeted and ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the before-mentioned "door on the right," which were rendered inaudible by the hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on some frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the handle, and entered the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate object of his visit had just gone up stairs to write a letter, he had leisure to sit down and observe the scene before him. The room—which was a small, confined den—was partitioned off into boxes, like the common room of some inferior eating-house. The dirty floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as to carpet or floor-cloth; and the ceiling was completely blackened by the flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night. The grey ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully accounted for the intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place; and the empty glasses, and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations in which the individuals who honoured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary residence in his house indulged. Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece; but, by way of a counterpoise, the ashes were confined, by a rusty fender, about twice as long as the hearth. From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some with green, and some with red backs—selections from decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some ingenious visitor, with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been made in the table at proper distances for the reception of the wooden pegs. In another box a stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some dinner, which his wife—an equally comfortable-looking personage—had brought him in a basket; and in a third, a genteel-looking young man was talking earnestly and in a low tone to a young female, whose face was concealed by a thick veil, but whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind as the debtor’s wife. A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed in the very extremity of the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying with much apparent relish to a pint pot, the contents of which were "chilling" on the hob. "Fourpence more, by G-d!" exclaimed one of the cribbage-players, lighting a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game; "one ’ud think you’d got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when you wanted it." "Well, that a’n’t a bad un," replied the other, who was a horse-dealer from Islington. "No; I’m blessed if it is," interposed the jolly-looking fellow, who, having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy.  "You’re a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker—will you dip your beak into this, Sir?" "Thank’ee, Sir," replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to the other to accept the proffered glass. "Here’s your health, Sir, and your good ’ooman’s here. Gentlemen all—your's, and better luck still. Well, Mr. Willis," continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the young man with the cigar, "you seem rather down to-day—floored, as one may say. What’s the matter, Sir? Never say die, you know." "Oh! I’m all right," replied the smoker. "I shall be bailed out to-morrow." "Shall you, though?" enquired the other. "Damme, I wish I could say the same. I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George; and stand about as much chance of being bailed out. Ha! ha! ha!" "Why," said the young man, stopping short, and speaking in a very loud key, "Look at me. What d’ye ye think I’ve stopped here two days for?" "'Cause you couldn’t get out, I suppose," interrupted Mr. Walker, winking to the company.  "Not that you’re exactly obliged to stop here, only you can’t help it. No compulsion, you know, only you must—eh?" "A’n’t he a rum un?" inquired the delighted individual, who had offered the gin-and-water, of his wife. "Oh, he just is!" replied the lady, who was quite overcome by these flashes of imagination. "Why, my case," frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire, and illustrating his argument by knocking the bottom of the pot on the table, at intervals,—"my case is a very singular one: my father’s a man of large property, and I am his son." "That’s a very strange circumstance," interrupted the jocose Mr. Walker, en passant. "—I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don’t owe no man nothing—not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to put my name to some bills for a friend—bills to a large amount. I may say a very large amount, for which I didn’t receive no consideration. What’s the consequence?" "Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The acceptances were'nt taken up, and you were, eh?" inquired Walker. "To be sure," replied the liberally educated young gentleman. "To be sure; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred pound." "Why don’t you ask your old governor to stump up?" inquired Walker, with a somewhat sceptical air. "Oh! bless you, he’d never do it," replied the other, in a tone of expostulation—"Never!" "Well, it is very odd to—be—sure," interposed the owner of the flat bottle, mixing another glass, "but I’ve been in difficulties, as one may say, now for thirty year. I went to pieces when I was in a milk-walk, thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept a spring wan; and arter that again in the coal and ’tatur line—but all that time, I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who wasn’t going out again directly, and who hadn’t been arrested on bills which he’d given a friend, and for which he’d received nothing whatsomever—not a fraction." "Oh! it’s always the cry," said Walker. "I can’t see the use on it; that’s what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much better opinion of an individual, if he’d say at once, in an honourable and gentlemanly manner, as he’d done everybody he possibly could." "Ay, to be sure," interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, "so should I."  The young gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, was on the point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising of the young man before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting by him, to leave the room, interrupted the conversation. She had been weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon her excited feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her companion necessary as they quitted it together. There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was observed until the whirr—r—bang of the spring door announced that they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the ex-fruiterer. "Poor creetur!" said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin-and-water. "She’s very young." "She’s a nice-loooking ’ooman, too," added the horse-dealer. "What’s he in for, Ikey?" inquired Walker, of an individual who was spreading a cloth, with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recognizing as the man who had called upon him in the morning. "Vy," responded the factotum, "it’s one of the rummiest rigs you ever heard on. He come in here last Vensday, which, by the bye, he’s a-going over the water to-night—hows’ever that’s neither here nor there. You see I’ve been a going back’ards and for’ards about his business, and ha’ managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them; and so far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here effect—" "Cut it short, old fellow," interrupted Walker, who knew from former experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor intelligible in his narratives. "Let me alone," replied Ikey, "and I’ll ha’ vound up, and made my lucky in five seconds. This here young gen’lm’n’s father—so I’m told, mind ye—and the father o’ the young voman, have always been on very bad, out-and-out, rig’lar knock-me-down, sort o’ terms; but somehow or another when he was a wisitin’ at some gentlefolk’s house, as he know'd at college, he came into contract with the young lady. He seed her several times; and then he up and said he’d keep company with her, if so be as she vos agreeable. Vell, she vos as sweet upon him as he vos upon her, and so I s’pose they made it all right: for they got married ’bout six months arterwards, unbeknown mind ye to the two fathers—leastways so I’m told. When they heard on it—my eyes, there was such a combustion! Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to ’em. The young gen’lm’n’s father cut him off vith a bob, ’cos he’d cut himself off vith a wife; and the young lady’s father he behaved even worser and more unnat’ral, for he not only blow’d her up dreadful, and swore he’d never see her again, but he employed a chap as I knows—and as you knows, Mr. Valker, a precious sight too well—to go about and buy up the bills and them things on which the young husband, thinking his governor ’ud come round agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself on vith for a time; besides vich, he made all the interest he could to set other people agin him.  Consequence vos, that he paid as long as he could; but things he never expected to have to meet till he’d had time to turn himself round, come fast upon him, and he vos nabbed. He vos brought here, as I said afore, last Vensday, and I think there’s about—ah half-a-dozen detainers agin him down stairs now. I have been," added Ikey,"‘in the purfession these fifteen year, and I never met vith such windictiveness afore!" "Poor creeturs!" exclaimed the coal-dealer’s wife once more: again resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the bud; "Ah! when they’ve seen as much trouble as I and my old man here have, they’ll be as comfortable under it, as we are." "The young lady’s a pretty creature," said Walker, "only she’s a little too delicate for my taste—there an’t enough of her. As to the young cove, he may be very respectable and what not, but he’s too down in the mouth for me—he an’t game." "Game!" exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times in order that he might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do.  "He’s game enough ven there’s anything to be fierce about; but who could be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that, hanging about him?—It’s enough to drive any man’s heart into his boots, to see ’em together—and no mistake at all about it. I never shall forget her first comin’ here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to come—I know he did ’cos I took the letter. Uncommon fidgetty he was all day to be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to Jacobs, says he 'Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few minutes this evening, without incurring any additional expense—just to see my wife in?' says he.  Jacobs looked as much as to say—'Strike me bountiful if you an’t one of the modest sort;' but as the gen’lm’n who had been in the back parlour, had just gone out, and had paid for it for that day, he says—werry grave—'Sir,' says he, 'it’s agin our rules to let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but,' says he, 'for a gentleman, I don’t mind breaking through them, for once.' So then he turns round to me and says, 'Ikey, put two mould candles in the back parlour, and charge ’em to this gen’lm’n’s account,' vich I did. Vell, by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough, was the young lady wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all alone. I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach came, and he vos a watin’ at the parlour door—wasn’t he a trembling neither? The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him. 'Oh, Harry!' she says, 'that it should have come to this! and all for my sake,' says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder. So he puts his arm round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and soft-like—'Why, Kate,' says he—" "Here’s the gentleman you want, Sir," said Ikey abruptly breaking off in his story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins Tottle, who at that moment entered the room.  Watkins advanced with a wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr. Gabriel Parsons held out. "I want to speak to you," said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive of his dislike of the company. "This way," replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at the rate of a couple of guineas a day. "Well, here I am," said Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa; and placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his friend’s countenance. "Yes; and here you’re likely to be," said Gabriel coolly, as he rattled the money in his unmentionable-pockets, and looked out of the window. "What’s the amount with the costs?" inquired Parsons after an awkward pause. "37l. 3s. 10d." "Have you any money?" "Nine and sixpence," Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds before he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed; he was accustomed to drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to conceal his avarice; at length he stopped short, and said,—"Tottle, you owe me fifty pounds." "I do." "And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it me." "I fear I am." "Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could?" "Certainly." "Then," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "listen; here’s my proposition. You know my way of old. Accept it—yes or no—I will or I won’t. I’ll pay the debt and costs, and I’ll lend you 10l. more (which, added to your annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you’ll give me your note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six months after you are married to Miss Lillerton." "My dear—" "Stop a minute—on one condition; and that is, that you propose to Miss Lillerton at once." "At once! My dear Parsons, consider.' "It’s for you to consider, not me. She knows you well from reputation, though she did not know you personally, until lately. Notwithstanding all her maiden modesty, I think she’d be devilish glad to get married, out of hand, with as little delay as possible. My wife has sounded her on the subject, and she has confessed." "What—what?" eagerly interrupted the enamoured Watkins." "Why," replied Parsons, "to say exactly what she has confessed, would be rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth; but my wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what she had confessed was as good as to say, that she was not insensible of your merits—in fact, that no other man should have her." Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell. "What’s that for?" inquired Parsons. "I want to send the man for the bill stamp," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Then you’ve made up your mind?" "I have,"—and they shook hands most cordially.  The note of hand was given—the debt and costs were paid—Ikey was satisfied for his trouble, and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon Jacobs’ establishment, on which most of his visitors were very happy when they found themselves once again—to wit, the outside. "Now," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to Norwood together—"you shall have an opportunity to make the disclosure to-night, and mind you speak out, Tottle." "I will—I will!" replied Watkins, valorously. "How I should like to see you together," ejaculated Mr. Gabriel Parsons.—"What fun!"— and he laughed so long and so loudly, that he disconcerted Mr. Watkins Tottle, and frightened the horse. "There’s Fanny and your intended walking about on the lawn," said Gabriel, as they approached the house.—"Mind your eye, Tottle." "Never fear," replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made his way to the spot where the ladies were walking. "Here’s Mr. Tottle, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, addressing Miss Lillerton. The lady turned quickly round, and acknowledged his courteous salute with the same sort of confusion that Watkins had noticed on their first interview, but with something like a slight expression of disappointment or carelessness. "Did you see how glad she was to see you?" whispered Parsons to his friend. "Why, I really thought she looked as if she would rather have seen somebody else," replied Tottle. Pooh, nonsense!" whispered Parsons again—"It’s always the way with women, young or old. They never show how delighted they are to see those whose presence makes their hearts beat. It’s the way with the whole sex, and no man should have lived to your time of life without knowing it. Fanny confessed it to me, when we were first married, over and over again—see what it is to have a wife." "Certainly," whispered Tottle, whose courage was vanishing fast. "Well, now, you’d better begin to pave the way," said Parsons; who, having invested some money in the speculation, assumed the office of director. "Yes, yes, I will—presently," replied Tottle, greatly flurried. "Say something to her, man," urged Parsons again.  "Damn it! pay her a compliment, can’t you?" "No! not till after dinner," replied the bashful Tottle, anxious to postpone the evil moment. "Well, gentlemen," said Mrs. Parsons, "you are really very polite; you stay away the whole morning, after promising to take us out, and when you do come home, you stand whispering together and take no notice of us." "We were talking of the business, my dear, which detained us this morning," replied Parsons, looking significantly at Tottle. "Dear me! how very quickly the morning has gone," said Miss Lillerton, referring to the gold watch, which was wound up on state occasions, whether it required it or not. "I think it has passed very slowly," mildly suggested Tottle. ("That’s right—bravo!") whispered Parsons. "Indeed!" said Miss Lillerton, with an air of majestic surprise. "I can only impute it to my unavoidable absence from your society, Madam," said Watkins, "and that of Mrs. Parsons." During this short dialogue, the ladies had been leading the way to the house. "What the deuce did you stick Fanny into that last compliment for?" enquired Parsons, as they followed together! "it quite spoilt the effect." "Oh! it really would have been too broad without," replied Watkins Tottle, "much too broad!" "He’s mad!" Parsons whispered his wife, as they entered the drawing-room, "mad from modesty." "Dear me!" ejaculated the lady, "I never heard of such a thing." "You’ll find we have quite a family dinner, Mr. Tottle," said Mrs. Parsons, when they sat down to table: "Miss Lillerton is one of us, and, of course, we make no stranger of you." Mr. Watkins Tottle expressed a hope that the Parsons family never would make a stranger of him, and wished internally that his bashfulness would allow him to feel a little less like a stranger himself. "Take off the covers, Martha," said Mrs. Parsons, directing the shifting of the scenery with great anxiety. The order was obeyed, and a pair of boiled fowls, with tongue and et ceteras, were displayed at the top, and a fillet of veal at the bottom. On one side of the table two green sauce-tureens, with ladles of the same, were setting to each other in a green dish; and on the other was a curried rabbit, in a brown suit, turned up with lemon. "Miss Lillerton, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "shall I assist you?" "Thank you, no; I think I’ll trouble Mr. Tottle." Watkins started—trembled—helped the rabbit—and broke a tumbler. The countenance of the lady of the house, which had been all smiles previously, underwent an awful change. "Extremely sorry," stammered Watkins, assisting himself to currie, and parsley and butter, in the extremity of his confusion. "Not the least consequence," replied Mrs. Parsons, in a tone which implied that it was of the greatest consequence possible, directing aside the researches of the boy, who was groping under the table for the bits of broken glass. "I presume," said Miss Lillerton, "that Mr. Tottle is aware of the interest which bachelors usually pay in such cases; a dozen glasses for one is the lowest penalty." Mr. Gabriel Parsons gave his friend an admonitory tread on the toe. Here was a clear hint that the sooner he ceased to be a bachelor and emancipated himself from such penalties, the better. Mr. Watkins Tottle viewed the observation in the same light, and challenged Mrs. Parsons to take wine, with a degree of presence of mind, which, under all the circumstances, was really extraordinary. "Miss Lillerton," said Gabriel, "may I have the pleasure?" "I shall be most happy." "Tottle, will you assist Miss Lillerton, and pass the decanter. Thank you." (The usual pantomimic ceremony of nodding and sipping gone through)— "Tottle, were you ever in Suffolk?" enquired the master of the house, who was burning to tell one of his seven stock stories. "No," responded Watkins, adding, by way of a saving clause, "but I’ve been in Devonshire." "Ah!" replied Gabriel, "it was in Suffolk that a rather singular circumstance happened to me, many years ago. Did you ever happen to hear me mention it?" Mr. Watkins Tottle had happened to hear his friend mention it some four hundred times. Of course he expressed great curiosity, and evinced the utmost impatience to hear the story again. Mr. Gabriel Parsons forthwith attempted to proceed, in spite of the interruptions to which, as our readers must frequently have observed, the master of the house is often exposed in such cases. We will attempt to give them an idea of our meaning. "When I was in Suffolk—" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons — "Take off the fowls first, Martha," said Mrs. Parsons. "I beg your pardon, my dear." "When I was in Suffolk," resumed Mr. Parsons, with an impatient glance at his wife, who pretended not to observe it, "which is now some years ago, business led me to the town of Bury St. Edmunds. I had to stop at the principal places in my way, and therefore, for the sake of convenience, I travelled in a gig. I left Sudbury one dark night—it was winter time—about nine o’clock; the rain poured in torrents, the wind howled among the trees that skirted the road-side, and I was obliged to proceed at a foot-pace, for I could hardly see my hand before me, it was so dark—" "John," interrupted Mrs. Parsons, in a low, hollow, voice, "don’t spill that gravy." "Fanny," said Parsons impatiently, "I wish you’d defer these domestic reproofs to some more suitable time. Really, my dear, these constant interruptions are very annoying." "My dear, I didn’t interrupt you," said Mrs. Parsons. "But, my dear, you did interrupt me," remonstrated Mr. Parsons. "How very absurd you are, my love! I must give directions to the servants; I am quite sure that if I sat here and allowed John to spill the gravy over the new carpet, you’d be the first to find fault when you saw the stain to-morrow morning." "Well," continued Gabriel, with a resigned air, as if he knew there was no getting over the point about the carpet, "I was just saying, it was so dark that I could hardly see my hand before me. The road was very lonely, and I assure you, Tottle (this was a device to arrest the wandering attention of that individual, which was distracted by a confidential communication between Mrs. Parsons and Martha, accompanied by the delivery of a large bunch of keys), I assure you, Tottle, I became somehow impressed with a sense of the loneliness of my situation—" "Pie to your master," interrupted Mrs. Parsons, again directing the servant. "Now, pray, my dear," remonstrated Parsons once more, very pettishly. Mrs. P. turned up her hands and eyebrows, and appealed in dumb show to Miss Lillerton. "As I turned a corner of the road," resumed Gabriel, "the horse stopped short, and reared tremendously. I pulled up, jumped out, ran to his head, and found a man lying on his back in the middle of the road, with his eyes fixed on the sky. I thought he was dead; but no, he was alive, and there appeared to be nothing the matter with him. He jumped up, and putting his hand to his chest, and fixing upon me the most earnest gaze you can imagine, exclaimed—" "Pudding here," said Mrs. Parsons. "Oh! it’s no use," exclaimed the host, who was now rendered desperate. "Here, Tottle; a glass of wine.  It’s useless to attempt relating any thing when Mrs. Parsons is present." This attack was received in the usual way.  Mrs. Parsons talked to Miss Lillerton and at her bette half; expatiated on the impatience of men generally; hinted that her husband was peculiarly vicious in this respect, and wound up by insinuating that she must be one of the best tempers that ever existed, or she never could put up with it. Really what she had to endure sometimes, was more than any one who saw her in every-day life could by possibility suppose.—The story was now a painful subject, and therefore Mr. Parsons declined to enter into any details, and contented himself by stating that the man was a maniac, who had escaped from a neighbouring mad-house. The cloth was removed; the ladies soon afterwards retired, and Miss Lillerton played the piano in the drawing-room over head very loudly, for the edification of the visitor. Mr. Watkins Tottle and Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat chatting comfortably enough, until the conclusion of the second bottle, when the latter, in proposing an adjournment to the drawing-room, informed Watkins that he had concerted a plan with his wife, for leaving him and Miss Lillerton alone, soon after tea. "I say," said Tottle, as they went up stairs, "don’t you think it would be better if we put it off till—till—to-morrow?" "Don’t you think it would have been much better if I had left you in that wretched hole I found you in this morning?" retorted Parsons, bluntly. "Well—well—I only made a suggestion," said poor Watkins Tottle, with a deep sigh. Tea was soon concluded, and Miss Lillerton drawing a small work-table on one side of the fire, and placing a little wooden frame upon it, something like a miniature clay-mill without the horse, was soon busily engaged in making a watch-guard with brown silk. "God bless me!" exclaimed Parsons, starting up with well-feigned surprise, "I’ve forgotten those confounded letters. Tottle, I know you’ll excuse me." If Tottle had been a free agent, he would have allowed no one to leave the room on any pretence, except himself. As it was, however, he was obliged to look cheerful when Parsons quitted the apartment. He had scarcely left, when Martha put her head into the room, with—"please, Ma’am, you’re wanted." Mrs. Parsons left the room, shut the door carefully after her, and Mr. Watkins Tottle was left alone with Miss Lillerton. For the first five minutes there was a dead silence.—Mr. Watkins Tottle was thinking how he should begin, and Miss Lillerton appeared to be thinking of nothing. The fire was burning low; Mr. Watkins Tottle stirred it, and put some coals on. "Hem!" coughed Miss Lillerton; Mr. Watkins Tottle thought the fair creature had spoken— "I beg your pardon," said he. "Eh!" "I thought you spoke." "No." "Oh!" "There are some books on the sofa, Mr. Tottle, if you would like to look at them," said Miss Lillerton, after the lapse of another five minutes. "No, thank you," returned Watkins; and then he added, with a courage which was perfectly astonishing, even to himself, "Madam, that is Miss Lillerton, I wish to speak to you." "To me!" said Miss Lillerton, letting the silk drop from her hands, and sliding her chair back a few paces.—"Speak—to me!" "To you, Madam—and on the subject of the state of your affections." The lady hastily rose, and would have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle gently detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from him as the joint length of their arms would permit, he thus proceeded— "Pray do not misunderstand me, or suppose that I am led to address you, after so short an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits—for merits I have none which could give me a claim to your hand. I hope you will acquit me of any presumption when I explain that I have been acquainted through Mrs. Parsons, with the state—that is, that Mrs. Parsons has told me—at least, not Mrs. Parsons, but—" here Watkins began to wander, but Miss Lillerton relieved him. "Am I to understand, Mr. Tottle, that Mrs. Parsons has acquainted you with my feeling—my affection—I mean my respect, for an individual of the opposite sex?" "She has." "Then, what," inquired Miss Lillerton, averting her face, with a girlish air, "what could induce you to seek such an interview as this? What can your object be? How can I promote your happiness, Mr. Tottle?" Here was the time for a flourish—"By allowing me," replied Watkins, falling bump on his knees, and breaking two brace-buttons and a waistcoat-string, in the act—"By allowing me to be your slave, your servant—in short, by unreservedly making me the confidant of your heart’s feelings—may I say for the promotion of your own happiness—may I say, in order that you may become the wife of a kind and affectionate husband?" "Disinterested creature!" exclaimed Miss Lillerton, hiding her face in a white pocket-handkerchief with an eyelet-hole border. Mr. Watkins Tottle thought that if the lady knew all, she might possibly alter her opinion on this last point. He raised the tip of her middle finger ceremoniously to his lips, and got off his knees, as gracefully as he could. "My information was correct?" he tremulously inquired, when he was once more on his feet. "It was." Watkins elevated his hands, and looked up to the ornament in the centre of the ceiling, which had been made for a lamp, by way of expressing his rapture. "Our situation, Mr. Tottle," resumed the lady, glancing at him through one of the eyelet-holes, "is a most peculiar and delicate one." "It is," said Mr. Tottle. "Our acquaintance has been of so short duration," said Miss Lillerton. "Only a week," assented Watkins Tottle. "Oh! more than that,' exclaimed the lady, in a tone of surprise. "Indeed!" said Tottle. "More than a month—more than two months!" said Miss Lillerton. Rather odd, this, thought Watkins. "Oh!" he said, recollecting Parsons’ assurance that she had known him from report, "I understand. But, my dear madam, pray consider. The longer this acquaintance has existed, the less reason is there for delay now. Why not at once fix a period for gratifying the hopes of your devoted admirer?" "It has been represented to me again and again that this is the course I ought to pursue," replied Miss Lillerton, "but—pardon my feelings of delicacy, Mr. Tottle—pray excuse this embarrassment—I have peculiar ideas on such subjects, and I am quite sure that I never could summon up fortitude enough to name the day to my future husband." "Then allow me to name it," said Tottle eagerly. "I should like to fix it myself," replied Miss Lillerton, bashfully, "but I cannot do so without at once resorting to a third party." "A third party!" thought Watkins Tottle, "who the deuce is that to be, I wonder!" "Mr. Tottle," continued Miss Lillerton, "you have made me a most disinterested and kind offer—that offer I accept.  Will you at once be the bearer of a note from me to—to Mr. Timson?" "Mr. Timson!" said Watkins. "After what has passed between us," responded Miss Lillerton, still averting her head, "you must understand whom I mean; Mr. Timson, the—the—clergyman." "Mr. Timson, the clergyman!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle, in a state of inexpressible beatitude, and positive wonder at his own success. "Angel!  Certainly—this moment!" "I’ll prepare it immediately," said Miss Lillerton, making for the door; "the events of this day have flurried me so much, Mr. Tottle, that I shall not leave my room again this evening; I will send you the note by the servant." "Stay,—stay," cried Watkins Tottle, still keeping a most respectful distance from the lady; "when shall we meet again?" "Oh!  Mr. Tottle," replied Miss Lillerton, coquettishly, "when we are married, I can never see you too often, nor thank you too much;" and she left the room. Mr. Watkins Tottle flung himself into an arm-chair, and indulged in the most delicious reveries of future bliss, in which the idea of "Five hundred pounds per annum, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it, by her last will and testament," was somehow or other the foremost. He had gone through the interview so well, and it had terminated so admirably, that he almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for the settlement of the annual five hundred on himself. "May I come in?" said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peeping in at the door. "Come in," replied Watkins. "Well, have you done it?" anxiously inquired Gabriel. "Have I done it!" said Watkins Tottle. "Hush—I’m going to the clergyman." "No!" said Parsons. "How well you have managed it." "Where does Timson live?" inquired Watkins. "At his uncle’s," replied Gabriel, "just round the lane. He’s waiting for a living, and has been assisting his uncle here for the last two or three months. But how well you have done it—I didn’t think you could have carried it off so." Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate that the Richardsonian principle was the best on which love could possibly be made, when he was interrupted by the entrance of Martha with a little pink note folded like a fancy cocked-hat. "Miss Lillerton’s compliments," said Martha, as she delivered it into Tottle’s hands, and vanished. "Do you observe the delicacy?" said Tottle, appealing to Mr. Gabriel Parsons. "Compliments, not love, by the servant, eh?" Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn’t exactly know what reply to make, so he poked the forefinger of his right hand between the third and fourth ribs of Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Come," said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth, consequent on this practical jest, had subsided, "we’ll be off at once—let’s lose no time." "Capital!" echoed Gabriel Parsons; and in five minutes they were at the garden-gate of the villa tenanted by the uncle of Mr. Timson. "Is Mr. Charles Timson at home?" inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle of Mr. Charles Timson’s uncle’s man. "Mr. Charles is at home," replied the man, stammering; "but he desired me to say he couldn’t be interrupted, Sir, by any of the parishioners." "I am not a parishioner," replied Watkins. "Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom?" inquired Parsons, thrusting himself forward. "No, Mr. Parsons, sir; he’s not exactly writing a sermon, but he is practising the violoncello in his own bedroom, and gave strict orders not to be disturbed." "Say I’m here," replied Gabriel, leading the way across the garden; "Mr. Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on private and particular business." They were shewn into the parlour, and the servant departed to deliver his message. The distant groaning of the violoncello ceased; footsteps were heard on the stairs, and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook hands with Parsons with the utmost cordiality. "How do you do, Sir?" said Watkins Tottle with great solemnity. "How do you do, sir?" replied Timson, with as much coldness as if it were a matter of perfect indifference to him how he did, as it very likely was. "I beg to deliver this note to you," said Watkins Tottle, producing the cocked hat. "From Miss Lillerton!" said Timson, suddenly changing colour. "Pray sit down." Mr. Watkins Tottle sat down, and while Timson perused the note, fixed his eyes on an oyster-sauce-coloured portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which hung over the fire-place. Mr. Timson rose from his seat when he had concluded the note, and looked dubiously at Parsons. —"May I ask," he inquired, appealing to Watkins Tottle, "whether our friend here is acquainted with the object of your visit?" "Our friend is in my confidence," replied Watkins, with considerable importance. "Then, Sir," said Timson, seizing both Tottle’s hands, "allow me in his presence to thank you most unfeignedly and cordially, for the noble part you have acted in this affair." "He thinks I recommended him," thought Tottle.  "Confound these fellows! they never think of anything but their fees." "I deeply regret having misunderstood your intentions, my dear Sir," continued Timson.  "Disinterested and manly indeed! There are very few men who would have acted as you have done." Mr. Watkins Tottle could not help thinking that this last remark was anything but complimentary. He therefore inquired rather hastily, "When is it to be?" "On Thursday," replied Timson,—"on Thursday morning at half-past-eight." "Uncommonly early," observed Watkins Tottle, with an air of triumphant self-denial. "I shall hardly be able to get down here by that hour." (This was intended for a joke.) "Never mind, my dear fellow," replied Timson, all suavity, shaking hands with Tottle again most heartily, "so long as we see you to breakfast, you know—" "Eh!" said Parsons, with one of the most extraordinary expressions of countenance that ever appeared on the human face. "What!" ejaculated Watkins Tottle, at the same moment. "I say that so long as we see you to breakfast," replied Timson, "we will excuse your being absent from the ceremony, though of course your presence at it would give us the utmost pleasure." Mr. Watkins Tottle staggered against the wall, and fixed his eyes on Timson with apalling perseverance. "Timson," said Parsons, hurriedly brushing his hat with his left arm, "when you say “us,” whom do you mean?" Mr. Timson looked foolish in his turn, when he replied, "Why—Mrs. Timson that will be this day week: Miss Lillerton that is"— "Now don’t stare at that idiot in the corner," angrily exclaimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle’s countenance excited the wondering gaze of Timson, "but have the goodness to tell me in three words the contents of that note?" "This note," replied Timson, "is from Miss Lillerton, to whom I have been for the last five weeks regularly engaged. Her singular scruples and strange feeling on some points have hitherto prevented my bringing the engagement to that termination which I so anxiously desire. She informs me here, that she sounded Mrs. Parsons with the view of making her her confidante and go-between, that Mrs. Parsons informed this elderly gentleman, Mr. Tottle, of the circumstance, and that he, in the most kind and delicate terms, offered to assist us in any way, and even undertook to convey this note, which contains the promise I have long sought in vain—an act of kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful." "Good night, Timson," said Parsons hurrying off, and lugging the bewildered Tottle with him. "Won’t you stay—and have something?" said Timson. "No, thank ye," replied Parsons, "I’ve had quite enough;" and away he went, followed by Watkins Tottle in a state of stupefaction. Mr. Gabriel Parsons whistled until they had walked some quarter of a mile past his own gate, when he suddenly stopped, and said, "You are a clever fellow, Tottle, an’t you?" "I don’t know," said the unfortunate Watkins. "I suppose you’ll say this is Fanny’s fault, won’t you?" inquired Gabriel. "I don’t know anything about it," replied the bewildered Tottle. "Well," said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home, "the next time you make an offer, you had better speak plainly, and don’t throw a chance away. And the next time you’re locked up in a spunging-house, just wait there till I come and take you out, there’s a good fellow." How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned to Cecil-street is unknown. His boots were seen outside his bedroom-door next morning, but we have the authority of his landlady for stating that he neither emerged therefrom, or accepted sustenance for four-and-twenty hours; at the expiration of that period, and when a council of war was being held in the kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial beadle to break his door open, he rang his bell, and demanded a cup of milk-and-water. The next morning he went through the formalities of eating and drinking as usual, but a week afterwards he was seized with a relapse, while perusing the list of marriages in a morning paper, from which he never perfectly recovered. A few weeks since, the body of a gentleman unknown was found in the Regent’s canal. In the trousers-pockets were four shillings and three-pence-halfpenny; a matrimonial advertisement from a lady, which appeared to have been cut out of the Sunday Times; a tooth-pick, and a card-case, which it is confidently believed would have led to the identification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the circumstance of there being none but blank cards in it. Mr. Watkins Tottle absented himself from his lodgings shortly before.  A bill which has not been taken up, was presented next morning; and a bill which has not been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his parlour-window. He left a variety of papers in the hands of his landlady—the materials collected in his wanderings among different classes of society—which that lady has determined to published, to defray the unpaid expenses of his board and lodging. They will be carefully arranged, and presented to the public from time to time, with all due humility, by BOZ. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._II_Gin_Shops/1835-02-07_Sketches_of_London_No.2_Gin_Shops.pdf 25cc2c9645b1e657da3adfa362385f66 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350207 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. It is a very remarkable circumstance that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable: and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the the trades is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety - they are very regular in their irregularities. You know the period at which the emergency will arise, and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad you are all ready for him - kill or cure - pills or bullets - calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket barrel. If a dog happen to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue out of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets; nay, worse; for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease; moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it diffuses itself almost incredible. We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were, an inordinate love of plate glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops, in different parts of town, were pilled down; spacious premises, with stuccoed fronts, and gold letters, were erected instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets, roofs supported by massive pillars, doors knocked into windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, one shopman into a dozen - and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in time, that the Commissioners of Bankrupt were as competent to decide such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement, and gentle examination did wonders. The disease abated; it died away; and a year or two of comparative tranquility ensued. Suddenly it burst out again among the chemists; the symptoms were the same with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany varnish, and expensive floor-cloth; then the hoslers were infected and began to pill down their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congratulate themselves upon its entire disappearance when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans and keepers of "wine vaults;" from that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms; and onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public houses, and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rose-wood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks at the corner of every street. The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them is divided into branches, is most amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you "To the Counting-House," another to the "Bottle Department," a third to the "Wholesale Department," a fourth to "The Wine Promenade," and so fourth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a "Brandy Bell," or a "Whiskey Entrance." Then ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community, as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between "The cream of the valley," "The out and out," "The no mistake," "The good for mixing," "The real knock-me-down," "The celebrated butter gin," "The regular flare up," and a dozen other equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with in every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin shops in and near Drury-lane, Holborn, St. Giles', Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London - there is more of filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-lane through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the "Rookery." The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two, or even three; fruit and "sweet-stuff" manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlors, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a "musician" in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one - filth everywhere - a gutter before the houses and a drain behind them - clothes drying at the windows, slops emptying from the ditto; girls of 14 or 15, with matted hair, walking about bare-footed, and in old white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes, and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging about, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as "Old Tom, 549;" "Young Tom, 360;" "Samson, 1421." Behind the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and "compounds." They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. Look at the groups of customers and observe the different air with which they call for what they want, as they are more or less struck by the grandeur of the establishment. The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour of the young ladies who officiate; and receive their half-quarters of gin and peppermint with considerable deference, prefacing a request for "one of them soft biscuits," with a "Just be good enough, ma'am," &c. They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in the brown-coat and bright buttons, who ushering in his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless a manner as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a "kervorten and a three-out glass," just as if the place were his own. "Gin for you, sir?" says the young lady when she has drawn it, carefully looking every way but the right one to show that the wink had no effect upon her. "For me, Mary, my dear," replies the gentleman in brown. "My name an't Mary as it happens," says the young girl in a most insinuating manner as she delivers the change. "Vell, if it an't, it ought to be," responds the irresistible one; "all the Marys as ever I see was handsome gals." Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent misunderstanding that "this gentleman pays," calls for "a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar," the drinking which, and sipping another, accompanied by sundry whisperings to her companion, and no small quantity of giggling, occupies a considering time. Observe the group on the other side: those two old men who came in "just to have a drain," finished their third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying drunk, and the fat, comfortable-looking elderly women, who had "a glass of rum-srub" each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that "grief never mended no broken bones, and as good people's wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on'em, and that's all about it;" a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers - cold wretched-looking creatures, in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and threatening the life of, each other for the last hour, become furious in their disputes; and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the infallible expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. Out rush the man in the fur cap, and the potboy; a scene of riot and confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; in come the police; and the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because if it were pursued farther it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken, besotted men, and wretched, broken-down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; - forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch, not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were. Until then, we almost despair of their decrease. Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. II, Gin Shops.' The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. II, Gin Shops' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350207/028/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350207/028/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-07 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. "Sketches of London, No. II." The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. It is a very remarkable circumstance that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable: and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the the trades is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety - they are very regular in their irregularities. You know the period at which the emergency will arise, and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad you are all ready for him - kill or cure - pills or bullets - calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket barrel. If a dog happen to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue out of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets; nay, worse; for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease; moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it diffuses itself almost incredible.  We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were, an inordinate love of plate glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops, in different parts of town, were pilled down; spacious premises, with stuccoed fronts, and gold letters, were erected instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets, roofs supported by massive pillars, doors knocked into windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, one shopman into a dozen - and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in time, that the Commissioners of Bankrupt were as competent to decide such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement, and gentle examination did wonders. The disease abated; it died away; and a year or two of comparative tranquility ensued. Suddenly it burst out again among the chemists; the symptoms were the same with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany varnish, and expensive floor-cloth; then the hoslers were infected and began to pill down their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congratulate themselves upon its entire disappearance when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans and keepers of "wine vaults;" from that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms; and onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public houses, and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rose-wood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks at the corner of every street. The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them is divided into branches, is most amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you "To the Counting-House," another to the "Bottle Department," a third to the "Wholesale Department," a fourth to "The Wine Promenade," and so fourth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a "Brandy Bell," or a "Whiskey Entrance." Then ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community, as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between "The cream of the valley," "The out and out," "The no mistake," "The good for mixing," "The real knock-me-down," "The celebrated butter gin," "The regular flare up," and a dozen other equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with in every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin shops in and near Drury-lane, Holborn, St. Giles', Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London - there is more of filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-lane through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the "Rookery." The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two, or even three; fruit and "sweet-stuff" manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlors, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a "musician" in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one - filth everywhere - a gutter before the houses and a drain behind them - clothes drying at the windows, slops emptying from the ditto; girls of 14 or 15, with matted hair, walking about bare-footed, and in old white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes, and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging about, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as "Old Tom, 549;" "Young Tom, 360;" "Samson, 1421." Behind the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and "compounds." They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. Look at the groups of customers and observe the different air with which they call for what they want, as they are more or less struck by the grandeur of the establishment. The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour of the young ladies who officiate; and receive their half-quarters of gin and peppermint with considerable deference, prefacing a request for "one of them soft biscuits," with a "Just be good enough, ma'am," &c. They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in the brown-coat and bright buttons, who ushering in his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless a manner as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a "kervorten and a three-out glass," just as if the place were his own. "Gin for you, sir?" says the young lady when she has drawn it, carefully looking every way but the right one to show that the wink had no effect upon her. "For me, Mary, my dear," replies the gentleman in brown. "My name an't Mary as it happens," says the young girl in a most insinuating manner as she delivers the change. "Vell, if it an't, it ought to be," responds the irresistible one; "all the Marys as ever I see was handsome gals." Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent misunderstanding that "this gentleman pays," calls for "a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar," the drinking which, and sipping another, accompanied by sundry whisperings to her companion, and no small quantity of giggling, occupies a considering time. Observe the group on the other side: those two old men who came in "just to have a drain," finished their third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying drunk, and the fat, comfortable-looking elderly women, who had "a glass of rum-srub" each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that "grief never mended no broken bones, and as good people's wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on'em, and that's all about it;" a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers - cold wretched-looking creatures, in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and threatening the life of, each other for the last hour, become furious in their disputes; and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the infallible expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. Out rush the man in the fur cap, and the potboy; a scene of riot and confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; in come the police; and the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because if it were pursued farther it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken, besotted men, and wretched, broken-down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; - forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch, not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were. Until then, we almost despair of their decrease.  https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._III_Early_Coaches/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_No.III_Early_Coaches.pdf 74407d4b49189c6281d799ebb2a32299 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350219 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a succession of early coaches an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel would be nothing to breaking his rest, his peace, his heart—everything but his fast—between four and five; and the punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by the bye, who has discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful Churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a small coach, which travelled day and night; and securing the remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last travels, leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on his line of road, might think proper to inflict. Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey? You receive an intimation from your place of business—wherever that may be, or whatever you may be—that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an express is immediately dispatched to the washer-woman’s; everybody is in a bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking office to secure your place. Here a painful consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills, the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-dozen people are "booking" brown paper parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness, which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so many Atlas's, keep rushing in and out with large packages on their shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking office clerks can have been before they were booking office clerks; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the passengers’ names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—actually whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead!— In frosty weather, too! They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—"What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?"—"Six o’clock," replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk. "Rather before than arter," adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street, ruminating, as you bend your steps homewards, on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty by custom. If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, over night, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small-hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been "going off" before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether" one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow, on the off-leader: anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard, an old school-fellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don’t take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering! —rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be; you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he’s talking now—what’s that he said? Five o’clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed as if you were rehearsing the tent scene in Richard. The vision is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker’s shop is your own bedroom, and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles, or the pannels of the door. You proceed to dress yourself with all possible dispatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the things you want are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete your toilette, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham great coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet bag in your right hand, you walk lightly down stairs lest you should awake any of the family; and after pausing in the sitting-room for one moment just to have a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the crumbs of last night’s supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the street door, and find yourself fairly in the street. A thaw, by all that's miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is "coming in" in every area—the pipes have burst—the water butts are running over—the kennels seem to be doing matches against time—pump-handles descend of their own accord—horses in market-carts fall down, and there’s no one to help them up again— policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass—here and there a milk woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping—boys who "don’t sleep in the house," and an't allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did. It strikes a quarter-past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your way to the Golden-cross, and you discover for the first time that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back; there is no place open to go into, and you have therefore no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham High-flyer, which, for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether; for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the booking-office, which, with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to "The Tap"—not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,—when the kettle boils; an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s church steeple just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy and water in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office with breathless rapidity. The place which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of "Times, gen’lm’n, Times," "Here’s Chron—Chron—Chron," "Herald, ma’am," "Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n," "Curious case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies," &.c &c. The inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the appearance of chrystallized rats tails, one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan’s pipes. "Take off the cloths, Bob," says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue great coat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart that you can’t see them both at the same time. "Now, gen’lm’n," cries the guard, with the way-bill in his hand. "Five minutes behind time already!" Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling, and pushing, and helping, and trouble, which she repays by expressing her solemn conviction that she'll never be able to get down again. "All right," sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards in proof of the soundness of his wind. "Let ’em go, Harry, give 'em their heads," cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were "all right," as well as the coach, and looking forward as anxiously to the termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done long since, to the conclusion of our article. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches.' The Evening Chronicle (19 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-19 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0001315/18350219/008/0001" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0001315/18350219/008/0001</a>.  Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches' (19 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (19 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a succession of early coaches an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel would be nothing to breaking his rest, his peace, his heart—everything but his fast—between four and five; and the punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by the bye, who has discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful Churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a small coach, which travelled day and night; and securing the remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last travels, leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on his line of road, might think proper to inflict. Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey? You receive an intimation from your place of business—wherever that may be, or whatever you may be—that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an express is immediately dispatched to the washer-woman’s; everybody is in a bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking office to secure your place. Here a painful consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills, the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-dozen people are "booking" brown paper parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness, which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so many Atlas's, keep rushing in and out with large packages on their shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking office clerks can have been before they were booking office clerks; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the passengers’ names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—actually whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead!— In frosty weather, too! They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—"What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?"—"Six o’clock," replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk. "Rather before than arter," adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street, ruminating, as you bend your steps homewards, on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty by custom. If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, over night, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small-hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been "going off" before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether" one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow, on the off-leader: anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard, an old school-fellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don’t take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering! —rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be; you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he’s talking now—what’s that he said? Five o’clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed as if you were rehearsing the tent scene in Richard. The vision is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker’s shop is your own bedroom, and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles, or the pannels of the door. You proceed to dress yourself with all possible dispatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the things you want are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete your toilette, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham great coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet bag in your right hand, you walk lightly down stairs lest you should awake any of the family; and after pausing in the sitting-room for one moment just to have a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the crumbs of last night’s supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the street door, and find yourself fairly in the street. A thaw, by all that's miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is "coming in" in every area—the pipes have burst—the water butts are running over—the kennels seem to be doing matches against time—pump-handles descend of their own accord—horses in market-carts fall down, and there’s no one to help them up again— policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass—here and there a milk woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping—boys who "don’t sleep in the house," and an't allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did. It strikes a quarter-past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your way to the Golden-cross, and you discover for the first time that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back; there is no place open to go into, and you have therefore no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham High-flyer, which, for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether; for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the booking-office, which, with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to "The Tap"—not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,—when the kettle boils; an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s church steeple just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy and water in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office with breathless rapidity. The place which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of "Times, gen’lm’n, Times," "Here’s Chron—Chron—Chron," "Herald, ma’am," "Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n," "Curious case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies," &.c &c. The inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the appearance of chrystallized rats tails, one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan’s pipes. "Take off the cloths, Bob," says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue great coat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart that you can’t see them both at the same time. "Now, gen’lm’n," cries the guard, with the way-bill in his hand. "Five minutes behind time already!" Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling, and pushing, and helping, and trouble, which she repays by expressing her solemn conviction that she'll never be able to get down again. "All right," sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards in proof of the soundness of his wind. "Let ’em go, Harry, give 'em their heads," cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were "all right," as well as the coach, and looking forward as anxiously to the termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done long since, to the conclusion of our article. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._IV_The_Parish/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.4_The_Parish.pdf 81f01a6a7cbbf36d5ac8e383969da484 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350228 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish? There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish." Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish.' The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' (28 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish?  There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys.  Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle.  His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise.  The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle.  Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once.  It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power.  He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish." https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._V_The_House/1835-03-07_Sketches_of_London_No.V_The_House.pdf 0dd8f44e2c592fcc3e0b20976c611878 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350307 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at the rather ominous title we have chosen for our fifth sketch. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of "the House" and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate would be productive of some amusement; and as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time—have attended it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our own personal peace and comfort—we have determined to accept the description. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Sergeants at Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier feeds, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once, into the building, and upon our subject. Half-past four o'clock, and at five the mover of the Address will be "on his legs," as the newspaper announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads. What a scene of bustle and excitement! The members are pouring in one after the other in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages scrutinize them as they pass with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally becomes a person of great importance. Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of "That's Sir John Thompson." "Which? him with the gilt order round his neck?" "No, no; that's one of the messengers—that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson." "Here's Mr. Smith." "Lor! Yes, how dy'e do, sir?—(He is our new member)—How do you do, sir?" Mr. Smith stops; turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning), seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, rushes into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his "fellow townsman." The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer crowned, broad brimmed hat, white corderoy breeches and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That's the great conservator of the peace of Westminster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they've been here. "Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr.—?" timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office. "How can you ask such questions, sir?" replies the functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand. "Pray do not, sir, I beg of you; pray do not, sir." Here the little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just as this moment, some unfortunate individual appears, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable down stairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. "Go back sir—you must not come here!" shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. "Do you hear, sir—will you go back?" continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some dozen yards. "Come, don't push me," replies the stranger, turning angrily round. "I will, sir;" "You won't, sir;" "Go out, sir:" "Take your hands off me, sir;" "Go out of the passage, sir." "You're a Jack-in-office, sir." "A what?" ejaculates he of the boots. "A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow," reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion. "Pray do not force me to put you out, sir," retorts the other— "pray do not—my instructions are to keep this passage clear—it's the Speaker's orders, sir." "D—n the Speaker, sir," shouts the intruder. "Here, Wilson!—Collins!" gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; "take this man out— take him out, I say! How dare you, sir?" &c., and down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the Commander-in-Chief and his supernumeraries. "Make way, gentlemen, —pray make way for the Members, I beg of you;" shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of the liberal and independent. You see this ferocious-looking personage, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustaches would give him the appearance of a figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance possessed one ray of the intelligence communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is a militia-man, with a brain slightly damaged, and (quite unintentionally) the most amusing person in the House. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm—they are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. You must often have seen him in the box-lobbies of the theatres during the vacation. He is very punctual in his attendance at the house, and his self-satisfied "He-ar-He-ar," is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter. This is the man who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers' Gallery in the old House of Commons to inquire the name of a gentleman who was using an eye-glass, in order that he (the Militia-man) might complain to the Speaker that the individual in question was quizzing him! On another occasion he repaired to Bellamy's kitchen—a refreshment room where persons who are not members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper who he was aware were not Members, and could not in that place very well resent his insolence, he indulged in the exquisite pleasantry and gentlemanly facetiousness of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! Poor creature! he is generally harmless, and his absurdities are amusing enough. By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the house, as the door is opened for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topic of the day. That smart looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facing and cuffs, who wears his D'Orsay hat so rakishly, is "Honest Tom," a metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague. That quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief and gloves, whose closely buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The elderly man with the bald head and thin face, who is leaning against the wall perusing the leading articles of the soi-disant "Leading Journal," is the identical "old country gentleman" who has lived for two-thirds of his whole existence exactly one minute and a quarter's walk from Black-friars'-bridge. The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good specimen of that class of men—now nearly extinct. He is also a county member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose wide brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side; the knee breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver-watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and white handkerchief tied in a great bow with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt frill. It is a costume one seldom sees now-a-days, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be extinct too. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o-clock except on regular field days, of which everybody was apprized before-hand. He has a great contempt for all young members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he has sat in the house for fifteen years at least, without saying anything at all. He is of opinion that "That young Macaulay" was a regular imposter; he allows that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but he's too young Sir—too young. He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how the house once divided on the question, that fresh candles be new brought in; how the Speakers was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three hours, till some member could be knocked up, and brought back again to move the adjournment—and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound contempt, and conjuring up before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old house in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism, flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great coat is, who has accosted every member who has entered the House since we have been standing here. He is not a member; he is only an "hereditary bondsman," or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who had just procured his forty-second frank from a member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again—another! Bless the man, he has got his hat and pockets full already. We'll try our fortune at the Strangers' Gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success. What on earth are you about? Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open? Nonsense. Just preserve the order for an autograph, if its worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and fore-finger expressively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper. "Any room?" "Not an inch—two or three dozen gentlemen waiting downstairs on the chance of somebody's going out." Pull out your purse—"Are you quite sure there's no room?"—I'll go and look," replies the door-keeper, with a wishful glance at your purse, "but I'm afraid there's not." He returns, and with real feeling, assures you that it's morally impossible to get near the gallery. It's no use waiting. When you are refused admission into the Stranger's Gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be re-markably full indeed. Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary door-way adjoining the King's entrance to the House of Lords. We will endeavour to smuggle you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you may peep into the House for one instant, but not longer, for its against orders our being there at all. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best: through this little wicket—there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. You heard the "hear, hear," which occasioned that laugh; it proceaded from our warlike friend in the mustachios; he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look round you, and retire; the body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members, some with their legs on the back of the opposite seat; some with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all of them talking, laughing, lounging, coughin, o-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion to be met with in no other place in existence. There are a few more portraits—some in the body of the house—others in one of the galleries—which we should like to lay before our readers. We have exhausted our space, and most therefore reserve them for our next sketch, which will be entitled "Bellamy's." Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. V, The House.' The Evening Chronicle (7 March 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. V, The House' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350307/019/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350307/019/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-03-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. V, The House' (7 March 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (7 March 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at the rather ominous title we have chosen for our fifth sketch. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of "the House" and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate would be productive of some amusement; and as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time—have attended it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our own personal peace and comfort—we have determined to accept the description. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Sergeants at Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier feeds, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once, into the building, and upon our subject. Half-past four o'clock, and at five the mover of the Address will be "on his legs," as the newspaper announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads. What a scene of bustle and excitement! The members are pouring in one after the other in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages scrutinize them as they pass with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally becomes a person of great importance. Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of "That's Sir John Thompson." "Which? him with the gilt order round his neck?" "No, no; that's one of the messengers—that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson." "Here's Mr. Smith." "Lor! Yes, how dy'e do, sir?—(He is our new member)—How do you do, sir?" Mr. Smith stops; turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning), seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, rushes into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his "fellow townsman." The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer crowned, broad brimmed hat, white corderoy breeches and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That's the great conservator of the peace of Westminster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they've been here. "Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr.—?" timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office. "How can you ask such questions, sir?" replies the functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand. "Pray do not, sir, I beg of you; pray do not, sir." Here the little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just as this moment, some unfortunate individual appears, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable down stairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. "Go back sir—you must not come here!" shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. "Do you hear, sir—will you go back?" continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some dozen yards. "Come, don't push me," replies the stranger, turning angrily round. "I will, sir;" "You won't, sir;" "Go out, sir:" "Take your hands off me, sir;" "Go out of the passage, sir." "You're a Jack-in-office, sir." "A what?" ejaculates he of the boots. "A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow," reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion. "Pray do not force me to put you out, sir," retorts the other— "pray do not—my instructions are to keep this passage clear—it's the Speaker's orders, sir." "D—n the Speaker, sir," shouts the intruder. "Here, Wilson!—Collins!" gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; "take this man out— take him out, I say! How dare you, sir?" &c., and down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the Commander-in-Chief and his supernumeraries. "Make way, gentlemen, —pray make way for the Members, I beg of you;" shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of the liberal and independent. You see this ferocious-looking personage, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustaches would give him the appearance of a figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance possessed one ray of the intelligence communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is a militia-man, with a brain slightly damaged, and (quite unintentionally) the most amusing person in the House. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm—they are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. You must often have seen him in the box-lobbies of the theatres during the vacation. He is very punctual in his attendance at the house, and his self-satisfied "He-ar-He-ar," is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter. This is the man who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers' Gallery in the old House of Commons to inquire the name of a gentleman who was using an eye-glass, in order that he (the Militia-man) might complain to the Speaker that the individual in question was quizzing him! On another occasion he repaired to Bellamy's kitchen—a refreshment room where persons who are not members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper who he was aware were not Members, and could not in that place very well resent his insolence, he indulged in the exquisite pleasantry and gentlemanly facetiousness of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! Poor creature! he is generally harmless, and his absurdities are amusing enough.  By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the house, as the door is opened for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topic of the day. That smart looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facing and cuffs, who wears his D'Orsay hat so rakishly, is "Honest Tom," a metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague. That quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief and gloves, whose closely buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The elderly man with the bald head and thin face, who is leaning against the wall perusing the leading articles of the soi-disant "Leading Journal," is the identical "old country gentleman" who has lived for two-thirds of his whole existence exactly one minute and a quarter's walk from Black-friars'-bridge. The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good specimen of that class of men—now nearly extinct. He is also a county member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose wide brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side; the knee breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver-watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and white handkerchief tied in a great bow with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt frill. It is a costume one seldom sees now-a-days, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be extinct too. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o-clock except on regular field days, of which everybody was apprized before-hand. He has a great contempt for all young members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he has sat in the house for fifteen years at least, without saying anything at all. He is of opinion that "That young Macaulay" was a regular imposter; he allows that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but he's too young Sir—too young. He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how the house once divided on the question, that fresh candles be new brought in; how the Speakers was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three hours, till some member could be knocked up, and brought back again to move the adjournment—and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound contempt, and conjuring up before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old house in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism, flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great coat is, who has accosted every member who has entered the House since we have been standing here. He is not a member; he is only an "hereditary bondsman," or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who had just procured his forty-second frank from a member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again—another! Bless the man, he has got his hat and pockets full already. We'll try our fortune at the Strangers' Gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success. What on earth are you about? Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open? Nonsense. Just preserve the order for an autograph, if its worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and fore-finger expressively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper. "Any room?" "Not an inch—two or three dozen gentlemen waiting downstairs on the chance of somebody's going out." Pull out your purse—"Are you quite sure there's no room?"—I'll go and look," replies the door-keeper, with a wishful glance at your purse, "but I'm afraid there's not." He returns, and with real feeling, assures you that it's morally impossible to get near the gallery. It's no use waiting. When you are refused admission into the Stranger's Gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be re-markably full indeed. Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary door-way adjoining the King's entrance to the House of Lords. We will endeavour to smuggle you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you may peep into the House for one instant, but not longer, for its against orders our being there at all. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best: through this little wicket—there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. You heard the "hear, hear," which occasioned that laugh; it proceaded from our warlike friend in the mustachios; he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look round you, and retire; the body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members, some with their legs on the back of the opposite seat; some with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all of them talking, laughing, lounging, coughin, o-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion to be met with in no other place in existence. There are a few more portraits—some in the body of the house—others in one of the galleries—which we should like to lay before our readers. We have exhausted our space, and most therefore reserve them for our next sketch, which will be entitled "Bellamy's." https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._VI_London_Recreations/1835-03-17_Sketches_of_London_No._VI_London_Recreations.pdf a238431fef3737e16a246d9384dbb3bb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350317 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent among the small gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with Court Journal-reading families, and circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up tavern assemblies in humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy "large room" of some second rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some "fancy fair in high life," suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a languishing condition; Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s nursery ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few other weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the contemptible attempt at imitation, to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement in our walks and musings; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes a great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young fellows, who are holding parasols over them - of course only to keep the sun off, while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week day he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of the dining room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you - who are a young friend of the family - with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town - say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife - who is as clean and compact a little body as himself - have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it by the hour together. He has always something to do in it, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and messing about, with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour window, and geranium-pots in the little front court testify. She takes a great pride in the garden too, and when one of the four fruit-trees produces a rather larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass, on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it with his own hands. On a summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers - No bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch; there used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days - whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings - has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing - we hope not. Let us turn, now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived - we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural "Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women - boys and girls - sweethearts and married people - babies in arms, and children in chaises - pipes and shrimps - cigars and perriwinkles - tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, "cutting it uncommon fat!") - ladies, with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass, in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen - husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of "srimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort - boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked 'em - gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes - and children of every age and size in incredible numbers, from the boy of one in a straw hat and lace cockade, to the girl of twelve in a little scanty spencer, with a beaver bonnet and green veil. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile; but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a "ma’am" at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them - that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother, a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of "Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for it's a matter of course here. Every woman in "the gardens" who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it's impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of "tea for four: bread and butter for forty;" and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper "pigtail" on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently "keeping company" with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints - such as "Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know." "I shall look out for the cake, Sally." "I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy" and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she's in perfect ecstacies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the "gin-and-water warm with," of which Uncle Bill ordered "glasses round" after tea, "jist to keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch a day, which certainly was 'rayther warm,' as the child said when it fell into the fire." It's getting dark, and the people begin to move: the field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along: the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep - the mothers begin to wish they were at home again - sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives - the gardens look mournful enough by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers - and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. There are many other classes who regularly pursue the same round of reaction. The better description of clerks form rowing clubs, and dress themselves like sailors at fancy balls; others resort to the billiard table. Some people think the greatest enjoyment of existence is to stew in an unwholesome vault for a whole night, drinking bad spirits and hearing worse singing; and others go half-price to the theatre regularly every evening. A certain class of donkeys think the chief happiness of human existence is to knock at doors and run away again; and there are other men whose only recreation is leaning against the posts at street-corners, and not moving at all. Whatever be the class, or whatever the recreation, so long as it does not render a man absurd himself, or offensive to others, we hope it will never be interfered with, either by a misdirected feeling of propriety on the one hand, or detestable cant on the other. (Footnote): On consideration, we postpone for a week or two the sketch we announced in our last. We have various reasons for doing so, among which the inevitable sameness of the subject is not the least. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations.' The Evening Chronicle (17 March 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350317/033/0003" class="waffle-rich-text-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350317/033/0003</a>. Source is faded and illegible in places. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-03-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations' (17 March 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (17 March 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent among the small gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with Court Journal-reading families, and circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up tavern assemblies in humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy "large room" of some second rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some "fancy fair in high life," suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a languishing condition; Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s nursery ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few other weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the contemptible attempt at imitation, to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement in our walks and musings; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes a great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young fellows, who are holding parasols over them - of course only to keep the sun off, while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week day he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of the dining room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you - who are a young friend of the family - with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town - say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife - who is as clean and compact a little body as himself - have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it by the hour together. He has always something to do in it, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and messing about, with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour window, and geranium-pots in the little front court testify. She takes a great pride in the garden too, and when one of the four fruit-trees produces a rather larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass, on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it with his own hands. On a summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers - No bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch; there used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days - whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings - has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing - we hope not. Let us turn, now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived - we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural "Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women - boys and girls - sweethearts and married people - babies in arms, and children in chaises - pipes and shrimps - cigars and perriwinkles - tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, "cutting it uncommon fat!") - ladies, with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass, in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen - husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of "srimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort - boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked 'em - gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes - and children of every age and size in incredible numbers, from the boy of one in a straw hat and lace cockade, to the girl of twelve in a little scanty spencer, with a beaver bonnet and green veil. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile; but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a "ma’am" at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them - that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother, a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of "Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for it's a matter of course here. Every woman in "the gardens" who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it's impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of "tea for four: bread and butter for forty;" and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper "pigtail" on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently "keeping company" with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints - such as "Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know." "I shall look out for the cake, Sally." "I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy" and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she's in perfect ecstacies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the "gin-and-water warm with," of which Uncle Bill ordered "glasses round" after tea, "jist to keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch a day, which certainly was 'rayther warm,' as the child said when it fell into the fire." It's getting dark, and the people begin to move: the field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along: the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep - the mothers begin to wish they were at home again - sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives - the gardens look mournful enough by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers - and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. There are many other classes who regularly pursue the same round of reaction. The better description of clerks form rowing clubs, and dress themselves like sailors at fancy balls; others resort to the billiard table. Some people think the greatest enjoyment of existence is to stew in an unwholesome vault for a whole night, drinking bad spirits and hearing worse singing; and others go half-price to the theatre regularly every evening. A certain class of donkeys think the chief happiness of human existence is to knock at doors and run away again; and there are other men whose only recreation is leaning against the posts at street-corners, and not moving at all. Whatever be the class, or whatever the recreation, so long as it does not render a man absurd himself, or offensive to others, we hope it will never be interfered with, either by a misdirected feeling of propriety on the one hand, or detestable cant on the other.  (Footnote): On consideration, we postpone for a week or two the sketch we announced in our last. We have various reasons for doing so, among which the inevitable sameness of the subject is not the least.