10 10 361 https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/New_Series_No._4_Vauxhall-Gardens_by_Day/1836-10-26-VauxhallGardens_by_Day.pdf a89910bac14d85392f0a702410b8870c 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. 18361026 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. There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall-gardens would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by day-light! A porter pot without porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas lamp without the gas—pooh, nonsense, the thing was not to be thought of. It was rumoured, too, in those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day were the scene of secret and hidden experiments; that there, carvers were exercised in the mystic art of cutting a moderate sized ham into slices thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds; that beneath the shade of the tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in chemical experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus could possibly bear; and that in some retired nooks, appropriated to the study of ornithology, other sage and learned men were, by a process known only to themselves, incessantly employed in reducing fowls to a mere combination of skin and bone. Vague rumours of this kind, together with many others of a similar nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens an air of deep mystery; and as there is a great deal in the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was not a little enhanced by this very circumstance. Of this class of people we confess to having made one. We loved to wander among these illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and laborious researches which had been carried on there during the day, and witnessing their results in the suppers which were served up, beneath the light of lamps, and to the sound of music at night. The temples and saloons and cosmoramas and fountains glittered and sparkled before our eyes; the beauty of the lady singers and the elegant deportment of the gentlemen captivated our hearts; a few hundred thousand of additional lamps dazzled our senses; a bowl or two of reeking punch bewildered our brains; and we were happy. In an evil hour, the proprietors of Vauxhall-gardens took to opening them by day. We regretted this as rudely and harshly disturbing that veil of mystery which had hung about the property for many years, and which none but the noon-day Sun and the late Mr. Simpson had ever penetrated. We shrunk from going; at this moment we scarcely know why. Perhaps a morbid consciousness of approaching disappointment—perhaps a fatal presentiment—perhaps the weather; whatever it was, we did not go until the second or third announcement of a race between two balloons tempted us, and we went. We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw, for the first time, that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very roughly-painted boards and saw-dust. We glanced at the orchestra and supper-room as we hurried past—we just recognised them, and that was all. We bent our steps to the firework-ground; there, at least, we should not be disappointed. We reached it, and stood rooted to the spot with mortification and astonishment. That the Moorish tower—that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs of crimson and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-case! That the place where night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artillery, and where the white garments of Madame Somebody or other, who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her temple! That the—but at this moment the bell rung—the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot from whence the sound proceeded, and we, from the mere force of habit, found ourself running among the first, as if for very life. It was for the concert in the orchestra. A small party of dismal men in cocked hats were "executing" the overture to Tancredi, and a numerous assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, with their families, had rushed from their half-emptied stout mugs in the supper boxes, and crowded to the spot. Intense was the low murmur of admiration when a particularly small gentleman, in a dress coat, led on a particularly tall lady in a blue sarcenet pelisse and bonnet of the same, ornamented with large white feathers, and forthwith commenced a plaintive duet. We knew the small gentleman well; we had seen a lithographed semblance of him on many a piece of music, with his mouth wide open as if in the act of singing; a wine glass in his hand, and a table with two decanters and four pine-apples on it in the background. The tall lady, too, we had gazed on, lost in raptures of admiration, many and many a time—how different people do look by daylight and without punch, to be sure! It was a beautiful duet: first the small gentleman asked a question, and then the tall lady answered it; then the small gentleman and the tall lady sang together most melodiously; then the small gentleman went through a little piece of vehemence by himself, and got very tenor indeed in the excitement of his feelings, to which the tall lady responded in a similar manner; then the small gentleman had a shake or two, after which the tall lady had the same, and then they both merged imperceptibly into the original air, and the band wound themselves up to a pitch of fury and the small gentleman handed the tall lady out, and the applause was rapturous. The comic singer, however, was the especial favourite; we really thought that a gentleman with his dinner in a pocket handkerchief, who stood near us, would have fainted with excess of joy. A fearfully facetious old man that comic singer is; his distinguishing characteristics are, a wig approaching to the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the name of one of the English counties, if we recollect right. He sang a song about the seven ages, the first half hour of which seemed to afford the assembly the purest delight; of the rest we can make no report, as we did not stay to hear any more. We walked about, and met with a disappointment at every turn; our favourite views were mere patches of paint; the fountain that had sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of a water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments were dingy, and all the walks gloomy. There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little open theatre; the sun shone upon the spangled dresses of the performers, and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and appropriate as a country dance in a family vault. So we retraced our steps to the firework-ground, and mingled with the little crowd of people who were contemplating Mr. Green. Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity of one of the balloons, which was completely filled, and had the car already attached; and as rumours had gone abroad that a lord was "going up," the crowd were more than usually anxious and talkative. There was one little man in faded black, with a dirty face and a rusty black neckerchief with a red border, tied in a narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into conversation with everybody, and had something to say upon every remark that was made within his hearing. He was standing with his arms folded, staring up at the balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of reverence for the aeronaut, by saying, as he looked round to catch somebody’s eye, "He’s a rum ’un is Green; think o’ this here being up’ards of his two hundredth ascent; by God, the man as is ekal to Green never had the tooth-ache yet, nor wo'nt have within this hundred year, and that’s all about it. Wen you meets with real talent, and native, too, encourage it, that’s wot I say;" and when he had delivered himself to this effect, he would fold his arms with more determination than ever, and stare at the balloon with a sort of admiring defiance of any other man alive, beyond himself and Green, that impressed the crowd with the opinion that he was an oracle. "Ah, you’re very right, sir," said another gentleman, with his wife, and children, and mother, and wife’s sister, and a host of female friends, in all the gentility of white pocket-handkerchiefs, frills, and spencers, "Mr. Green is a steady hand, sir, and there’s no fear about him." "Fear!" said the little man: "ain't it a lovely thing to see him and his wife a going up in one balloon, and his own son and his wife a jostling up agin 'em in another, and all of 'em going twenty or thirty mile in three hours or so, and then coming back in po-chayses? I don’t know where this here science is to stop, mind you; that’s what bothers me." Here there was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers. "What’s the ladies a laughing at, sir?" inquired the little man, condescendingly. "It’s only my sister Mary," said one of the girls, "as says she hopes his Lordship won’t be frightened when he’s in the car, and want to come out agin." "Make yourself easy about that there, my dear," replied the little man. "If he was so much as to move a inch without leave, Green would jist fetch him a crack over the head with the telescope, as vid send him into the bottom of the basket in no time, and stun him till they come down again." "Would he, though?" inquired the other man. "Yes, by God, would he," replied the little one, 'and think nothing of it, neither, if he was the king himself. Green’s presence of mind is wonderful." Just at this moment all eyes were directed to the preparations which were being made for starting. The car was attached to the second balloon, the two were brought pretty close together, and a military band commenced playing with a zeal and fervour which would render the most timid man in existence but too happy to accept any means of quitting that particular spot of earth on which they were stationed. Then Mr. Green, sen., and his noble companion entered one car, and Mr. Green, jun., and his companion the other; and then the balloons went up, and the aerial travellers stood up, and the crowd outside roared with delight, and the two gentlemen who had never ascended before, tried to wave their flags, as if they were not nervous, but held on very fast all the while, and the balloons were wafted gently away, our little friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green; the gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming "bal-loon," and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly in again, perfectly satisfied. The next day there was a grand account of the ascent in the morning papers, and the public were informed how it was the finest day but four in Mr. Green’s remembrance; how they retained sight of the earth till they lost it behind the clouds; and how the reflection of the balloon on the undulating masses of vapour was gorgeously picturesque; together with a little science about the refraction of the sun’s rays, and some mysterious hints respecting atmospheric heat and eddying currents of air. There was also an interesting account how a man in a boat was distinctly heard by Mr. Green, jun., to exclaim, "My eye!" which Mr. Green, jun., attributed to his voice rising to the balloon, and the sound being thrown back from its surface into the car; and the whole concluded with a slight allusion to another ascent next Wednesday, all of which was very instructive and very amusing, as our readers will see if they look to the papers. If we have forgotten to mention the date, they have only to wait till next summer and take the account of the first ascent, and it will answer the purpose equally well. 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 'New Series, No. 4, Vauxhall-Gardens by Day' Description An account of the resource Published in The Morning Chronicle (26 October 1836), 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/0000082/18361026/006/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000082/18361026/006/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836-10-26 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-10-26-VauxhallGardens_by_Day 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. 'New Series, No. 4, 'Vauxhall-Gardens by Day' (26 October 1836). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1836-10-26-VauxhallGardens_by_Day">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1836-10-26-VauxhallGardens_by_Day</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. There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall-gardens would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by day-light! A porter pot without porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas lamp without the gas—pooh, nonsense, the thing was not to be thought of. It was rumoured, too, in those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day were the scene of secret and hidden experiments; that there, carvers were exercised in the mystic art of cutting a moderate sized ham into slices thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds; that beneath the shade of the tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in chemical experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus could possibly bear; and that in some retired nooks, appropriated to the study of ornithology, other sage and learned men were, by a process known only to themselves, incessantly employed in reducing fowls to a mere combination of skin and bone. Vague rumours of this kind, together with many others of a similar nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens an air of deep mystery; and as there is a great deal in the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was not a little enhanced by this very circumstance. Of this class of people we confess to having made one. We loved to wander among these illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and laborious researches which had been carried on there during the day, and witnessing their results in the suppers which were served up, beneath the light of lamps, and to the sound of music at night. The temples and saloons and cosmoramas and fountains glittered and sparkled before our eyes; the beauty of the lady singers and the elegant deportment of the gentlemen captivated our hearts; a few hundred thousand of additional lamps dazzled our senses; a bowl or two of reeking punch bewildered our brains; and we were happy. In an evil hour, the proprietors of Vauxhall-gardens took to opening them by day. We regretted this as rudely and harshly disturbing that veil of mystery which had hung about the property for many years, and which none but the noon-day Sun and the late Mr. Simpson had ever penetrated. We shrunk from going; at this moment we scarcely know why. Perhaps a morbid consciousness of approaching disappointment—perhaps a fatal presentiment—perhaps the weather; whatever it was, we did not go until the second or third announcement of a race between two balloons tempted us, and we went. We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw, for the first time, that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very roughly-painted boards and saw-dust. We glanced at the orchestra and supper-room as we hurried past—we just recognised them, and that was all. We bent our steps to the firework-ground; there, at least, we should not be disappointed. We reached it, and stood rooted to the spot with mortification and astonishment. That the Moorish tower—that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs of crimson and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-case! That the place where night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artillery, and where the white garments of Madame Somebody or other, who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her temple! That the—but at this moment the bell rung—the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot from whence the sound proceeded, and we, from the mere force of habit, found ourself running among the first, as if for very life. It was for the concert in the orchestra. A small party of dismal men in cocked hats were "executing" the overture to Tancredi, and a numerous assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, with their families, had rushed from their half-emptied stout mugs in the supper boxes, and crowded to the spot. Intense was the low murmur of admiration when a particularly small gentleman, in a dress coat, led on a particularly tall lady in a blue sarcenet pelisse and bonnet of the same, ornamented with large white feathers, and forthwith commenced a plaintive duet. We knew the small gentleman well; we had seen a lithographed semblance of him on many a piece of music, with his mouth wide open as if in the act of singing; a wine glass in his hand, and a table with two decanters and four pine-apples on it in the background. The tall lady, too, we had gazed on, lost in raptures of admiration, many and many a time—how different people do look by daylight and without punch, to be sure! It was a beautiful duet: first the small gentleman asked a question, and then the tall lady answered it; then the small gentleman and the tall lady sang together most melodiously; then the small gentleman went through a little piece of vehemence by himself, and got very tenor indeed in the excitement of his feelings, to which the tall lady responded in a similar manner; then the small gentleman had a shake or two, after which the tall lady had the same, and then they both merged imperceptibly into the original air, and the band wound themselves up to a pitch of fury and the small gentleman handed the tall lady out, and the applause was rapturous. The comic singer, however, was the especial favourite; we really thought that a gentleman with his dinner in a pocket handkerchief, who stood near us, would have fainted with excess of joy. A fearfully facetious old man that comic singer is; his distinguishing characteristics are, a wig approaching to the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the name of one of the English counties, if we recollect right. He sang a song about the seven ages, the first half hour of which seemed to afford the assembly the purest delight; of the rest we can make no report, as we did not stay to hear any more. We walked about, and met with a disappointment at every turn; our favourite views were mere patches of paint; the fountain that had sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of a water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments were dingy, and all the walks gloomy. There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little open theatre; the sun shone upon the spangled dresses of the performers, and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and appropriate as a country dance in a family vault. So we retraced our steps to the firework-ground, and mingled with the little crowd of people who were contemplating Mr. Green. Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity of one of the balloons, which was completely filled, and had the car already attached; and as rumours had gone abroad that a lord was "going up," the crowd were more than usually anxious and talkative. There was one little man in faded black, with a dirty face and a rusty black neckerchief with a red border, tied in a narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into conversation with everybody, and had something to say upon every remark that was made within his hearing. He was standing with his arms folded, staring up at the balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of reverence for the aëronaut, by saying, as he looked round to catch somebody’s eye, "He’s a rum ’un is Green; think o’ this here being up’ards of his two hundredth ascent; by God, the man as is ekal to Green never had the tooth-ache yet, nor wo'nt have within this hundred year, and that’s all about it. Wen you meets with real talent, and native, too, encourage it, that’s wot I say;" and when he had delivered himself to this effect, he would fold his arms with more determination than ever, and stare at the balloon with a sort of admiring defiance of any other man alive, beyond himself and Green, that impressed the crowd with the opinion that he was an oracle. "Ah, you’re very right, sir," said another gentleman, with his wife, and children, and mother, and wife’s sister, and a host of female friends, in all the gentility of white pocket-handkerchiefs, frills, and spencers, "Mr. Green is a steady hand, sir, and there’s no fear about him." "Fear!" said the little man: "ain't it a lovely thing to see him and his wife a going up in one balloon, and his own son and his wife a jostling up agin 'em in another, and all of 'em going twenty or thirty mile in three hours or so, and then coming back in po-chayses? I don’t know where this here science is to stop, mind you; that’s what bothers me." Here there was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers. "What’s the ladies a laughing at, sir?" inquired the little man, condescendingly. "It’s only my sister Mary," said one of the girls, "as says she hopes his Lordship won’t be frightened when he’s in the car, and want to come out agin." "Make yourself easy about that there, my dear," replied the little man. "If he was so much as to move a inch without leave, Green would jist fetch him a crack over the head with the telescope, as vid send him into the bottom of the basket in no time, and stun him till they come down again." "Would he, though?" inquired the other man. "Yes, by God, would he," replied the little one, 'and think nothing of it, neither, if he was the king himself. Green’s presence of mind is wonderful." Just at this moment all eyes were directed to the preparations which were being made for starting. The car was attached to the second balloon, the two were brought pretty close together, and a military band commenced playing with a zeal and fervour which would render the most timid man in existence but too happy to accept any means of quitting that particular spot of earth on which they were stationed. Then Mr. Green, sen., and his noble companion entered one car, and Mr. Green, jun., and his companion the other; and then the balloons went up, and the aerial travellers stood up, and the crowd outside roared with delight, and the two gentlemen who had never ascended before, tried to wave their flags, as if they were not nervous, but held on very fast all the while, and the balloons were wafted gently away, our little friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green; the gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming "bal-loon," and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly in again, perfectly satisfied. The next day there was a grand account of the ascent in the morning papers, and the public were informed how it was the finest day but four in Mr. Green’s remembrance; how they retained sight of the earth till they lost it behind the clouds; and how the reflection of the balloon on the undulating masses of vapour was gorgeously picturesque; together with a little science about the refraction of the sun’s rays, and some mysterious hints respecting atmospheric heat and eddying currents of air. There was also an interesting account how a man in a boat was distinctly heard by Mr. Green, jun., to exclaim, "My eye!" which Mr. Green, jun., attributed to his voice rising to the balloon, and the sound being thrown back from its surface into the car; and the whole concluded with a slight allusion to another ascent next Wednesday, all of which was very instructive and very amusing, as our readers will see if they look to the papers. If we have forgotten to mention the date, they have only to wait till next summer and take the account of the first ascent, and it will answer the purpose equally well. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/A_Christmas_Carol/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol.pdf ccfa496801a548d8ec9092ea580c9353 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem 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. 18361201 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. I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing, Let the blossoms and buds be borne: He wooes them amain with his treacherous rain, And he scatters them ere the morn. An inconstant elf, he knows not himself, Nor his own changing mind an hour, He’ll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace, He’ll wither your youngest flower. Let the Summer sun to his bright home run, He shall never be sought by me; When he’s dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud, And care not how sulky he be! For his darling child is the madness wild That sports in fierce fever’s train; And when love is too strong, it don’t last long, As many have found to their pain. A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light Of the modest and gentle moon, Has a far sweeter sheen, for me, I ween, Than the broad and unblushing noon. But every leaf awakens my grief, As it lieth beneath the tree; So let Autumn air be never so far, It by no means agrees with me. But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS stout, The heart, the true, and the bold; A bumper I drain, and with might and main Give three cheers for this Christmas old! We’ll usher him in with a merry din That shall gladden his joyous heart, And we’ll keep him up, while there’s bite or sup, And in fellowship good, we’ll part. In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide One jot of his hard-weather scars; They’re no disgrace, for there’s much the same trace On the cheeks of our bravest tars. Then again I sing till the roof doth ring, And it echoes from wall to wall – To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night, As the King of the Seasons all! Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Serial Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Pickwick Papers TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'A Christmas Carol.' The Pickwick Papers. Issue 10, ch. 28 (December 1836): p. 298.</a> Pseudonym The name under which the item was published 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 'A Christmas Carol' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Chapter 28. Number 10 (December 1836), pp. 297-298. UVic Libraries, <a href="https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/generic_works/003c9690-060f-4e1a-bc46-712154b6a510?">https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/generic_works/003c9690-060f-4e1a-bc46-712154b6a510?</a>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Chapman and Hall Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource UVic Libraries, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/lice%20nses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/lice nses/by-nc/4.0/</a>. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol 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. 'A Christmas Carol' from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 10, Chapter 28 (December 1836): pp. 297-298. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol</a>. Description An account of the resource From The Pickwick Papers, ch. 28, no. 10 (December 1836). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing, Let the blossoms and buds be borne: He wooes them amain with his treacherous rain, And he scatters them ere the morn. An inconstant elf, he knows not himself, Nor his own changing mind an hour, He’ll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace, He’ll wither your youngest flower. Let the Summer sun to his bright home run, He shall never be sought by me; When he’s dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud, And care not how sulky he be! For his darling child is the madness wild That sports in fierce fever’s train; And when love is too strong, it don’t last long, As many have found to their pain. A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light Of the modest and gentle moon, Has a far sweeter sheen, for me, I ween, Than the broad and unblushing noon. But every leaf awakens my grief, As it lieth beneath the tree; So let Autumn air be never so far, It by no means agrees with me. But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS stout, The heart, the true, and the bold; A bumper I drain, and with might and main Give three cheers for this Christmas old! We’ll usher him in with a merry din That shall gladden his joyous heart, And we’ll keep him up, while there’s bite or sup, And in fellowship good, we’ll part. In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide One jot of his hard-weather scars; They’re no disgrace, for there’s much the same trace On the cheeks of our bravest tars. Then again I sing till the roof doth ring, And it echoes from wall to wall –   To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night, As the King of the Seasons all! https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/Gabriel_Grub_s_Song/1836-12-Pickwick_Papers_Gabriel_Grubs_Song.pdf c223ab3f9d32f299f8f737202247b196 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem 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. 18361201 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. Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one, A few feet of cold earth, when life is done; A stone at the head, a stone at the feet, A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat; Rank grass over head, and damp clay around, Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground! Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Serial Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Pickwick Papers TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_Gabriel_Grubs_Song.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Gabriel Grub's Song.' The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 10, Chapter 29 (December 1836): p. 300.</a> Pseudonym The name under which the item was published 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 'Gabriel Grub's Song' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 10, Chapter 29 (December 1836), p. 300. UVic Libraries,<a href="https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/file_sets/bf08b770-6776-47b5-be67-433295ac4b4a?locale=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/file_sets/bf08b770-6776-47b5-be67-433295ac4b4a?locale=en</a>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Chapman and Hall Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource UVic Libraries, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/lice%20nses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/lice nses/by-nc/4.0/</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-12-Pickwick_Papers_Gabriel_Grubs_Song 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. 'The Ivy Green' from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 10, Chapter 29 (December 1836), p. 300. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-12-Pickwick_Papers_Gabriel_Grubs_Song">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-12-Pickwick_Papers_Gabriel_Grubs_Song</a>. Description An account of the resource From The Pickwick Papers issue 10, ch. 29 (December 1836). Type The nature or genre of the resource Song Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one, A few feet of cold earth, when life is done; A stone at the head, a stone at the feet, A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat; Rank grass over head, and damp clay around, Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground! 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem 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. 18370101 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. Now, if I don't make The completest mistake That ever put man in a rage, This bird of two weathers Has moulted his feathers, And left them in some other cage. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Autograph Album TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1836-after-Now_if_I_dont_make_the_completest_mistake.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Now if I don't make the completest mistake.' Autograph Album of Mrs. S. C. Hall (after 1836).</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 'Now if I don't make the completest mistake' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Held at The New York Public Library's Archives & Manuscripts, <a href="http://archives.nypl.org/brg/19176#c218463" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://archives.nypl.org/brg/19176#c218463</a>. Quoted in Hall, S.C. and Mrs. S.C. Hall. ‘Memories of the Authors of the Age’. Art-Journal, vol.5, 1 January 1866, pp. 21-24; p. 22 and Hotten, John Camden. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/uDUz2Uu8KxYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=completest%20mistake" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Charles Dickens, the Story of his Life</a> (John Camden Hotten, 1870), pp. 280-281. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-after-Now_if_I_dont_make_the_completest_mistake 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. 'Now if I don't make the completest mistake.' For Mrs. S.C. Hall (written after 1836): Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-after-Now_if_I_dont_make_the_completest_mistake">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-after-Now_if_I_dont_make_the_completest_mistake</a>. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Autograph Album of Mrs. S. C. Hall. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836, after Description An account of the resource From the autograph album of Mrs. S. C. Hall (after 1836). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Now, if I don't make The completest mistake That ever put man in a rage, This bird of two weathers Has moulted his feathers, And left them in some other cage. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_by_Boz_Second_Series_[1837]/1837_Sketches_by_Boz_Second_Series.pdf 4dfb0a54160ccc80e7508853924ea083 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 Book 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. 18370101 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 by Boz, Second Series (1837) Description An account of the resource Published by John Macrone, 1837, 1 vol. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Google Books, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sketches_by_Boz/NyAGAAAAQAAJ">https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sketches_by_Boz/NyAGAAAAQAAJ</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Illustrated by George Cruikshank Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Public domain, Google-digitised Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1837_Sketches_by_Boz_Second_Series 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 by Boz, Second Series (1837). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1837_Sketches_by_Boz_Second_Series">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1837_Sketches_by_Boz_Second_Series</a>. Relation A related resource Table of Contents and Relation to Previous Sketches: <ul> <li>'The Streets by Morning', pp. 1-16. Originally <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/56">'Sketches of London, No. XVII, The Streets—Morning'</a>.</li> <li>'The Streets by Night', pp. 17-23. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/106">'Scenes and Characters, No. 12, The Streets at Night'</a>.</li> <li>'Making a Night of It', pp. 24-48. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/67">'Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It'</a>.</li> <li>'Criminal Courts', pp. 49-62. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/160">'Street Sketches. No. III. The Old Bailey'</a>.</li> <li>'Scotland-Yard', pp. 63-76. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/138">New Series, No. 2, 'Scotland Yard'</a>.</li> <li>'The New Year', pp. 77-92. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/105">'Scenes and Characters, No. 11, The New Year'</a>.</li> <li>'Meditations in Monmouth-Street', pp. 93-112. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/137">New Series, No. 1, 'Meditations in Monmouth-Street'</a>.</li> <li>'Our Next-Door Neighbours', pp. 113-131. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/167">'Our Next-Door Neighbours'</a>.</li> <li>'The Hospital Patient', pp. 132-142. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/219">'The Hospital Patient'</a>. </li> <li>'Seven Dials', pp. 143-156. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/64">'Scenes and Characters, No. 1, Seven Dials'</a>.</li> <li>'The Mistaken Milliner. A Tale of Ambition', pp. 157-174. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/101">'Scenes and Characters, No. 7, The Vocal Dressmaker'</a>.</li> <li>'Doctors' Commons', pp. 175-190. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/139">'New Series, No. 3, 'Doctors' Commons'</a>.</li> <li>'Misplaced Attachment of Mr. John Dounce', pp. 191-208. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/68">'Scenes and Characters, No. 5, Love and Oysters'</a>.</li> <li>'Vauxhall Gardens by Day', pp. 209-224. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/166">New Series No. 4, 'Vauxhall-Gardens by Day'.</a></li> <li>'A Parliamentary Sketch—With a Few Portraits', pp. 225-255. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/44">'Sketches of London, No. V, The House'</a> and <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/47">'Sketches of London, No. VIII, Bellamy's'</a>.</li> <li>'Mr. Minns and His Cousin', pp. 256-282. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/39">'A Dinner at Poplar Walk'</a>. </li> <li>'The Last Cab-Driver, and the First Omnibus Cad', pp. 283-308. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/87">'Scenes and Characters, No. 6, Some Account of an Omnibus Cad'</a>.</li> <li>'The Parlour Orator', pp. 309. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/103">'Scenes and Characters, No. 9, The Parlour'</a>.</li> <li>'The First of May', pp. 325-346. Orig. <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/show/165">'A Little Talk about Spring and the Sweeps'</a>.</li> <li>'The Drunkard's Death', pp. 347-377. First Printing.</li> </ul> Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. PREFACE. If brevity be the soul of wit, anywhere, it is most especially so, in a preface; firstly, because those who do read such things as prefaces, prefer them, like grace before meat, in an epigrammatic form; and, secondly, because nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thousand, never read a preface at all. Some of these sketches were written before the appearance of the former series, and the remainder have been added at different periods since that time. The author ventures to hope that they may experience as favourable a reception as the first productions of his pen; and that the present volume will not be considered an unwelcome, or inappropriate sequel, to the two which preceded it. With these few words, he gives a modest tap at the door of the public with his Christmas Piece, when, perhaps, he may imagine the following dialogue to ensue, founded on the well-known precedent of the charity-boys and the housemaid. Publisher (to author.)⁠—You knock.  Author (to publisher.)⁠—No⁠—you. [Here the publisher seizes the knocker, and gives a loud rap at the door.] Public (suspiciously, and with the door a-jar.)⁠—Well; what do you want? Publisher.⁠—Please, will you look at this Christmas Piece; me and the other boy goes partners in it. Public.⁠— Go away; we have so many knocks of the same kind, at this time of year, that we are tired of answering the door. Go away. Publisher (pushing it.)⁠—No; but do look at it, please. It's all his own doing, except the pictures; and they're capital, let alone the writing. [Here the public gradually softens, and takes the Christmas Piece in; upon which the Publisher makes a bow, and retires]⁠—while the author lingers behind, for one instant, to repeat an old form with much sincerity; and to express his hearty wish that his best friend, the Public, may enjoy "a merry Christmas, and a happy new year." Furnival's Inn. December 17, 1836. The Streets by Morning. The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, make them well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and the quiet, closely shut buildings which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive. The last drunken man, who shall find his way home before sunlight, has just staggered heavily along, occasionally roaring out the burden of the drinking song of the previous night: the last houseless vagrant whom penury and the police have left in the streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some paved corner, to dream of food and warmth. The drunken, the dissipated, and the wretched have disappeared: the more sober and orderly part of the population have not yet awakened to the labours of the day: and the stillness of death is over the streets; its very hue seems to be imparted to them, cold and lifeless as they look, in the grey, sombre light of day-break. The coach-stands in the larger thoroughfares are deserted: the night-houses are closed: the chosen promenades of profligate misery are empty. An occasional policeman may be seen at the street-corners, listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him; and now and then a rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road, and descends his own area with as much caution and slyness, bounding first on the water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flag-stones, as if he were conscious that his character depended on his gallantries of the preceding night escaping public observation. A partially opened bedroom-window here, and there, bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the uneasy slumbers of its occupant—and the dim scanty flicker of the rush-light, through the window-blind, denotes the chamber of watching or sickness. With these few exceptions the streets present no signs of life, nor the houses of habitation. An hour wears away. The spires of the churches, and roofs of the principal buildings, are faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun; and the streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle and animation. Market-carts roll slowly along: the sleepy waggoner impatiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly endeavouring to awaken the boy, who, luxuriously stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets, forgets in happy oblivion his long-cherished curiosity to behold the wonders of London. Rough, sleepy-looking animals, of strange appearance, something between ostlers and hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early public-houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations for a street-breakfast, make their appearance at the customary stations. Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, on their way to Covent-garden; and, following each other in rapid succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn of the road at Knightsbridge. Here and there, a bricklayer’s labourer, with the day’s dinner tied up in a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot of three or four school-boys on a stolen bathing expedition, rattle merrily over the pavement, their boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly with the demeanour of the little sweep, who, having knocked and rung till his arm aches, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature from endangering his lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the door-step until the house maid may happen to awake. Covent-garden market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling coster-monger’s cart with its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market, and the numerous noises are almost as multifarious—men shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on the excellence of their pastry, donkeys braying, and a hundred other sounds, form a compound discordant enough, even to a Londoner’s ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen, who are sleeping at the Hummums for the first time. Another hour passes away, and the day begins in good earnest. The servant of all-work, who, under the plea of sleeping very soundly, has utterly disregarded "Missis's" ringing for half an hour previously, is warned by Master (whom Missis has sent up in his drapery to the landing-place for that purpose) that it’s half-past six, whereupon she awakes all of a sudden with well feigned astonishment, and goes down stairs very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that the principle of spontaneous combustion would extend itself to coals and kitchen ranges. When the fire is lit she opens the street-door to take in the milk, when, by the most singular coincidence in the world, she discovers that the servant next door has just taken in her milk too, and that Mr. Todd’s young man over the way, is by an equally extraordinary chance taking down his master’s shutters. The inevitable consequence is, that she just steps, milk-jug in hand, as far as next door, just to say "good morning" to Betsy Clark, and that Mr. Todd’s young man just steps over the way just to say "good morning" to both of ’em; and as the aforesaid Mr. Todd’s young man is almost as good-looking and fascinating as the baker himself, the conversation quickly becomes very interesting, and probably would become more so, if Betsy Clark’s missis, who always will be a followin’ her about, didn’t give an angry tap at her bed-room window, on which Mr. Todd’s young man tries to whistle coolly, as he goes back to his shop much faster than he came from it; and the two girls run back to their respective places, and shut their street-doors with surprising softness, each of them poking their heads out of the front parlour-window a minute afterwards, however, ostensibly with the view of looking at the mail which just then passes by, but really for the purpose of catching another glimpse of Mr. Todd’s young man, who, being fond of mails, but more fond of females, takes a short look at the coach and a long look at the girls, much to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. The mail itself goes on to the coach-office in due course, and the passengers who are going out by the early coach, stare with astonishment at the passengers who are coming in by the early coach, who look blue and dismal, and are evidently under the influence of that odd feeling produced by travelling, which makes the events of yesterday morning seem as if they had happened at least six months ago, and induces people to wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends and relations they took leave of, a fortnight before, have altered much since they have left them. The coach-office is all alive, and the coaches which are just going out are surrounded by the usual crowd of Jews and nondescripts, who seem to consider, Heaven knows why, that it's quite impossible any man can mount a coach without requiring at least sixpenn'orth of oranges, a penknife, a pocket-book, a last year’s annual, a pencil-case, a piece of sponge, and a small series of caricatures. Half-an-hour more, and the sun darts his bright rays cheerfully down the still half-empty streets, and shines with sufficient force to rouse the diurnal laziness of the apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly employed how hot it will be to-day, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes and his left resting on the broom, gazing at the Wonder, or the Tally-Ho, or the Nimrod, or some other fast coach, till it's out of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the passengers on the outside of the fast coach, and thinking of the old red brick house "down in the country," where he went to school: the miseries of thin milk and water and thick bread and scrapings, fading into nothing before the pleasant recollection of the green field the boys used to play in, and the green pond he was caned for presuming to fall into, and other school-boy associations. Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’ legs, and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach-offices, or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand, polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles—the former wondering how people can prefer "them wild beast cariwans of omnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter," and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of "them crazy cabs, when they can have a ’spectable ackney cotche with a pair of orses as von’t run away with no vun;"—a consolation unquestionably founded in fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all, "except," as the smart cabman in front of the rank observes, "except one, and he run back’ards!" The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices and shopmen are busily engaged in cleaning and decking the windows for the day. The bakers’ shops in town are filled with servants and children waiting for the drawing of the first batch of rolls—an operation which was performed a full hour ago, in the suburbs; for the early-clerk population of Somers and Camdon Towns, Islington and Pentonville, are fast pouring into the City, or directing their steps towards Chancery-lane and the Inns of court. Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the counting-house: knowing by sight almost every body they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning (Sunday excepted) during the last twenty years; but speaking to no one. If they do happen to overtake a personal acquaintance, they just exchange a hurried salutation, and keep walking on, either by his side or in front of him, as his rate of walking may chance to be. As to stopping to shake hands, or to take the friend’s arm, they seem to think that it is not included in their salary, and they have no right to do it. Small office lads in large hats, who are made men before they are boys, hurry along in pairs with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trowsers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day’s dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks’ doors; but a consciousness of their own importance, and the receipt of seven shillings a week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they accordingly put their hats a little more on one side, and look under the bonnets of all the milliners’ and stay-makers’ apprentices they meet. Poor girls! The hardest worked, the worst paid, and, too often, the worst used, class of the community. Eleven o’clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in the shop windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in their white neckerchiefs, and spruce coats, look as if they couldn’t clean a window if their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared from Covent Garden; the waggoners have returned, and the costermongers repaired to their ordinary "beats" in the suburbs; clerks are at their offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are conveying their masters to the same destination. The streets are thronged with a vast concourse of people—gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and industrious; and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity, of NOON. The Streets by Night. But the Streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky, winter’s night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy, without cleaning it of any of its impurities, and when the heavy lazy mist which hangs over every object makes the gas lamps look brighter, and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they present to the darkness around. Everybody at home on such a night as this, seem disposed to make themselves as snug and comfortable as possible; and the passengers in the streets have excellent reason to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated by their own fire-sides.  In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlour curtains are closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savoury steams of hot dinners salute the nostrils of the hungry wayfarer, as he plods wearily by the area railings. In the suburbs, the muffin-boy rings his way down the little street, much more slowly than he is wont to do: for Mrs. Macklin, at No. 4, has no sooner opened her little street door and screamed out "Muffins" with all her might, than Mrs. Walker at No. 5, puts her head out of the parlour-window, and screams "Muffins" too, and Mrs. Walker has scarcely got the word out of her lips, than Mrs. Peplow over the way, lets loose Master Peplow, who darts down the street with a velocity which nothing but buttered muffins in perspective could possibly inspire, and drags the boy back by main force, whereupon Mrs. Macklin and Mrs. Walker, just to save the boy trouble, and to say a few neighbourly words to Mrs. Peplow at the same time, run over the way and buy their muffins at Mrs. Peplow’s door, when it appears from the voluntary statement of Mrs. Walker, that her kittle’s just a-biling, and the cups and sarsers ready laid, and that, as it was such a wretched night out o’ doors, she’d made up her mind to have a nice hot comfortable cup o’ tea—a determination at which, by the most singular coincidence, the other two ladies had simultaneously arrived.  After a little conversation about the wretchedness of the weather and the merits of tea, with a digression relative to the viciousness of boys as a rule, and the amiability of Master Peplow as an exception, Mrs. Walker sees her husband coming down the street; and as he must want his tea, poor man, after his dirty walk from the Docks, she instantly runs across, muffins in hand, and Mrs. Macklin does the same, and after a few words to Mrs. Walker, they all pop into their little houses and slam their little street doors, which are not opened again for the remainder of the evening, except to the nine o’clock "beer," who comes round with a lantern in front of his tray, and says, as he lends Mrs. Walker "Yesterday’s 'Tiser," that he’s blessed if he can hardly hold the p, much less feel the paper, for it’s one of the bitterest nights he ever felt, ’cept the night when the man was frozen to death in the Brick-field.  After a little prophetic conversation with the policeman at the street-corner, touching a probable change in the weather, and the setting-in of a hard frost, the nine o’clock beer returns to his master’s house, and employs himself for the remainder of the evening, in assiduously stirring the tap-room fire, and deferentially taking part in the conversation of the worthies assembled round it. The streets in the vicinity of the Marsh-gate and Victoria Theatre present an appearance of dirt, and discomfort on such a night, which the groups who lounge about them, in no degree tend to diminish.  Even the little block-tin temple sacred to baked potatoes, surmounted by a splendid design in variegated lamps, looks less gay than usual: and as to the kidney-pie stand, its glory has quite departed. The candle in the transparent lamp, manufactured of oiled paper, embellished with "Characters" has been blown out fifty times, so the kidney-pie merchant, tired with running backwards and forwards to the next wine-vaults to get a light, has given up the idea of illumination in despair, and the only signs of his whereabout, are the bright sparks, of which a long irregular train is whirled down the street every time he opens his portable oven to hand a hot kidney-pie to a customer.  Flat-fish, oyster, and fruit-vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel, in vain endeavouring to attract customers; and the ragged boys who usually disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvass window blind of the cheesemonger’s, where great flaring gas lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles of bright red, and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with little five-penny dabs of dingy bacon, various tubs of weekly Dorset, and cloudy rolls of "best fresh."  Here they amuse themselves with theatrical converse, arising out of their last half-price visit to the Victoria gallery, admire the terrific combat, which is nightly encored, and expatiate on the inimitable manner in which Bill Thompson can come the double monkey, or go through the mysterious involutions of a sailor’s hornpipe. It is nearly eleven o’clock, and the cold thin rain which has been drizzling so long, is beginning to pour down in good earnest; the baked-tatur man has departed—the kidney-pie man has just departed with his warehouse on his arm with the same object—the cheesemonger has drawn in his blind,— and the boys have dispersed. The constant clicking of pattens on the slippy and uneven pavement, and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind blows against the shop windows, bear testimony to the inclemency of the night; and the policeman, with his oil-skin cape buttoned closely round him, seems as he holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid the gust of wind and rain which drives against him at the street corner, to be very far from congratulating himself on the prospect before him.  The little chandler’s shop, with the cracked bell behind the door, whose melancholy tinkling has been regulated by the demand for quarterns of sugar and half-ounces of coffee, is shutting up. The crowds which have been passing to and fro during the whole day, are rapidly dwindling away; and the noise of shouting and quarrelling which issues from the public houses, is almost the only sound that breaks the melancholy stillness of the night.  There was another, but it has ceased. That wretched woman with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular ballad in the hope of wringing a few pence from the compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak voice, is all she has gained. The tears fall thick and fast down her worn pale face; the child is cold and hungry, and its low half-stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despairingly down, on a cold damp door-step. Singing! How few of those who pass such a miserable creature as this, think of the anguish of heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which the very effort of singing produces. What a bitter mockery! Disease, neglect, and starvation faintly articulating the words of the joyous ditty that has enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment, God knows how often! It is no subject for jeering. The weak tremulous voice tells a fearful tale of want and famishing; and the feeble singer of this roaring song, may turn away, only to die of cold and hunger. One o’clock! Parties returning from the different theatres foot it through the muddy streets; cabs, hackney-coaches, carriages, and theatre omnibuses, roll swiftly by; watermen with dim dirty lanterns in their hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, who have been shouting and rushing about, for the last two hours, retire to their watering houses, to solace themselves with the creature comforts of pipes and purl; the half-price pit and box frequenters of the theatres, throng to the different houses of refreshment; and chops, kidneys, rabbits, oysters, stout, cigars, and "goes" innumerable, are served up amidst a noise and confusion of smoking, running, knife clattering, and waiter clattering, perfectly indescribable.  The more musical portion of the play-going community betake themselves to some harmonic meeting; and, as a matter of curiosity we will follow them thither for a few moments. In a lofty room, of spacious dimensions, are some eighty or a hundred guests knocking little pewter measures on the tables, and hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk makers. They are applauding a glee, which has just been executed by the three "professional gentlemen" at the top of the centre table, one of whom is in the chair—the little pompous man with the bald head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are seated on either side of him—the stout man with the small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most amusing personage,—such condescending grandeur, and such a voice. "Bass!" as the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly remarks to his companion, "bass!  I b’lieve you, he can go down lower than any man: so low sometimes that you can’t hear him." And so he does. To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can’t get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with which he pours forth his soul in "My ’art’s in the Highlands, or "The Brave old Hoak." The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and warbles "Fly fly from the World, my Bessy, with me," or some such song, with lady-like sweetness and in the most seductive tones imaginable. "Pray give your orders gen’l’m’n—pray give your orders"—says the pale-faced man with the red-head; and demands for "goes" of gin and "goes" of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness, are vociferously made from all parts of the room. The "professional gentlemen" are in the very height of their glory, and bestow condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition on the better known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and patronising manner possible. The little round-faced man with the small brown surtout, white stockings and shoes, is in the comic line; the mixed air of self-denial, and mental consciousness of his own powers, with which he acknowledges the call of the chair, is particularly gratifying. "Gentlemen," says the little pompous man, accompanying the word with a knock of the president’s hammer on the table—"Gentlemen, allow me to claim your attention—Our friend Mr. Smuggins will oblige."—"Bravo!" shout the company, and Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song with a fal-de-ral—tol-de-rol chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause; and after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says "Gen'lm'n, we will attempt a glee, if you please." This announcement calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits express the unqualified approbation it affords them by knocking one or two stout glasses off their legs—a humorous device; but one which frequently occasions some slight altercation when the form of paying the damage is proposed to be gone through, by the waiter. Scenes like these, are continued until three or four o’clock in the morning; and even when they close, fresh ones open to the inquisitive novice.  But as a description of all of them, however slight, would require a volume, the contents of which, however instructive, would be by no means pleasing, we make our bow, and drop the curtain. Making a Night of it. Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend; and the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in their character have now obsolete. Damons are rather hard to find in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and they cost half-a-crown); and, as to the Pythiases, the few that have existed in these degenerate times, have had an unfortunate knack of making themselves scarce, at the very moment when their appearance would have been strictly classical. If the actions of these heroes, however, can find no parallel in modern times, their friendship can. We have Damon and Pythias on the one hand—Potter and Smithers on the other; and lest the two last-mentioned names should never have reached the ears of our unenlightened readers, we can do no better than make them acquainted with the owners thereof. Mr. Thomas Potter, then, was a clerk in the city, and Mr. Robert Smithers was a ditto in the same; their incomes were limited, but their friendship was unbounded. They lived in the same street, walked into town every morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap-bang every day, and revelled in each other’s company very night. They were knit together by the closest ties of intimacy and friendship; or, as Mr. Thomas Potter touchingly observed, they were "thick-and-thin pals, and nothing but it." There was a spice of romance in Mr. Smithers’s disposition—a ray of poetry—a gleam of misery—a sort of consciousness of he didn’t exactly know what coming across him he didn’t precisely know why—which stood out in fine relief against the off-hand, dashing, amateur-pickpocket-sort-of-manner, which distinguished Mr. Potter in an eminent degree. The peculiarity of their respective dispositions, extended itself to their individual costume. Mr. Smithers generally appeared in public, in a surtout and shoes, with a narrow black neckerchief, and a brown hat, very much turned up at the sides— peculiarities which Mr. Potter wholly eschewed: for it was his ambition to do something in the celebrated "kiddy" or stage-coach way, and he had even gone so far as to invest capital in the purchase of a rough blue coat with wooden buttons, made upon the fireman’s principle, in which, with the addition of a low-crowned, flower-pot-saucer-shaped hat, he had created no inconsiderable sensation at the Albion, and divers other places of public and fashionable resort. Mr. Potter and Mr. Smithers had mutually agreed that, on the receipt of their quarter’s salary, they would jointly and in company "spend the evening"— an evident misnomer—the spending applying, as everybody knows, not to the evening itself, but to all the money the individual may chance to be possessed of, on the occasion to which reference is made; and they had likewise agreed that, on the evening aforesaid, they would "make a night of it"—an expressive term, implying the borrowing of several hours from to-morrow morning, adding them to the night before, and manufacturing a compound night of the whole. The quarter-day arrived at last—we say at last, because quarter-days are as eccentric as comets, moving wonderfully quick when you've a good deal to pay, and marvellously slow when you have a little to receive: and Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers met by appointment to begin the evening with a dinner; and a nice, snug, comfortable dinner they had, consisting of a little procession of four chops, and four kidneys, following each other, supported on either side by a pot of the real draught stout, and attended by divers cushions of bread, and wedges of cheese. When the cloth was removed, Mr. Thomas Potter ordered the waiter to bring in, two goes of his best Scotch whiskey, with warm water and sugar, and a couple of his "very mildest" Havannahs, which the waiter did. Mr. Thomas Potter mixed his grog, and lit his cigar; Mr. Robert Smithers did the same; and then Mr. Thomas Potter jocularly proposed as the first toast, "the abolition of all offices whatever" (not sinecures, but counting-houses), which was immediately drank by Mr. Robert Smithers, with enthusiastic applause; and then they went on talking politics, puffing cigars, and sipping whiskey and water, until the "goes"—most appropriately so called—were both gone, which Mr. Robert Smithers forthwith perceiving, immediately ordered in two more goes of the best Scotch whiskey, and two more of the very mildest Havannahs; and the goes kept coming in, and the mild Havannahs kept going out, until what with the drinking, and lighting, and puffing, and the stale ashes on the table, and the tallow-grease on the cigars, Mr. Robert Smithers began to doubt the mildness of the Havannahs, and to feel very much as if he had been sitting in a hackney-coach, with his back to the horses. As to Mr. Thomas Potter, he would keep laughing out loud, and volunteering inarticulate declarations that he was "all right," in proof of which, he feebly bespoke the evening paper after the next gentleman, but finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover any news in its columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had any columns at all, he walked slowly out to look for the comet, and after coming back quite pale with looking up at the sky so long, and attempting to express mirth at Mr. Robert Smithers having fallen asleep, by various galvanic chuckles, he laid his head on his arm, and went to sleep also. When he awoke again, Mr. Robert Smithers woke too, and they both very gravely agreed that it was extremely unwise to eat so many pickled walnuts with the chops, as it was a notorious fact that they always made people queer and sleepy; indeed, if it hadn't been for the whiskey and cigars, there was no knowing what harm they mightn’t have done ’em. So they took some coffee, and after paying the bill, twelve and two-pence the dinner, and the odd ten-pence for the waiter, thirteen shillings, started out on their expedition to manufacture a night. It was just half-past eight, so they thought they couldn’t do better than go half-price to the slips at the City Theatre, which they did accordingly. Mr. Robert Smithers, who had become extremely poetical after the settlement of the bill, enlivening the walk by informing Mr. Thomas Potter, in confidence, that he felt an inward presentiment of approaching dissolution: and subsequently embellishing the theatre, by falling asleep, with his head and both arms gracefully drooping over the front of the boxes. Such was the quiet demeanour of the unassuming Smithers, and such were the happy effects of Scotch whiskey and Havannahs on that interesting person; but Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a "knowing card," a "fast-goer," and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner, and commenced going very fast indeed—rather too fast at last, for the patience of the audience to keep pace with. On his first entry, he contented himself by earnestly calling upon the gentlemen in the gallery to "flare up," accompanying the demand with another request expressive of his wish that they would instantaneously "form a union," both which requisitions were responded to in the manner most in vogue on such occasions. "Give that dog a bone," cried one gentleman in his shirt sleeves. "Vere have you been having half a pint of intermediate?" cried a second. "Tailor!" screamed a third. "Barber’s clerk!" shouted a fourth. "Throw him o—ver!" roared a fifth, while numerous voices concurred in desiring Mr. Thomas Potter to return to the arms of his maternal parent, or in common parlance to "go home to his mother." All these taunts Mr. Thomas Potter received with supreme contempt, cocking the low-crowned hat a little more on one side, whenever any reference was made to his personal appearance; and standing up with his arms a-kimbo, expressing defiance most melodramatically. The overture—to which these various sounds had been an ad libitum accompaniment—concluded: the second piece began, and Mr. Thomas Potter emboldened by impunity, proceeded to behave in a most unprecedented and outrageous manner. First of all he imitated the shake of the principal female singer: then groaned at the blue fire, then affected to be frightened into convulsions of terror at the appearance of the ghost; and lastly, not only made a running commentary in an audible voice, upon the dialogue on the stage, but actually woke Mr. Robert Smithers who, hearing his companion making a noise, and having a very indistinct notion of where he was, or what was required of him, immediately, by way of imitating a good example, set up the most unearthly, unremitting, and appalling howling that ever audience heard. It was too much. "Turn 'em out," was the general cry. A noise as of shuffling of feet, and men being knocked up with violence against wainscotting, was heard: a hurried dialogue of "come out"—"I won’t"—"You shall"—"I shan’t"—"Give me your card Sir"—"You're a scoundrel, Sir," and so forth, succeeded; a round of applause betokened the approbation of the audience; and Mr. Robert Smithers and Mr. Thomas Potter found themselves shot with astonishing swiftness into the road, without having had the trouble of once putting foot to ground during the whole progress of their rapid descent. Mr. Robert Smithers being constitutionally one of the slow-goers, and having had quite enough of fast-going, in the course of his recent expulsion, to last 'till the quarter-day then next ensuing, at the very least, had no sooner emerged with his companion from the precincts of Milton-street, than he proceeded to indulge in circuitous references to the beauties of sleep, mingled with distant allusions to the propriety of returning to Islington, and testing the influence of their patent Bramahs over the street-door locks to which they respectively belonged. Mr. Thomas Potter, however, was valorous and peremptory. They had come out to make a night of it; and a night must be made. So Mr. Robert Smithers, who was three parts dull, and the other dismal, despairingly assented; and they went into a wine-vaults to get materials for assisting them in making a night, where they found a good many young ladies, and various old gentlemen, and a plentiful sprinkling of hackney-coachmen and cab-drivers, all drinking and talking together; and Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers drank small glasses of brandy, and large glasses of soda, till they began to have a very confused idea either of things in general, or anything in particular; and when they had done treating themselves, they began to treat everybody else; and the rest of the entertainment was a confused mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and blue uniforms, mud and gas-lights, thick doors, and a stone paving. Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us—"all was a blank!" and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words "Station-house," and the station-house was filled up with Mr. Thomas Potter, Mr. Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion of clothing of any kind. And it was disclosed at the Police-office to the indignation of the Bench, and the astonishment of the spectators, how one Robert Smithers aided and abetted by one Thomas Potter, had knocked down and beaten, in divers streets, at different times, five men, four boys, and three women; how the said Thomas Potter had feloniously obtained possession of five door-knockers, two bell-handles, and a bonnet; how Robert Smithers, his friend, had sworn, at least forty pounds’ worth of oaths, at the rate of five shillings a-piece, terrified whole streets-full of His Majesty’s subjects, with awful shrieks and alarms of fire, destroyed the uniforms of five policemen; and committed various other atrocities, too numerous to recapitulate. And the magistrate, after an appropriate reprimand, fined Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Thomas Smithers, five shillings each, for being, what the law vulgarly terms, drunk, with the trifling addition of thirty-four pounds, for seventeen assaults, at five shillings a-head, with liberty to speak to the prosecutors. The prosecutors were spoken to; and Messrs. Potter and Smithers lived on credit for a quarter, as best they might; and, although the prosecutors expressed their readiness to be assaulted twice a-week on the same terms, they have never since been detected in making a night of it. Criminal Courts. We shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe and respect, with which we used to gaze on the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days. How dreadful its rough, heavy walls, and low massive doors, appeared to us—the latter looking as if they were made for the express purpose of letting people in, and never letting them out again. Then the fetters over the debtors’ door, which we used to think were a bonâ fide set of irons, just hung up there, for convenience sake, ready to be taken down at a moment’s notice, and rivetted on the limbs of some refractory felon! We used to wonder how the hackney-coachmen on the opposite stand could cut jokes in the presence of such horrors, and drink pots of half-and-half so near the last drop. Often have we strayed here in sessions time, just to catch a glimpse of the whipping-place, and that dark building on one side of the yard, in which is kept the gibbet with all its dreadful apparatus, and on the door of which we half expected to see a brass plate, with the inscription "Mr. Ketch;" for we never imagined that the distinguished functionary could by possibility live anywhere else. The days of these childish dreams have passed away, and with them many other boyish ideas of a gayer nature. But we still retain so much of our original feeling, that to this hour we never pass the building without something like a shudder. What London pedestrian is there who has not, at some time or other, cast a hurried glance through the wicket at which prisoners are admitted into this gloomy mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern, with an indescribable feeling of curiosity? The thick door, plated with iron and mounted with spikes, just low enough to enable you to see, leaning over them, an ill-looking fellow in a broad-brimmed hat, belcher handkerchief, and top boots, with a brown coat, something between a great coat and a "sporting" jacket, on his back, and an immense key in his left hand. Perhaps you are lucky enough to pass just as the gate is being opened; then you see on the other side of the lodge, another gate, the very image of its predecessor, and two or three more turnkeys, who look like multiplications of the first one, seated round a fire which just lights up the whitewashed apartment sufficiently to enable you to catch a hasty glimpse of these different objects. We have a great respect for Mrs. Fry, but she certainly ought to have written more romances than Mrs. Radcliffe. We were walking leisurely down the Old Bailey, a few weeks ago, when, just as we passed this identical gate, it was opened by the officiating turnkey. We turned quickly round, as a matter of course, and saw two persons descending the steps. We could not help stopping and observing them. They were an elderly woman, of decent appearance, though evidently poor, and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen. The woman was crying bitterly; she carried a small bundle in her hand, and the boy followed at a short distance behind her. Their little history was obvious. The boy was her son, to whose early comfort she had perhaps sacrificed her own; for whose sake she had borne misery without repining, and poverty without a murmur; looking steadily forward to the time, when he who had so long witnessed her struggles for himself, might be enabled to make some exertions for their joint support. He had formed dissolute connexions; idleness had led to crime, and he had been committed to take his trial for some petty theft. He had been long in prison, and, after receiving some trifling additional punishments, had been ordered to be discharged that morning. It was his first offence, and his poor old mother, still hoping to reclaim him, had been waiting at the gate to implore him to return home. We cannot forget the boy; he descended the steps with a dogged look, shaking his head with an air of bravado, and obstinate determination. They walked a few paces, and paused. The woman put her hand upon his shoulder in an agony of entreaty, and the boy sullenly raised his head as if in refusal. It was a brilliant morning, and every object looked fresh and happy in the broad, gay sun-light; he gazed around him for a few moments, bewildered with the brightness of the scene—it was long since he had beheld any thing save the gloomy walls of a prison. The contrast was powerful; perhaps the wretchedness of his mother made some impression on the boy’s heart; perhaps some undefined recollection of the time when he was a happy child, and she his only friend, and best companion, crowded on him—he burst into tears; and covering his face with one hand, and hurriedly placing the other in his mother’s, they walked away together.  Curiosity has occasionally led us into both Courts at the Old Bailey. Nothing is so likely to strike the person who enters them for the first time, as the calm indifference with which the proceedings are conducted; every trial seems a mere matter of business. There is a great deal of form, but no compassion; considerable interest, but no sympathy. Take the Old Court for example. There sit the Judges, with whose great dignity everybody is acquainted, and of whom therefore we need say no more. Then, there is the Lord Mayor in the centre, looking as cool as a Lord Mayor can look, with an immense bouquet before him, and habited in all the splendour of his office. Then there are the Sheriffs, who are almost as dignified as the Lord Mayor himself; and the Barristers, who are quite dignified enough in their own opinion; and the spectators, who having paid for their admission, look upon the whole scene as if it were got up especially for their amusement. Look upon the whole group in the body of the Court—some wholly engrossed in the morning papers, others carelessly conversing in low whispers, and others, again, quietly dozing away an hour—and you can scarcely believe that the result of the trial is a matter of life or death to one wretched being present. Turn your eyes to the dock; watch the prisoner attentively for a few moments, and the fact is before you, in all its painful reality. Mark how restlessly he has been engaged for the last ten minutes, in forming all sorts of fantastic figures with the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge before him; observe the ashy paleness of his face, when a particular witness appears, and how he changes his position and wipes his clammy forehead, and feverish hands, when the case for the prosecution is closed, as if it were a relief to him to feel that the jury knew the worst. The defence is concluded; the judge proceeds to sum up the evidence, and the prisoner watches the countenances of the jury, as a dying man, clinging to life to the very last, vainly looks in the face of his physician for one slight ray of hope. They turn round to consult; you can almost hear the man’s heart beat, as he bites that stalk of rosemary, with a desperate effort to appear composed. They resume their places; a dead silence prevails as the foreman delivers in the verdict—"Guilty!" An appalling shriek bursts from a female in the gallery; the prisoner casts one look at the quarter from whence the noise proceeded, and is immediately hurried from the dock by the gaoler. The clerk directs one of the officers of the court to "take the woman out," and fresh business is proceeded with, as if nothing had occurred. No imaginary contrast to a case like this, could be as complete as that which is constantly presented in the New Court, the gravity of which is frequently disturbed in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity of juvenile offenders. A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the pocket of some subject of his Majesty, and the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country—asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally, have entered into a conspiracy "again" him. However probable this statement may be, it fails to convince the Court, and some such scene as the following then takes place:— Court: Have you any witnesses to speak to your character, boy? Boy: Yes, my Lord; fifteen gen’lm’n is a vaten outside, and vos a vaten all day yesterday, vich they told me the night afore my trial vos a comin’ on. Court: Inquire for these witnesses. Here, a stout beadle runs out, and vociferates for the witnesses at the very top of his voice; you hear his cry grow fainter and fainter as he descends the steps into the court-yard below. After an absence of five minutes, he returns very warm, and hoarse, and informs the Court of what it was perfectly well aware of, before—namely, that there are no such witnesses in attendance. Hereupon the boy sets up the most awful howling ever heard within or without the walls of a court; screws the lower part of the palms of his hands into the corners of his eyes, and endeavours to look the picture of injured innocence. The jury at once find him "guilty," and his endeavours to squeeze out a tear or two, are redoubled. The governor of the gaol then states, in reply to an inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner has been under his care twice before. This the urchin resolutely denies in some such terms as—"S’elp me God, gen’lm’n, I never vos in trouble afore—indeed, my Lord, I never vos. It’s all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully taken to prigging, and vich is so exactly like me, that no vun ever knows the difference atween us." This representation, like the defence, fails in producing the desired effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps, to seven years’ transportation. Finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives vent to his feelings in an indignant cry of "Flare up, old big vig!" and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the dock, is forthwith carried out by two men, congratulating himself on having succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/Manchester_Athenaeum_[founded_1837]/m58907.jpg 3800a8c07039f4de9501540039caadf9 Place Location The location Manchester Venue Where the speech was given Athenaeum 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 Manchester Athenaeum (founded 1837) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context place-manchester-athenaeum manchester https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Public_Life_of_Mr._Tulrumble_Once_Mayor_of_Mudfog/1837-01-Public_Life_Tulrumble.pdf 399860df9f9efc3df7ed874864f592a8 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) Bentley's Miscellany 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. 18370101 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. Mudfog is a pleasant town—a remarkably pleasant town—situated in a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a roving population in oil-skin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen, and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a good deal of water about Mudfog, and yet it is not exactly the sort of town for a watering-place, either. Water is a perverse sort of element at the best of times, and in Mudfog it is particularly so. In winter, it comes oozing down the streets and tumbling over the fields,—nay, rushes into the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavish prodigality that might well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer weather it will dry up, and turn green: and, although green is a very good colour in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not becoming to water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mudfog is rather impaired, even by this trifling circumstance. Mudfog is a healthy place—very healthy;—damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that. It’s quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best in damp situations, and why shouldn’t men? The inhabitants of Mudfog are unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people on the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious contradiction of the vulgar error at once. So, admitting Mudfog to be damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious. The town of Mudfog is extremely picturesque. Limehouse and Ratcliffe Highway are both something like it, but they give you a very faint idea of Mudfog. There are a great many more public-houses in Mudfog,—more than in Ratcliffe Highway and Limehouse put together. The public buildings, too, are very imposing. We consider the Town-hall one of the finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of the pig-sty and tea-garden-box, orders; and the simplicity of its design is of surpassing beauty. The idea of placing a large window on one side of the door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy. There is a fine bold Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which is strictly in keeping with the general effect. In this room do the mayor and corporation of Mudfog assemble together in solemn council for the public weal. Seated on the massive wooden benches, which, with the table in the centre, form the only furniture of the whitewashed apartment, the sage men of Mudfog spend hour after hour in grave deliberation. Here they settle at what hour of the night the public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall be permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat their dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into the night, for their country’s good. Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his appearance and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known coal-dealer. However exciting the subject of discussion, however animated the tone of the debate, or however warm the personalities exchanged, (and even in Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas Tulrumble was always the same. To say truth, Nicholas, being an industrious man, and always up betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a debate began, and to remain asleep till it was over, when he would wake up very much refreshed, and give his vote with the greatest complacency. The fact was, that Nicholas Tulrumble, knowing that everybody there, had made up his mind beforehand, considered the talking as just a long botheration about nothing at all; and to the present hour it remains a question, whether, on this point at all events, Nicholas Tulrumble was not pretty near right. Time, which strews a man’s head with silver, sometimes fills his pockets with gold. As he gradually performed one good office for Nicholas Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other. Nicholas began life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a capital of two and ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and a-half of coals, exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of sign-board, outside. Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then he left the shed, and the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs. Tulrumble; then he moved again and set up a cart; the cart was soon afterwards exchanged for a waggon; and so he went on, like his great predecessor Whittington—only without a cat for a partner—increasing in wealth and fame, until at last he gave up business altogether, and retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and family to Mudfog Hall, which he had himself erected, on something which he endeavoured to delude himself into the belief was a hill, about a quarter of a mile distant from the town of Mudfog. About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success had corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural goodness of his heart; in short, that he was setting up for a public character, and a great gentleman, and affected to look down upon his old companions with compassion and contempt. Whether these reports were at the time well-founded, or not, certain it is that Mrs. Tulrumble very shortly afterwards started a four-wheel chaise, driven by a tall postilion in a yellow cap,—that Mr. Tulrumble junior took to smoking cigars, and calling the footman a “feller,”—and that Mr. Tulrumble from that time forth, was no more seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner of the Lighterman’s Arms at night. This looked bad; but, more than this, it began to be observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the corporation meetings more frequently than heretofore; that he no longer went to sleep as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids open with his two fore-fingers; that he read the newspapers by himself at home; and that he was in the habit of indulging abroad in distant and mysterious allusions to “masses of people,” and “the property of the country,” and “productive power,” and “the monied interest:” all of which denoted and proved that Nicholas Tulrumble was either mad, or worse; and it puzzled the good people of Mudfog amazingly. At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble and family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs. Tulrumble informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of the fashionable season. Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health-preserving air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn’t understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the corporation; and the corporation were imperatively called upon to elect his successor. So, they met for the purpose; and being very full of Nicholas Tulrumble just then, and Nicholas Tulrumble being a very important man, they elected him, and wrote off to London by the very next post to acquaint Nicholas Tulrumble with his new elevation. Now, it being November time, and Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble being in the capital, it fell out that he was present at the Lord Mayor’s show and dinner, at sight of the glory and splendour whereof, he, Mr. Tulrumble, was greatly mortified, inasmuch as the reflection would force itself on his mind, that, had he been born in London instead of in Mudfog, he might have been a Lord Mayor too, and have patronised the judges, and been affable to the Lord Chancellor, and friendly with the Premier, and coldly condescending to the Secretary to the Treasury, and have dined with a flag behind his back, and done a great many other acts and deeds which unto Lord Mayors of London peculiarly appertain. The more he thought of the Lord Mayor, the more enviable a personage he seemed. To be a King was all very well; but what was the King to the Lord Mayor! When the King made a speech, everybody knew it was somebody else’s writing; whereas here was the Lord Mayor, talking away for half an hour—all out of his own head—amidst the enthusiastic applause of the whole company, while it was notorious that the King might talk to his parliament till he was black in the face without getting so much as a single cheer. As all these reflections passed through the mind of Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble, the Lord Mayor of London appeared to him the greatest sovereign on the face of the earth, beating the Emperor of Russia all to nothing, and leaving the Great Mogul immeasurably behind. Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was pondering over these things, and inwardly cursing the fate which had pitched his coal-shed in Mudfog, when the letter of the corporation was put into his hand. A crimson flush mantled over his face as he read it, for visions of brightness were already dancing before his imagination. “My dear,” said Mr. Tulrumble to his wife, “they have elected me, Mayor of Mudfog.” “Lor-a-mussy!” said Mrs. Tulrumble: “why, what’s become of old Sniggs?” “The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble,” said Mr. Tulrumble sharply, for he by no means approved of the notion of unceremoniously designating a gentleman who had filled the high office of Mayor, as “old Sniggs,”—“The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble, is dead.” The communication was very unexpected; but Mrs. Tulrumble only ejaculated “Lor-a-mussy!” once again, as if a Mayor were a mere ordinary Christian, at which Mr. Tulrumble frowned gloomily. “What a pity ’tan’t in London, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Tulrumble, after a short pause; “what a pity ’tan’t in London, where you might have had a show.” “I might have a show in Mudfog, if I thought proper, I apprehend,” said Mr. Tulrumble mysteriously. “Lor! so you might, I declare,” replied Mrs. Tulrumble.“And a good one, too,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “Delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Tulrumble. “One which would rather astonish the ignorant people down there,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “It would kill them with envy,” said Mrs. Tulrumble. So it was agreed that his Majesty’s lieges in Mudfog should be astonished with splendour, and slaughtered with envy, and that such a show should take place as had never been seen in that town, or in any other town before,—no, not even in London itself. On the very next day after the receipt of the letter, down came the tall postilion in a post-chaise,—not upon one of the horses, but inside—actually inside the chaise,—and, driving up to the very door of the town-hall, where the corporation were assembled, delivered a letter, written by the Lord knows who, and signed by Nicholas Tulrumble, in which Nicholas said, all through four sides of closely-written, gilt-edged, hot-pressed, Bath post letter-paper, that he responded to the call of his fellow-townsmen with feelings of heartfelt delight; that he accepted the arduous office which their confidence had imposed upon him; that they would never find him shrinking from the discharge of his duty; that he would endeavour to execute his functions with all that dignity which their magnitude and importance demanded; and a great deal more to the same effect. But even this was not all. The tall postilion produced from his right-hand top-boot, a damp copy of that afternoon’s number of the county paper; and there, in large type, running the whole length of the very first column, was a long address from Nicholas Tulrumble to the inhabitants of Mudfog, in which he said that he cheerfully complied with their requisition, and, in short, as if to prevent any mistake about the matter, told them over again what a grand fellow he meant to be, in very much the same terms as those in which he had already told them all about the matter in his letter. The corporation stared at one another very hard at all this, and then looked as if for explanation to the tall postilion, but as the tall postilion was intently contemplating the gold tassel on the top of his yellow cap, and could have afforded no explanation whatever, even if his thoughts had been entirely disengaged, they contented themselves with coughing very dubiously, and looking very grave. The tall postilion then delivered another letter, in which Nicholas Tulrumble informed the corporation, that he intended repairing to the town-hall, in grand state and gorgeous procession, on the Monday afternoon then next ensuing. At this, the corporation looked still more solemn; but, as the epistle wound up with a formal invitation to the whole body to dine with the Mayor on that day, at Mudfog Hall, Mudfog Hill, Mudfog, they began to see the fun of the thing directly, and sent back their compliments, and they’d be sure to come. Now there happened to be in Mudfog, as somehow or other there does happen to be, in almost every town in the British dominions, and perhaps in foreign dominions too—we think it very likely, but, being no great traveller, cannot distinctly say—there happened to be, in Mudfog a merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond, with an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable attachment to strong beer and spirits, whom everybody knew, and nobody, except his wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from his ancestors the appellation of Edward Twigger, and rejoiced in the sobriquet of Bottle-nosed Ned. He was drunk upon the average once a day, and penitent upon an equally fair calculation once a month; and when he was penitent, he was invariably in the very last stage of maudlin intoxication. He was a ragged, roving, roaring kind of fellow, with a burly form, a sharp wit, and a ready head, and could turn his hand to anything when he chose to do it. He was by no means opposed to hard labour on principle, for he would work away at a cricket-match by the day together,—running, and catching, and batting, and bowling, and revelling in toil which would exhaust a galley-slave. He would have been invaluable to a fire-office; never was a man with such a natural taste for pumping engines, running up ladders, and throwing furniture out of two-pair-of-stairs’ windows: nor was this the only element in which he was at home; he was a humane society in himself, a portable drag, an animated life-preserver, and had saved more people, in his time, from drowning, than the Plymouth life-boat, or Captain Manby’s apparatus. With all these qualifications, notwithstanding his dissipation, Bottle-nosed Ned was a general favourite; and the authorities of Mudfog, remembering his numerous services to the population, allowed him in return to get drunk in his own way, without the fear of stocks, fine, or imprisonment. He had a general licence, and he showed his sense of the compliment by making the most of it. We have been thus particular in describing the character and avocations of Bottle-nosed Ned, because it enables us to introduce a fact politely, without hauling it into the reader’s presence with indecent haste by the head and shoulders, and brings us very naturally to relate, that on the very same evening on which Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble and family returned to Mudfog, Mr. Tulrumble’s new secretary, just imported from London, with a pale face and light whiskers, thrust his head down to the very bottom of his neckcloth-tie, in at the tap-room door of the Lighterman’s Arms, and enquiring whether one Ned Twigger was luxuriating within, announced himself as the bearer of a message from Nicholas Tulrumble, Esquire, requiring Mr. Twigger’s immediate attendance at the hall, on private and particular business. It being by no means Mr. Twigger’s interest to affront the Mayor, he rose from the fire-place with a slight sigh, and followed the light-whiskered secretary through the dirt and wet of Mudfog streets, up to Mudfog Hall, without further ado. Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was seated in a small cavern with a skylight, which he called his library, sketching out a plan of the procession on a large sheet of paper; and into the cavern the secretary ushered Ned Twigger. “Well, Twigger!” said Nicholas Tulrumble, condescendingly. There was a time when Twigger would have replied, “Well, Nick!” but that was in the days of the truck, and a couple of years before the donkey; so, he only bowed. “I want you to go into training, Twigger,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “What for, sir?” enquired Ned, with a stare. “Hush, hush, Twigger!” said the Mayor. “Shut the door, Mr. Jennings. Look here, Twigger.” As the Mayor said this, he unlocked a high closet, and disclosed a complete suit of brass armour, of gigantic dimensions. “I want you to wear this, next Monday, Twigger,” said the Mayor. “Bless your heart and soul, sir!” replied Ned, “you might as well ask me to wear a seventy-four pounder, or a cast-iron boiler.” “Nonsense, Twigger! nonsense!” said the Mayor. “I couldn’t stand under it, sir,” said Twigger; “it would make mashed potatoes of me, if I attempted it.” “Pooh, pooh, Twigger!” returned the Mayor. “I tell you I have seen it done with my own eyes, in London, and the man wasn’t half such a man as you are, either.” “I should as soon have thought of a man’s wearing the case of an eight-day clock to save his linen,” said Twigger, casting a look of apprehension at the brass suit. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” rejoined the Mayor. “It’s nothing,” said Mr. Jennings. “When you’re used to it,” added Ned. “You do it by degrees,” said the Mayor. “You would begin with one piece to-morrow, and two the next day, and so on, till you had got it all on. Mr. Jennings, give Twigger a glass of rum. Just try the breast-plate, Twigger. Stay; take another glass of rum first. Help me to lift it, Mr. Jennings. Stand firm, Twigger! There!—it isn’t half as heavy as it looks, is it?” Twigger was a good strong, stout fellow; so, after a great deal of staggering, he managed to keep himself up, under the breast-plate, and even contrived, with the aid of another glass of rum, to walk about in it, and the gauntlets into the bargain. He made a trial of the helmet, but was not equally successful, inasmuch as he tipped over instantly,—an accident which Mr. Tulrumble clearly demonstrated to be occasioned by his not having a counteracting weight of brass on his legs. “Now, wear that with grace and propriety on Monday next,” said Tulrumble, “and I’ll make your fortune.” “I’ll try what I can do, sir,” said Twigger. “It must be kept a profound secret,” said Tulrumble. “Of course, sir,” replied Twigger. “And you must be sober,” said Tulrumble; “perfectly sober.” Mr. Twigger at once solemnly pledged himself to be as sober as a judge, and Nicholas Tulrumble was satisfied, although, had we been Nicholas, we should certainly have exacted some promise of a more specific nature; inasmuch as, having attended the Mudfog assizes in the evening more than once, we can solemnly testify to having seen judges with very strong symptoms of dinner under their wigs. However, that’s neither here nor there. The next day, and the day following, and the day after that, Ned Twigger was securely locked up in the small cavern with the skylight, hard at work at the armour. With every additional piece he could manage to stand upright in, he had an additional glass of rum; and at last, after many partial suffocations, he contrived to get on the whole suit, and to stagger up and down the room in it, like an intoxicated effigy from Westminster Abbey. Never was man so delighted as Nicholas Tulrumble; never was woman so charmed as Nicholas Tulrumble’s wife. Here was a sight for the common people of Mudfog! A live man in brass armour! Why, they would go wild with wonder! The day—the Monday—arrived. If the morning had been made to order, it couldn’t have been better adapted to the purpose. They never showed a better fog in London on Lord Mayor’s day, than enwrapped the town of Mudfog on that eventful occasion. It had risen slowly and surely from the green and stagnant water with the first light of morning, until it reached a little above the lamp-post tops; and there it had stopped, with a sleepy, sluggish obstinacy, which bade defiance to the sun, who had got up very blood-shot about the eyes, as if he had been at a drinking-party over night, and was doing his day’s work with the worst possible grace. The thick damp mist hung over the town like a huge gauze curtain. All was dim and dismal. The church-steeples had bidden a temporary adieu to the world below; and every object of lesser importance—houses, barns, hedges, trees, and barges—had all taken the veil. The church-clock struck one. A cracked trumpet from the front-garden of Mudfog Hall produced a feeble flourish, as if some asthmatic person had coughed into it accidentally; the gate flew open, and out came a gentleman, on a moist-sugar coloured charger, intended to represent a herald, but bearing a much stronger resemblance to a court-card on horseback. This was one of the Circus people, who always came down to Mudfog at that time of the year, and who had been engaged by Nicholas Tulrumble expressly for the occasion. There was the horse, whisking his tail about, balancing himself on his hind-legs, and flourishing away with his fore-feet, in a manner which would have gone to the hearts and souls of any reasonable crowd. But a Mudfog crowd never was a reasonable one, and in all probability never will be. Instead of scattering the very fog with their shouts, as they ought most indubitably to have done, and were fully intended to do, by Nicholas Tulrumble, they no sooner recognised the herald, than they began to growl forth the most unqualified disapprobation at the bare notion of his riding like any other man. If he had come out on his head indeed, or jumping through a hoop, or flying through a red-hot drum, or even standing on one leg with his other foot in his mouth, they might have had something to say to him; but for a professional gentleman to sit astride in the saddle, with his feet in the stirrups, was rather too good a joke. So, the herald was a decided failure, and the crowd hooted with great energy, as he pranced ingloriously away. On the procession came. We are afraid to say how many supernumeraries there were, in striped shirts and black velvet caps, to imitate the London watermen, or how many base imitations of running-footmen, or how many banners, which, owing to the heaviness of the atmosphere, could by no means be prevailed on to display their inscriptions: still less do we feel disposed to relate how the men who played the wind instruments, looking up into the sky (we mean the fog) with musical fervour, walked through pools of water and hillocks of mud, till they covered the powdered heads of the running-footmen aforesaid with splashes, that looked curious, but not ornamental; or how the barrel-organ performer put on the wrong stop, and played one tune while the band played another; or how the horses, being used to the arena, and not to the streets, would stand still and dance, instead of going on and prancing;—all of which are matters which might be dilated upon to great advantage, but which we have not the least intention of dilating upon, notwithstanding. Oh! it was a grand and beautiful sight to behold the corporation in glass coaches, provided at the sole cost and charge of Nicholas Tulrumble, coming rolling along, like a funeral out of mourning, and to watch the attempts the corporation made to look great and solemn, when Nicholas Tulrumble himself, in the four-wheel chaise, with the tall postilion, rolled out after them, with Mr. Jennings on one side to look like the chaplain, and a supernumerary on the other, with an old life-guardsman’s sabre, to imitate the sword-bearer; and to see the tears rolling down the faces of the mob as they screamed with merriment. This was beautiful! and so was the appearance of Mrs. Tulrumble and son, as they bowed with grave dignity out of their coach-window to all the dirty faces that were laughing around them: but it is not even with this that we have to do, but with the sudden stopping of the procession at another blast of the trumpet, whereat, and whereupon, a profound silence ensued, and all eyes were turned towards Mudfog Hall, in the confident anticipation of some new wonder. “They won’t laugh now, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas Tulrumble. “I think not, sir,” said Mr. Jennings. “See how eager they look,” said Nicholas Tulrumble. “Aha! the laugh will be on our side now; eh, Mr. Jennings?” “No doubt of that, sir,” replied Mr. Jennings; and Nicholas Tulrumble, in a state of pleasurable excitement, stood up in the four-wheel chaise, and telegraphed gratification to the Mayoress behind. While all this was going forward, Ned Twigger had descended into the kitchen of Mudfog Hall for the purpose of indulging the servants with a private view of the curiosity that was to burst upon the town; and, somehow or other, the footman was so companionable, and the housemaid so kind, and the cook so friendly, that he could not resist the offer of the first-mentioned to sit down and take something—just to drink success to master in. So, down Ned Twigger sat himself in his brass livery on the top of the kitchen-table; and in a mug of something strong, paid for the by unconscious Nicholas Tulrumble, and provided by the companionable footman, drank success to the Mayor and his procession; and, as Ned laid by his helmet to imbibe the something strong, the companionable footman put it on his own head, to the immeasurable and unrecordable delight of the cook and housemaid. The companionable footman was very facetious to Ned, and Ned was very gallant to the cook and housemaid by turns. They were all very cosy and comfortable; and the something strong went briskly round. At last Ned Twigger was loudly called for, by the procession people: and, having had his helmet fixed on, in a very complicated manner, by the companionable footman, and the kind housemaid, and the friendly cook, he walked gravely forth, and appeared before the multitude. The crowd roared—it was not with wonder, it was not with surprise; it was most decidedly and unquestionably with laughter. “What!” said Mr. Tulrumble, starting up in the four-wheel chaise. “Laughing? If they laugh at a man in real brass armour, they’d laugh when their own fathers were dying. Why doesn’t he go into his place, Mr. Jennings? What’s he rolling down towards us for?—he has no business here!” “I am afraid, sir —” faltered Mr. Jennings. “Afraid of what, sir?” said Nicholas Tulrumble, looking up into the secretary’s face. “I am afraid he’s drunk, sir;” replied Mr. Jennings. Nicholas Tulrumble took one look at the extraordinary figure that was bearing down upon them; and then, clasping his secretary by the arm, uttered an audible groan in anguish of spirit. It is a melancholy fact that Mr. Twigger having full licence to demand a single glass of rum on the putting on of every piece of the armour, got, by some means or other, rather out in his calculation in the hurry and confusion of preparation, and drank about four glasses to a piece instead of one, not to mention the something strong which went on the top of it. Whether the brass armour checked the natural flow of perspiration, and thus prevented the spirit from evaporating, we are not scientific enough to know; but, whatever the cause was, Mr. Twigger no sooner found himself outside the gate of Mudfog Hall, than he also found himself in a very considerable state of intoxication; and hence his extraordinary style of progressing. This was bad enough, but, as if fate and fortune had conspired against Nicholas Tulrumble, Mr. Twigger, not having been penitent for a good calendar month, took it into his head to be most especially and particularly sentimental, just when his repentance could have been most conveniently dispensed with. Immense tears were rolling down his cheeks, and he was vainly endeavouring to conceal his grief by applying to his eyes a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief with white spots,— an article not strictly in keeping with a suit of armour some three hundred years old, or thereabouts. “Twigger, you villain!” said Nicholas Tulrumble, quite forgetting his dignity, “go back!” “Never,” said Ned. “I’m a miserable wretch. I’ll never leave you.” The by-standers of course received this declaration with acclamations of “That’s right, Ned; don’t!” “I don’t intend it,” said Ned, with all the obstinacy of a very tipsy man. “I’m very unhappy. I’m the wretched father of an unfortunate family; but I am very faithful, sir. I’ll never leave you.” Having reiterated this obliging promise, Ned proceeded in broken words to harangue the crowd upon the number of years he had lived in Mudfog, the excessive respectability of his character, and other topics of the like nature. “Here! will anybody lead him away?” said Nicholas: “if they’ll call on me afterwards, I’ll reward them well.” Two or three men stepped forward, with the view of bearing Ned off, when the secretary interposed. “Take care! take care!” said Mr. Jennings. “I beg your pardon, sir; but they’d better not go too near him, because, if he falls over, he’ll certainly crush somebody.” At this hint the crowd retired on all sides to a very respectful distance, and left Ned, like the Duke of Devonshire, in a little circle of his own. “But, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas Tulrumble, “he’ll be suffocated.” “I’m very sorry for it, sir,” replied Mr. Jennings; “but nobody can get that armour off, without his own assistance. I’m quite certain of it, from the way he put it on.” Here Ned wept dolefully, and shook his helmeted head, in a manner that might have touched a heart of stone; but the crowd had not hearts of stone, and they laughed heartily. “Dear me, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas, turning pale at the possibility of Ned’s being smothered in his antique costume—“Dear me, Mr. Jennings, can nothing be done with him?” “Nothing at all,” replied Ned, “nothing at all. Gentlemen, I’m an unhappy wretch. I’m a body, gentlemen, in a brass coffin.” At this poetical idea of his own conjuring up, Ned cried so much that the people began to get sympathetic, and to ask what Nicholas Tulrumble meant by putting a man into such a machine as that; and one individual in a hairy waistcoat like the top of a trunk, who had previously expressed his opinion that if Ned hadn’t been a poor man, Nicholas wouldn’t have dared to do it, hinted at the propriety of breaking the four-wheel chaise, or Nicholas’s head, or both, which last compound proposition the crowd seemed to consider a very good notion. It was not acted upon, however, for it had hardly been broached, when Ned Twigger’s wife made her appearance abruptly in the little circle before noticed, and Ned no sooner caught a glimpse of her face and form, than from the mere force of habit he set off towards his home just as fast as his legs would carry him; and that was not very quick in the present instance either, for, however ready they might have been to carry ''him'', they couldn’t get on very well under the brass armour. So, Mrs. Twigger had plenty of time to denounce Nicholas Tulrumble to his face: to express her opinion that he was a decided monster; and to intimate that, if her ill-used husband sustained any personal damage from the brass armour, she would have the law of Nicholas Tulrumble for manslaughter. When she had said all this with due vehemence, she posted after Ned, who was dragging himself along as best he could, and deploring his unhappiness in most dismal tones. What a wailing and screaming Ned’s children raised when he got home at last! Mrs. Twigger tried to undo the armour, first in one place, and then in another, but she couldn’t manage it; so she tumbled Ned into bed, helmet, armour, gauntlets, and all. Such a creaking as the bedstead made, under Ned’s weight in his new suit! It didn’t break down though; and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time he groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the consolation Ned Twigger got. Nicholas Tulrumble and the gorgeous procession went on together to the town-hall, amid the hisses and groans of all the spectators, who had suddenly taken it into their heads to consider poor Ned a martyr. Nicholas was formally installed in his new office, in acknowledgment of which ceremony he delivered himself of a speech, composed by the secretary, which was very long, and no doubt very good, only the noise of the people outside prevented anybody from hearing it, but Nicholas Tulrumble himself. After which, the procession got back to Mudfog Hall any how it could; and Nicholas and the corporation sat down to dinner. But the dinner was flat, and Nicholas was disappointed. They were such dull sleepy old fellows, that corporation. Nicholas made quite as long speeches as the Lord Mayor of London had done, nay, he said the very same things that the Lord Mayor of London had said, and the deuce a cheer the corporation gave him. There was only one man in the party who was thoroughly awake; and he was insolent, and called him Nick. Nick! What would be the consequence, thought Nicholas, of anybody presuming to call the Lord Mayor of London “Nick!” He should like to know what the sword-bearer would say to that; or the recorder, or the toast-master, or any other of the great officers of the city. They’d nick him. But these were not the worst of Nicholas Tulrumble’s doings; If they had been, he might have remained a Mayor to this day, and have talked till he lost his voice. He contracted a relish for statistics, and got philosophical; and the statistics and the philosophy together, led him into an act which increased his unpopularity and hastened his downfall. At the very end of the Mudfog High-street, and abutting on the river-side, stands the Jolly Boatmen, an old-fashioned, low-roofed, bay-windowed house, with a bar, kitchen, and tap-room all in one, and a large fire-place with a kettle to correspond, round which the working men have congregated time out of mind on a winter’s night, refreshed by draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor and corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from time, whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the contrary. Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime, and parliamentary reports,— or had made the secretary read them to him, which is the same thing in effect,—and he at once perceived that this fiddle and tambourine must have done more to demoralize Mudfog, than any other operating causes that ingenuity could imagine. So he read up for the subject, and determined to come out on the corporation with a burst, the very next time the licence was applied for. The licensing day came, and the red-faced landlord of the Jolly Boatmen, walked into the town-hall, looking as jolly as need be, having actually put on an extra fiddle for that night, to commemorate the anniversary of the Jolly Boatmen’s music licence. It was applied for in due form, and was just about to be granted as a matter of course, when up rose Nicholas Tulrumble, and drowned the astonished corporation in a torrent of eloquence. He descanted in glowing terms upon the increasing depravity of his native town of Mudfog, and the excesses committed by its population. Then, he related how shocked he had been, to see barrels of beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after week; and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two days together, to count the people who went in for beer between the hours of twelve and one o’clock alone—which, by-the-bye, was the time at which the great majority of the Mudfog people dined. Then, he went on to state, how the number of people who came out with beer-jugs, averaged twenty-one in five minutes, which, being multiplied by twelve, gave two hundred and fifty-two people with beer-jugs in an hour, and multiplied again by fifteen (the number of hours during which the house was open daily) yielded three thousand seven hundred and eighty people with beer-jugs per day, or twenty-six thousand four hundred and sixty people with beer-jugs, per week. Then he proceeded to show that a tambourine and moral degradation were synonymous terms, and a fiddle and vicious propensities wholly inseparable. All these arguments he strengthened and demonstrated by frequent references to a large book with a blue cover, and sundry quotations from the Middlesex magistrates; and in the end, the corporation, who were posed with the figures, and sleepy with the speech, and sadly in want of dinner into the bargain, yielded the palm to Nicholas Tulrumble, and refused the music licence to the Jolly Boatmen. But although Nicholas triumphed, his triumph was short. He carried on the war against beer-jugs and fiddles, forgetting the time when he was glad to drink out of the one, and to dance to the other, till the people hated, and his old friends shunned him. He grew tired of the lonely magnificence of Mudfog Hall, and his heart yearned towards the Lighterman’s Arms. He wished he had never set up as a public man, and sighed for the good old times of the coal-shop, and the chimney-corner. At length old Nicholas, being thoroughly miserable, took heart of grace, paid the secretary a quarter’s wages in advance, and packed him off to London by the next coach. Having taken this step, he put his hat on his head, and his pride in his pocket, and walked down to the old room at the Lighterman’s Arms. There were only two of the old fellows there, and they looked coldly on Nicholas as he proffered his hand. “Are you going to put down pipes, Mr. Tulrumble?” said one. “Or trace the progress of crime to ’baccer?” growled the other. “Neither,” replied Nicholas Tulrumble, shaking hands with them both, whether they would or not. “I’ve come down to say that I’m very sorry for having made a fool of myself, and that I hope you’ll give me up, the old chair, again.” The old fellows opened their eyes, and three or four more old fellows opened the door, to whom Nicholas, with tears in his eyes, thrust out his hand too, and told the same story. They raised a shout of joy, that made the bells in the ancient church-tower vibrate again, and wheeling the old chair into the warm corner, thrust old Nicholas down into it, and ordered in the very largest-sized bowl of hot punch, with an unlimited number of pipes, directly. The next day, the Jolly Boatmen got the licence, and the next night, old Nicholas and Ned Twigger’s wife led off a dance to the music of the fiddle and tambourine, the tone of which seemed mightily improved by a little rest, for they never had played so merrily before. Ned Twigger was in the very height of his glory, and he danced hornpipes, and balanced chairs on his chin, and straws on his nose, till the whole company, including the corporation, were in raptures of admiration at the brilliancy of his acquirements. Mr. Tulrumble, junior, couldn’t make up his mind to be anything but magnificent, so he went up to London and drew bills on his father; and when he had overdrawn, and got into debt, he grew penitent and came home again. As to old Nicholas, he kept his word, and having had six weeks of public life, never tried it any more. He went to sleep in the town-hall at the very next meeting; and, in full proof of his sincerity, has requested us to write this faithful narrative. We wish it could have the effect of reminding the Tulrumbles of another sphere, that puffed-up conceit is not dignity, and that snarling at the little pleasures they were once glad to enjoy, because they would rather forget the times when they were of lower station, renders them objects of contempt and ridicule. This is the first time we have published any of our gleanings from this particular source. Perhaps, at some future period, we may venture to open the chronicles of Mudfog. 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 'Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, Once Mayor of Mudfog' 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 1837-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1837-01-Public_Life_Tulrumble Description An account of the resource Published in Bentley's Miscellany, vol.1 (January 1837), pp. 49-63. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858046014936">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858046014936</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Google-digitised. Digitised materials on Google Books published before 1922 are in the public domain. 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. 'Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, Once Mayor of Mudfog.' Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1837-01-Public_Life_Tulrumble">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1837-01-Public_Life_Tulrumble</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. <div class="transcription prose"> Mudfog is a pleasant town—a remarkably pleasant town—situated in a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a roving population in oil-skin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen, and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a good deal of water about Mudfog, and yet it is not exactly the sort of town for a watering-place, either. Water is a perverse sort of element at the best of times, and in Mudfog it is particularly so. In winter, it comes oozing down the streets and tumbling over the fields,—nay, rushes into the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavish prodigality that might well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer weather it will dry up, and turn green: and, although green is a very good colour in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not becoming to water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mudfog is rather impaired, even by this trifling circumstance. Mudfog is a healthy place—very healthy;—damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that. It’s quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best in damp situations, and why shouldn’t men? The inhabitants of Mudfog are unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people on the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious contradiction of the vulgar error at once. So, admitting Mudfog to be damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious. The town of Mudfog is extremely picturesque. Limehouse and Ratcliffe Highway are both something like it, but they give you a very faint idea of Mudfog. There are a great many more public-houses in Mudfog,—more than in Ratcliffe Highway and Limehouse put together. The public buildings, too, are very imposing. We consider the Town-hall one of the finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of the pig-sty and tea-garden-box, orders; and the simplicity of its design is of surpassing beauty. The idea of placing a large window on one side of the door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy. There is a fine bold Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which is strictly in keeping with the general effect. In this room do the mayor and corporation of Mudfog assemble together in solemn council for the public weal. Seated on the massive wooden benches, which, with the table in the centre, form the only furniture of the whitewashed apartment, the sage men of Mudfog spend hour after hour in grave deliberation. Here they settle at what hour of the night the public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall be permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat their dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into the night, for their country’s good. Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his appearance and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known coal-dealer. However exciting the subject of discussion, however animated the tone of the debate, or however warm the personalities exchanged, (and even in Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas Tulrumble was always the same. To say truth, Nicholas, being an industrious man, and always up betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a debate began, and to remain asleep till it was over, when he would wake up very much refreshed, and give his vote with the greatest complacency. The fact was, that Nicholas Tulrumble, knowing that everybody there, had made up his mind beforehand, considered the talking as just a long botheration about nothing at all; and to the present hour it remains a question, whether, on this point at all events, Nicholas Tulrumble was not pretty near right. Time, which strews a man’s head with silver, sometimes fills his pockets with gold. As he gradually performed one good office for Nicholas Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other. Nicholas began life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a capital of two and ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and a-half of coals, exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of sign-board, outside. Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then he left the shed, and the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs. Tulrumble; then he moved again and set up a cart; the cart was soon afterwards exchanged for a waggon; and so he went on, like his great predecessor Whittington—only without a cat for a partner—increasing in wealth and fame, until at last he gave up business altogether, and retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and family to Mudfog Hall, which he had himself erected, on something which he endeavoured to delude himself into the belief was a hill, about a quarter of a mile distant from the town of Mudfog. About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success had corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural goodness of his heart; in short, that he was setting up for a public character, and a great gentleman, and affected to look down upon his old companions with compassion and contempt. Whether these reports were at the time well-founded, or not, certain it is that Mrs. Tulrumble very shortly afterwards started a four-wheel chaise, driven by a tall postilion in a yellow cap,—that Mr. Tulrumble junior took to smoking cigars, and calling the footman a “feller,”—and that Mr. Tulrumble from that time forth, was no more seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner of the Lighterman’s Arms at night. This looked bad; but, more than this, it began to be observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the corporation meetings more frequently than heretofore; that he no longer went to sleep as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids open with his two fore-fingers; that he read the newspapers by himself at home; and that he was in the habit of indulging abroad in distant and mysterious allusions to “masses of people,” and “the property of the country,” and “productive power,” and “the monied interest:” all of which denoted and proved that Nicholas Tulrumble was either mad, or worse; and it puzzled the good people of Mudfog amazingly. At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble and family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs. Tulrumble informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of the fashionable season. Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health-preserving air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn’t understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the corporation; and the corporation were imperatively called upon to elect his successor. So, they met for the purpose; and being very full of Nicholas Tulrumble just then, and Nicholas Tulrumble being a very important man, they elected him, and wrote off to London by the very next post to acquaint Nicholas Tulrumble with his new elevation. Now, it being November time, and Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble being in the capital, it fell out that he was present at the Lord Mayor’s show and dinner, at sight of the glory and splendour whereof, he, Mr. Tulrumble, was greatly mortified, inasmuch as the reflection would force itself on his mind, that, had he been born in London instead of in Mudfog, he might have been a Lord Mayor too, and have patronised the judges, and been affable to the Lord Chancellor, and friendly with the Premier, and coldly condescending to the Secretary to the Treasury, and have dined with a flag behind his back, and done a great many other acts and deeds which unto Lord Mayors of London peculiarly appertain. The more he thought of the Lord Mayor, the more enviable a personage he seemed. To be a King was all very well; but what was the King to the Lord Mayor! When the King made a speech, everybody knew it was somebody else’s writing; whereas here was the Lord Mayor, talking away for half an hour—all out of his own head—amidst the enthusiastic applause of the whole company, while it was notorious that the King might talk to his parliament till he was black in the face without getting so much as a single cheer. As all these reflections passed through the mind of Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble, the Lord Mayor of London appeared to him the greatest sovereign on the face of the earth, beating the Emperor of Russia all to nothing, and leaving the Great Mogul immeasurably behind. Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was pondering over these things, and inwardly cursing the fate which had pitched his coal-shed in Mudfog, when the letter of the corporation was put into his hand. A crimson flush mantled over his face as he read it, for visions of brightness were already dancing before his imagination. “My dear,” said Mr. Tulrumble to his wife, “they have elected me, Mayor of Mudfog.” “Lor-a-mussy!” said Mrs. Tulrumble: “why, what’s become of old Sniggs?” “The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble,” said Mr. Tulrumble sharply, for he by no means approved of the notion of unceremoniously designating a gentleman who had filled the high office of Mayor, as “old Sniggs,”—“The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble, is dead.” The communication was very unexpected; but Mrs. Tulrumble only ejaculated “Lor-a-mussy!” once again, as if a Mayor were a mere ordinary Christian, at which Mr. Tulrumble frowned gloomily. “What a pity ’tan’t in London, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Tulrumble, after a short pause; “what a pity ’tan’t in London, where you might have had a show.” “I might have a show in Mudfog, if I thought proper, I apprehend,” said Mr. Tulrumble mysteriously. “Lor! so you might, I declare,” replied Mrs. Tulrumble.“And a good one, too,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “Delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Tulrumble. “One which would rather astonish the ignorant people down there,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “It would kill them with envy,” said Mrs. Tulrumble. So it was agreed that his Majesty’s lieges in Mudfog should be astonished with splendour, and slaughtered with envy, and that such a show should take place as had never been seen in that town, or in any other town before,—no, not even in London itself. On the very next day after the receipt of the letter, down came the tall postilion in a post-chaise,—not upon one of the horses, but inside—actually inside the chaise,—and, driving up to the very door of the town-hall, where the corporation were assembled, delivered a letter, written by the Lord knows who, and signed by Nicholas Tulrumble, in which Nicholas said, all through four sides of closely-written, gilt-edged, hot-pressed, Bath post letter-paper, that he responded to the call of his fellow-townsmen with feelings of heartfelt delight; that he accepted the arduous office which their confidence had imposed upon him; that they would never find him shrinking from the discharge of his duty; that he would endeavour to execute his functions with all that dignity which their magnitude and importance demanded; and a great deal more to the same effect. But even this was not all. The tall postilion produced from his right-hand top-boot, a damp copy of that afternoon’s number of the county paper; and there, in large type, running the whole length of the very first column, was a long address from Nicholas Tulrumble to the inhabitants of Mudfog, in which he said that he cheerfully complied with their requisition, and, in short, as if to prevent any mistake about the matter, told them over again what a grand fellow he meant to be, in very much the same terms as those in which he had already told them all about the matter in his letter. The corporation stared at one another very hard at all this, and then looked as if for explanation to the tall postilion, but as the tall postilion was intently contemplating the gold tassel on the top of his yellow cap, and could have afforded no explanation whatever, even if his thoughts had been entirely disengaged, they contented themselves with coughing very dubiously, and looking very grave. The tall postilion then delivered another letter, in which Nicholas Tulrumble informed the corporation, that he intended repairing to the town-hall, in grand state and gorgeous procession, on the Monday afternoon then next ensuing. At this, the corporation looked still more solemn; but, as the epistle wound up with a formal invitation to the whole body to dine with the Mayor on that day, at Mudfog Hall, Mudfog Hill, Mudfog, they began to see the fun of the thing directly, and sent back their compliments, and they’d be sure to come. Now there happened to be in Mudfog, as somehow or other there does happen to be, in almost every town in the British dominions, and perhaps in foreign dominions too—we think it very likely, but, being no great traveller, cannot distinctly say—there happened to be, in Mudfog a merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond, with an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable attachment to strong beer and spirits, whom everybody knew, and nobody, except his wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from his ancestors the appellation of Edward Twigger, and rejoiced in the sobriquet of Bottle-nosed Ned. He was drunk upon the average once a day, and penitent upon an equally fair calculation once a month; and when he was penitent, he was invariably in the very last stage of maudlin intoxication. He was a ragged, roving, roaring kind of fellow, with a burly form, a sharp wit, and a ready head, and could turn his hand to anything when he chose to do it. He was by no means opposed to hard labour on principle, for he would work away at a cricket-match by the day together,—running, and catching, and batting, and bowling, and revelling in toil which would exhaust a galley-slave. He would have been invaluable to a fire-office; never was a man with such a natural taste for pumping engines, running up ladders, and throwing furniture out of two-pair-of-stairs’ windows: nor was this the only element in which he was at home; he was a humane society in himself, a portable drag, an animated life-preserver, and had saved more people, in his time, from drowning, than the Plymouth life-boat, or Captain Manby’s apparatus. With all these qualifications, notwithstanding his dissipation, Bottle-nosed Ned was a general favourite; and the authorities of Mudfog, remembering his numerous services to the population, allowed him in return to get drunk in his own way, without the fear of stocks, fine, or imprisonment. He had a general licence, and he showed his sense of the compliment by making the most of it. We have been thus particular in describing the character and avocations of Bottle-nosed Ned, because it enables us to introduce a fact politely, without hauling it into the reader’s presence with indecent haste by the head and shoulders, and brings us very naturally to relate, that on the very same evening on which Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble and family returned to Mudfog, Mr. Tulrumble’s new secretary, just imported from London, with a pale face and light whiskers, thrust his head down to the very bottom of his neckcloth-tie, in at the tap-room door of the Lighterman’s Arms, and enquiring whether one Ned Twigger was luxuriating within, announced himself as the bearer of a message from Nicholas Tulrumble, Esquire, requiring Mr. Twigger’s immediate attendance at the hall, on private and particular business. It being by no means Mr. Twigger’s interest to affront the Mayor, he rose from the fire-place with a slight sigh, and followed the light-whiskered secretary through the dirt and wet of Mudfog streets, up to Mudfog Hall, without further ado. Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was seated in a small cavern with a skylight, which he called his library, sketching out a plan of the procession on a large sheet of paper; and into the cavern the secretary ushered Ned Twigger. “Well, Twigger!” said Nicholas Tulrumble, condescendingly. There was a time when Twigger would have replied, “Well, Nick!” but that was in the days of the truck, and a couple of years before the donkey; so, he only bowed. “I want you to go into training, Twigger,” said Mr. Tulrumble. “What for, sir?” enquired Ned, with a stare. “Hush, hush, Twigger!” said the Mayor. “Shut the door, Mr. Jennings. Look here, Twigger.” As the Mayor said this, he unlocked a high closet, and disclosed a complete suit of brass armour, of gigantic dimensions. “I want you to wear this, next Monday, Twigger,” said the Mayor. “Bless your heart and soul, sir!” replied Ned, “you might as well ask me to wear a seventy-four pounder, or a cast-iron boiler.” “Nonsense, Twigger! nonsense!” said the Mayor. “I couldn’t stand under it, sir,” said Twigger; “it would make mashed potatoes of me, if I attempted it.” “Pooh, pooh, Twigger!” returned the Mayor. “I tell you I have seen it done with my own eyes, in London, and the man wasn’t half such a man as you are, either.” “I should as soon have thought of a man’s wearing the case of an eight-day clock to save his linen,” said Twigger, casting a look of apprehension at the brass suit. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” rejoined the Mayor. “It’s nothing,” said Mr. Jennings. “When you’re used to it,” added Ned. “You do it by degrees,” said the Mayor. “You would begin with one piece to-morrow, and two the next day, and so on, till you had got it all on. Mr. Jennings, give Twigger a glass of rum. Just try the breast-plate, Twigger. Stay; take another glass of rum first. Help me to lift it, Mr. Jennings. Stand firm, Twigger! There!—it isn’t half as heavy as it looks, is it?” Twigger was a good strong, stout fellow; so, after a great deal of staggering, he managed to keep himself up, under the breast-plate, and even contrived, with the aid of another glass of rum, to walk about in it, and the gauntlets into the bargain. He made a trial of the helmet, but was not equally successful, inasmuch as he tipped over instantly,—an accident which Mr. Tulrumble clearly demonstrated to be occasioned by his not having a counteracting weight of brass on his legs. “Now, wear that with grace and propriety on Monday next,” said Tulrumble, “and I’ll make your fortune.” “I’ll try what I can do, sir,” said Twigger. “It must be kept a profound secret,” said Tulrumble. “Of course, sir,” replied Twigger. “And you must be sober,” said Tulrumble; “perfectly sober.” Mr. Twigger at once solemnly pledged himself to be as sober as a judge, and Nicholas Tulrumble was satisfied, although, had we been Nicholas, we should certainly have exacted some promise of a more specific nature; inasmuch as, having attended the Mudfog assizes in the evening more than once, we can solemnly testify to having seen judges with very strong symptoms of dinner under their wigs. However, that’s neither here nor there. The next day, and the day following, and the day after that, Ned Twigger was securely locked up in the small cavern with the skylight, hard at work at the armour. With every additional piece he could manage to stand upright in, he had an additional glass of rum; and at last, after many partial suffocations, he contrived to get on the whole suit, and to stagger up and down the room in it, like an intoxicated effigy from Westminster Abbey. Never was man so delighted as Nicholas Tulrumble; never was woman so charmed as Nicholas Tulrumble’s wife. Here was a sight for the common people of Mudfog! A live man in brass armour! Why, they would go wild with wonder! The day—the Monday—arrived. If the morning had been made to order, it couldn’t have been better adapted to the purpose. They never showed a better fog in London on Lord Mayor’s day, than enwrapped the town of Mudfog on that eventful occasion. It had risen slowly and surely from the green and stagnant water with the first light of morning, until it reached a little above the lamp-post tops; and there it had stopped, with a sleepy, sluggish obstinacy, which bade defiance to the sun, who had got up very blood-shot about the eyes, as if he had been at a drinking-party over night, and was doing his day’s work with the worst possible grace. The thick damp mist hung over the town like a huge gauze curtain. All was dim and dismal. The church-steeples had bidden a temporary adieu to the world below; and every object of lesser importance—houses, barns, hedges, trees, and barges—had all taken the veil. The church-clock struck one. A cracked trumpet from the front-garden of Mudfog Hall produced a feeble flourish, as if some asthmatic person had coughed into it accidentally; the gate flew open, and out came a gentleman, on a moist-sugar coloured charger, intended to represent a herald, but bearing a much stronger resemblance to a court-card on horseback. This was one of the Circus people, who always came down to Mudfog at that time of the year, and who had been engaged by Nicholas Tulrumble expressly for the occasion. There was the horse, whisking his tail about, balancing himself on his hind-legs, and flourishing away with his fore-feet, in a manner which would have gone to the hearts and souls of any reasonable crowd. But a Mudfog crowd never was a reasonable one, and in all probability never will be. Instead of scattering the very fog with their shouts, as they ought most indubitably to have done, and were fully intended to do, by Nicholas Tulrumble, they no sooner recognised the herald, than they began to growl forth the most unqualified disapprobation at the bare notion of his riding like any other man. If he had come out on his head indeed, or jumping through a hoop, or flying through a red-hot drum, or even standing on one leg with his other foot in his mouth, they might have had something to say to him; but for a professional gentleman to sit astride in the saddle, with his feet in the stirrups, was rather too good a joke. So, the herald was a decided failure, and the crowd hooted with great energy, as he pranced ingloriously away. On the procession came. We are afraid to say how many supernumeraries there were, in striped shirts and black velvet caps, to imitate the London watermen, or how many base imitations of running-footmen, or how many banners, which, owing to the heaviness of the atmosphere, could by no means be prevailed on to display their inscriptions: still less do we feel disposed to relate how the men who played the wind instruments, looking up into the sky (we mean the fog) with musical fervour, walked through pools of water and hillocks of mud, till they covered the powdered heads of the running-footmen aforesaid with splashes, that looked curious, but not ornamental; or how the barrel-organ performer put on the wrong stop, and played one tune while the band played another; or how the horses, being used to the arena, and not to the streets, would stand still and dance, instead of going on and prancing;—all of which are matters which might be dilated upon to great advantage, but which we have not the least intention of dilating upon, notwithstanding. Oh! it was a grand and beautiful sight to behold the corporation in glass coaches, provided at the sole cost and charge of Nicholas Tulrumble, coming rolling along, like a funeral out of mourning, and to watch the attempts the corporation made to look great and solemn, when Nicholas Tulrumble himself, in the four-wheel chaise, with the tall postilion, rolled out after them, with Mr. Jennings on one side to look like the chaplain, and a supernumerary on the other, with an old life-guardsman’s sabre, to imitate the sword-bearer; and to see the tears rolling down the faces of the mob as they screamed with merriment. This was beautiful! and so was the appearance of Mrs. Tulrumble and son, as they bowed with grave dignity out of their coach-window to all the dirty faces that were laughing around them: but it is not even with this that we have to do, but with the sudden stopping of the procession at another blast of the trumpet, whereat, and whereupon, a profound silence ensued, and all eyes were turned towards Mudfog Hall, in the confident anticipation of some new wonder. “They won’t laugh now, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas Tulrumble. “I think not, sir,” said Mr. Jennings. “See how eager they look,” said Nicholas Tulrumble. “Aha! the laugh will be on our side now; eh, Mr. Jennings?” “No doubt of that, sir,” replied Mr. Jennings; and Nicholas Tulrumble, in a state of pleasurable excitement, stood up in the four-wheel chaise, and telegraphed gratification to the Mayoress behind. While all this was going forward, Ned Twigger had descended into the kitchen of Mudfog Hall for the purpose of indulging the servants with a private view of the curiosity that was to burst upon the town; and, somehow or other, the footman was so companionable, and the housemaid so kind, and the cook so friendly, that he could not resist the offer of the first-mentioned to sit down and take something—just to drink success to master in. So, down Ned Twigger sat himself in his brass livery on the top of the kitchen-table; and in a mug of something strong, paid for the by unconscious Nicholas Tulrumble, and provided by the companionable footman, drank success to the Mayor and his procession; and, as Ned laid by his helmet to imbibe the something strong, the companionable footman put it on his own head, to the immeasurable and unrecordable delight of the cook and housemaid. The companionable footman was very facetious to Ned, and Ned was very gallant to the cook and housemaid by turns. They were all very cosy and comfortable; and the something strong went briskly round. At last Ned Twigger was loudly called for, by the procession people: and, having had his helmet fixed on, in a very complicated manner, by the companionable footman, and the kind housemaid, and the friendly cook, he walked gravely forth, and appeared before the multitude. The crowd roared—it was not with wonder, it was not with surprise; it was most decidedly and unquestionably with laughter. “What!” said Mr. Tulrumble, starting up in the four-wheel chaise. “Laughing? If they laugh at a man in real brass armour, they’d laugh when their own fathers were dying. Why doesn’t he go into his place, Mr. Jennings? What’s he rolling down towards us for?—he has no business here!” “I am afraid, sir —” faltered Mr. Jennings. “Afraid of what, sir?” said Nicholas Tulrumble, looking up into the secretary’s face. “I am afraid he’s drunk, sir;” replied Mr. Jennings. Nicholas Tulrumble took one look at the extraordinary figure that was bearing down upon them; and then, clasping his secretary by the arm, uttered an audible groan in anguish of spirit. It is a melancholy fact that Mr. Twigger having full licence to demand a single glass of rum on the putting on of every piece of the armour, got, by some means or other, rather out in his calculation in the hurry and confusion of preparation, and drank about four glasses to a piece instead of one, not to mention the something strong which went on the top of it. Whether the brass armour checked the natural flow of perspiration, and thus prevented the spirit from evaporating, we are not scientific enough to know; but, whatever the cause was, Mr. Twigger no sooner found himself outside the gate of Mudfog Hall, than he also found himself in a very considerable state of intoxication; and hence his extraordinary style of progressing. This was bad enough, but, as if fate and fortune had conspired against Nicholas Tulrumble, Mr. Twigger, not having been penitent for a good calendar month, took it into his head to be most especially and particularly sentimental, just when his repentance could have been most conveniently dispensed with. Immense tears were rolling down his cheeks, and he was vainly endeavouring to conceal his grief by applying to his eyes a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief with white spots,— an article not strictly in keeping with a suit of armour some three hundred years old, or thereabouts. “Twigger, you villain!” said Nicholas Tulrumble, quite forgetting his dignity, “go back!” “Never,” said Ned. “I’m a miserable wretch. I’ll never leave you.” The by-standers of course received this declaration with acclamations of “That’s right, Ned; don’t!” “I don’t intend it,” said Ned, with all the obstinacy of a very tipsy man. “I’m very unhappy. I’m the wretched father of an unfortunate family; but I am very faithful, sir. I’ll never leave you.” Having reiterated this obliging promise, Ned proceeded in broken words to harangue the crowd upon the number of years he had lived in Mudfog, the excessive respectability of his character, and other topics of the like nature. “Here! will anybody lead him away?” said Nicholas: “if they’ll call on me afterwards, I’ll reward them well.” Two or three men stepped forward, with the view of bearing Ned off, when the secretary interposed. “Take care! take care!” said Mr. Jennings. “I beg your pardon, sir; but they’d better not go too near him, because, if he falls over, he’ll certainly crush somebody.” At this hint the crowd retired on all sides to a very respectful distance, and left Ned, like the Duke of Devonshire, in a little circle of his own. “But, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas Tulrumble, “he’ll be suffocated.” “I’m very sorry for it, sir,” replied Mr. Jennings; “but nobody can get that armour off, without his own assistance. I’m quite certain of it, from the way he put it on.” Here Ned wept dolefully, and shook his helmeted head, in a manner that might have touched a heart of stone; but the crowd had not hearts of stone, and they laughed heartily. “Dear me, Mr. Jennings,” said Nicholas, turning pale at the possibility of Ned’s being smothered in his antique costume—“Dear me, Mr. Jennings, can nothing be done with him?” “Nothing at all,” replied Ned, “nothing at all. Gentlemen, I’m an unhappy wretch. I’m a body, gentlemen, in a brass coffin.” At this poetical idea of his own conjuring up, Ned cried so much that the people began to get sympathetic, and to ask what Nicholas Tulrumble meant by putting a man into such a machine as that; and one individual in a hairy waistcoat like the top of a trunk, who had previously expressed his opinion that if Ned hadn’t been a poor man, Nicholas wouldn’t have dared to do it, hinted at the propriety of breaking the four-wheel chaise, or Nicholas’s head, or both, which last compound proposition the crowd seemed to consider a very good notion. It was not acted upon, however, for it had hardly been broached, when Ned Twigger’s wife made her appearance abruptly in the little circle before noticed, and Ned no sooner caught a glimpse of her face and form, than from the mere force of habit he set off towards his home just as fast as his legs would carry him; and that was not very quick in the present instance either, for, however ready they might have been to carry ''him'', they couldn’t get on very well under the brass armour. So, Mrs. Twigger had plenty of time to denounce Nicholas Tulrumble to his face: to express her opinion that he was a decided monster; and to intimate that, if her ill-used husband sustained any personal damage from the brass armour, she would have the law of Nicholas Tulrumble for manslaughter. When she had said all this with due vehemence, she posted after Ned, who was dragging himself along as best he could, and deploring his unhappiness in most dismal tones. What a wailing and screaming Ned’s children raised when he got home at last! Mrs. Twigger tried to undo the armour, first in one place, and then in another, but she couldn’t manage it; so she tumbled Ned into bed, helmet, armour, gauntlets, and all. Such a creaking as the bedstead made, under Ned’s weight in his new suit! It didn’t break down though; and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time he groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the consolation Ned Twigger got. Nicholas Tulrumble and the gorgeous procession went on together to the town-hall, amid the hisses and groans of all the spectators, who had suddenly taken it into their heads to consider poor Ned a martyr. Nicholas was formally installed in his new office, in acknowledgment of which ceremony he delivered himself of a speech, composed by the secretary, which was very long, and no doubt very good, only the noise of the people outside prevented anybody from hearing it, but Nicholas Tulrumble himself. After which, the procession got back to Mudfog Hall any how it could; and Nicholas and the corporation sat down to dinner. But the dinner was flat, and Nicholas was disappointed. They were such dull sleepy old fellows, that corporation. Nicholas made quite as long speeches as the Lord Mayor of London had done, nay, he said the very same things that the Lord Mayor of London had said, and the deuce a cheer the corporation gave him. There was only one man in the party who was thoroughly awake; and he was insolent, and called him Nick. Nick! What would be the consequence, thought Nicholas, of anybody presuming to call the Lord Mayor of London “Nick!” He should like to know what the sword-bearer would say to that; or the recorder, or the toast-master, or any other of the great officers of the city. They’d nick him. But these were not the worst of Nicholas Tulrumble’s doings; If they had been, he might have remained a Mayor to this day, and have talked till he lost his voice. He contracted a relish for statistics, and got philosophical; and the statistics and the philosophy together, led him into an act which increased his unpopularity and hastened his downfall. At the very end of the Mudfog High-street, and abutting on the river-side, stands the Jolly Boatmen, an old-fashioned, low-roofed, bay-windowed house, with a bar, kitchen, and tap-room all in one, and a large fire-place with a kettle to correspond, round which the working men have congregated time out of mind on a winter’s night, refreshed by draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor and corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from time, whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the contrary. Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime, and parliamentary reports,— or had made the secretary read them to him, which is the same thing in effect,—and he at once perceived that this fiddle and tambourine must have done more to demoralize Mudfog, than any other operating causes that ingenuity could imagine. So he read up for the subject, and determined to come out on the corporation with a burst, the very next time the licence was applied for. The licensing day came, and the red-faced landlord of the Jolly Boatmen, walked into the town-hall, looking as jolly as need be, having actually put on an extra fiddle for that night, to commemorate the anniversary of the Jolly Boatmen’s music licence. It was applied for in due form, and was just about to be granted as a matter of course, when up rose Nicholas Tulrumble, and drowned the astonished corporation in a torrent of eloquence. He descanted in glowing terms upon the increasing depravity of his native town of Mudfog, and the excesses committed by its population. Then, he related how shocked he had been, to see barrels of beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after week; and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two days together, to count the people who went in for beer between the hours of twelve and one o’clock alone—which, by-the-bye, was the time at which the great majority of the Mudfog people dined. Then, he went on to state, how the number of people who came out with beer-jugs, averaged twenty-one in five minutes, which, being multiplied by twelve, gave two hundred and fifty-two people with beer-jugs in an hour, and multiplied again by fifteen (the number of hours during which the house was open daily) yielded three thousand seven hundred and eighty people with beer-jugs per day, or twenty-six thousand four hundred and sixty people with beer-jugs, per week. Then he proceeded to show that a tambourine and moral degradation were synonymous terms, and a fiddle and vicious propensities wholly inseparable. All these arguments he strengthened and demonstrated by frequent references to a large book with a blue cover, and sundry quotations from the Middlesex magistrates; and in the end, the corporation, who were posed with the figures, and sleepy with the speech, and sadly in want of dinner into the bargain, yielded the palm to Nicholas Tulrumble, and refused the music licence to the Jolly Boatmen. But although Nicholas triumphed, his triumph was short. He carried on the war against beer-jugs and fiddles, forgetting the time when he was glad to drink out of the one, and to dance to the other, till the people hated, and his old friends shunned him. He grew tired of the lonely magnificence of Mudfog Hall, and his heart yearned towards the Lighterman’s Arms. He wished he had never set up as a public man, and sighed for the good old times of the coal-shop, and the chimney-corner. At length old Nicholas, being thoroughly miserable, took heart of grace, paid the secretary a quarter’s wages in advance, and packed him off to London by the next coach. Having taken this step, he put his hat on his head, and his pride in his pocket, and walked down to the old room at the Lighterman’s Arms. There were only two of the old fellows there, and they looked coldly on Nicholas as he proffered his hand. “Are you going to put down pipes, Mr. Tulrumble?” said one. “Or trace the progress of crime to ’baccer?” growled the other. “Neither,” replied Nicholas Tulrumble, shaking hands with them both, whether they would or not. “I’ve come down to say that I’m very sorry for having made a fool of myself, and that I hope you’ll give me up, the old chair, again.” The old fellows opened their eyes, and three or four more old fellows opened the door, to whom Nicholas, with tears in his eyes, thrust out his hand too, and told the same story. They raised a shout of joy, that made the bells in the ancient church-tower vibrate again, and wheeling the old chair into the warm corner, thrust old Nicholas down into it, and ordered in the very largest-sized bowl of hot punch, with an unlimited number of pipes, directly. The next day, the Jolly Boatmen got the licence, and the next night, old Nicholas and Ned Twigger’s wife led off a dance to the music of the fiddle and tambourine, the tone of which seemed mightily improved by a little rest, for they never had played so merrily before. Ned Twigger was in the very height of his glory, and he danced hornpipes, and balanced chairs on his chin, and straws on his nose, till the whole company, including the corporation, were in raptures of admiration at the brilliancy of his acquirements. Mr. Tulrumble, junior, couldn’t make up his mind to be anything but magnificent, so he went up to London and drew bills on his father; and when he had overdrawn, and got into debt, he grew penitent and came home again. As to old Nicholas, he kept his word, and having had six weeks of public life, never tried it any more. He went to sleep in the town-hall at the very next meeting; and, in full proof of his sincerity, has requested us to write this faithful narrative. We wish it could have the effect of reminding the Tulrumbles of another sphere, that puffed-up conceit is not dignity, and that snarling at the little pleasures they were once glad to enjoy, because they would rather forget the times when they were of lower station, renders them objects of contempt and ridicule. This is the first time we have published any of our gleanings from this particular source. Perhaps, at some future period, we may venture to open the chronicles of Mudfog. </div> 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Play Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Duet_Mr_And_Mrs_Lovetown.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Duet: Mr. and Mrs. Lovetown.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (27 February 1837).</a> 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. 18370227 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. A married life, Is not all joy; But noise & strife, Its charms alloy. Tho’ to please we do our best: Misery’ll our life infest – Nought is right we e’re can do, But all is wrong – & all is rue! Sometimes darling, Oft times snarling Now then pleasing Then there teasing Nought but care – and nought but strife Oh, who would sigh for a married life. 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 'Duet: Mr. and Mrs. Lovetown' Description An account of the resource From Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (Lord Chamberlain’s Copy, 27 February 1837). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Lord Chamberlain’s Copy, British Library. 'Duet: Mr. and Mrs. Lovetown.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey. Volume 1 (1820-1839), pp. 698-699. Oxford University Press, 1965. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837-02-27 Type The nature or genre of the resource Song Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Duet_Mr_And_Mrs_Lovetown 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. 'Duet: Mr. and Mrs. Lovetown.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (27 February 1837). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Duet_Mr_And_Mrs_Lovetown">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Duet_Mr_And_Mrs_Lovetown</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. A married life, Is not all joy; But noise & strife, Its charms alloy. Tho’ to please we do our best: Misery’ll our life infest – Nought is right we e’re can do, But all is wrong – & all is rue! Sometimes darling, Oft times snarling Now then pleasing Then there teasing Nought but care – and nought but strife Oh, who would sigh for a married life. 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Play Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Song_Felix_Tapkins.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Song – Felix Tapkins.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (27 February 1837).</a> 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. 18370227 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. 1. It was in search of wonders so high and so low That the flying Phemominon, said he would go Where no mortal man had e’re been before For he, all the world was resolved to explore. 2. With wings made of leather, of steel, and of steam Of wonders he said, he should sure be the theme For who in the world could with him compare As like a great Goose he should fly thro’ the air. 3. No sooner the Globe he resolved o’er to range Then of linen, he packed in his bag up a change To give Mankind the bag, he thought it no harm So his bag he took with him just under his arm. 4. In the Morning it was, he first took his flight And in Greece on a Turkey, he supp’d the same night – He dined on his way, at Hamberg, upon Ham – And in Tartary, sipp’d his Bohe with the Cham. 5. In the Artic regeons, twas he took his lunc And on an Ice-burg – why he drank Ice’d punch. His heart was so full, it he couldn’t control So he sat and he sung on the famous North Pole. 6. He paid him a visit to Venus and Mars To the Sun, to the Moon, and the seven stars He shook hands with Satan, and then I declare That he had a hug of the very great Bear. 7. With a fiery Comit, he then tried his pace And in spite of its tail why he won the race But much further of, he couldn’t well roam For he sing’d all his wings, and was forced to come home. 8. Now I think that with me, you all will agree That a cleverer chap, sure there never could be But if what I have said, should not be quite right Why like him, I’ve indulged in fancy’s flight. 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 'Song – Felix Tapkins' Description An account of the resource From Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (Lord Chamberlain’s Copy, 27 February 1837). Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Lord Chamberlain’s Copy, British Library. 'Song – Felix Tapkins.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular!. The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey. Volume 1 (1820-1839), p. 698-699. Oxford University Press, 1965. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837-02-27 Type The nature or genre of the resource Song Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Song_Felix_Tapkins 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. 'Song – Felix Tapkins.' Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (27 February 1837). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Song_Felix_Tapkins">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1837-02-27_Is_She_His_Wife_Or_Something_Singular_Song_Felix_Tapkins</a>. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. <h4>1.</h4> It was in search of wonders so high and so low That the flying Phemominon, said he would go Where no mortal man had e’re been before For he, all the world was resolved to explore. <h4>2.</h4> With wings made of leather, of steel, and of steam Of wonders he said, he should sure be the theme For who in the world could with him compare As like a great Goose he should fly thro’ the air. <h4>3.</h4> No sooner the Globe he resolved o’er to range Then of linen, he packed in his bag up a change To give Mankind the bag, he thought it no harm So his bag he took with him just under his arm. <h4>4.</h4> In the Morning it was, he first took his flight And in Greece on a Turkey, he supp’d the same night – He dined on his way, at Hamberg, upon Ham – And in Tartary, sipp’d his Bohe with the Cham. <h4>5.</h4> In the Artic regeons, twas he took his lunc And on an Ice-burg – why he drank Ice’d punch. His heart was so full, it he couldn’t control So he sat and he sung on the famous North Pole. <h4>6.</h4> He paid him a visit to Venus and Mars To the Sun, to the Moon, & the seven stars He shook hands with Satan, and then I declare That he had a hug of the very great Bear. <h4>7.</h4> With a fiery Comit, he then tried his pace And in spite of its tail why he won the race But much further of, he couldn’t well roam For he sing’d all his wings, & was forced to come home. <h4>8.</h4> Now I think that with me, you all will agree That a cleverer chap, sure there never could be But if what I have said, should not be quite right Why like him, I’ve indulged in fancy’s flight. 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 Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1837-05_Epitaph_Mary_Hogarth.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Epitaph of Mary Hogarth' (May 1837).</a> 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. 18370512 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. Mary Scott Hogarth Died 7th May 1837 Young Beautiful And Good God In His Mercy Numbered Her With His Angels At the Early Age Of Seventeen 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 'Epitaph of Mary Hogarth' Description An account of the resource Composed after the death of Mary Hogarth on 7 May 1837 (May 1837). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <div id="dublin-core-source" class="element"> <div class="element-text">'Epitaph of Mary Hogarth.' The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey. Volume 1 (1820-1839), p. 259n. Oxford University Press, 1965.</div> </div> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837-05 Type The nature or genre of the resource Epitaph Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1837-05_Epitaph_Mary_Hogarth 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. 'Epitaph of Mary Hogarth' (May 1837). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/ 1837-05_Epitaph_Mary_Hogarth" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/ 1837-05_Epitaph_Mary_Hogarth</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. <div style="text-align: center;">Mary Scott Hogarth</div> <div style="text-align: center;">Died 7th May 1837</div> <div style="text-align: center;">Young Beautiful And Good</div> <div style="text-align: center;">God In His Mercy</div> <div style="text-align: center;">Numbered Her With His Angels</div> <div style="text-align: center;">At the Early Age Of</div> <div style="text-align: center;">Seventeen</div>