30 10 361 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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Hall 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. 18620520 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. Ladies and Gentlemen, When I had the honour of being asked to preside over the anniversary dinner of the society last year, I was prevented from doing so by indisposition. I requested my friend Wilkie Collins to reign in my stead. He very kindly complied, to my great relief, and he made an excellent speech. Indeed, to tell you the truth, I read the account at the time with considerable uneasiness, for it inspired me with a strong misgiving that I might have done better to have presided last year with neuralgia in my face and my subject in my head, rather than preside this year with my neuralgia all gone, and my subject anticipated. Therefore I shall preface the toast of the evening by making the managers of this institution one very solemn and repentant promise, and it is this – if ever I have to find them a substitute again, they may implicitly rely upon my sending them the most speechless man in my circle of acquaintance. The chairman of last year presented you with an admirable view of the universality of a newsman’s calling, and the great variety of people who look to him each day, and the diversity of interest with which his burden is expected. Now nothing I can think of seems to be left for me, but to imagine the newsman’s burden itself, to unfold one of those wonderful sheets which he every day disseminates, and to take a glance over his shoulder – a bird’s-eye view of the general character of its contents. So, if you please, choosing my own time – as the newsman cannot, as he must be equally active in all weathers, in winter as in summer, in sunshine and snow, in light and darkness, early and late – say, choosing my weather, as an amateur can but as he cannot, I will for two or three moments start off with my newsman on a fine May morning, and take a peep over his shoulder at one of the wonderful broadsheets which he every day scatters broadcast over the country. Well, the first thing that occurs to me in taking up the newspaper every morning is that we are born every day, that every day we – or, at least, some of us – are married, and that every day we die. Consequently my first glimpse over the newsman’s shoulder instructs me that Atkins is born, Catkins is married, and that Datkins is dead. But one of the most remarkable circumstances connected with the sheet is, that Atkin’s infancy seems to be surprisingly brief, for I immediately discover in the very next column that he has grown up to be seventeen years old, and has run away from his mother. At least I see that, ‘if W. A.’, which stands for William Atkins, ‘who is seventeen years old, in a dress suit, with one front tooth missing, will only return to his disconsolate parents, everything will be arranged to the satisfaction of everyone’. I am afraid he never will return, for the reason, amongst others perhaps, that if he had ever meant to have come back he never would have gone away. Immediately below, I find a mysterious character, in a position of such mysterious difficulty, that it is only to be expressed by several disjointed letters, several figures, several stars, and some such adjuration as, ‘Amelia write instantly. Destruction, all is lost! The canary bird has made over his property to his uncle. The elephant is on the wing.’ Then, still glancing over the shoulder of my industrious friend the newsman, there pass by fleets of ships bound to all parts of the earth, all going to have immediate dispatch, all with a little more stowage for a little more cargo, and a few more berths for a few more passengers, that they all have the most spacious cabins, all teak-built and copper-fastened, all carrying surgeons of experience, and having elevated space between decks – all, in short, A.1. at Lloyd’s and everywhere else. Still glancing over the shoulder of my industrious friend, I find I am offered every kind of house, lodging, clerk, servant, situation, that I can possibly or impossibly want, with everything to eat, drink, wear, and use. I learn, to my intense gratification – for I begin to have some doubts upon the subject myself – that I need never grow old; that I may preserve the juvenile bloom of my complexion to any period of life; that I need never more have any grey hairs; that if I ever cough again it is entirely my own fault; that I need never be ill of any complaint; that if I want brown cod liver oil I know where to find it; that if I want a Turkish bath I know where to get it; and that if I want an income of seven pounds a week for life for 2s. 6d. down, I have only to send the postage stamps and there it is. Still glancing over the newsman’s shoulder, my eye rests on the Imperial Parliament, and there I read among other stereotyped passages, which I am always sure to find there, how the hon. member for somewhere, asked the Right hon. gentlemen the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he had any intelligence to communicate respecting that last outrage, or that last railway accident, or that last mine explosion, or that last case of police justice; and I always read how the Right hon. gentleman said in reply, rather magnificently, that ‘he knew nothing whatever about the matter except what he had read in the newspapers’. Which stereotyped reply I observe to be received universally with a ‘Hear, hear’, which is, to me, perfectly incomprehensible; because I can read such things in a paper without drawing a salary for doing it. Well then I look to the Police Intelligence, and that teaches me that if I want to bite off a woman’s nose I can do it very cheap, but if I want surreptitiously to make off with the salted nose of a pig or calf from a shop window, it will cost me exceedingly dear. And, also, that if I allow myself to be betrayed into the folly, say, of killing an inoffensive tradesman on his own doorstep, that little act of indiscretion will not in the least interfere with my triumphant production of testimonials to character as a most amiable young man, particularly to be esteemed in all respects, but above all things remarkable for the singular inoffensiveness of my character and disposition. So, also looking over the shoulder of my friend the newsman of the day, I pass to the theatrical intelligence; and there, perhaps, I read the gratifying announcement, which is no news to anyone, that the true spirit of a picturesque artist has again been displayed by Mr. Benjamin Webster, and that another most subtle and delicate piece of genuine comedy has been achieved by my friend Mr. Alfred Wigan. Then, turning my eye to the Fine Arts, under that head I find the latest intelligence to be that a certain ‘J. O.’ has most triumphantly exposed a certain ‘J.O.B.’, which ‘J.O.B.’ is remarkable for this singular and particularly novel feature, that I was required to make the sacrifice of depriving myself of the best of my pictures for six months; that for that time they were to be hung upon wet walls; and that I was to be requited for my courtesy by having them impertinently covered with a wet blanket. Now, ladies and gentlemen, summing up in short, this one glance over my newsman’s shoulder gives me the comprehensive knowledge of what is going on over the great continent of Europe, over the great continent of America to boot, to say nothing of such little-known geographical regions as India and China; for Reuter’s telegrams come straight to me. Under the heading of Military Intelligence, I read the last news of my boy in the Army, and under the head of Naval Intelligence, I read the last news concerning my boy in the Navy. All these topics are ready sifted for me in sharp, terse, pointed, leading articles. In a word, every morning before my breakfast is done, I can put a girdle round the earth, like Ariel, and come up to the time of high water at London Bridge, and the arrival of the Japanese ambassadors. By the by, the Japanese ambassadors ought of all things to be here tonight. They could not be shown anything in England so astonishing as a newsvendors dinner, seeing that it is the usage and policy of their country, as described by travellers, to forbid the circulation of news of any kind, on pain of instant death, and to cut the newsman in half the moment he shows himself. Now, my friends, this is the glance over the newsman’s shoulder from the whimsical point of view, which is the point, I believe, that most promotes digestion. The newsman is to be met with at every turn, on steamboats, and in railway stations. His profits are small, he has a great amount of anxiety and care, and no little amount of personal wear and tear. He is indispensable to civilization and freedom, and he is looked for with pleasurable excitement every day, except when he lends the paper for an hour, and then his punctuality in calling for it is anything but agreeable. I think the lesson we can learn from the newsman is some new illustration of the uncertainty of life, some illustration of its vicissitudes and fluctuations. Mindful of this permanent lesson, some members of the trade founded this society, which would afford them assistance in time of sickness and indigence in return for their subscription – a subscription which is infinitesimal. It amounts to five shillings per annum. Looking at the returns before me, the progress of the society would seem to be slow, but it has only been slow for the best of all reasons, that it has been sure. The pensions granted by the society are all drawn out of the interest on the funded capital, and, therefore, the institution is literally as safe as the Bank. It is stated that there are several news-vendors who are not members of this society; but that is equally the case in all institutions which have come under my experience. The very persons who are most likely to stand in need of the benefits which an institution of this kind confers, are usually the persons to keep away until bitter experience comes to them too late, and shows that men have much to lose in keeping apart from it. In asking you to drink this toast I have to congratulate you on the success which has followed this institution, and I must also congratulate you on the fact that a rare article of intelligence will appear in the public prints tomorrow, and give employment to the newsvendors – the fact, namely, that ladies have dined at a public dinner table. I respect the gallantry and good sense of the committee in abolishing, so far as they have been concerned, the barbarous and preposterous custom which condemned the ladies to a distinct place while the other sex were eating and drinking – which is the custom of all savage tribes. 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival 1862 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival (20 May 1862). 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 1862-05-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1862-05-20_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival 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. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival' (20 May 1862). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1862-05-20_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1862-05-20_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, When I had the honour of being asked to preside over the anniversary dinner of the society last year, I was prevented from doing so by indisposition. I requested my friend Wilkie Collins to reign in my stead. He very kindly complied, to my great relief, and he made an excellent speech. Indeed, to tell you the truth, I read the account at the time with considerable uneasiness, for it inspired me with a strong misgiving that I might have done better to have presided last year with neuralgia in my face and my subject in my head, rather than preside this year with my neuralgia all gone, and my subject anticipated. Therefore I shall preface the toast of the evening by making the managers of this institution one very solemn and repentant promise, and it is this – if ever I have to find them a substitute again, they may implicitly rely upon my sending them the most speechless man in my circle of acquaintance. The chairman of last year presented you with an admirable view of the universality of a newsman's calling, and the great variety of people who look to him each day, and the diversity of interest with which his burden is expected. Now nothing I can think of seems to be left for me, but to imagine the newsman's burden itself, to unfold one of those wonderful sheets which he every day disseminates, and to take a glance over his shoulder – a bird's-eye view of the general character of its contents. So, if you please, choosing my own time – as the newsman cannot, as he must be equally active in all weathers, in winter as in summer, in sunshine and snow, in light and darkness, early and late – say, choosing my weather, as an amateur can but as he cannot, I will for two or three moments start off with my newsman on a fine May morning, and take a peep over his shoulder at one of the wonderful broadsheets which he every day scatters broadcast over the country. Well, the first thing that occurs to me in taking up the newspaper every morning is that we are born every day, that every day we – or, at least, some of us – are married, and that every day we die. Consequently my first glimpse over the newsman's shoulder instructs me that Atkins is born, Catkins is married, and that Datkins is dead. But one of the most remarkable circumstances connected with the sheet is, that Atkin's infancy seems to be surprisingly brief, for I immediately discover in the very next column that he has grown up to be seventeen years old, and has run away from his mother. At least I see that, ‘if W. A.’, which stands for William Atkins, ‘who is seventeen years old, in a dress suit, with one front tooth missing, will only return to his disconsolate parents, everything will be arranged to the satisfaction of everyone’. I am afraid he never will return, for the reason, amongst others perhaps, that if he had ever meant to have come back he never would have gone away. Immediately below, I find a mysterious character, in a position of such mysterious difficulty, that it is only to be expressed by several disjointed letters, several figures, several stars, and some such adjuration as, ‘Amelia write instantly. Destruction, all is lost! The canary bird has made over his property to his uncle. The elephant is on the wing.’ Then, still glancing over the shoulder of my industrious friend the newsman, there pass by fleets of ships bound to all parts of the earth, all going to have immediate dispatch, all with a little more stowage for a little more cargo, and a few more berths for a few more passengers, that they all have the most spacious cabins, all teak-built and copper-fastened, all carrying surgeons of experience, and having elevated space between decks – all, in short, A.1. at Lloyd's and everywhere else. Still glancing over the shoulder of my industrious friend, I find I am offered every kind of house, lodging, clerk, servant, situation, that I can possibly or impossibly want, with everything to eat, drink, wear, and use. I learn, to my intense gratification – for I begin to have some doubts upon the subject myself – that I need never grow old; that I may preserve the juvenile bloom of my complexion to any period of life; that I need never more have any grey hairs; that if I ever cough again it is entirely my own fault; that I need never be ill of any complaint; that if I want brown cod liver oil I know where to find it; that if I want a Turkish bath I know where to get it; and that if I want an income of seven pounds a week for life for 2s. 6d. down, I have only to send the postage stamps and there it is. Still glancing over the newsman's shoulder, my eye rests on the Imperial Parliament, and there I read among other stereotyped passages, which I am always sure to find there, how the hon. member for somewhere, asked the Right hon. gentlemen the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he had any intelligence to communicate respecting that last outrage, or that last railway accident, or that last mine explosion, or that last case of police justice; and I always read how the Right hon. gentleman said in reply, rather magnificently, that ‘he knew nothing whatever about the matter except what he had read in the newspapers’. Which stereotyped reply I observe to be received universally with a ‘Hear, hear’, which is, to me, perfectly incomprehensible; because I can read such things in a paper without drawing a salary for doing it. Well then I look to the Police Intelligence, and that teaches me that if I want to bite off a woman's nose I can do it very cheap, but if I want surreptitiously to make off with the salted nose of a pig or calf from a shop window, it will cost me exceedingly dear. And, also, that if I allow myself to be betrayed into the folly, say, of killing an inoffensive tradesman on his own doorstep, that little act of indiscretion will not in the least interfere with my triumphant production of testimonials to character as a most amiable young man, particularly to be esteemed in all respects, but above all things remarkable for the singular inoffensiveness of my character and disposition. So, also looking over the shoulder of my friend the newsman of the day, I pass to the theatrical intelligence; and there, perhaps, I read the gratifying announcement, which is no news to anyone, that the true spirit of a picturesque artist has again been displayed by Mr. Benjamin Webster, and that another most subtle and delicate piece of genuine comedy has been achieved by my friend Mr. Alfred Wigan. Then, turning my eye to the Fine Arts, under that head I find the latest intelligence to be that a certain ‘J. O.’ has most triumphantly exposed a certain ‘J.O.B.’, which ‘J.O.B.’ is remarkable for this singular and particularly novel feature, that I was required to make the sacrifice of depriving myself of the best of my pictures for six months; that for that time they were to be hung upon wet walls; and that I was to be requited for my courtesy by having them impertinently covered with a wet blanket.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, summing up in short, this one glance over my newsman's shoulder gives me the comprehensive knowledge of what is going on over the great continent of Europe, over the great continent of America to boot, to say nothing of such little-known geographical regions as India and China; for Reuter's telegrams come straight to me. Under the heading of Military Intelligence, I read the last news of my boy in the Army, and under the head of Naval Intelligence, I read the last news concerning my boy in the Navy. All these topics are ready sifted for me in sharp, terse, pointed, leading articles. In a word, every morning before my breakfast is done, I can put a girdle round the earth, like Ariel, and come up to the time of high water at London Bridge, and the arrival of the Japanese ambassadors. By the by, the Japanese ambassadors ought of all things to be here tonight. They could not be shown anything in England so astonishing as a newsvendors dinner, seeing that it is the usage and policy of their country, as described by travellers, to forbid the circulation of news of any kind, on pain of instant death, and to cut the newsman in half the moment he shows himself. Now, my friends, this is the glance over the newsman’s shoulder from the whimsical point of view, which is the point, I believe, that most promotes digestion. The newsman is to be met with at every turn, on steamboats, and in railway stations. His profits are small, he has a great amount of anxiety and care, and no little amount of personal wear and tear. He is indispensable to civilization and freedom, and he is looked for with pleasurable excitement every day, except when he lends the paper for an hour, and then his punctuality in calling for it is anything but agreeable. I think the lesson we can learn from the newsman is some new illustration of the uncertainty of life, some illustration of its vicissitudes and fluctuations. Mindful of this permanent lesson, some members of the trade founded this society, which would afford them assistance in time of sickness and indigence in return for their subscription – a subscription which is infinitesimal. It amounts to five shillings per annum. Looking at the returns before me, the progress of the society would seem to be slow, but it has only been slow for the best of all reasons, that it has been sure. The pensions granted by the society are all drawn out of the interest on the funded capital, and, therefore, the institution is literally as safe as the Bank. It is stated that there are several news-vendors who are not members of this society; but that is equally the case in all institutions which have come under my experience. The very persons who are most likely to stand in need of the benefits which an institution of this kind confers, are usually the persons to keep away until bitter experience comes to them too late, and shows that men have much to lose in keeping apart from it. In asking you to drink this toast I have to congratulate you on the success which has followed this institution, and I must also congratulate you on the fact that a rare article of intelligence will appear in the public prints tomorrow, and give employment to the newsvendors – the fact, namely, that ladies have dined at a public dinner table. I respect the gallantry and good sense of the committee in abolishing, so far as they have been concerned, the barbarous and preposterous custom which condemned the ladies to a distinct place while the other sex were eating and drinking – which is the custom of all savage tribes. 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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Tavern 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. 18650509 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. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Johnson’s experience of that club, the members of which had travelled over one another’s minds in every direction,’ is not to be compared with the experience of the perpetual President of a society like this, who, having on previous occasions said everything about it that he could possibly find to say, is again produced, with the usual awful solemnities, to say anything about it that he can not possibly find to say. It struck me, when Dr. Frederick Jones was referring just now to Easter Monday, that the case of such an ill-starred President is very like that of the stag at the Epping Hunt on Easter Monday. The unfortunate animal, when he is uncarted at the tavern where the meet comes off, generally makes away, I am told, at a cool trot, venturesomely followed by the whole field, to the yard where he lives, and there subsides into a quiet inoffensive existence, until he is again brought out, to be again followed by exactly the same field, over exactly the same ground, under exactly the same circum-stances, next Easter Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, the difficulties of the situation – and here I mean the President’s and not the stag’s – are greatly increased in such an instance as this by the peculiar nature of the institution. In its unpretending solidity, reality, and usefulness, believe me – for I have carefully considered the point – it presents no opening whatever of an oratorical nature. If it were one of those costly charities, so-called, whose yield of wool bears no sort of proportion to their cry for cash, I very likely might have a word or two to say on the subject. If its funds were lavished on patronage and show, instead of being honestly expended in providing small annuities for hard-working people who have themselves contributed to its funds; if its management were entrusted to people who could by no possibility know anything about it, instead of being invested in plain, practical, business hands; if it hoarded when it ought to spend, and if it got by cringing and fawning what it never deserved, I might possibly impress you with my indignation. If the managers could tell me that it was insolvent, that it was in a hopeless condition, that its accounts had been kept by Mr. Edmunds, or by ‘Tom’, or if its treasurer had only done me the favour of running away with the money-box, then I might have made a pathetic appeal to your feelings. But I have no such chance. And just as the nation is happy whose records are barren, so is the society fortunate that has no history, and its President unfortunate. I can only assure you that our institution continues its plain, unobtrusive, useful career, and that the objects of its care and the bulk of its members are faithful hard-working servants of the public, who minister to their wants at untimely hours, in all seasons, and in all weathers; at their own doors, at the street corners, at every railway train, at every steam-boat; equally through the agency of enormous establishments and the tiniest little shops; and that whether regarded as master or regarded as man, their profits are very modest and their risks numerous, while their trouble and responsibility are very great. The newsvendors and newsmen are no doubt a very subordinate part of that wonderful engine, the Newspaper Press; but I think we all know very well that they are to the fountain-head what a good service of water pipes is to a good water-supply. Just as a goodly store of water, say at Watford, would be a mere tantilization to thirsty London if it were not brought hither and skilfully laid on, so would any amount of news accumulated at Printing House Square, or Fleet Street, or the Strand, be a mere mockery of the public impatience if there were no skill and enterprise engaged in its dissemination. We are all of us in the habit of saying in our everyday life, that ‘we never know the value of anything until we lose it’. Try the news-vendors by that test. A few years ago we discovered one morning that there was a strike of cab-drivers in London. Now, let us imagine a similar strike of newsmen. Imagine all the morning trains waiting in vain for all the newspapers. Imagine all sorts and conditions of men dying to know the shipping news, the commercial news, the legal news, the criminal news, the foreign news and domestic news – paralysis on all the provincial exchanges, the silence and desertion on the newsmen’s exchange in London, the circulation of the blood of the country standing still, the clock of the world stopped! Why, even Mr. Reuter, the great Reuter whom I am always glad to imagine slumbering at night by the side of Mrs. Reuter, with a galvanic battery under the bolster, telegraph wires to the head of his bed, and an electric bell at each ear even he would click and flash those wondrous dispatches of his to little purpose, if it were not for the humble, and by comparison, slow activity, which gathers up the stitches of the electric needle, and scatters them over the land. It is curious to consider – and the thought occurred to me today, when I was out for a stroll pondering over the duties of this evening, then looming in the distance, and, to confess the honest truth. not half so far off in the distance as I could have desired – I found it very curious to consider that though the newsman must be allowed to be a very unpicturesque rendering of Mercury, or Fame, or whatnot conventional messenger from the clouds, and although we must allow that he is of this earth, and often has a great deal of it on his boots, poor fellow, still that he has two very remarkable characteristics to which none of his celestial predecessors can lay the slightest claims. One is that he is always the messenger of civilization; the other, that he is at least equally so not only in what he brings, but in what he ceases to bring. The time was, and not so many years ago either, when the newsman constantly brought home to our doors (though I am afraid not to our hearts, which were custom-hardened then) the most terrific accounts of numbers of our fellow creatures being publicly put to death for what we should now call trivial offences, in the very heart of London, regularly every Monday morning. In the same times the newsmen regularly brought to us accounts of other savage punishments, which were demoralizing to the innocent parts of the community, while they did not operate as punishments in deterring offenders from the perpetration of crime. In the same times also, the newsman brought to us daily accounts of a regularly accepted and received system of loading the unfortunate insane with chains, littering them down on straw, starving them on bread and water, denying them their clothes, soothing them under their tremendous affliction with the whip, and making periodical exhibitions of them at a small charge, rendering our public asylums a kind of demoniacal Zoological Gardens. He brought us constant accounts of the destruction of machinery which was destined to supply unborn millions with employment. In the same times he brought us accounts of riots for bread, which were constantly occurring and undermining the State, of the most terrible animosity of class against class, and of the habitual employment of spies for the discovery, if not for the organization of plots, in which that animosity on both sides found in those days some relief. In the same times the same newsmen were apprising us of the state of society all around us in which the grossest sensuality and intemperance were the rule, and not as now the ignorant, the wicked, or inexcusably vicious exception – a state of society in which the professional bully was rampant, and in which the deadliest of duels were daily fought for the absurdest and most disgraceful causes. All this the newsman has ceased to tell us. This state of society has discontinued in England for ever. And when we remember the undoubted truth, that the change could never, never, never have been effected without the aid of the load the newsman bears, surely it is not very romantic to claim for him from the public some little token of that sympathetic remembrance which we are all of us so glad to bestow on the messengers of good news and the bearers of blessed tidings. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will be glad to hear that I am coming to a conclusion; and for the conclusion I have a familiar precedent. You all of you know how often it happens when you have been away from home for a short excursion, that you find on your return a delicate intimation that ‘the collector has called’. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am the collector for this district, and I hope that you will bear in mind, coming back from the excursion into which I have betrayed you, that I have respectfully called. Regarding the institution on whose behalf I have presented myself, I need only say technically two things. First, that its annuities are granted out of the interest on its funded capital, and that therefore it is literally as safe as the Bank; and, secondly, they are attainable by such a slight exercise of prudence and foresight, that a payment of twenty-five shillings extending over a period of five years, entitles a subscriber if a male to an annuity of sixteen pounds a year, and if a female to one of twelve pounds. Pray bear in mind that this is the plain, practical institution on behalf of which the collector has called, leaving behind him the assurance that what you can give to one of the most faithful of your servants, will be thoroughly well bestowed, and faithfully applied to the purposes which you intend to further, and to those purposes alone. 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival 1865 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival (9 May 1865). 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 1865-05-09 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. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival' (9 May 1865). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1865-05-09_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1865-05-09_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1865-05-09_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Johnson’s experience of that club, the members of which had travelled over one another’s minds in every direction,’ is not to be compared with the experience of the perpetual President of a society like this, who, having on previous occasions said everything about it that he could possibly find to say, is again produced, with the usual awful solemnities, to say anything about it that he can not possibly find to say. It struck me, when Dr. Frederick Jones was referring just now to Easter Monday, that the case of such an ill-starred President is very like that of the stag at the Epping Hunt on Easter Monday. The unfortunate animal, when he is uncarted at the tavern where the meet comes off, generally makes away, I am told, at a cool trot, venturesomely followed by the whole field, to the yard where he lives, and there subsides into a quiet inoffensive existence, until he is again brought out, to be again followed by exactly the same field, over exactly the same ground, under exactly the same circum-stances, next Easter Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, the difficulties of the situation – and here I mean the President’s and not the stag’s – are greatly increased in such an instance as this by the peculiar nature of the institution. In its unpretending solidity, reality, and usefulness, believe me –  for I have carefully considered the point – it presents no opening whatever of an oratorical nature. If it were one of those costly charities, so-called, whose yield of wool bears no sort of proportion to their cry for cash, I very likely might have a word or two to say on the subject. If its funds were lavished on patronage and show, instead of being honestly expended in providing small annuities for hard-working people who have themselves contributed to its funds; if its management were entrusted to people who could by no possibility know anything about it, instead of being invested in plain, practical, business hands; if it hoarded when it ought to spend, and if it got by cringing and fawning what it never deserved, I might possibly impress you with my indignation. If the managers could tell me that it was insolvent, that it was in a hopeless condition, that its accounts had been kept by Mr. Edmunds, or by ‘Tom’, or if its treasurer had only done me the favour of running away with the money-box, then I might have made a pathetic appeal to your feelings. But I have no such chance. And just as the nation is happy whose records are barren, so is the society fortunate that has no history, and its President unfortunate. I can only assure you that our institution continues its plain, unobtrusive, useful career, and that the objects of its care and the bulk of its members are faithful hard-working servants of the public, who minister to their wants at untimely hours, in all seasons, and in all weathers; at their own doors, at the street corners, at every railway train, at every steam-boat; equally through the agency of enormous establishments and the tiniest little shops; and that whether regarded as master or regarded as man, their profits are very modest and their risks numerous, while their trouble and responsibility are very great.  The newsvendors and newsmen are no doubt a very subordinate part of that wonderful engine, the Newspaper Press; but I think we all know very well that they are to the fountain-head what a good service of water pipes is to a good water-supply. Just as a goodly store of water, say at Watford, would be a mere tantilization to thirsty London if it were not brought hither and skilfully laid on, so would any amount of news accumulated at Printing House Square, or Fleet Street, or the Strand, be a mere mockery of the public impatience if there were no skill and enterprise engaged in its dissemination. We are all of us in the habit of saying in our everyday life, that ‘we never know the value of anything until we lose it’. Try the news-vendors by that test. A few years ago we discovered one morning that there was a strike of cab-drivers in London. Now, let us imagine a similar strike of newsmen. Imagine all the morning trains waiting in vain for all the newspapers. Imagine all sorts and conditions of men dying to know the shipping news, the commercial news, the legal news, the criminal news, the foreign news and domestic news – paralysis on all the provincial exchanges, the silence and desertion on the newsmen’s exchange in London, the circulation of the blood of the country standing still, the clock of the world stopped! Why, even Mr. Reuter, the great Reuter whom I am always glad to imagine slumbering at night by the side of Mrs. Reuter, with a galvanic battery under the bolster, telegraph wires to the head of his bed, and an electric bell at each ear even he would click and flash those wondrous dispatches of his to little purpose, if it were not for the humble, and by comparison, slow activity, which gathers up the stitches of the electric needle, and scatters them over the land. It is curious to consider – and the thought occurred to me today, when I was out for a stroll pondering over the duties of this evening, then looming in the distance, and, to confess the honest truth. not half so far off in the distance as I could have desired – I found it very curious to consider that though the newsman must be allowed to be a very unpicturesque rendering of Mercury, or Fame, or whatnot conventional messenger from the clouds, and although we must allow that he is of this earth, and often has a great deal of it on his boots, poor fellow, still that he has two very remarkable characteristics to which none of his celestial predecessors can lay the slightest claims. One is that he is always the messenger of civilization; the other, that he is at least equally so not only in what he brings, but in what he ceases to bring. The time was, and not so many years ago either, when the newsman constantly brought home to our doors (though I am afraid not to our hearts, which were custom-hardened then) the most terrific accounts of numbers of our fellow creatures being publicly put to death for what we should now call trivial offences, in the very heart of London, regularly every Monday morning. In the same times the newsmen regularly brought to us accounts of other savage punishments, which were demoralizing to the innocent parts of the community, while they did not operate as punishments in deterring offenders from the perpetration of crime. In the same times also, the newsman brought to us daily accounts of a regularly accepted and received system of loading the unfortunate insane with chains, littering them down on straw, starving them on bread and water, denying them their clothes, soothing them under their tremendous affliction with the whip, and making periodical exhibitions of them at a small charge, rendering our public asylums a kind of demoniacal Zoological Gardens. He brought us constant accounts of the destruction of machinery which was destined to supply unborn millions with employment. In the same times he brought us accounts of riots for bread, which were constantly occurring and undermining the State, of the most terrible animosity of class against class, and of the habitual employment of spies for the discovery, if not for the organization of plots, in which that animosity on both sides found in those days some relief. In the same times the same newsmen were apprising us of the state of society all around us in which the grossest sensuality and intemperance were the rule, and not as now the ignorant, the wicked, or inexcusably vicious exception – a state of society in which the professional bully was rampant, and in which the deadliest of duels were daily fought for the absurdest and most disgraceful causes. All this the newsman has ceased to tell us. This state of society has discontinued in England for ever. And when we remember the undoubted truth, that the change could never, never, never have been effected without the aid of the load the newsman bears, surely it is not very romantic to claim for him from the public some little token of that sympathetic remembrance which we are all of us so glad to bestow on the messengers of good news and the bearers of blessed tidings. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will be glad to hear that I am coming to a conclusion; and for the conclusion I have a familiar precedent. You all of you know how often it happens when you have been away from home for a short excursion, that you find on your return a delicate intimation that ‘the collector has called’. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am the collector for this district, and I hope that you will bear in mind, coming back from the excursion into which I have betrayed you, that I have respectfully called. Regarding the institution on whose behalf I have presented myself, I need only say technically two things. First, that its annuities are granted out of the interest on its funded capital, and that therefore it is literally as safe as the Bank; and, secondly, they are attainable by such a slight exercise of prudence and foresight, that a payment of twenty-five shillings extending over a period of five years, entitles a subscriber if a male to an annuity of sixteen pounds a year, and if a female to one of twelve pounds. Pray bear in mind that this is the plain, practical institution on behalf of which the collector has called, leaving behind him the assurance that what you can give to one of the most faithful of your servants, will be thoroughly well bestowed, and faithfully applied to the purposes which you intend to further, and to those purposes alone. 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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Hall 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. 18550521 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. Before proceeding with the business of the general meeting, it occurs to me that we should all refresh our memories as to what this institution is, what it wants, and why we have reason for hoping that its wants will, in the long run, be realized. In the first place your institution is a society – a benevolent and provident society – ‘for granting temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress may require assistance.’ As I understand the society, although it grants temporary relief to those who are not members, it reasonably, as a matter of justice and right, only grants pensions to the persons and widows of those who are members. It appears one of the great merits of this institution that the qualification of membership is made so extremely small and easy, and within the access of everybody belonging to the trade, the subscription being five shillings annually, or a fraction more than a penny a week. Everybody knows, on the authority of ‘the wisdom of our ancestors’, that ‘early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise’; and although the newsmen as a class are compelled to rise extremely early, which implies extremely early going to bed, still the financial operations of the newsmen do not materially affect the money market. The society provides a qualification within the reach of all poor men, and therefore you commence with the very strong leverage of going upon a perfectly practicable plan. The management of the society is remarkably economical; its expenses are particularly small; it has three pensioners upon its list; and it has saved from its small beginnings £1,500. Then we come to the question of what your infant struggling society wants? It wants, in the first place, as we all do, more money; it wants, as very few of us do with our current Parliamentary experience, more members. This latter want I regard as by far the more important want of the two; for it is only by the support of the newsvendors themselves; it is only by your zealous exertions and devotion to your own cause; it is only, in short, by your uniting together for the benefit of your common calling, that this society can ever be raised into an extended sphere of usefulness; in fact it is only by your thoroughly helping yourselves that the public can ever be got to help you. You may rely upon it that there is no principle more certain than this, that every man who becomes a member of your society communicates a moral support to it which is worth his five shillings a year fifty times told. Every man owes a duty to the calling in which he is engaged no less than to himself, and it is only by this sense of double duty being diffused among the whole trade that your society can ever succeed. Even if there be a man in your trade so sanguine as to believe that he himself will never want help in age, infirmity, or distress, you must inspire that man with the ambition to help his brothers all round, and to elevate the whole family by the brightness of that laudable example. Well then, we come to the question, what grounds the society has for believing that it will ultimately come to the accomplishment of those wants which I have stated? Now, foremost in the future which is opening before you, I cannot but put the intelligence and enterprise of the principals engaged in the newsvending trade, and the business habits, the good sense, and the good feeling of their assistants. If certain gentlemen whom I see about me tonight– if Mr. Wild, for example, who is close to me, were a distributor of news for the two reasons that his great grandmother, the Dowager – dowager Mrs. Wild had been a distributor of news, that he himself had not the slightest knowledge of his own business, I should have slight hope of him. Or if he had selected for his assistant a man who left me the Morning Post for last Christmas Day twelve months, instead of The Times of this morning, sent my copy of the Examiner to Bengal instead of to Tavistock Square, and insisted in serving me with publications I never wished to see, while keeping back those I am dying to read, I should have very small hope of him; and I should take the liberty of saying of such a master and man – as I have taken the liberty of saying pretty often lately of another master and man: ‘It is perfectly clear that no good whatever can come out of these people; they are a scarcely animated heap of confusion and imbecility, and they can no more become better than roses can bloom in the Great Desert, or than the Great Pyramid can stand on its head.’ But newsmen cannot proceed in this manner. They must be steady, attentive, active, industrious, and efficient. The master, to succeed in his trade, must watch and be wary and attentive to every minute detail; and the assistant, to be an assistant worthy of his money – whether he be a man of middle age with a large family, or whether he be an undersized boy who gets a larger-sized boy to hold his oilskin portfolio while he refreshes himself by ‘overing’ all the posts on his beat – must do his appointed task of work within his appointed time, or he must come out of the Cabinet altogether, and go to the father of all confusion and false principles. And although the checktaker at a theatre never sees the play, and similarly it is possible a newsman may never read the paper – though I have seen him at it often when he goes along the street – I cannot but believe that he derives some intelligence and instruction from the article in which he deals; and so long as he discharges his duties faithfully and efficiently, I cannot think it likely his trade will remain a peculiar or exceptional case in not having its own thriving provident institution, supported by the very best men. Then, lastly, if the members of the trade be only true to the trade itself and to themselves – which I again insist on, with your leave, to be the one thing needful in this business, and the solid ground on which alone your house can stand – we have to ask whether there is a reasonable hope that the public will be glad to help them? I am strongly of opinion that there is, since no one can doubt that the newsman is in his degree a public servant, and that the pack he carries up and down is of vital importance to the public interest. There are near Westminster, at this very moment while I speak, some gentlemen – certain howling Dervishes, who are observed to be particularly attentive at their devotions at the shrine of my friend Mr. Layard, whose honesty of purpose stands unimpeached – who would hamstring every newsman in London, if they could do so with impunity. Why? Because the newsman, though he is humbly associated, still is usefully and necessarily associated with that great engine which puts a girdle round the earth in every twenty-four hours, and because the newsman, going upon his daily way, lights up the whole country, as the bearer of a flaming cross used to call the Highland clans together.  We have had lately a strike among the gasworkers, and a strike among the cab-drivers; but consider what were those inconveniences compared with the light that would be dimmed, and the progress that would be stopped, by a strike of newsmen. Humbly associated, I say again, but necessarily associated with that wonderful engine, that great result of civilization which is the terror of all humbugs, and the natural enemy of everyone and everything that cannot bear the light, the newsman is undoubtedly in his degree a good public servant, and the public never forgot a good public servant yet, if he took his right place. And when I remember that this trade has grown to what it is from the days when some little, mean, poor broadside was issued occasionally, giving an account of certain wonderful appearances observed in the air by eighteen persons of credit down in Northamptonshire; when a dozen country gentlemen subscribed to a newsletter written by a person of learning, the news of which, seldom true to begin with, was six months old when they got it; when a copy of The Times would scarcely have made one night's curl papers for a young lady with a very moderate crop; and when I look to the present day when the same newspaper is large enough for a carpet for a dining-room; and when I reflect that the daily press is the portal through which men of great ability, intelligence, and energy pass to win their way to distinction in every quarter of the world; I say – when I see all this – I cannot believe that an institution belonging to the trade, and plainly tending to its benefit, does not contain within it the capacity of being developed to a state of usefulness and credit worthy of the service in which newsmen were enlisted. 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting (21 May 1855). 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 1855-05-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting 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. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting' (21 May 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Before proceeding with the business of the general meeting, it occurs to me that we should all refresh our memories as to what this institution is, what it wants, and why we have reason for hoping that its wants will, in the long run, be realized. In the first place your institution is a society – a benevolent and provident society – ‘for granting temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress may require assistance.’ As I understand the society, although it grants temporary relief to those who are not members, it reasonably, as a matter of justice and right, only grants pensions to the persons and widows of those who are members. It appears one of the great merits of this institution that the qualification of membership is made so extremely small and easy, and within the access of everybody belonging to the trade, the subscription being five shillings annually, or a fraction more than a penny a week. Everybody knows, on the authority of ‘the wisdom of our ancestors’, that ‘early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise’; and although the newsmen as a class are compelled to rise extremely early, which implies extremely early going to bed, still the financial operations of the newsmen do not materially affect the money market. The society provides a qualification within the reach of all poor men, and therefore you commence with the very strong leverage of going upon a perfectly practicable plan. The management of the society is remarkably economical; its expenses are particularly small; it has three pensioners upon its list; and it has saved from its small beginnings £1,500. Then we come to the question of what your infant struggling society wants? It wants, in the first place, as we all do, more money; it wants, as very few of us do with our current Parliamentary experience, more members. This latter want I regard as by far the more important want of the two; for it is only by the support of the newsvendors themselves; it is only by your zealous exertions and devotion to your own cause; it is only, in short, by your uniting together for the benefit of your common calling, that this society can ever be raised into an extended sphere of usefulness; in fact it is only by your thoroughly helping yourselves that the public can ever be got to help you. You may rely upon it that there is no principle more certain than this, that every man who becomes a member of your society communicates a moral support to it which is worth his five shillings a year fifty times told. Every man owes a duty to the calling in which he is engaged no less than to himself, and it is only by this sense of double duty being diffused among the whole trade that your society can ever succeed. Even if there be a man in your trade so sanguine as to believe that he himself will never want help in age, infirmity, or distress, you must inspire that man with the ambition to help his brothers all round, and to elevate the whole family by the brightness of that laudable example. Well then, we come to the question, what grounds the society has for believing that it will ultimately come to the accomplishment of those wants which I have stated? Now, foremost in the future which is opening before you, I cannot but put the intelligence and enterprise of the principals engaged in the newsvending trade, and the business habits, the good sense, and the good feeling of their assistants. If certain gentlemen whom I see about me tonight– if Mr. Wild, for example, who is close to me, were a distributor of news for the two reasons that his great grandmother, the Dowager – dowager Mrs. Wild had been a distributor of news, that he himself had not the slightest knowledge of his own business, I should have slight hope of him. Or if he had selected for his assistant a man who left me the Morning Post for last Christmas Day twelve months, instead of The Times of this morning, sent my copy of the Examiner to Bengal instead of to Tavistock Square, and insisted in serving me with publications I never wished to see, while keeping back those I am dying to read, I should have very small hope of him; and I should take the liberty of saying of such a master and man – as I have taken the liberty of saying pretty often lately of another master and man: ‘It is perfectly clear that no good whatever can come out of these people; they are a scarcely animated heap of confusion and imbecility, and they can no more become better than roses can bloom in the Great Desert, or than the Great Pyramid can stand on its head.’ But newsmen cannot proceed in this manner. They must be steady, attentive, active, industrious, and efficient. The master, to succeed in his trade, must watch and be wary and attentive to every minute detail; and the assistant, to be an assistant worthy of his money – whether he be a man of middle age with a large family, or whether he be an undersized boy who gets a larger-sized boy to hold his oilskin portfolio while he refreshes himself by ‘overing’ all the posts on his beat – must do his appointed task of work within his appointed time, or he must come out of the Cabinet altogether, and go to the father of all confusion and false principles. And although the checktaker at a theatre never sees the play, and similarly it is possible a newsman may never read the paper – though I have seen him at it often when he goes along the street – I cannot but believe that he derives some intelligence and instruction from the article in which he deals; and so long as he discharges his duties faithfully and efficiently, I cannot think it likely his trade will remain a peculiar or exceptional case in not having its own thriving provident institution, supported by the very best men. Then, lastly, if the members of the trade be only true to the trade itself and to themselves – which I again insist on, with your leave, to be the one thing needful in this business, and the solid ground on which alone your house can stand – we have to ask whether there is a reasonable hope that the public will be glad to help them? I am strongly of opinion that there is, since no one can doubt that the newsman is in his degree a public servant, and that the pack he carries up and down is of vital importance to the public interest. There are near Westminster, at this very moment while I speak, some gentlemen – certain howling Dervishes, who are observed to be particularly attentive at their devotions at the shrine of my friend Mr. Layard, whose honesty of purpose stands unimpeached – who would hamstring every newsman in London, if they could do so with impunity. Why? Because the newsman, though he is humbly associated, still is usefully and necessarily associated with that great engine which puts a girdle round the earth in every twenty-four hours, and because the newsman, going upon his daily way, lights up the whole country, as the bearer of a flaming cross used to call the Highland clans together.  We have had lately a strike among the gasworkers, and a strike among the cab-drivers; but consider what were those inconveniences compared with the light that would be dimmed, and the progress that would be stopped, by a strike of newsmen. Humbly associated, I say again, but necessarily associated with that wonderful engine, that great result of civilization which is the terror of all humbugs, and the natural enemy of everyone and everything that cannot bear the light, the newsman is undoubtedly in his degree a good public servant, and the public never forgot a good public servant yet, if he took his right place. And when I remember that this trade has grown to what it is from the days when some little, mean, poor broadside was issued occasionally, giving an account of certain wonderful appearances observed in the air by eighteen persons of credit down in Northamptonshire; when a dozen country gentlemen subscribed to a newsletter written by a person of learning, the news of which, seldom true to begin with, was six months old when they got it; when a copy of The Times would scarcely have made one night's curl papers for a young lady with a very moderate crop; and when I look to the present day when the same newspaper is large enough for a carpet for a dining-room; and when I reflect that the daily press is the portal through which men of great ability, intelligence, and energy pass to win their way to distinction in every quarter of the world; I say – when I see all this – I cannot believe that an institution belonging to the trade, and plainly tending to its benefit, does not contain within it the capacity of being developed to a state of usefulness and credit worthy of the service in which newsmen were enlisted. 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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He then said it had now become his duty to give them what was usually called ‘the toast of the evening’ – That ‘duty’, as Shakespeare said, ‘cannot be silent’. But he would promise that what he might say should be said earnestly and to the purpose, and at once as much and as little as possible. As he learned from the pamphlet which had been placed before him, it was ten years since the newsvendors, being a large and industrious body in London, established a Benevolent and Provident Institution ‘for the granting of temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress, may require the aid of the benevolent’. And he observed that the institution so originated had this excellent feature – that only those were eligible as permanent pensioners who were members of the society, and had subscribed to its funds – which, as he thought, was a very salutary and wise regulation; not only as encouraging provident habits and the feeling of brotherhood, but also as sparing the reduced recipients of bounty any humiliation in availing themselves of those funds – as inspiring (which he considered a most excellent thing) the thought: ‘I can take the money without a blush; I did a just thing when I subscribed to this institution, and I did it for others no less than for myself. I did not then know that the hour of sickness and distress, which comes to so many of us, would come to me; but, being come, I can thank God I was mindful of it, and that I can take this pittance with an independent spirit, and an upright head.’  This institution, although it had a portion of £1,000 hard money out at interest, which was a very tolerable fortune for so very young a creature, was still exceedingly young. Its whole life had been passed in the nursery. It was so young, indeed, that it had never until today come down to show itself after dinner. But as there was in the infancy of almost all young creatures a certain period when the frame was employed in gathering form and strength, so he believed that this young creature had been employed these ten years in taking the necessary amount of sleep and very mild sustenance; and that tonight a young giant was exhibited to them for the first time, which, like the giant in the Arabian Nights, would contemptuously kick over the casket which had contained it; yet, unlike that giant, would never be able to get into it again. The rapidity with which healthy children grew out of their clothes was, he believed, a frequent subject of complaint in many families – he knew it was in his own. If this child did not grow out of its first suit of £1,000 while the nap was still new upon it, so as to compel them to measure him in quick succession for a suit of £2,000, or £5,000, or £10,000, all he meant to say was that  the fault would be theirs alone, and they would deserve to be stigmatized as most unnatural parents. For himself, as a friend of the family, he should never be satisfied unless he had an opportunity of saying to the grown-up bantling: ‘I knew you when you were a baby with a very weak chest. I sat at the head of the table on the first occasion when your pinafore was taken off; and now I see you a strong man, who (if I may adopt the phraseology of the sporting part of the press, with which you are all, no doubt, familiar) may be heard of once a year at the bar of the Albion, whose money is ready for all comers, and who would be very glad to meet with any customer who will do him the honour to call.’ The claims of the Newsvendors, as a body, upon one another, and upon the public, to erect a provident institution of their own: and not only that, but to elevate themselves and those whom they employed, in the social scale, in intelligence and good conduct: seemed to him to be most undeniable. It was not that they toiled in all weathers – it was not that they were up early and late that they were watching while others slept –  that they were at our doors daily throughout the year ministering to our requirements – although this was much, and in virtue of which we owed them a debt of gratitude –  it was not for this that they inherited this claim; but it was because they were connected with that great power which had become the axis on which the moral world turned round. – Humbly connected no doubt, but most usefully and inseparably. They were, to that fountain of knowledge to all men which was popularly called ‘the Press’, as conduits to a well of water; or what the pipes which undermined the streets of this city were to the great gas works from which the lights proceeded which turned our night into day. It was that they went on for ever between us and those mighty engines which, working night by night, and all night long, were felt in their faintest throb throughout the civilized world. It was that those men should be in a high degree worthy of their trade, and should not be behind the members of any other industrious calling, but should be up with the foremost. It was no more than two hundred and fifty years since the first idea of a newspaper was conceived in this island, to stimulate the people to resist the Spanish Armada. It was not more than two hundred years since the first notion of a regular newspaper, in anything like its present form, was reduced to practice. One hundred and fifty years ago there did not appear to have been a single daily paper in England, and ten years later only one. When he compared such a state of things with that now existing, he felt as if the humble men connected with the vending of news ought to be in advance of those times in the same proportionate degree as  the newspapers they dealt in, and that they ought to take their stand upon the footing of their useful trade, and be as much recognized and respected in that trade as the paper-maker or the printer. Were they not indebted to the newsvendors almost for everything? If expresses came from different parts of the country, or steam-packets from foreign lands, did they not do so to deposit their treasures with the newsvendors, by whom their most important communications were laid thereafter before the public? It was only last summer a member of their trade delivered at his door the astounding intelligence that the City of London was the best watered, the best drained, and the most wholesome city in the world; and, shortly after, the same gentleman, brought him the astounding intelligence that certain sages who said such was the case, were not locked up in the incurable cellars of Bethlehem Hospital. Shortly after this the same newsvendor brought him the news that the city was a charnel-house; and on yesterday morning an afflicted wife and family heard from the same source, that a husband and father was roaming about the world with an unsatiated thirst for human blood. The object which brought them together at that meeting might at first sight seem small enough; but it was so great in its importance, and so comprehensive in principle, that it really deserved their best consideration. He thought that every follower, however humble, of that great plough, which was for ever turning up the world, and knew no season of pause in its work, was deserving of their best consideration; and therefore he asked them to drink most heartily and cordially, “Prosperity to the Newsvendors' Provident and Benevolent Association.” The toast was drunk ‘with three times three, and one cheer more’. One of the Newsvendors then proposed the health of the chairman, and Dickens replied. He thanked the company most heartily, he said, for this very cordial mark of their good will, which he could not separate from something of the earnestness of a private greeting, rather than a mere public welcome. Having been himself a speaker so often already, he ought now to confine himself to calling forth divers unwilling gentlemen he saw around him, and contemplating their sufferings and their triumphs. In thanking them for the honour they had conferred upon him, he could not forget that his first entry into life, his first success in life, his first view of the bearings of life around him, were in connexion with a London daily newspaper, and that connexion had always lived in his remembrance as a source of pleasure, and he acknowledged it as a source of at once pride and pleasure. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Albion Tavern 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. 18491121 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner (21 November 1849). 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 1849-11-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner 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. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner' (21 November 1849). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner</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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He approached the next task, he said, with much the same feelings as an ex-Lord Mayor contemplated a Lord Mayor in full glory, as he could not but remember that he had once occupied the exceedingly dignified, but, if his memory served him, somewhat uncomfortable post of honour, the Chair. He might be allowed, however, to congratulate the newsvendors present on the happy accident of their pursuing their avocations in the capital of a country which gave its name to the house in which they were then assembled rather than in the capital of a neighbouring country which should be nameless. He had been told, that in the very improbable event of any one of the tightly muzzled newspapers opening its lips by any extraordinary effort, it was the intention of the paternal Government there immediately to hamstring all the newsmen. It was felt, as he had learnt on the best authority, that in having been every day the dispensers of free speech, they had rendered themselves obnoxious to the ‘cause of order’, and that ‘perfect liberty and freedom’ (by which was to be understood, of course, perfect liberty to destroy liberty) could not possibly exist as long as the newsvendors continued to run about. Not being so embarrassed themselves, however, he might perhaps be permitted to congratulate them on three grounds. In the first place, on the reappearance of their society in public. He thought it a very important thing that lights of this nature should not be hidden under bushels; but that they should sometimes shine in a cheerful atmosphere, like the present, to remind their friends that they were burning steadily. It was really important that the friends and patrons of the society should have such opportunities of meeting together, not only to encourage and stimulate one another, but to remind the public also of its modest existence, and of its very moderate appeal in behalf of a most trustworthy, useful, punctual, and reliable class of servants. In the second place he must say that, while sitting there, it had been particularly pleasant to him to observe that so small a company contained so many gentlemen who were distinguished at that fountain-head whose waters were, by the agency of the news-vendors, dispensed to all England. It was a good and right thing that the great popular artist of the time, whose humour was so delicate, so nice, and so discriminating, and whose peneil like his observation was so graceful and so informed with the sense of beauty that it was mere disparagement to call his works ‘caricatures’, should be there tonight in the person of Mr. Leech. Passing over some other friends, whom he saw both on his right hand and his left, and who very fitly and properly represented the graces of our periodical literature, it was good also that they have a separate representation of that weekly picture of the age, that weekly necessary of life with which Mr. Leech was inseparably connected – of course he meant Punch –  in the person of its editor, Mr. Lemon. It was equally gratifying and appropriate that they should have their antiquarian literature, curious research, and various knowledge, represented by Mr. Peter Cunningham; publishing enterprise, liberality, and a great deal more by Mr. Charles Knight; and printing enterprise and success on a great scale by Mr. Evans and Mr. Whiting. It was so fitting that those gentlemen should be there, and their presence seemed to be inclusive of so much, and to be such a good testimony to the worth and vigour of the institution, that he could scarcely have felt disposed to congratulate them more if they had had representatives among them from the whole public, beginning with the young gentleman at the head of the third column of The Times, who for some years past had been conjured to return to his disconsolate parents, but had never yet however had time to do so, and ending with the wonderful man who lived somewhere over at Kennington, who was still engaged in gauging the rain and measuring the wind: if they were represented, he could not congratulate them more.  Thirdly, and lastly, he congratulated them upon their chairman, of whom he would say in reference to his usefulness there that night, that no man could possibly descend from his station to be useful. However exalted his station he must ascend from it to be useful to mankind; and this was one of the greatest principles and greatest truths of the greatest history with which mankind was acquainted. On this occasion he proposed the health of their chairman with peculiar pleasure. He did so not only because of his admirable discharge of the duties of his office and his forcible exposition of the claims of their order and institution, but because he recognized in his being asked to fill the position of chairman, a peculiar significance which was most creditable to the society. It was a proof to him that they were resolved that their chairman on these occasions should mean something – that they were not disposed to look out for the commonplace aid of a mere title or a mere signpost; but that, remembering their calling, they desired to place in their Chair a worthy representative of the journals of England. Therefore it was that they had elected for their chairman a gentleman who was the editor of one of the most able, original, useful, upright, and honourable journals in the world. In doing this they had done wisely and well, and he would venture to predict that if they were always as true to themselves the public would certainly be true to them. Besides the paramount claim of the chairman on their respect, at which he had already glanced, he might add that in his earliest work Mr. Forster was the fearless historian of freedom, and the plain speaker of plain truths long industriously concealed in mere moonshine and mystification, while in his latest works he had been the gallant champion of the dignity of literature and its common cause with the people against sordid patrons, hard taskmasters, empty headed noodles, and every description of froth and foppery that could possibly surround them. He begged to propose the health of the chairman. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Albion Tavern 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. 18520127 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner (27 January 1852). 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 1852-01-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner 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. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner' (27 January 1852). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner</a>. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._I_George_Silverman_s_Explanation_[Atlantic_Monthly]/1868-01_George_Silvermans_Explanation_No1.pdf 906f5c3806b22f53ccec7b694cb3e8ca 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) Atlantic Monthly 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. 18680101 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. FIRST CHAPTER. It happened in this wise: — But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain my Explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better. SECOND CHAPTER. It happened in this wise: — But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I find they are the selfsame words repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head or heart. THIRD CHAPTER. Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me! My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of Father’s Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect that, when Mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on her waist,—until finally her face came into view and settled the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low. Mother had the gripe and clutch of Poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge from Mother’s pursuing grasp at my hair. A worldly little devil was Mother’s usual name for me. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she would still say, "O, you worldly little devil!" And the sting of it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly compared how much I got of those good things with how much Father and Mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going. Sometimes they both went away seeking work, and then I would be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death of Mother’s father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard Mother say, she would come into a whole courtful of houses "if she had her rights." Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar floor,—walking over my grandfather’s body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear. At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change came down even as low as that,—so will it mount to any height on which a human creature can perch,—and brought other changes with it. We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the darkest corner, which we called "the bed." For three days Mother lay upon it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me. It frightened Father, too; and we took it by turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, Father fell a laughing and a singing, and then there was only I to give them both water, and they both died. FOURTH CHAPTER. When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the roadway, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying, "I am hungry and thirsty!" "Does he know they are dead?" asked one of another. "Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?" asked a third of me, severely. "I don’t know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth and the water spilt over them. I am hungry and thirsty." That was all I had to say about it. The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me, and then they all looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I couldn’t help it. I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, "My name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich." Then the ring split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously. "He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just dead too," said Mr. Hawkyard. I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner, "Where’s his houses?" "Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave," said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out of me. "I have undertaken a slight—a very slight—trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged." The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much more favourable than their opinion of me. "He shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard, "(O, yes, he shall be taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present? He may be infected. He may disseminate infection." The ring widened considerably. "What is to be done with him?" He held some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no word save "Farm-house." There was another sound several times repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be "Hoghton Towers." "Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard. "I think that sounds promising; I think that sounds hopeful. And he can be put by himself in a Ward, for a night or two, you say?" It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he who replied, Yes. It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm, and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug and blanket to cover me. Where I had enough to eat too, and was shown how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared, and disinfected in a variety of ways. When all this was done,—I don’t know in how many days or how few, but it matters not,—Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, remaining close to it, and said, "Go and stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman. As far off as you can. That’ll do. How do you feel?" I told him that I didn’t feel cold, and didn’t feel hungry, and didn’t feel thirsty. That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten. "Well," said he, "you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to be purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. You had better not say much—in fact, you had better be very careful not to say anything—about what your parents died of, or they might not like to take you in. Behave well, and I’ll put you to school; (O, yes, I’ll put you to school!), though I am not obligated to do it. I am a servant of the Lord, George, and I have been a good servant to him (I have!) these five-and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good servant in me, and he knows it." What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine. As little do I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent member of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to know, on that day in the Ward, that the farmer’s cart was waiting for me at the street corner. I was not slow to get into it, for it was the first ride I ever had in my life. It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Preston streets as long as they lasted, and, meanwhile I may have had some small dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was. But I doubt it. Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who would bury Father and Mother, or where they would be buried, or when. The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as at the Ward superseded those questions. The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me, and I found that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-road through a field. And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace, and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in the thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers. Which I looked at like a stupid savage; seeing no specialty in; seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it; assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin that I knew,—Poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them might be killed for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy vessels drying in the sunlight could be goodly porringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and which he polished when he had done, according to my Ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shadows, passing over that airy height on the bright spring day were not something in the nature of frowns; sordid, afraid, unadmiring, a small Brute to shudder at. To that time I had never had the faintest impression of beauty. I had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar steps into the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better. Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was my condition when I lay on my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a young Vampire. FIFTH CHAPTER. What do I know of Hoghton Towers? Very little, for I have been gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions. A house, centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry to make money by making Baronets, perhaps made some of those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a Counterblast, hinting at Steam Power, powerful in two distances. What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its Guardian Ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter-weather blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents and sights of fresh green growth and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of,—I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton Towers? I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein have I anticipated the answer. I knew that all these things looked sorrowfully at me. That they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without pity for me: "Alas! poor worldly little devil!" There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked in. They were scuffling for some prey that was there. And, when they started and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old life (it had grown old already) in the cellar. How not to be this worldly little devil? How not to have a repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats? I hid in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and I tried to think about it. One of the farm-ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and down the field so peacefully and quietly. There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had come into my mind at our first dinner that she might take the fever from me. The thought had not disquieted me then; I had only speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would die. But it came into my mind now, that I might try to prevent her taking the fever, by keeping away from her. I knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought. From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she went to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of hearing. I often watched for her at the dim windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier. Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I felt in some sort dignified by the pride of protecting her, by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new feeling, it insensibly softened about Mother and Father. It seemed to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful for Mother and Father as well. Therefore did I cry again, and often too. The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked round. "George," she called to me in a pleased voice, "to-morrow is my birthday, and we are to have a fiddler, and there’s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable for once, George." "I am very sorry, miss," I answered, "but I—but, no; I can’t come." "You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad," she returned disdainfully, "and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never speak to you again." As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire after she was gone, I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me. "Eh, lad!" said he, "Sylvy’s right. You’re as moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes on yet!" I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said coldly, "Maybe not, maybe not. There! Get thy supper, get thy supper, and then thou canst sulk to thy heart’s content again." Ah! If they could have seen me next day in the ruin, watching for the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart as I crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, "They will take no hurt from me,"—they would not have thought mine a morose or an unsocial nature! It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of the studious and retired life of a poor scholar. 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 No. I 'George Silverman's Explanation' (Atlantic Monthly) Description An account of the resource Published in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 21 (January 1868), pp. 118-123. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000555786">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000555786</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1868-01 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. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-01_George_Silvermans_Explanation_1 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. 'George Silverman's Explanation' (January 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-01_George_Silvermans_Explanation_1">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-01_George_Silvermans_Explanation_1</a>. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Relation A related resource <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=50&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=No.I+%27George+Silverman%27s+Explanation%27+%28%3Cem%3EATYR%3C%2Fem%3E%29">No.I 'George Silverman's Explanation' (ATYR)</a> Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. FIRST CHAPTER. It happened in this wise: — But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain my Explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better. SECOND CHAPTER. It happened in this wise: — But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I find they are the selfsame words repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head or heart. THIRD CHAPTER. Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me! My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of Father’s Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect that, when Mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on her waist,—until finally her face came into view and settled the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low. Mother had the gripe and clutch of Poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge from Mother’s pursuing grasp at my hair. A worldly little devil was Mother’s usual name for me. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she would still say, "O, you worldly little devil!" And the sting of it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly compared how much I got of those good things with how much Father and Mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going. Sometimes they both went away seeking work, and then I would be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death of Mother’s father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard Mother say, she would come into a whole courtful of houses "if she had her rights." Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar floor,—walking over my grandfather’s body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear. At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change came down even as low as that,—so will it mount to any height on which a human creature can perch,—and brought other changes with it. We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the darkest corner, which we called "the bed." For three days Mother lay upon it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me. It frightened Father, too; and we took it by turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, Father fell a laughing and a singing, and then there was only I to give them both water, and they both died. FOURTH CHAPTER. When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the roadway, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying, "I am hungry and thirsty!" "Does he know they are dead?" asked one of another. "Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?" asked a third of me, severely. "I don’t know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth and the water spilt over them. I am hungry and thirsty." That was all I had to say about it. The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me, and then they all looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I couldn’t help it. I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, "My name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich." Then the ring split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously. "He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just dead too," said Mr. Hawkyard. I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner, "Where’s his houses?" "Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave," said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out of me. "I have undertaken a slight—a very slight—trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged." The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much more favourable than their opinion of me. "He shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard, "(O, yes, he shall be taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present? He may be infected. He may disseminate infection." The ring widened considerably. "What is to be done with him?" He held some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no word save "Farm-house." There was another sound several times repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be "Hoghton Towers." "Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard. "I think that sounds promising; I think that sounds hopeful. And he can be put by himself in a Ward, for a night or two, you say?" It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he who replied, Yes. It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm, and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug and blanket to cover me. Where I had enough to eat too, and was shown how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared, and disinfected in a variety of ways. When all this was done,—I don’t know in how many days or how few, but it matters not,—Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, remaining close to it, and said, "Go and stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman. As far off as you can. That’ll do. How do you feel?" I told him that I didn’t feel cold, and didn’t feel hungry, and didn’t feel thirsty. That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten. "Well," said he, "you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to be purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. You had better not say much—in fact, you had better be very careful not to say anything—about what your parents died of, or they might not like to take you in. Behave well, and I’ll put you to school; (O, yes, I’ll put you to school!), though I am not obligated to do it. I am a servant of the Lord, George, and I have been a good servant to him (I have!) these five-and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good servant in me, and he knows it." What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine. As little do I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent member of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to know, on that day in the Ward, that the farmer’s cart was waiting for me at the street corner. I was not slow to get into it, for it was the first ride I ever had in my life. It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Preston streets as long as they lasted, and, meanwhile I may have had some small dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was. But I doubt it. Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who would bury Father and Mother, or where they would be buried, or when. The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as at the Ward superseded those questions. The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me, and I found that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-road through a field. And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace, and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in the thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers. Which I looked at like a stupid savage; seeing no specialty in; seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it; assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin that I knew,—Poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them might be killed for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy vessels drying in the sunlight could be goodly porringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and which he polished when he had done, according to my Ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shadows, passing over that airy height on the bright spring day were not something in the nature of frowns; sordid, afraid, unadmiring, a small Brute to shudder at. To that time I had never had the faintest impression of beauty. I had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar steps into the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better. Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was my condition when I lay on my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a young Vampire. FIFTH CHAPTER. What do I know of Hoghton Towers? Very little, for I have been gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions. A house, centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry to make money by making Baronets, perhaps made some of those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a Counterblast, hinting at Steam Power, powerful in two distances. What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its Guardian Ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter-weather blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents and sights of fresh green growth and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of,—I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton Towers? I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein have I anticipated the answer. I knew that all these things looked sorrowfully at me. That they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without pity for me: "Alas! poor worldly little devil!" There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked in. They were scuffling for some prey that was there. And, when they started and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old life (it had grown old already) in the cellar. How not to be this worldly little devil? How not to have a repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats? I hid in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and I tried to think about it. One of the farm-ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and down the field so peacefully and quietly. There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had come into my mind at our first dinner that she might take the fever from me. The thought had not disquieted me then; I had only speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would die. But it came into my mind now, that I might try to prevent her taking the fever, by keeping away from her. I knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought. From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she went to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of hearing. I often watched for her at the dim windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier. Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I felt in some sort dignified by the pride of protecting her, by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new feeling, it insensibly softened about Mother and Father. It seemed to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful for Mother and Father as well. Therefore did I cry again, and often too. The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked round. "George," she called to me in a pleased voice, "to-morrow is my birthday, and we are to have a fiddler, and there’s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable for once, George." "I am very sorry, miss," I answered, "but I—but, no; I can’t come." "You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad," she returned disdainfully, "and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never speak to you again." As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire after she was gone, I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me. "Eh, lad!" said he, "Sylvy’s right. You’re as moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes on yet!" I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said coldly, "Maybe not, maybe not. There! Get thy supper, get thy supper, and then thou canst sulk to thy heart’s content again." Ah! If they could have seen me next day in the ruin, watching for the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart as I crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, "They will take no hurt from me,"—they would not have thought mine a morose or an unsocial nature! It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of the studious and retired life of a poor scholar. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._I_The_Lazy_Tour_of_Two_Idle_Apprentices/1857-10-03-The_Lazy_Tour_of_Two_Idle_Apprentices_No1.pdf 26ef935a5fcc46d2fc04aa9b0ac0a75e 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) Household Words 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. 18571003 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. In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long hot summer and the long hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their employer. They were bound to a highly meritorious lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might be. This is the more remarkable, as there is nothing against the respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary; her family having rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of London. It may be sufficient to name Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard the Second, at the time of Wat Tyler's insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington: which latter distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady's family for the gift of his celebrated cat. There is also strong reason to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for him with their own hands. The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress from whom they had received many favors, were actuated by the low idea of making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction. They had no intention of going anywhere, in particular; they wanted to see nothing, they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted to do nothing. They wanted only to be idle. They took to themselves (after HOGARTH), the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but, there was not a moral pin to choose between them, and they were both idle in the last degree. Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness. The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of their escape, walking down into the North of England. That is to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over a distant viaduct—which was his idea of walking down into the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South against time—which was his idea of walking down into the North. In the meantime the day waned, and the milestones remained unconquered. "Tom," said Goodchild, "The sun is getting low. Up, and let us go forward!" "Nay," quoth Thomas Idle, "I have not done with Annie Laurie yet." And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name he would "lay him doon and dee,"— equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die. "What an ass that fellow was!" cried Goodchild, with the bitter emphasis of contempt. "Which fellow? " asked Thomas Idle. "The fellow in your song. Lay him doon and dee! Finely he'd show off before the girl by doing that. A Sniveller! Why couldn't he get up, and punch somebody's head!" "Whose?" asked Thomas Idle. "Anybody's. Everybody's would be better than nobody's! If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do you think I'd lay me doon and dee? No, sir," proceeded Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent, "I'd get me oop and peetch into somebody. Wouldn't you ?" "I wouldn't have anything to do with her," yawned Thomas Idle. "Why should I take the trouble?" "It's no trouble Tom, to fall in love," said Goodchild, shaking his head. "It's trouble enough to fall out of it, once you're in it," retorted Tom. "So I keep out of it altogether. It would be better for you, if you did the same." Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made no reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by the lower orders "a bellowser," and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged him northward. These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining, each a knapsack. Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw's Guide, and finding out where it was now—and where now—and where now—and to asking what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such a pace as that. Was it to see the country? If that was the object, look at it out of carriage-windows. There was a great deal more of it to be seen there, than here. Besides, who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And, again, who ever did walk? Nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never did it. They came back and said they did, but they didn't. Then why should he walk? He wouldn't walk. He swore it by this milestone! It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston Square Terminus. Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked down into the North by the next morning's express, and carried their knapsacks in the luggage-van. It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be. It bore through the harvested country, a smell like a large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now, the engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues of darkness. Here, were station after station, swallowed up by the press without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays and three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again, bang, bang, bang! At long intervals were uncomfortable refreshment rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in the story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air. In these fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor, and didn't mind; in those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week. The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shining little pouch, or read his newspaper. Carlisle! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It looked congenially and delightfully idle. Something in the way of public amusement had happened last month, and something else was going to happen before Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did not. Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist's proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers, also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail. Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression of Mr. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even something gross. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do. The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player, from among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick. On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals, and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey. There was its corn market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks. There was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms on which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive and fresh to behold. With women trying on clogs and caps at open stalls, and "Bible stalls" adjoining. With "Doctor Mantle's Dispensary for the cure of all Human Maladies and no charge for advice," and with Doctor Mantle's "Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science"—both healing institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one sun-blind. With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations "enabling him or her to know themselves." Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting serjeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, "growing lads of five feet eleven" need not absolutely despair of being accepted. Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at eight o'clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Heske, Newmarket, some fourteen miles distant. Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing to do), had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be the culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away. Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake country), dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner. Good, weather-proof, warm, peasant houses, well white-limed, scantily dotting the road. Clean children coming out to look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves. Harvest still lying out and much rained upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped. Well cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard soil. Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild's remark.) By-and-by, the village. Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street. All the children running out directly. Women pausing in washing, to peep from doorways and very little windows. Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker's. Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning. The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock. No visitors went up Carrock. No visitors came there at all. Aa' the world ganged awa' yon. The driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Inn-keeper had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to drink whiskey and eat oakcake. The Innkeeper was not idle enough—was not idle at all, which was a great fault in him—but was a fine specimen of a north- country man, or any kind of man. He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, up-stairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.) The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and re-crossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-side, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping-glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunt's country-boy, before and after his pie were on the wall, divided by a highly coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had all her colors (and more) flying, and was making great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady's collar. A benevolent elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp packed for travelling. Everything became a nick-nack in this curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest possible distance from the fire-place, and said, "By your leave, not a kittle, but a bijou." The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon the sofa, and therefrom proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-colored wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down, on the part of some corpulent member of the family. There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner. Fielding was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome by-place—so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house—so fanciful to imagine what a wonder the room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village—what grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland—it was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice oat-cake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass that the men in the fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced them without explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how everything was arranged without the least arrangement, for climbing to old Carrock's shoulders, and standing on his head. Without a word of inquiry, therefore, The Two Idle Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog-cart, and rattled off, through the village, for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland road went up and down like other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more difficult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent. Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without. Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn. The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in mist. The rain was falling faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idle—always weak on walking excursions—shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was already penetrating through the young man's outer coat to a bran new shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there is level ground within reach to walk on instead. Was it for this that Thomas had left London? London, where there are nice short walks in level public gardens,with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for weary travellers—London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was not for the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city and travelled to Cumberland. Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the top of it. The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From time to time, the two foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for. At first the ascent was delusively easy: the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon. After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but little, irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. When these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look at the view below them. The scene of the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out. The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm- house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey light like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world. Was this a sight worth climbing to see? Surely—surely not! Up again—for the top of Carrock is not reached yet. The landlord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a springiness of step wonderful to behold. Mr. Idle, farther and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the toes of his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging damply to his aching sides, with his over-coat so full of rain, and standing out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a gigantic extinguisher—the despairing spirit within him representing but too aptly the candle that had just been put out. Up and up and up again, till a ridge is reached, and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly and drizzlingly near. Is this the top ? No, nothing like the top. It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that, although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his way for the purpose of ascending them. Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and even precipices, as if it was Mont Blanc. No matter; Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of being left behind by himself, must follow. On entering the edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it will not get any thicker. It is twenty years since he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain. Goodchild hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it. He marches for the top that is never to be found, as if he was them Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything. The landlord faithfully accompanies him. The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far below,look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants, mounting the steps of some invisible castle together. Up and up, and then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level ground, and then up again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble. Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with all the little curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view of—Nothing! The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring party is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to which the sight of it points—the said conclusion being that the mountain mist has actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared it would. It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has been left, before the travellers attempt to descend. While the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of his companions a neat pocket-compass. The north is found, the point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent begins. After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his fellow-travellers turn aside sharply—tries to follow them—loses them in the mist—is shouted after, waited for, recovered—and then finds that a halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the purpose of again consulting the compass. The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but marching straight forward round the slope of it. The difficulty of following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds the hardship of walking at all, greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight down the declivity. Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now involved themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance again, was shouted for, recovered as before; found Goodchild repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the sideway route that his companions persisted in following. It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some irritability. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the descent from the place where they had now halted. Idle received this answer with the silent respect which was due to the commanders of the expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assurance which he received on starting again, that the object of the party was only to gain "a certain point," and, this haven attained, to continue the descent afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached. Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract form of expression, the phrase "a certain point" has the disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a London fog. Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as he could. More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points reached except the "certain point;" third loss of Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone. Something falls on the turf—it is the glass. Something else drops immediately after—it is the needle. The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost! It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive all great disasters in dead silence. Mr. Goodchild restored the useless compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing for it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of chances. Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still walking round the slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in reaching the "certain point." A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream. Here another halt was called, and another consultation took place. The landlord, still clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the "point," voted for crossing the ravine and going on round the slope of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another view of the case, and backed Mr. Idle's proposal to descend Carrock at once, at any hazard—the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to follow from the mountain to the valley. Accordingly, the party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions. Not much more than six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of his ancles, and he began to feel this same ancle getting rather weak when he found himself among the stones that were strewn about the running water. Goodchild and the landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him. He saw them cross the stream and disappear round a projection on its banks. He heard them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were waiting for him. Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled in an instant. The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger. There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as ever, there was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom he was conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild's pocket. To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of the question. However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to try if he could walk. Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can imagine who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it afterwards. At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly ignorant whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend with the pain in his ancle, before he gave in altogether and fell down again, unable to stir another step. Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left. After a little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle could be left in safety. It was now getting on towards the afternoon, and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the party, delayed in their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by the darkness before the right route was found, and be condemned to pass the night on the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes. The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid. The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock; and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while, in the hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way. After walking forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it. Here, there were a few sheep feeding. The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he recognised the marks on them—then thought he did not—finally gave up the sheep in despair—and walked on, just as ignorant of the whereabouts of the party as ever. The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes at most would find him at the end of his last physical resources. He had just made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist suddenly brightened, and began to lift straight ahead. In another minute, the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree. Before long, other trees appeared—then a cottage—then a house beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind it. Last of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand. The party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but had wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why—away, far down on the very moor by which they had approached the base of Carrock that morning. The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the travellers had groped their way, though by a very round-about direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr. Idle's sinking spirits and reanimated his failing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against the garden-wall, like an artist's lay-figure waiting to be forwarded, until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below. In due time—and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle—the rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into his seat. As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord related an anecdote which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; who had passed the night there alone; who had been found the next morning, "scared and starved;" and who never went out afterwards, except on his way to the grave. Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one useful impression from it. Bad as the pain in his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of Carrock. 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 No. I, 'The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices' Description An account of the resource Published in Household Words, Vol. XVI, No. 393, 3 October 1857, pp. 313-319. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles and Wilkie Collins Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dickens Journals Online, <a href="https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xvi/page-313.html">https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xvi/page-313.html</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1857-10-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Scanned material from Dickens Journals Online, <a href="http://www.djo.org.uk/" id="LPNoLPOWALinkPreview" contenteditable="false" title="http://www.djo.org.uk">www.djo.org.uk</a>. Available under CC BY licence. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1857-10-03-The_Lazy_Tour_of_Two_Idle_Apprentices_No1 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 and Wilkie Collins. No.I 'The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices'. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1857-10-03-The_Lazy_Tour_of_Two_Idle_Apprentices_No1">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1857-10-03-The_Lazy_Tour_of_Two_Idle_Apprentices_No1</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long hot summer and the long hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their employer. They were bound to a highly meritorious lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might be. This is the more remarkable, as there is nothing against the respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary; her family having rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of London. It may be sufficient to name Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard the Second, at the time of Wat Tyler's insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington: which latter distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady's family for the gift of his celebrated cat. There is also strong reason to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for him with their own hands. The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress from whom they had received many favors, were actuated by the low idea of making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction. They had no intention of going anywhere, in particular; they wanted to see nothing, they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted to do nothing. They wanted only to be idle. They took to themselves (after HOGARTH), the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but, there was not a moral pin to choose between them, and they were both idle in the last degree. Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness. The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of their escape, walking down into the North of England. That is to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over a distant viaduct—which was his idea of walking down into the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South against time—which was his idea of walking down into the North. In the meantime the day waned, and the milestones remained unconquered. "Tom," said Goodchild, "The sun is getting low. Up, and let us go forward!" "Nay," quoth Thomas Idle, "I have not done with Annie Laurie yet." And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name he would "lay him doon and dee,"— equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die. "What an ass that fellow was!" cried Goodchild, with the bitter emphasis of contempt. "Which fellow? " asked Thomas Idle. "The fellow in your song. Lay him doon and dee! Finely he'd show off before the girl by doing that. A Sniveller! Why couldn't he get up, and punch somebody's head!" "Whose?" asked Thomas Idle. "Anybody's. Everybody's would be better than nobody's! If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do you think I'd lay me doon and dee? No, sir," proceeded Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent, "I'd get me oop and peetch into somebody. Wouldn't you ?" "I wouldn't have anything to do with her," yawned Thomas Idle. "Why should I take the trouble?" "It's no trouble Tom, to fall in love," said Goodchild, shaking his head. "It's trouble enough to fall out of it, once you're in it," retorted Tom. "So I keep out of it altogether. It would be better for you, if you did the same." Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made no reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by the lower orders "a bellowser," and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged him northward. These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining, each a knapsack. Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw's Guide, and finding out where it was now—and where now—and where now—and to asking what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such a pace as that. Was it to see the country? If that was the object, look at it out of carriage-windows. There was a great deal more of it to be seen there, than here. Besides, who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And, again, who ever did walk? Nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never did it. They came back and said they did, but they didn't. Then why should he walk? He wouldn't walk. He swore it by this milestone! It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston Square Terminus. Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked down into the North by the next morning's express, and carried their knapsacks in the luggage-van. It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be. It bore through the harvested country, a smell like a large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now, the engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues of darkness. Here, were station after station, swallowed up by the press without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays and three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again, bang, bang, bang! At long intervals were uncomfortable refreshment rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in the story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air. In these fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor, and didn't mind; in those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week. The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shining little pouch, or read his newspaper. Carlisle! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It looked congenially and delightfully idle. Something in the way of public amusement had happened last month, and something else was going to happen before Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did not. Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist's proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers, also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail. Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression of Mr. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even something gross. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do. The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player, from among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick. On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals, and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey. There was its corn market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks. There was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms on which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive and fresh to behold. With women trying on clogs and caps at open stalls, and "Bible stalls" adjoining. With "Doctor Mantle's Dispensary for the cure of all Human Maladies and no charge for advice," and with Doctor Mantle's "Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science"—both healing institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one sun-blind. With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations "enabling him or her to know themselves." Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting serjeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, "growing lads of five feet eleven" need not absolutely despair of being accepted. Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at eight o'clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Heske, Newmarket, some fourteen miles distant. Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing to do), had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be the culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away. Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake country), dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner. Good, weather-proof, warm, peasant houses, well white-limed, scantily dotting the road. Clean children coming out to look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves. Harvest still lying out and much rained upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped. Well cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard soil. Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild's remark.) By-and-by, the village. Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street. All the children running out directly. Women pausing in washing, to peep from doorways and very little windows. Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker's. Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning. The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock. No visitors went up Carrock. No visitors came there at all. Aa' the world ganged awa' yon. The driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Inn-keeper had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to drink whiskey and eat oakcake. The Innkeeper was not idle enough—was not idle at all, which was a great fault in him—but was a fine specimen of a north- country man, or any kind of man. He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, up-stairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.) The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and re-crossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-side, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping-glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunt's country-boy, before and after his pie were on the wall, divided by a highly coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had all her colors (and more) flying, and was making great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady's collar. A benevolent elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp packed for travelling. Everything became a nick-nack in this curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest possible distance from the fire-place, and said, "By your leave, not a kittle, but a bijou." The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon the sofa, and therefrom proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-colored wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down, on the part of some corpulent member of the family. There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner. Fielding was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome by-place—so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house—so fanciful to imagine what a wonder the room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village—what grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland—it was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice oat-cake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass that the men in the fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced them without explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how everything was arranged without the least arrangement, for climbing to old Carrock's shoulders, and standing on his head. Without a word of inquiry, therefore, The Two Idle Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog-cart, and rattled off, through the village, for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland road went up and down like other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more difficult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent. Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without. Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn. The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in mist. The rain was falling faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idle—always weak on walking excursions—shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was already penetrating through the young man's outer coat to a bran new shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there is level ground within reach to walk on instead. Was it for this that Thomas had left London? London, where there are nice short walks in level public gardens,with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for weary travellers—London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was not for the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city and travelled to Cumberland. Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the top of it. The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From time to time, the two foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for. At first the ascent was delusively easy: the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon. After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but little, irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. When these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look at the view below them. The scene of the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out. The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey light like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world. Was this a sight worth climbing to see? Surely—surely not! Up again—for the top of Carrock is not reached yet. The landlord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a springiness of step wonderful to behold. Mr. Idle, farther and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the toes of his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging damply to his aching sides, with his over-coat so full of rain, and standing out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a gigantic extinguisher—the despairing spirit within him representing but too aptly the candle that had just been put out. Up and up and up again, till a ridge is reached, and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly and drizzlingly near. Is this the top ? No, nothing like the top. It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that, although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his way for the purpose of ascending them. Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and even precipices, as if it was Mont Blanc. No matter; Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of being left behind by himself, must follow. On entering the edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it will not get any thicker. It is twenty years since he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain. Goodchild hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it. He marches for the top that is never to be found, as if he was them Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything. The landlord faithfully accompanies him. The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far below,look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants, mounting the steps of some invisible castle together. Up and up, and then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level ground, and then up again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble. Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with all the little curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view of—Nothing! The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring party is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to which the sight of it points—the said conclusion being that the mountain mist has actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared it would. It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has been left, before the travellers attempt to descend. While the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of his companions a neat pocket-compass. The north is found, the point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent begins. After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his fellow-travellers turn aside sharply—tries to follow them—loses them in the mist—is shouted after, waited for, recovered—and then finds that a halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the purpose of again consulting the compass. The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but marching straight forward round the slope of it. The difficulty of following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds the hardship of walking at all, greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight down the declivity. Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now involved themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance again, was shouted for, recovered as before; found Goodchild repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the sideway route that his companions persisted in following. It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some irritability. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the descent from the place where they had now halted. Idle received this answer with the silent respect which was due to the commanders of the expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assurance which he received on starting again, that the object of the party was only to gain "a certain point," and, this haven attained, to continue the descent afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached. Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract form of expression, the phrase "a certain point" has the disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a London fog. Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as he could. More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points reached except the "certain point;" third loss of Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone. Something falls on the turf—it is the glass. Something else drops immediately after—it is the needle. The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost! It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive all great disasters in dead silence. Mr. Goodchild restored the useless compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing for it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of chances. Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still walking round the slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in reaching the "certain point." A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream. Here another halt was called, and another consultation took place. The landlord, still clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the "point," voted for crossing the ravine and going on round the slope of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another view of the case, and backed Mr. Idle's proposal to descend Carrock at once, at any hazard—the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to follow from the mountain to the valley. Accordingly, the party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions. Not much more than six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of his ancles, and he began to feel this same ancle getting rather weak when he found himself among the stones that were strewn about the running water. Goodchild and the landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him. He saw them cross the stream and disappear round a projection on its banks. He heard them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were waiting for him. Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled in an instant. The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger. There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as ever, there was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom he was conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild's pocket. To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of the question. However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to try if he could walk. Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can imagine who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it afterwards. At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly ignorant whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend with the pain in his ancle, before he gave in altogether and fell down again, unable to stir another step. Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left. After a little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle could be left in safety. It was now getting on towards the afternoon, and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the party, delayed in their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by the darkness before the right route was found, and be condemned to pass the night on the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes. The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid. The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock; and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while, in the hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way. After walking forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it. Here, there were a few sheep feeding. The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he recognised the marks on them—then thought he did not—finally gave up the sheep in despair—and walked on, just as ignorant of the whereabouts of the party as ever. The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes at most would find him at the end of his last physical resources. He had just made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist suddenly brightened, and began to lift straight ahead. In another minute, the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree. Before long, other trees appeared—then a cottage—then a house beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind it. Last of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand. The party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but had wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why—away, far down on the very moor by which they had approached the base of Carrock that morning. The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the travellers had groped their way, though by a very round-about direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr. Idle's sinking spirits and reanimated his failing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against the garden-wall, like an artist's lay-figure waiting to be forwarded, until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below. In due time—and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle—the rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into his seat. As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord related an anecdote which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; who had passed the night there alone; who had been found the next morning, "scared and starved;" and who never went out afterwards, except on his way to the grave. Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one useful impression from it. Bad as the pain in his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of Carrock. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._I_Holiday_Romance_Introductory_Romance._From_the_Pen_of_William_Tinkling_Esquire/1868-01_No1_Holiday_Romance_William_Tinkling.pdf 9ae87ba0b4c6ddafb56fc0d3bdd40123 https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._I_Holiday_Romance_Introductory_Romance._From_the_Pen_of_William_Tinkling_Esquire/1868-01_No1_Holiday_Romance_William_Tinkling_Illustration_Part1.pdf f097d6d3361f24dd60a231361f7804b7 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) Our Young Folks 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. 18680101 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. IN FOUR PARTS PART I. INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF WILLIAM TINKLING ESQUIRE.* This beginning-part is not made out of anybody’s head, you know. It’s real. You must believe this beginning-part more than what comes after, else you won’t understand how what comes after came to be written. You must believe it all, but you must believe this most, please. I am the Editor of it. Bob Redforth (he’s my cousin, and shaking the table on purpose) wanted to be the Editor of it, but I said he shouldn’t because he couldn’t. He has no idea of being an Editor. Nettie Ashford is my Bride. We were married in the right-hand closet in the corner of the dancing-school where first we met, with a ring (a green one) from Wilkingwater’s toy-shop. I owed for it out of my pocket-money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we all four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought loaded in Bob Redforth’s waistcoat pocket) to announce our Nuptials. It flew right up when it went off, and turned over. Next day, Lieutenant Colonel Robin Redforth was united, with similar ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird. This time, the cannon burst with a most terrific explosion, and made a puppy bark. My peerless Bride was, at the period of which we now treat, in captivity at Miss Grimmer’s. Drowvey and Grimmer is the partnership, and opinion is divided which is the greatest Beast. The lovely Bride of the Colonel was also immured in the Dungeons of the same establishment. A vow was entered into, between the Colonel and myself that we would cut them out on the following Wednesday when walking two and two. Under the desperate circumstances of the case, the active brain of the Colonel, combining with his lawless pursuit (he is a Pirate), suggested an attack with fireworks. This however, from motives of humanity, was abandoned as too expensive. Lightly armed with a paper-knife buttoned up under his jacket, and waving the dreaded black flag at the end of a cane, the Colonel took command of me at 2 P.M. on the eventful and appointed day. He had drawn out the plan of attack on a piece of paper which was rolled up round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My position and my full-length portrait (but my real ears don’t stick out horizontal) was behind a corner-lamp-post, with written orders to remain there till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey who was to fall was the one in spectacles, not the one with the large lavender bonnet. At that signal I was to rush forth, seize my Bride, and fight my way to the lane. There, a junction would be effected between myself and the Colonel, and putting our Brides behind us, between ourselves and the palings, we were to conquer or die. The enemy appeared—approached. Waving his black flag, the Colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anxiously I awaited my signal, but my signal came not. So far from falling, the hated Drowvey in spectacles appeared to me to have muffled the Colonel’s head in his outlawed banner, and to be pitching into him with a parasol. The one in the lavender bonnet also performed prodigies of valour with her fists on his back. Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I fought my desperate way hand to hand to the lane. Through taking the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody, and arrived there uninterrupted. It seemed an age ere the Colonel joined me. He had been to the jobbing-tailor’s to be sewn up in several places, and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate he had said to her, "Die recreant!" but had found her no more open to reason on that point than the other. My blooming Bride appeared, accompanied by the Colonel’s Bride, at the Dancing School next day. What? Was her face averted from me? Hah? Even so. With a look of scorn, she put into my hand a bit of paper, and took another partner. On the paper was pencilled, "Heavens! Can I write the word! Is my husband a Cow." In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to think what slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal mentioned above. Vain were my endeavors. At the end of that dance I whispered the Colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I showed him the note. "There is a syllable wanting," said he, with a gloomy brow. "Hah! What syllable?" was my inquiry. "She asks, Can she write the word? And no; you see she couldn’t," said the Colonel, pointing out the passage. "And the word was?" said I. "Cow—cow—coward," hissed the Pirate-Colonel in my ear, and gave me back the note. Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a branded boy —person I mean—or that I must clear up my honor, I demanded to be tried by a Court-Martial. The Colonel admitted my right to be tried. Some difficulty was found in composing the court, on account of the Emperor of France’s aunt refusing to let him come out. He was to be the President. Ere yet we had appointed a substitute, he made his escape over the back-wall, and stood among us, a free monarch. The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recognized, in a certain Admiral among my judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had given rise to language that I could not brook. But confiding in my innocence, and also in the knowledge that the President of the United States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced myself for the ordeal. It was a solemn spectacle that court. Two executioners with pinafores reversed led me in. Under the shade of an umbrella I perceived my Bride, supported by the Bride of the Pirate-Colonel. The President (having reproved a little female ensign for tittering, on a matter of Life or Death) called upon me to plead, "Coward or no Coward, Guilty or not Guilty?" I pleaded in a firm tone, "No Coward and not Guilty. (The little female ensign being again reproved by the President for misconduct, mutinied, left the court, and threw stones.) My implacable enemy, the Admiral, conducted the case against me. The Colonel’s Bride was called to prove that I had remained behind the corner-lamp-post during the engagement. I might have been spared the anguish of my own Bride’s being also made a witness to the same point, but the Admiral knew where to wound me. Be still, my soul, no matter. The Colonel was then brought forward with his evidence. It was for this point that I had saved myself up, as the turning-point of my case. Shaking myself free of my guards —who had no business to hold me, the stupids! unless I was found Guilty,—I asked the Colonel what he considered the first duty of a soldier? Ere he could reply, the President of the United States rose and informed the court that my foe the Admiral had suggested "Bravery," and that prompting a witness wasn’t fair. The President of the court immediately ordered the Admiral’s mouth to be filled with leaves, and tied up with string. I had the satisfaction of seeing the sentence carried into effect before the proceedings went further. I then took a paper from my trousers-pocket, and asked: "What do you consider, Colonel Redforth, the first duty of a soldier? Is it obedience?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Is that paper—please to look at it—in your hand?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Is it a military sketch?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Of an engagement?" "Quite so," said the Colonel. "Of the late engagement?" "Of the late engagement." "Please to describe it, and then hand it to the President of the Court." From that triumphant moment my sufferings and my dangers were at an end. The court rose up and jumped, on discovering that I had strictly obeyed orders. My foe, the Admiral, who though muzzled was malignant yet, contrived to suggest that I was dishonored by having quitted the field. But the Colonel himself had done as much, and gave his opinion, upon his word and honour as a Pirate, that when all was lost the field might be quitted without disgrace. I was going to be found "No Coward and Not Guilty," and my blooming Bride was going to be publicly restored to my arms in a procession, when an unlooked for event disturbed the general rejoicing. This was no other than the Emperor of France’s aunt catching hold of his hair. The proceedings abruptly terminated, and the court tumultuously dissolved. It was when the shades of the next evening but one were beginning to fall, ere yet the silver beams of Luna touched the earth, that four forms might have been descried slowly advancing towards the weeping willow on the borders of the pond, the now deserted scene of the day before yesterday’s agonies and triumphs. On a nearer approach, and by a practised eye, these might have been identified as the forms of the Pirate-Colonel with his Bride, and of the day before yesterday’s gallant prisoner with his Bride. On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs, dejection sat enthroned. All four reclined under the willow for some minutes without speaking, till at length the Bride of the Colonel poutingly observed, "It’s of no use pretending any more, and we had better give it up." "Hah!" exclaimed the Pirate. "Pretending?" "Don’t go on like that; you worry me," returned his Bride. The lovely Bride of Tinkling echoed the incredible declaration. The two warriors exchanged stony glances. "If," said the Bride of the Pirate-Colonel, "grown-up people WON’T do what they ought to do, and WILL put us out, what comes of our pretending?" "We only get into scrapes," said the Bride of Tinkling. "You know very well," pursued the Colonel’s Bride, "that Miss Drowvey wouldn’t fall. You complained of it yourself. And you know how disgracefully the court-martial ended. As to our marriage; would my people acknowledge it at home?" "Or would my people acknowledge ours?" said the bride of Tinkling. Again the two warriors exchanged stony glances. "If you knocked at the door and claimed me, after you were told to go away," said the Colonel’s Bride, "you would only have your hair pulled, or your ears, or your nose." "If you persisted in ringing at the bell and claiming Me," said the Bride of Tinkling to that gentleman, "you would have things dropped on your head from the window over the handle, or you would be played upon by the garden-engine." "And at your own homes," resumed the Bride of the Colonel, "it would be just as bad. You would be sent to bed, or something equally undignified. Again, how would you support us?" The Pirate-Colonel replied in a courageous voice, "By rapine!" But his Bride retorted, "Suppose the grown-up people wouldn’t be rapined?" Then, said the colonel, they should pay the penalty in Blood. But suppose they should object, retorted his bride, and wouldn’t pay the penalty in Blood or anything else? A mournful silence ensued. "Then do you no longer love me, Alice?" asked the Colonel. "Redforth! I am ever thine," returned his Bride. "Then do you no longer love me, Nettie?" asked the present writer. "Tinkling! I am ever thine," returned my Bride. We all four embraced. Let me not be misunderstood by the giddy. The Colonel embraced his own Bride, and I embraced mine. But two times two make four. "Nettie and I," said Alice mournfully, "have been considering our position. The grown-up people are too strong for us. They make us ridiculous. Besides, they have changed the times. William Tinkling’s baby brother was christened yesterday. What took place? Was any king present? Answer, William." I said No, unless disguised as great-uncle Chopper. "Any queen?" There had been no queen that I knew of at our house. There might have been one in the kitchen; but I didn’t think so, or the servants would have mentioned it. "Any fairies?" None that were visible. "We had an idea among us, I think," said Alice, with a melancholy smile, "we four, that Miss Grimmer would prove to be the wicked fairy, and would come in at the christening with her crutch-stick, and give the child a bad gift? Was there anything of that sort? Answer, William." I said that Ma had said afterwards (and so she had), that great-uncle Chopper’s gift was a shabby one; but she hadn’t said a bad one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and below his income. "It must be the grown-up people who have changed all this," said Alice. "We couldn’t have changed it, if we had been so inclined, and we never should have been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after all, and won’t act up to it because the grown-up people have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would make us ridiculous if we told them what we expected." "Tyrants!" muttered the Pirate-Colonel. "Nay, my Redforth," said Alice, "say not so. Call not names, my Redforth, or they will apply to pa." "Let ’em," said the Colonel. "I don't care! Who’s he?" Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remonstrating with his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions above quoted. "What remains for us to do?" Alice went on in her mild, wise way. "We must educate, we must pretend in a new manner, we must wait." The Colonel clenched his teeth,—four out in front, and a piece off another, and he had been twice dragged to the door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his guards. "How educate? How pretend in a new manner? How wait?" "Educate the grown-up people," replied Alice. "We part to-night. Yes, Redforth!"—for the Colonel tucked up his cuffs,—"part to-night! Let us, in these next Holidays now going to begin, throw our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning under a mask of romance; you, I, and Nettie. William Tinkling being the plainest and quickest writer shall copy out. Is it agreed?" The Colonel answered sulkily, "I don’t mind!" He then asked, "How about pretending?" "We will pretend," said Alice, "that we are children; not that we are those grown-up people who won’t help us out as they ought, and who understand us so badly." The Colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, "How about waiting?" "We will wait," answered little Alice, taking Nettie’s hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, "we will wait—ever constant and true—till the times have got so changed as that everything helps us out, and nothing makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will wait—ever constant and true—till we are eighty, ninety, or one hundred. And then the fairies will send us children, and we will help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they pretend ever so much." "So we will, dear," said Nettie Ashford, taking her round the waist with both arms and kissing her. "And now if my husband will go and buy some cherries for us, I have got some money." In the friendliest manner I invited the Colonel to go with me; but he so far forgot himself as to acknowledge the invitation by kicking out behind, and then lying down on his stomach on the grass, pulling it up and chewing it. When I came back, however, Alice had nearly brought him out of his vexation, and was soothing him by telling him how soon we should all be ninety. As we sat under the willow-tree and ate the cherries (fair, for Alice shared them out), we played at being ninety. Nettie complained that she had a bone in her old back and it made her hobble, and Alice sang a song in an old woman’s way, but it was very pretty, and we were all merry. At least I don’t know about merry exactly, but all comfortable. There was a most tremendous lot of cherries, and Alice always had with her some neat little bag or box or case, to hold things. In it that night was a tiny wine-glass. So Alice and Nettie said they would make some cherry-wine to drink our love at parting. Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious, and each of us drank the toast, "Our love at parting." The Colonel drank his wine last, and it got into my head directly that it got into his directly. Anyhow his eyes rolled immediately after he had turned the glass upside down, and he took me on one side and proposed in a hoarse whisper that we should "Cut ‘em out still." "How did he mean?" I asked my lawless friend. "Cut our Brides out," said the Colonel, "and then cut our way, without going down a single turning, Bang to the Spanish Main!" We might have tried it, though I didn’t think it would answer; only we looked round and saw that there was nothing but moonlight under the willow-tree, and that our pretty pretty wives were gone. We burst out crying. The colonel gave in second, and came to first; but he gave in strong. We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung about for half an hour to whiten them. Likewise a piece of chalk round the rims, I doing the Colonel’s, and he mine, but afterwards found in the bedroom looking-glass not natural, besides inflammation. Our conversation turned on being ninety. The Colonel told me he had a pair of boots that wanted soling and heeling, but he thought it hardly worth while to mention it to his father, as he himself should so soon be ninety, when he thought shoes would be more convenient. The Colonel also told me with his hand upon his hip that he felt himself already getting on in life, and turning rheumatic. And I told him the same. And when they said at our house at supper (they are always bothering about something) that I stooped, I felt so glad! This is the end of the beginning-part that you were to believe most. *Aged Eight. 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 No. I, Holiday Romance, 'Introductory Romance. From the Pen of William Tinkling, Esquire' Description An account of the resource Published in Our Young Folks, vol. 4, no.1 (January 1868), pp. 1-7. Edited by J.T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000052381508">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000052381508</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1868-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Illustrated by John Gilbert 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-01_No1_Holiday_Romance_William_Tinkling 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. 'Introductory Romance. From the Pen of William Tinkling, Esquire' (January 1868). Holiday Romance. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-01_No1_Holiday_Romance_William_Tinkling">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-01_No1_Holiday_Romance_William_Tinkling</a>. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-01_William_Tinkling_A_Holiday_Romance_1"></a> Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. IN FOUR PARTS PART I. INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF WILLIAM TINKLING ESQUIRE.* This beginning-part is not made out of anybody’s head, you know. It’s real. You must believe this beginning-part more than what comes after, else you won’t understand how what comes after came to be written. You must believe it all, but you must believe this most, please. I am the Editor of it. Bob Redforth (he’s my cousin, and shaking the table on purpose) wanted to be the Editor of it, but I said he shouldn’t because he couldn’t. He has no idea of being an Editor. Nettie Ashford is my Bride. We were married in the right-hand closet in the corner of the dancing-school where first we met, with a ring (a green one) from Wilkingwater’s toy-shop. I owed for it out of my pocket-money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we all four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought loaded in Bob Redforth’s waistcoat pocket) to announce our Nuptials. It flew right up when it went off, and turned over. Next day, Lieutenant Colonel Robin Redforth was united, with similar ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird. This time, the cannon burst with a most terrific explosion, and made a puppy bark. My peerless Bride was, at the period of which we now treat, in captivity at Miss Grimmer’s. Drowvey and Grimmer is the partnership, and opinion is divided which is the greatest Beast. The lovely Bride of the Colonel was also immured in the Dungeons of the same establishment. A vow was entered into, between the Colonel and myself that we would cut them out on the following Wednesday when walking two and two. Under the desperate circumstances of the case, the active brain of the Colonel, combining with his lawless pursuit (he is a Pirate), suggested an attack with fireworks. This however, from motives of humanity, was abandoned as too expensive. Lightly armed with a paper-knife buttoned up under his jacket, and waving the dreaded black flag at the end of a cane, the Colonel took command of me at 2 P.M. on the eventful and appointed day. He had drawn out the plan of attack on a piece of paper which was rolled up round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My position and my full-length portrait (but my real ears don’t stick out horizontal) was behind a corner-lamp-post, with written orders to remain there till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey who was to fall was the one in spectacles, not the one with the large lavender bonnet. At that signal I was to rush forth, seize my Bride, and fight my way to the lane. There, a junction would be effected between myself and the Colonel, and putting our Brides behind us, between ourselves and the palings, we were to conquer or die. The enemy appeared—approached. Waving his black flag, the Colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anxiously I awaited my signal, but my signal came not. So far from falling, the hated Drowvey in spectacles appeared to me to have muffled the Colonel’s head in his outlawed banner, and to be pitching into him with a parasol. The one in the lavender bonnet also performed prodigies of valour with her fists on his back. Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I fought my desperate way hand to hand to the lane. Through taking the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody, and arrived there uninterrupted. It seemed an age ere the Colonel joined me. He had been to the jobbing-tailor’s to be sewn up in several places, and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate he had said to her, "Die recreant!" but had found her no more open to reason on that point than the other. My blooming Bride appeared, accompanied by the Colonel’s Bride, at the Dancing School next day. What? Was her face averted from me? Hah? Even so. With a look of scorn, she put into my hand a bit of paper, and took another partner. On the paper was pencilled, "Heavens! Can I write the word! Is my husband a Cow." In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to think what slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal mentioned above. Vain were my endeavors. At the end of that dance I whispered the Colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I showed him the note. "There is a syllable wanting," said he, with a gloomy brow. "Hah! What syllable?" was my inquiry. "She asks, Can she write the word? And no; you see she couldn’t," said the Colonel, pointing out the passage. "And the word was?" said I. "Cow—cow—coward," hissed the Pirate-Colonel in my ear, and gave me back the note. Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a branded boy —person I mean—or that I must clear up my honor, I demanded to be tried by a Court-Martial. The Colonel admitted my right to be tried. Some difficulty was found in composing the court, on account of the Emperor of France’s aunt refusing to let him come out. He was to be the President. Ere yet we had appointed a substitute, he made his escape over the back-wall, and stood among us, a free monarch. The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recognized, in a certain Admiral among my judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had given rise to language that I could not brook. But confiding in my innocence, and also in the knowledge that the President of the United States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced myself for the ordeal. It was a solemn spectacle that court. Two executioners with pinafores reversed led me in. Under the shade of an umbrella I perceived my Bride, supported by the Bride of the Pirate-Colonel. The President (having reproved a little female ensign for tittering, on a matter of Life or Death) called upon me to plead, "Coward or no Coward, Guilty or not Guilty?" I pleaded in a firm tone, "No Coward and not Guilty. (The little female ensign being again reproved by the President for misconduct, mutinied, left the court, and threw stones.) My implacable enemy, the Admiral, conducted the case against me. The Colonel’s Bride was called to prove that I had remained behind the corner-lamp-post during the engagement. I might have been spared the anguish of my own Bride’s being also made a witness to the same point, but the Admiral knew where to wound me. Be still, my soul, no matter. The Colonel was then brought forward with his evidence. It was for this point that I had saved myself up, as the turning-point of my case. Shaking myself free of my guards —who had no business to hold me, the stupids! unless I was found Guilty,—I asked the Colonel what he considered the first duty of a soldier? Ere he could reply, the President of the United States rose and informed the court that my foe the Admiral had suggested "Bravery," and that prompting a witness wasn’t fair. The President of the court immediately ordered the Admiral’s mouth to be filled with leaves, and tied up with string. I had the satisfaction of seeing the sentence carried into effect before the proceedings went further. I then took a paper from my trousers-pocket, and asked: "What do you consider, Colonel Redforth, the first duty of a soldier? Is it obedience?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Is that paper—please to look at it—in your hand?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Is it a military sketch?" "It is," said the Colonel. "Of an engagement?" "Quite so," said the Colonel. "Of the late engagement?" "Of the late engagement." "Please to describe it, and then hand it to the President of the Court." From that triumphant moment my sufferings and my dangers were at an end. The court rose up and jumped, on discovering that I had strictly obeyed orders. My foe, the Admiral, who though muzzled was malignant yet, contrived to suggest that I was dishonored by having quitted the field. But the Colonel himself had done as much, and gave his opinion, upon his word and honour as a Pirate, that when all was lost the field might be quitted without disgrace. I was going to be found "No Coward and Not Guilty," and my blooming Bride was going to be publicly restored to my arms in a procession, when an unlooked for event disturbed the general rejoicing. This was no other than the Emperor of France’s aunt catching hold of his hair. The proceedings abruptly terminated, and the court tumultuously dissolved. It was when the shades of the next evening but one were beginning to fall, ere yet the silver beams of Luna touched the earth, that four forms might have been descried slowly advancing towards the weeping willow on the borders of the pond, the now deserted scene of the day before yesterday’s agonies and triumphs. On a nearer approach, and by a practised eye, these might have been identified as the forms of the Pirate-Colonel with his Bride, and of the day before yesterday’s gallant prisoner with his Bride. On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs, dejection sat enthroned. All four reclined under the willow for some minutes without speaking, till at length the Bride of the Colonel poutingly observed, "It’s of no use pretending any more, and we had better give it up." "Hah!" exclaimed the Pirate. "Pretending?" "Don’t go on like that; you worry me," returned his Bride. The lovely Bride of Tinkling echoed the incredible declaration. The two warriors exchanged stony glances. "If," said the Bride of the Pirate-Colonel, "grown-up people WON’T do what they ought to do, and WILL put us out, what comes of our pretending?" "We only get into scrapes," said the Bride of Tinkling. "You know very well," pursued the Colonel’s Bride, "that Miss Drowvey wouldn’t fall. You complained of it yourself. And you know how disgracefully the court-martial ended. As to our marriage; would my people acknowledge it at home?" "Or would my people acknowledge ours?" said the bride of Tinkling. Again the two warriors exchanged stony glances. "If you knocked at the door and claimed me, after you were told to go away," said the Colonel’s Bride, "you would only have your hair pulled, or your ears, or your nose." "If you persisted in ringing at the bell and claiming Me," said the Bride of Tinkling to that gentleman, "you would have things dropped on your head from the window over the handle, or you would be played upon by the garden-engine." "And at your own homes," resumed the Bride of the Colonel, "it would be just as bad. You would be sent to bed, or something equally undignified. Again, how would you support us?" The Pirate-Colonel replied in a courageous voice, "By rapine!" But his Bride retorted, "Suppose the grown-up people wouldn’t be rapined?" Then, said the colonel, they should pay the penalty in Blood. But suppose they should object, retorted his bride, and wouldn’t pay the penalty in Blood or anything else? A mournful silence ensued. "Then do you no longer love me, Alice?" asked the Colonel. "Redforth! I am ever thine," returned his Bride. "Then do you no longer love me, Nettie?" asked the present writer. "Tinkling! I am ever thine," returned my Bride. We all four embraced. Let me not be misunderstood by the giddy. The Colonel embraced his own Bride, and I embraced mine. But two times two make four. "Nettie and I," said Alice mournfully, "have been considering our position. The grown-up people are too strong for us. They make us ridiculous. Besides, they have changed the times. William Tinkling’s baby brother was christened yesterday. What took place? Was any king present? Answer, William." I said No, unless disguised as great-uncle Chopper. "Any queen?" There had been no queen that I knew of at our house. There might have been one in the kitchen; but I didn’t think so, or the servants would have mentioned it. "Any fairies?" None that were visible. "We had an idea among us, I think," said Alice, with a melancholy smile, "we four, that Miss Grimmer would prove to be the wicked fairy, and would come in at the christening with her crutch-stick, and give the child a bad gift? Was there anything of that sort? Answer, William." I said that Ma had said afterwards (and so she had), that great-uncle Chopper’s gift was a shabby one; but she hadn’t said a bad one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and below his income. "It must be the grown-up people who have changed all this," said Alice. "We couldn’t have changed it, if we had been so inclined, and we never should have been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after all, and won’t act up to it because the grown-up people have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would make us ridiculous if we told them what we expected." "Tyrants!" muttered the Pirate-Colonel. "Nay, my Redforth," said Alice, "say not so. Call not names, my Redforth, or they will apply to pa." "Let ’em," said the Colonel. "I don't care! Who’s he?" Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remonstrating with his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions above quoted. "What remains for us to do?" Alice went on in her mild, wise way. "We must educate, we must pretend in a new manner, we must wait." The Colonel clenched his teeth,—four out in front, and a piece off another, and he had been twice dragged to the door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his guards. "How educate? How pretend in a new manner? How wait?" "Educate the grown-up people," replied Alice. "We part to-night. Yes, Redforth!"—for the Colonel tucked up his cuffs,—"part to-night! Let us, in these next Holidays now going to begin, throw our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning under a mask of romance; you, I, and Nettie. William Tinkling being the plainest and quickest writer shall copy out. Is it agreed?" The Colonel answered sulkily, "I don’t mind!" He then asked, "How about pretending?" "We will pretend," said Alice, "that we are children; not that we are those grown-up people who won’t help us out as they ought, and who understand us so badly." The Colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, "How about waiting?" "We will wait," answered little Alice, taking Nettie’s hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, "we will wait—ever constant and true—till the times have got so changed as that everything helps us out, and nothing makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will wait—ever constant and true—till we are eighty, ninety, or one hundred. And then the fairies will send us children, and we will help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they pretend ever so much." "So we will, dear," said Nettie Ashford, taking her round the waist with both arms and kissing her. "And now if my husband will go and buy some cherries for us, I have got some money." In the friendliest manner I invited the Colonel to go with me; but he so far forgot himself as to acknowledge the invitation by kicking out behind, and then lying down on his stomach on the grass, pulling it up and chewing it. When I came back, however, Alice had nearly brought him out of his vexation, and was soothing him by telling him how soon we should all be ninety. As we sat under the willow-tree and ate the cherries (fair, for Alice shared them out), we played at being ninety. Nettie complained that she had a bone in her old back and it made her hobble, and Alice sang a song in an old woman’s way, but it was very pretty, and we were all merry. At least I don’t know about merry exactly, but all comfortable. There was a most tremendous lot of cherries, and Alice always had with her some neat little bag or box or case, to hold things. In it that night was a tiny wine-glass. So Alice and Nettie said they would make some cherry-wine to drink our love at parting. Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious, and each of us drank the toast, "Our love at parting." The Colonel drank his wine last, and it got into my head directly that it got into his directly. Anyhow his eyes rolled immediately after he had turned the glass upside down, and he took me on one side and proposed in a hoarse whisper that we should "Cut ‘em out still." "How did he mean?" I asked my lawless friend. "Cut our Brides out," said the Colonel, "and then cut our way, without going down a single turning, Bang to the Spanish Main!" We might have tried it, though I didn’t think it would answer; only we looked round and saw that there was nothing but moonlight under the willow-tree, and that our pretty pretty wives were gone. We burst out crying. The colonel gave in second, and came to first; but he gave in strong. We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung about for half an hour to whiten them. Likewise a piece of chalk round the rims, I doing the Colonel’s, and he mine, but afterwards found in the bedroom looking-glass not natural, besides inflammation. Our conversation turned on being ninety. The Colonel told me he had a pair of boots that wanted soling and heeling, but he thought it hardly worth while to mention it to his father, as he himself should so soon be ninety, when he thought shoes would be more convenient. The Colonel also told me with his hand upon his hip that he felt himself already getting on in life, and turning rheumatic. And I told him the same. And when they said at our house at supper (they are always bothering about something) that I stooped, I felt so glad! This is the end of the beginning-part that you were to believe most. *Aged Eight. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._II_George_Silverman_s_Explanation_[Atlantic_Monthly]/1868_02_George_Silvermans_Explanation_No2.pdf 03a8ab6f1791c4a60cbf03834d69f63e 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) Atlantic Monthly 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. 18680201 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. SIXTH CHAPTER Brother Hawkyard (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to school, and told me to work my way. "You are all right, George," he said. "I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his service for this five-and-thirty year, (O, I have!) and he knows the value of such a servant as I have been to him, (O, yes, he does!) and he’ll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward. That’s what he’ll do, George. He’ll do it for me." From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways of the sublime inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard’s part. As I grew a little wiser and still a little wiser, I liked it less and less. His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,—as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word,—I found distasteful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me, for I had a dread that they were worldly. As time went on, I became a Foundation-Boy on a good Foundation, and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing. When I had worked my way so far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a presentation to College and a Fellowship. My health has never been strong (some vapor from the Preston cellar cleaves to me I think), and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to be regarded—that is, by my fellow-students—as unsocial. All through my time as a Foundation-Boy I was within a few miles of Brother Hawkyard’s congregation, and whenever I was what we called a Leave-Boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire. Before the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place of meeting these Brothers and Sisters were no better than the rest of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth, — I say, before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of Heaven and Earth with their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted state of Grace was the "worldly" state, I did for a time suffer tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation. Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He was by trade a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face, a large dog’s-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a drysalter, and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once) bore him a jealous grudge. Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the life and the truth. On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for, and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:— "Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began, that I didn’t know a word of what I was going to say to you, (and no, I did not!) but that it was all one to me, because I knew the Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted." ("That’s it!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted." ( ("So he did!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And why?" ("Ah, let’s have that!" from Brother Gimblet.) "Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty years, and because he knows it. For five-and-thirty years! And he knows it, mind you! I got those words that I wanted on account of my wages. I got ’em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down. I said, 'Here’s a heap of wages due; let us have something down, on account.' And I got it down, and I paid it over to you, and you won’t wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet pocketankercher, but you’ll put it out at good interest. Very well. Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going to conclude with a question, and I’ll make it so plain (with the help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather hope!) as that the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your heads. Which he would be overjoyed to do." ("Just his way. Crafty old blackguard!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And the question is this. Are the angels learned?" ("Not they. Not a bit on it." From Brother Gimblet, with the greatest confidence.) "Not they. And where’s the proof? Sent ready-made by the hand of the Lord. Why, there’s one among us here now, that has got all the Learning that could be crammed into him. I got him all the Learning that could be crammed into him. His grandfather’"(this I had never heard before) "was a Brother of ours. He was Brother Parksop. That’s what he was. Parksop. Brother Parksop. His worldly name was Parksop, and he was a Brother of this Brotherhood. Then wasn’t he Brother Parksop?" ("Must be. Couldn’t help hisself." from Brother Gimblet.) "Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a Brother-Sinner of his, (and that Brother-Sinner, mind you, was a sinner of a bigger size in his time than any of you, Praise the Lord!) Brother Hawkyard. Me. I got him without fee or reward,—without a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet Amber, letting alone the honeycomb,—all the Learning that could be crammed into him. Has it brought him into our Temple, in the spirit? No. Have we had any ignorant Brothers and Sisters that didn’t know round O from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many. Then the Angels are not learned. Then they don’t so much as know their alphabet. And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to that, perhaps some Brother present—perhaps you, Brother Gimblet—will pray a bit for us?" Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered: "Well! I don’t know as I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place neither." He said this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow. What we were specially to be preserved from, according to his solicitations, was despoilment of the orphan, suppression of testamentary intentions on the part of a Father or (say) Grandfather, appropriation of the orphan’s house-property, feigning to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld his due; and that class of sins. He ended with the petition, "Give us peace!" Which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after twenty minutes of his bellowing. Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees, steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard’s tone of congratulating him on the vigor with which he had roared, I should have detected a malicious application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier school-days, and had always caused me great distress; for they were worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that had drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions, without a shadow of proof. They were worthy to have originated in the unwholesome cellar. They were not only without proof, but against proof. For was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard had done? And without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers? Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard against any tendency to such relapse. After getting these suspicions under my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to like Brother Hawkyard’s manner, or his professed religion. So it came about, that, as I walked back that Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of reparation for any such injury my struggling thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his hands, before going to College, a full acknowledgment of his goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks. It might serve as an implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival Brother and Expounder, or from any other quarter. Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care. I may add with much feeling too, for it affected me as I went on. Having no set studies to pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his place of business and give it into his own hands. It was a winter afternoon when I tapped at the door of his little counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop. As I did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes were taken in, and where there was the inscription, "Private Way to the Counting-house"), a shopman called to me from the counter that he was engaged. "Brother Gimblet" (said the shopman, who was one of the Brotherhood) "is with him." I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap again. They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing, for I heard it being counted out. "Who is it?" asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply. "George Silverman," I answered, holding the door open. "May I come in?" Both Brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shier than usual. But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of their faces. "What is the matter?" asked Brother Hawkyard. "Ay! What is the matter?" asked Brother Gimblet. "Nothing at all," I said, diffidently producing my document. "I am only the bearer of a letter from myself." "From yourself, George?" cried Brother Hawkyard. "And to you," said I. "And to me, George?" He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it, and seeing generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered his color, and said, "Praise the Lord!" "That’s it!" cried Brother Gimblet. "Well put! Amen." Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain: "You must know, George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two businesses one. We are going into partnership. We are settling it now. Brother Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (O, yes! And he shall have it, he shall have it to the last farthing!)" "D.V.!" said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched on his right leg. "There is no objection," pursued Brother Hawkyard, "to my reading this aloud, George?" As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after yesterday’s prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it aloud. He did so, and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed smile. "It was in a good hour that I came here," he said, wrinkling up his eyes. "It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday to depict for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct opposite of Brother Hawkyard’s. But it was the Lord that done it. I felt him at it, while I was perspiring." After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend the congregation once more, before my final departure. What my shy reserve would undergo, from being expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew beforehand. But I reflected that it would be for the last time, and that it might add to the weight of my letter. It was well known to the Brothers and Sisters that there was no place taken for me in their Paradise; and if I showed this last token of deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own sinful inclinations, it might go some little way in aid of my statement that he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to him. Merely stipulating, therefore, that no express endeavour should be made for my conversion,—which would involve the rolling of several Brothers and Sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those repulsive mysteries,—I promised. Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue neckerchief, and grinning to himself. It was, however, a habit that Brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even when expounding. I call to mind a delighted snarl with which he used to detail from the platform the torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all human creation except the Brotherhood), as being remarkably hideous. I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count money; and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday. Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years, leaving all he possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have been told) that very day. Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual. How could I foresee that the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, where I winced and shrunk when it was touched, or was even approached, would be handled as the theme of the whole proceedings? On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and to Brother Gimblet to preach. The prayer was to open the ceremonies; the discourse was to come next. Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother Gimblet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready to preach. "Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners." Yes. But it was I who was the sacrifice. It was our poor sinful worldly-minded Brother here present who was wrestled for. The now-opening career of this our unawakened Brother might lead to his becoming a minister of what was called The Church. That was what he looked to. The Church. Not the chapel, Lord. The Church. No rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord! many such in the Church. Protect our sinful Brother from his love of lucre. Cleanse from our unawakened Brother’s breast his sin of worldly-mindedness. The prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing more to any intelligible effect. Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would) the text, "My kingdom is not of this world." Ah! but whose was, my fellow-sinners? Whose? Why, our Brother’s here present was. The only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world. ("That’s it!" from several of the congregation). What did the woman do when she lost the piece of money? Went and looked for it. What should our Brother do when he lost his way? ("Go and look for it," from a Sister.) Go and look for it. True. But must he look for it in the right direction, or in the wrong? ("In the right," from a Brother.) There spake the prophets! He must look for it in the right direction, or he couldn’t find it. But he had turned his back upon the right direction, and he wouldn’t find it. Now, my fellow-sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-mindedness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world and kingdoms of this world, here was a letter wrote by even our worldly-minded Brother unto Brother Hawkyard. Judge, from hearing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was the faithful steward that the Lord had in his mind only t’other day, when, in this very place, he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one; for it was him that done it, not me. Don’t doubt that! Brother Gimblet then grinned and bellowed his way through my composition, and subsequently through an hour. The service closed with a hymn, in which the Brothers unanimously roared, and the Sisters unanimously shrieked, at me, that I by wiles of worldly gain was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked; that I with Mammon struggled in the dark, while they were floating in a second Ark. I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary spirit; not because I was quite so weak as to consider these narrow creatures interpreters of the Divine majesty and wisdom; but because I was weak enough to feel as though it were my hard fortune to be misrepresented and misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue any risings of mere worldliness within me, and when I most hoped, that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had succeeded. 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 No. II 'George Silverman's Explanation' (Atlantic Monthly) Description An account of the resource Published in the Atlantic Monthly, vol.21 (February 1868), pp. 145-149. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000555786">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000555786</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1861-02 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-02_George_Silvermans_Explanation_2 Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. No. II, 'George Silverman's Explanation' (February 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date].<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-02_George_Silvermans_Explanation_2">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-02_George_Silvermans_Explanation_2</a>. Relation A related resource <a href="http://dickenssearch.com/admin/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=50&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=No.II+%27George+Silverman%27s+Explanation%27+%28%3Cem%3EATYR%3C%2Fem%3E%29">No.II 'George Silverman's Explanation' (ATYR)</a> Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. SIXTH CHAPTER Brother Hawkyard (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to school, and told me to work my way. "You are all right, George," he said. "I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his service for this five-and-thirty year, (O, I have!) and he knows the value of such a servant as I have been to him, (O, yes, he does!) and he’ll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward. That’s what he’ll do, George. He’ll do it for me." From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways of the sublime inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard’s part. As I grew a little wiser and still a little wiser, I liked it less and less. His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,—as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word,—I found distasteful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me, for I had a dread that they were worldly. As time went on, I became a Foundation-Boy on a good Foundation, and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing. When I had worked my way so far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a presentation to College and a Fellowship. My health has never been strong (some vapor from the Preston cellar cleaves to me I think), and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to be regarded—that is, by my fellow-students—as unsocial. All through my time as a Foundation-Boy I was within a few miles of Brother Hawkyard’s congregation, and whenever I was what we called a Leave-Boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire. Before the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place of meeting these Brothers and Sisters were no better than the rest of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth, — I say, before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of Heaven and Earth with their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted state of Grace was the "worldly" state, I did for a time suffer tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation. Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He was by trade a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face, a large dog’s-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a drysalter, and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once) bore him a jealous grudge. Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the life and the truth. On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for, and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:— "Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began, that I didn’t know a word of what I was going to say to you, (and no, I did not!) but that it was all one to me, because I knew the Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted." ("That’s it!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted." ( ("So he did!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And why?" ("Ah, let’s have that!" from Brother Gimblet.) "Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty years, and because he knows it. For five-and-thirty years! And he knows it, mind you! I got those words that I wanted on account of my wages. I got ’em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down. I said, 'Here’s a heap of wages due; let us have something down, on account.' And I got it down, and I paid it over to you, and you won’t wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet pocketankercher, but you’ll put it out at good interest. Very well. Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going to conclude with a question, and I’ll make it so plain (with the help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather hope!) as that the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your heads. Which he would be overjoyed to do." ("Just his way. Crafty old blackguard!" from Brother Gimblet.) "And the question is this. Are the angels learned?" ("Not they. Not a bit on it." From Brother Gimblet, with the greatest confidence.) "Not they. And where’s the proof? Sent ready-made by the hand of the Lord. Why, there’s one among us here now, that has got all the Learning that could be crammed into him. I got him all the Learning that could be crammed into him. His grandfather’"(this I had never heard before) "was a Brother of ours. He was Brother Parksop. That’s what he was. Parksop. Brother Parksop. His worldly name was Parksop, and he was a Brother of this Brotherhood. Then wasn’t he Brother Parksop?" ("Must be. Couldn’t help hisself." from Brother Gimblet.) "Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a Brother-Sinner of his, (and that Brother-Sinner, mind you, was a sinner of a bigger size in his time than any of you, Praise the Lord!) Brother Hawkyard. Me. I got him without fee or reward,—without a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet Amber, letting alone the honeycomb,—all the Learning that could be crammed into him. Has it brought him into our Temple, in the spirit? No. Have we had any ignorant Brothers and Sisters that didn’t know round O from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many. Then the Angels are not learned. Then they don’t so much as know their alphabet. And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to that, perhaps some Brother present—perhaps you, Brother Gimblet—will pray a bit for us?" Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered: "Well! I don’t know as I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place neither." He said this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow. What we were specially to be preserved from, according to his solicitations, was despoilment of the orphan, suppression of testamentary intentions on the part of a Father or (say) Grandfather, appropriation of the orphan’s house-property, feigning to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld his due; and that class of sins. He ended with the petition, "Give us peace!" Which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after twenty minutes of his bellowing. Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees, steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard’s tone of congratulating him on the vigor with which he had roared, I should have detected a malicious application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier school-days, and had always caused me great distress; for they were worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that had drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions, without a shadow of proof. They were worthy to have originated in the unwholesome cellar. They were not only without proof, but against proof. For was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard had done? And without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers? Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard against any tendency to such relapse. After getting these suspicions under my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to like Brother Hawkyard’s manner, or his professed religion. So it came about, that, as I walked back that Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of reparation for any such injury my struggling thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his hands, before going to College, a full acknowledgment of his goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks. It might serve as an implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival Brother and Expounder, or from any other quarter. Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care. I may add with much feeling too, for it affected me as I went on. Having no set studies to pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his place of business and give it into his own hands. It was a winter afternoon when I tapped at the door of his little counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop. As I did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes were taken in, and where there was the inscription, "Private Way to the Counting-house"), a shopman called to me from the counter that he was engaged. "Brother Gimblet" (said the shopman, who was one of the Brotherhood) "is with him." I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap again. They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing, for I heard it being counted out. "Who is it?" asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply. "George Silverman," I answered, holding the door open. "May I come in?" Both Brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shier than usual. But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of their faces. "What is the matter?" asked Brother Hawkyard. "Ay! What is the matter?" asked Brother Gimblet. "Nothing at all," I said, diffidently producing my document. "I am only the bearer of a letter from myself." "From yourself, George?" cried Brother Hawkyard. "And to you," said I. "And to me, George?" He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it, and seeing generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered his color, and said, "Praise the Lord!" "That’s it!" cried Brother Gimblet. "Well put! Amen." Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain: "You must know, George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two businesses one. We are going into partnership. We are settling it now. Brother Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (O, yes! And he shall have it, he shall have it to the last farthing!)" "D.V.!" said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched on his right leg. "There is no objection," pursued Brother Hawkyard, "to my reading this aloud, George?" As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after yesterday’s prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it aloud. He did so, and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed smile. "It was in a good hour that I came here," he said, wrinkling up his eyes. "It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday to depict for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct opposite of Brother Hawkyard’s. But it was the Lord that done it. I felt him at it, while I was perspiring." After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend the congregation once more, before my final departure. What my shy reserve would undergo, from being expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew beforehand. But I reflected that it would be for the last time, and that it might add to the weight of my letter. It was well known to the Brothers and Sisters that there was no place taken for me in their Paradise; and if I showed this last token of deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own sinful inclinations, it might go some little way in aid of my statement that he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to him. Merely stipulating, therefore, that no express endeavour should be made for my conversion,—which would involve the rolling of several Brothers and Sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those repulsive mysteries,—I promised. Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue neckerchief, and grinning to himself. It was, however, a habit that Brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even when expounding. I call to mind a delighted snarl with which he used to detail from the platform the torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all human creation except the Brotherhood), as being remarkably hideous. I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count money; and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday. Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years, leaving all he possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have been told) that very day. Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual. How could I foresee that the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, where I winced and shrunk when it was touched, or was even approached, would be handled as the theme of the whole proceedings? On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and to Brother Gimblet to preach. The prayer was to open the ceremonies; the discourse was to come next. Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother Gimblet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready to preach. "Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners." Yes. But it was I who was the sacrifice. It was our poor sinful worldly-minded Brother here present who was wrestled for. The now-opening career of this our unawakened Brother might lead to his becoming a minister of what was called The Church. That was what he looked to. The Church. Not the chapel, Lord. The Church. No rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord! many such in the Church. Protect our sinful Brother from his love of lucre. Cleanse from our unawakened Brother’s breast his sin of worldly-mindedness. The prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing more to any intelligible effect. Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would) the text, "My kingdom is not of this world." Ah! but whose was, my fellow-sinners? Whose? Why, our Brother’s here present was. The only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world. ("That’s it!" from several of the congregation). What did the woman do when she lost the piece of money? Went and looked for it. What should our Brother do when he lost his way? ("Go and look for it," from a Sister.) Go and look for it. True. But must he look for it in the right direction, or in the wrong? ("In the right," from a Brother.) There spake the prophets! He must look for it in the right direction, or he couldn’t find it. But he had turned his back upon the right direction, and he wouldn’t find it. Now, my fellow-sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-mindedness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world and kingdoms of this world, here was a letter wrote by even our worldly-minded Brother unto Brother Hawkyard. Judge, from hearing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was the faithful steward that the Lord had in his mind only t’other day, when, in this very place, he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one; for it was him that done it, not me. Don’t doubt that! Brother Gimblet then grinned and bellowed his way through my composition, and subsequently through an hour. The service closed with a hymn, in which the Brothers unanimously roared, and the Sisters unanimously shrieked, at me, that I by wiles of worldly gain was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked; that I with Mammon struggled in the dark, while they were floating in a second Ark. I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary spirit; not because I was quite so weak as to consider these narrow creatures interpreters of the Divine majesty and wisdom; but because I was weak enough to feel as though it were my hard fortune to be misrepresented and misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue any risings of mere worldliness within me, and when I most hoped, that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had succeeded. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/No._II_Holiday_Romance_Romance._From_the_Pen_of_Miss_Alice_Rainbird/1868-03_No2_Holiday_Romance_Alice_Rainbird.pdf dd9ae0d862e0b18c28edb889b29830ad Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Ngram 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. PART II. ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS ALICE RAINBIRD* There was once a King, and he had a Queen, and he was the manliest of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. The King was, in his private profession, Under Government. The Queen’s father had been a medical man out of town. They had nineteen children, and were always having more. Seventeen of these children took care of the baby, and Alicia, the eldest, took care of them all. Their ages varied from seven years to seven months. Let us now resume our story. One day the king was going to the Office, when he stopped at the fishmonger’s to buy a pound and a half of salmon not too near the tail, which the Queen (who was a careful housekeeper) had requested him to send home. Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, "Certainly, sir, is there any other article, Good morning." The King went on towards the Office in a melancholy mood; for Quarter Day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children were growing out of their clothes. He had not proceeded far, when Mr. Pickles’s errand-boy came running after him, and said, "Sir, you didn’t notice the old lady in our shop." "What old lady?" inquired the King. "I saw none." Now the King had not seen any old lady, because this old lady had been invisible to him, though visible to Mr. Pickles’s boy. Probably because he messed and splashed the water about to that degree, and flopped the pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had not been visible to him, he would have spoilt her clothes. Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, smelling of dried lavender. "King Watkins the First, I believe?" said the old lady. "Watkins," replied the King, "is my name." "Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Princess Alicia?" said the old lady. "And of eighteen other darlings," replied the king. "Listen. You are going to the Office," said the old lady. It instantly flashed upon the King that she must be a Fairy, or how could she know that? "You are right," said the old lady, answering his thoughts, "I am the Good Fairy Grandmarina. Attend! When you return home to dinner, politely invite the Princess Alicia to have some of the salmon you bought just now." "It may disagree with her," said the King. The old lady became so very angry at this absurd idea, that the King was quite alarmed, and humbly begged her pardon. "We hear a great deal too much about this thing disagreeing and that thing disagreeing," said the old lady, with the greatest contempt it was possible to express. "Don’t be greedy. I think you want it all yourself." The King hung his head under this reproof, and said he wouldn’t talk about things disagreeing, any more. "Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, "and don’t. When the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon—as I think she will—you will find she will leave a fish-bone on her plate. Tell her to dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a present from me." "Is that all?" asked the King. "Don’t be impatient, sir," returned the Fairy Grandmarina, scolding him severely. "Don’t catch people short, before they have done speaking. Just the way with you grown-up persons. You are always doing it." The King again hung his head, and said he wouldn’t do so any more. "Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, "and don’t! Tell the Princess Alicia, with my love, that the fish-bone is a magic present which can only be used once; but that it will bring her, that once, whatever she wishes for, PROVIDED SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE RIGHT TIME. That is the message. Take care of it." The King was beginning, "Might I ask the reason—?" When the Fairy became absolutely furious. "Will you be good, sir?" she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the ground. "The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed! You are always wanting the reason. No reason. There! Hoity toity me! I am sick of your grown-up reasons." The King was extremely frightened by the old lady’s flying into such a passion, and said he was very sorry to have offended her, and he wouldn’t ask for reasons any more. "Be good, then," said the old lady, "and don’t!" With those words, Grandmarina vanished, and the King went on and on and on, till he came to the office. There he wrote and wrote and wrote, till it was time to go home again. Then he politely invited the Princess Alicia, as the Fairy had directed him, to partake of the salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very much, he saw the fish-bone on her plate, as the Fairy had told him he would, and he delivered the Fairy’s message, and the Princess Alicia took care to dry the bone, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shone like mother-of-pearl. And so, when the Queen was going to get up in the morning, she said, "O, dear me, dear me, my head, my head!" And then she fainted away. The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at the chamber door, asking about breakfast, was very much alarmed when she saw her Royal Mamma in this state, and she rang the bell for Peggy, — which was the name of the Lord Chamberlain. But remembering where the smelling-bottle was, she climbed on a chair and got it, and after that she climbed on another chair by the bedside and held the smelling-bottle to the Queen’s nose, and after that she jumped down and got some water, and after that she jumped up again and wetted the Queen’s forehead, and, in short, when the Lord Chamberlain came in, that dear old woman said to the little Princess, "What a Trot you are! I couldn’t have done it better myself!" But that was not the worst of the good Queen’s illness. O no! She was very ill indeed, for a long time. The Princess Alicia kept the seventeen young Princes and Princesses quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated the soup, and swept the hearth, and poured out the medicine, and nursed the Queen, and did all that ever she could, and was as busy busy busy as busy could be. For there were not many servants at that Palace for three reasons; because the King was short of money, because a rise in his office never seemed to come, and because quarter-day was so far off that it looked almost as far off and as little as one of the stars. But on the morning when the Queen fainted away, where was the magic fish-bone? Why, there it was in the Princess Alicia’s pocket. She had almost taken it out to bring the Queen to life again, when she put it back, and looked for the smelling-bottle. After the Queen had come out of her swoon that morning, and was dozing, the Princess Alicia hurried up-stairs to tell a most particular secret to a most particularly confidential friend of hers, who was a Duchess. People did suppose her to be a Doll, but she was really a Duchess, though nobody knew it except the Princess. This most particular secret was the secret about the magic fish-bone, the history of which was well known to the Duchess, because the princess told her everything. The Princess kneeled down by the bed on which the Duchess was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and whispered the secret to her. The Duchess smiled and nodded. People might have supposed that she never smiled and nodded, but she often did, though nobody knew it except the Princess. Then the Princess Alicia hurried down stairs again, to keep watch in the Queen’s room. She often kept watch by herself in the Queen’s room; but every evening, while the illness lasted, she sat there watching with the King. And every evening the King sat looking at her with a cross look, wondering why she never brought out the magic fish-bone. As often as she noticed this, she ran up stairs, whispered the secret to the Duchess over again, and said to the Duchess besides, "They think we children never have a reason or a meaning!" And the Duchess, though the most fashionable Duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye. "Alicia," said the King, one evening when she wished him Good Night. "Yes, Papa." "What is become of the magic fish-bone?" "In my pocket, Papa!" "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa." And so another time the dreadful little snapping pug-dog next door made a rush at one of the young Princes as he stood on the steps coming home from school, and terrified him out of his wits, and he put his hand through a pane of glass, and bled bled bled. When the seventeen other young Princes and Princesses saw him bleed bleed bleed, they were terrified out of their wits too, and screamed themselves black in their seventeen faces all at once. But the Princess Alicia put her hands over all their seventeen mouths, one after another, and persuaded them to be quiet because of the sick Queen. And then she put the wounded Prince’s hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while they stared with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down four and carry three eyes, and then she looked in the hand for bits of glass, and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. And then she said to two chubby-legged Princes, who were sturdy though small, "Bring me in the Royal rag-bag; I must snip and stitch and cut and contrive." So these two young Princes tugged at the Royal rag-bag and lugged it in, and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor with a large pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and snipped and stitched and cut and contrived, and made a bandage and put it on, and it fitted beautifully, and so when it was all done, she saw the King her Papa looking on by the door. "Alicia." "Yes, Papa." "What have you been doing?" "Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, Papa." "Where is the magic fish-bone?" "In my pocket, Papa." "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa!" After that, she ran up stairs to the Duchess and told her what had passed, and told her the secret over again, and the Duchess shook her flaxen curls, and laughed with her rosy lips. Well! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. The seventeen young Princes and Princesses were used to it, for they were almost always falling under the grate or down the stairs, but the baby was not used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. The way the poor little darling came to tumble was, that he was out of the Princess Alicia’s lap just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen fire, beginning to peel the turnips for the broth for dinner; and the way she came to be doing that was, that the King’s cook had run away that morning with her own true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then, the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, who cried at everything that happened, cried and roared. But the Princess Alicia (who couldn’t help crying a little herself) quietly called to them to be still, on account of not throwing back the Queen up stairs, who was fast getting well, and said, "Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, every one of you, while I examine baby!" Then she examined baby, and found that he hadn’t broken anything, and she held cold iron to his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor dear face, and he presently fell asleep in her arms. Then she said to the seventeen Princes and Princesses, "I am afraid to let him down yet, lest he should wake and feel pain, be good, and you shall all be cooks." They jumped for joy when they heard that, and began making themselves cooks’ caps out of old newspapers. So to one she gave the salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one she gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and to one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and all running about at work, she sitting in the middle, smothered in the great coarse apron, nursing baby. By and by the broth was done, and the baby woke up, smiling like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest Princess to hold, while the other Princes and Princesses were squeezed into a far-off corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning out the saucepan-full of broth, for fear (as they were always getting into trouble) they should get splashed and scalded. When the broth came tumbling out, steaming beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they clapped their hands. That made the baby clap his hands; and that, and his looking as if he had a comic toothache, made all the Princes and Princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said, "Laugh and be good, and after dinner we will make him a nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his nest and see a dance of eighteen cooks." That delighted the young Princes and Princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner, and then they in their cooks’ caps, and the Princess Alicia, in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, and crowed with joy. And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the First, her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said: "What have you been doing, Alicia?" "Cooking and contriving, Papa." "What else have you been doing, Alicia?" "Keeping the children light-hearted, Papa." "Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia?" "In my pocket, Papa." "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa." The King then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby. "What is the matter, Papa?" "I am dreadfully poor, my child." "Have you no money at all, Papa?" "None, my child." "Is there no way of getting any, Papa?" "No way," said the King. "I have tried very hard, and I have tried all ways." When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia began to put her hand into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone. "Papa," said she, "when we have tried very hard, and tried all ways, we must have done our very very best?" "No doubt, Alicia." "When we have done our very very best, Papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others." This was the very secret connected with the magic fish-bone, which she had found out for herself from the good fairy Grandmarina’s words, and which she had so often whispered to her beautiful and fashionable friend, the Duchess. So she took out of her pocket the magic fish-bone, that had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl; and she gave it one little kiss, and wished it was quarter-day. And immediately it was Quarter-Day, and the King’s quarter’s salary came rattling down the chimney, and bounced into the middle of the floor. But this was not half of what happened, no, not a quarter, for immediately afterwards the good Fairy Grandmarina came riding in, in a carriage and four (Peacocks), with Mr. Pickles’s boy up behind, dressed in silver and gold, with a cocked-hat, powdered hair, pink silk stockings, a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped Mr. Pickles’s boy with his cocked-hat in his hand and wonderfully polite (being entirely changed by enchantment), and handed Grandmarina out, and there she stood, in her rich shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning herself with a sparkling fan. "Alicia, my dear," said this charming old Fairy, "how do you do, I hope I see you pretty well, give me a kiss." The Princess Alicia embraced her; and then Grandmarina turned to the King, and said rather sharply: "Are you good?" The King said he hoped so. "I suppose you know the reason, now, why my god-Daughter here," kissing the Princess again, "did not apply to the fish-bone sooner?" said the Fairy. The King made her a shy bow. "Ah! but you didn’t then!" said the Fairy. The king made her a shyer bow. "Any more reasons to ask for?" said the fairy. The King said no, and he was very sorry. "Be good, then," said the Fairy, "and live happy ever afterwards." Then Grandmarina waved her fan, and the Queen came in most splendidly dressed, and the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, no longer grown out of their clothes, came in, newly fitted out from top to toe, with tucks in everything to admit of its being let out. After that, the Fairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan, and the smothering coarse apron flew away, and she appeared exquisitely dressed, like a little Bride, with a wreath of orange-flowers and a silver veil. After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold and looking-glass, which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. After that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his face and eye not a bit the worse but much the better. Then Grandmarina begged to be introduced to the Duchess, and, when the Duchess was brought down many compliments passed between them. A little whispering took place between the Fairy and the Duchess, and then the Fairy said out loud, "Yes. I thought she would have told you." Grandmarina then turned to the King and Queen, and said, "We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of your company is requested at church in half an hour precisely." So she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage, and Mr. Pickles’s boy handed in the Duchess who sat by herself on the opposite seat, and then Mr. Pickles’s boy put up the steps and got up behind, and the Peacocks flew away with their tails spread. Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the Peacocks followed by the carriage, coming in at the window, it immediately occurred to him that something uncommon was going to happen. "Prince," said Grandmarina, "I bring you your Bride." The moment the Fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio’s face left off being sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled on his head. He got into the carriage by the Fairy’s invitation, and there he renewed his acquaintance with the Duchess whom he had seen before. In the church were the Prince’s relations and friends, and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the seventeen Princes and Princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbors. The marriage was beautiful beyond expression. The Duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit where she was supported by the cushion of the desk. Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding feast afterwards, in which there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding cake was delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round. When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried, Hip Hip Hip Hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the King and Queen that in future there would be eight Quarter-Days in every year, except in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, "My dears, you will have thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being born." On hearing such good news, everybody cried out "Hip Hip Hip Hurrah!" again. "It only remains," said Grandmarina in conclusion, "to make an end of the fish-bone." So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next door and choked him, and he expired in convulsions. *Aged Seven. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Our Young Folks 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. 18680301 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 No. II, Holiday Romance, 'Romance. From the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird' Description An account of the resource Published in Our Young Folks, vol. 4, no. 3 (March 1868), pp. 129-136. Edited by J.T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000052381508">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000052381508</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1868-03 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Illustrated by John Gilbert 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-03_No2_Holiday_Romance_Alice_Rainbird 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. 'Romance. From the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird' (March 1868). Holiday Romance. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date].  <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-03_No2_Holiday_Romance_Alice_Rainbird">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1868-03_No2_Holiday_Romance_Alice_Rainbird</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. PART II. ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS ALICE RAINBIRD* There was once a King, and he had a Queen, and he was the manliest of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. The King was, in his private profession, Under Government. The Queen’s father had been a medical man out of town. They had nineteen children, and were always having more. Seventeen of these children took care of the baby, and Alicia, the eldest, took care of them all. Their ages varied from seven years to seven months. Let us now resume our story. One day the king was going to the Office, when he stopped at the fishmonger’s to buy a pound and a half of salmon not too near the tail, which the Queen (who was a careful housekeeper) had requested him to send home. Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, "Certainly, sir, is there any other article, Good morning." The King went on towards the Office in a melancholy mood; for Quarter Day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children were growing out of their clothes. He had not proceeded far, when Mr. Pickles’s errand-boy came running after him, and said, "Sir, you didn’t notice the old lady in our shop." "What old lady?" inquired the King. "I saw none." Now the King had not seen any old lady, because this old lady had been invisible to him, though visible to Mr. Pickles’s boy. Probably because he messed and splashed the water about to that degree, and flopped the pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had not been visible to him, he would have spoilt her clothes. Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, smelling of dried lavender. "King Watkins the First, I believe?" said the old lady. "Watkins," replied the King, "is my name." "Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Princess Alicia?" said the old lady. "And of eighteen other darlings," replied the king. "Listen. You are going to the Office," said the old lady. It instantly flashed upon the King that she must be a Fairy, or how could she know that? "You are right," said the old lady, answering his thoughts, "I am the Good Fairy Grandmarina. Attend! When you return home to dinner, politely invite the Princess Alicia to have some of the salmon you bought just now." "It may disagree with her," said the King. The old lady became so very angry at this absurd idea, that the King was quite alarmed, and humbly begged her pardon. "We hear a great deal too much about this thing disagreeing and that thing disagreeing," said the old lady, with the greatest contempt it was possible to express. "Don’t be greedy. I think you want it all yourself." The King hung his head under this reproof, and said he wouldn’t talk about things disagreeing, any more. "Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, "and don’t. When the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon—as I think she will—you will find she will leave a fish-bone on her plate. Tell her to dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a present from me." "Is that all?" asked the King. "Don’t be impatient, sir," returned the Fairy Grandmarina, scolding him severely. "Don’t catch people short, before they have done speaking. Just the way with you grown-up persons. You are always doing it." The King again hung his head, and said he wouldn’t do so any more. "Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, "and don’t! Tell the Princess Alicia, with my love, that the fish-bone is a magic present which can only be used once; but that it will bring her, that once, whatever she wishes for, PROVIDED SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE RIGHT TIME. That is the message. Take care of it." The King was beginning, "Might I ask the reason—?" When the Fairy became absolutely furious. "Will you be good, sir?" she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the ground. "The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed! You are always wanting the reason. No reason. There! Hoity toity me! I am sick of your grown-up reasons." The King was extremely frightened by the old lady’s flying into such a passion, and said he was very sorry to have offended her, and he wouldn’t ask for reasons any more. "Be good, then," said the old lady, "and don’t!" With those words, Grandmarina vanished, and the King went on and on and on, till he came to the office. There he wrote and wrote and wrote, till it was time to go home again. Then he politely invited the Princess Alicia, as the Fairy had directed him, to partake of the salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very much, he saw the fish-bone on her plate, as the Fairy had told him he would, and he delivered the Fairy’s message, and the Princess Alicia took care to dry the bone, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shone like mother-of-pearl. And so, when the Queen was going to get up in the morning, she said, "O, dear me, dear me, my head, my head!" And then she fainted away. The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at the chamber door, asking about breakfast, was very much alarmed when she saw her Royal Mamma in this state, and she rang the bell for Peggy, — which was the name of the Lord Chamberlain. But remembering where the smelling-bottle was, she climbed on a chair and got it, and after that she climbed on another chair by the bedside and held the smelling-bottle to the Queen’s nose, and after that she jumped down and got some water, and after that she jumped up again and wetted the Queen’s forehead, and, in short, when the Lord Chamberlain came in, that dear old woman said to the little Princess, "What a Trot you are! I couldn’t have done it better myself!" But that was not the worst of the good Queen’s illness. O no! She was very ill indeed, for a long time. The Princess Alicia kept the seventeen young Princes and Princesses quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated the soup, and swept the hearth, and poured out the medicine, and nursed the Queen, and did all that ever she could, and was as busy busy busy as busy could be. For there were not many servants at that Palace for three reasons; because the King was short of money, because a rise in his office never seemed to come, and because quarter-day was so far off that it looked almost as far off and as little as one of the stars. But on the morning when the Queen fainted away, where was the magic fish-bone? Why, there it was in the Princess Alicia’s pocket. She had almost taken it out to bring the Queen to life again, when she put it back, and looked for the smelling-bottle. After the Queen had come out of her swoon that morning, and was dozing, the Princess Alicia hurried up-stairs to tell a most particular secret to a most particularly confidential friend of hers, who was a Duchess. People did suppose her to be a Doll, but she was really a Duchess, though nobody knew it except the Princess. This most particular secret was the secret about the magic fish-bone, the history of which was well known to the Duchess, because the princess told her everything. The Princess kneeled down by the bed on which the Duchess was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and whispered the secret to her. The Duchess smiled and nodded. People might have supposed that she never smiled and nodded, but she often did, though nobody knew it except the Princess. Then the Princess Alicia hurried down stairs again, to keep watch in the Queen’s room. She often kept watch by herself in the Queen’s room; but every evening, while the illness lasted, she sat there watching with the King. And every evening the King sat looking at her with a cross look, wondering why she never brought out the magic fish-bone. As often as she noticed this, she ran up stairs, whispered the secret to the Duchess over again, and said to the Duchess besides, "They think we children never have a reason or a meaning!" And the Duchess, though the most fashionable Duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye. "Alicia," said the King, one evening when she wished him Good Night. "Yes, Papa." "What is become of the magic fish-bone?" "In my pocket, Papa!" "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa." And so another time the dreadful little snapping pug-dog next door made a rush at one of the young Princes as he stood on the steps coming home from school, and terrified him out of his wits, and he put his hand through a pane of glass, and bled bled bled. When the seventeen other young Princes and Princesses saw him bleed bleed bleed, they were terrified out of their wits too, and screamed themselves black in their seventeen faces all at once. But the Princess Alicia put her hands over all their seventeen mouths, one after another, and persuaded them to be quiet because of the sick Queen. And then she put the wounded Prince’s hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while they stared with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down four and carry three eyes, and then she looked in the hand for bits of glass, and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. And then she said to two chubby-legged Princes, who were sturdy though small, "Bring me in the Royal rag-bag; I must snip and stitch and cut and contrive." So these two young Princes tugged at the Royal rag-bag and lugged it in, and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor with a large pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and snipped and stitched and cut and contrived, and made a bandage and put it on, and it fitted beautifully, and so when it was all done, she saw the King her Papa looking on by the door. "Alicia." "Yes, Papa." "What have you been doing?" "Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, Papa." "Where is the magic fish-bone?" "In my pocket, Papa." "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa!" After that, she ran up stairs to the Duchess and told her what had passed, and told her the secret over again, and the Duchess shook her flaxen curls, and laughed with her rosy lips. Well! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. The seventeen young Princes and Princesses were used to it, for they were almost always falling under the grate or down the stairs, but the baby was not used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. The way the poor little darling came to tumble was, that he was out of the Princess Alicia’s lap just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen fire, beginning to peel the turnips for the broth for dinner; and the way she came to be doing that was, that the King’s cook had run away that morning with her own true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then, the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, who cried at everything that happened, cried and roared. But the Princess Alicia (who couldn’t help crying a little herself) quietly called to them to be still, on account of not throwing back the Queen up stairs, who was fast getting well, and said, "Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, every one of you, while I examine baby!" Then she examined baby, and found that he hadn’t broken anything, and she held cold iron to his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor dear face, and he presently fell asleep in her arms. Then she said to the seventeen Princes and Princesses, "I am afraid to let him down yet, lest he should wake and feel pain, be good, and you shall all be cooks." They jumped for joy when they heard that, and began making themselves cooks’ caps out of old newspapers. So to one she gave the salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one she gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and to one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and all running about at work, she sitting in the middle, smothered in the great coarse apron, nursing baby. By and by the broth was done, and the baby woke up, smiling like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest Princess to hold, while the other Princes and Princesses were squeezed into a far-off corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning out the saucepan-full of broth, for fear (as they were always getting into trouble) they should get splashed and scalded. When the broth came tumbling out, steaming beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they clapped their hands. That made the baby clap his hands; and that, and his looking as if he had a comic toothache, made all the Princes and Princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said, "Laugh and be good, and after dinner we will make him a nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his nest and see a dance of eighteen cooks." That delighted the young Princes and Princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner, and then they in their cooks’ caps, and the Princess Alicia, in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, and crowed with joy. And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the First, her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said: "What have you been doing, Alicia?" "Cooking and contriving, Papa." "What else have you been doing, Alicia?" "Keeping the children light-hearted, Papa." "Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia?" "In my pocket, Papa." "I thought you had lost it?" "O no, Papa!" "Or forgotten it?" "No, indeed, Papa." The King then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby. "What is the matter, Papa?" "I am dreadfully poor, my child." "Have you no money at all, Papa?" "None, my child." "Is there no way of getting any, Papa?" "No way," said the King. "I have tried very hard, and I have tried all ways." When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia began to put her hand into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone. "Papa," said she, "when we have tried very hard, and tried all ways, we must have done our very very best?" "No doubt, Alicia." "When we have done our very very best, Papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others." This was the very secret connected with the magic fish-bone, which she had found out for herself from the good fairy Grandmarina’s words, and which she had so often whispered to her beautiful and fashionable friend, the Duchess. So she took out of her pocket the magic fish-bone, that had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl; and she gave it one little kiss, and wished it was quarter-day. And immediately it was Quarter-Day, and the King’s quarter’s salary came rattling down the chimney, and bounced into the middle of the floor. But this was not half of what happened, no, not a quarter, for immediately afterwards the good Fairy Grandmarina came riding in, in a carriage and four (Peacocks), with Mr. Pickles’s boy up behind, dressed in silver and gold, with a cocked-hat, powdered hair, pink silk stockings, a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped Mr. Pickles’s boy with his cocked-hat in his hand and wonderfully polite (being entirely changed by enchantment), and handed Grandmarina out, and there she stood, in her rich shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning herself with a sparkling fan. "Alicia, my dear," said this charming old Fairy, "how do you do, I hope I see you pretty well, give me a kiss." The Princess Alicia embraced her; and then Grandmarina turned to the King, and said rather sharply: "Are you good?" The King said he hoped so. "I suppose you know the reason, now, why my god-Daughter here," kissing the Princess again, "did not apply to the fish-bone sooner?" said the Fairy. The King made her a shy bow. "Ah! but you didn’t then!" said the Fairy. The king made her a shyer bow. "Any more reasons to ask for?" said the fairy. The King said no, and he was very sorry. "Be good, then," said the Fairy, "and live happy ever afterwards." Then Grandmarina waved her fan, and the Queen came in most splendidly dressed, and the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, no longer grown out of their clothes, came in, newly fitted out from top to toe, with tucks in everything to admit of its being let out. After that, the Fairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan, and the smothering coarse apron flew away, and she appeared exquisitely dressed, like a little Bride, with a wreath of orange-flowers and a silver veil. After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold and looking-glass, which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. After that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his face and eye not a bit the worse but much the better. Then Grandmarina begged to be introduced to the Duchess, and, when the Duchess was brought down many compliments passed between them. A little whispering took place between the Fairy and the Duchess, and then the Fairy said out loud, "Yes. I thought she would have told you." Grandmarina then turned to the King and Queen, and said, "We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of your company is requested at church in half an hour precisely." So she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage, and Mr. Pickles’s boy handed in the Duchess who sat by herself on the opposite seat, and then Mr. Pickles’s boy put up the steps and got up behind, and the Peacocks flew away with their tails spread. Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the Peacocks followed by the carriage, coming in at the window, it immediately occurred to him that something uncommon was going to happen. "Prince," said Grandmarina, "I bring you your Bride." The moment the Fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio’s face left off being sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled on his head. He got into the carriage by the Fairy’s invitation, and there he renewed his acquaintance with the Duchess whom he had seen before. In the church were the Prince’s relations and friends, and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the seventeen Princes and Princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbors. The marriage was beautiful beyond expression. The Duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit where she was supported by the cushion of the desk. Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding feast afterwards, in which there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding cake was delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round. When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried, Hip Hip Hip Hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the King and Queen that in future there would be eight Quarter-Days in every year, except in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, "My dears, you will have thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being born." On hearing such good news, everybody cried out "Hip Hip Hip Hurrah!" again. "It only remains," said Grandmarina in conclusion, "to make an end of the fish-bone." So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next door and choked him, and he expired in convulsions. *Aged Seven.