5 10 361 https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._I_Hackney-Coach_Stands/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.1__Hackney_Coach_Stands.pdf cce2bfad73cb3b81b96620f03386578e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350131 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We commence our "London Sketches" with this subject, because we maintain that hackney-coach stands—properly so called—belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, "and other large towns" (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession of certain vehicles which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny. Take a regular, ponderous, ricketty, London hackney-coach of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembled it—unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands—and we say it with deep regret—rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach; whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other mis-called improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean?—our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to "keep moving," desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land—they were settled by the Legislature—plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament. Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? —or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eight-pence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph. Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves half bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We take great interest in hackney-coaches; but we seldom drive, having a knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as great friends to horses— hackney-coach and otherwise—as the renowned Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes-horse—enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of mutton— and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of depositing one's-self upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach stands we take our stand. There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy-yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat; the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking cloths; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the "double shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm. The smart servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and scream "coach!" with all their might and main. The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather bottom of his voice—for its a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room—the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it—and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children are in perfect extasies of delight. What a commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded, and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is no doubt kissing them all round in the back-parlour. She appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a small black bottle and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps—bang goes the door—"Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom," says the waterman—"Good bye, Grandma," cry the children—off jingles the coach at the rate of three miles an hour—and the mamma and children retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the smart servant, not ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way, which are either intended for us or the pot-boy (we are not quite certain which), shuts the door—and the hackney-coach stand is again at a stand still. We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which "a servant of all work," who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside; and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed of course in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had no doubt brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was worth five, at least, to them. What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body. The auto-biography of a broken-down hackney-coach would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hacknied dramatist; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief! Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition; when it’s a matter of neck or nothing— life or death—your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab from his first entry into public life, whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility—a victim to fashion—a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery—stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office—progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to—a stand! Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands.' The Evening Chronicle (31 January 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350131/036/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350131/036/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-01-31 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. I, Hackney-Coach Stands' (31 January 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-01-31_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoI_Hackney_Coach_Stands</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (31 January 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We commence our "London Sketches" with this subject, because we maintain that hackney-coach stands—properly so called—belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, "and other large towns" (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession of certain vehicles which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny. Take a regular, ponderous, ricketty, London hackney-coach of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembled it—unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands—and we say it with deep regret—rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach; whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other mis-called improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean?—our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to "keep moving," desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land—they were settled by the Legislature—plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament. Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? —or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eight-pence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph. Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves half bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We take great interest in hackney-coaches; but we seldom drive, having a knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as great friends to horses— hackney-coach and otherwise—as the renowned Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes-horse—enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of mutton— and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of depositing one's-self upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach stands we take our stand. There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy-yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat; the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking cloths; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the "double shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm. The smart servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and scream "coach!" with all their might and main. The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather bottom of his voice—for its a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room—the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it—and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children are in perfect extasies of delight. What a commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded, and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is no doubt kissing them all round in the back-parlour. She appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a small black bottle and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps—bang goes the door—"Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom," says the waterman—"Good bye, Grandma," cry the children—off jingles the coach at the rate of three miles an hour—and the mamma and children retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the smart servant, not ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way, which are either intended for us or the pot-boy (we are not quite certain which), shuts the door—and the hackney-coach stand is again at a stand still. We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which "a servant of all work," who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside; and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed of course in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had no doubt brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was worth five, at least, to them. What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body. The auto-biography of a broken-down hackney-coach would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hacknied dramatist; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief! Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition; when it’s a matter of neck or nothing— life or death—your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab from his first entry into public life, whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility—a victim to fashion—a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery—stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office—progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to—a stand! https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._II_Gin_Shops/1835-02-07_Sketches_of_London_No.2_Gin_Shops.pdf 25cc2c9645b1e657da3adfa362385f66 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350207 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. It is a very remarkable circumstance that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable: and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the the trades is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety - they are very regular in their irregularities. You know the period at which the emergency will arise, and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad you are all ready for him - kill or cure - pills or bullets - calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket barrel. If a dog happen to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue out of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets; nay, worse; for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease; moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it diffuses itself almost incredible. We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were, an inordinate love of plate glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops, in different parts of town, were pilled down; spacious premises, with stuccoed fronts, and gold letters, were erected instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets, roofs supported by massive pillars, doors knocked into windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, one shopman into a dozen - and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in time, that the Commissioners of Bankrupt were as competent to decide such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement, and gentle examination did wonders. The disease abated; it died away; and a year or two of comparative tranquility ensued. Suddenly it burst out again among the chemists; the symptoms were the same with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany varnish, and expensive floor-cloth; then the hoslers were infected and began to pill down their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congratulate themselves upon its entire disappearance when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans and keepers of "wine vaults;" from that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms; and onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public houses, and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rose-wood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks at the corner of every street. The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them is divided into branches, is most amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you "To the Counting-House," another to the "Bottle Department," a third to the "Wholesale Department," a fourth to "The Wine Promenade," and so fourth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a "Brandy Bell," or a "Whiskey Entrance." Then ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community, as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between "The cream of the valley," "The out and out," "The no mistake," "The good for mixing," "The real knock-me-down," "The celebrated butter gin," "The regular flare up," and a dozen other equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with in every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin shops in and near Drury-lane, Holborn, St. Giles', Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London - there is more of filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-lane through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the "Rookery." The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two, or even three; fruit and "sweet-stuff" manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlors, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a "musician" in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one - filth everywhere - a gutter before the houses and a drain behind them - clothes drying at the windows, slops emptying from the ditto; girls of 14 or 15, with matted hair, walking about bare-footed, and in old white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes, and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging about, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as "Old Tom, 549;" "Young Tom, 360;" "Samson, 1421." Behind the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and "compounds." They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. Look at the groups of customers and observe the different air with which they call for what they want, as they are more or less struck by the grandeur of the establishment. The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour of the young ladies who officiate; and receive their half-quarters of gin and peppermint with considerable deference, prefacing a request for "one of them soft biscuits," with a "Just be good enough, ma'am," &c. They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in the brown-coat and bright buttons, who ushering in his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless a manner as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a "kervorten and a three-out glass," just as if the place were his own. "Gin for you, sir?" says the young lady when she has drawn it, carefully looking every way but the right one to show that the wink had no effect upon her. "For me, Mary, my dear," replies the gentleman in brown. "My name an't Mary as it happens," says the young girl in a most insinuating manner as she delivers the change. "Vell, if it an't, it ought to be," responds the irresistible one; "all the Marys as ever I see was handsome gals." Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent misunderstanding that "this gentleman pays," calls for "a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar," the drinking which, and sipping another, accompanied by sundry whisperings to her companion, and no small quantity of giggling, occupies a considering time. Observe the group on the other side: those two old men who came in "just to have a drain," finished their third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying drunk, and the fat, comfortable-looking elderly women, who had "a glass of rum-srub" each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that "grief never mended no broken bones, and as good people's wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on'em, and that's all about it;" a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers - cold wretched-looking creatures, in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and threatening the life of, each other for the last hour, become furious in their disputes; and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the infallible expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. Out rush the man in the fur cap, and the potboy; a scene of riot and confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; in come the police; and the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because if it were pursued farther it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken, besotted men, and wretched, broken-down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; - forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch, not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were. Until then, we almost despair of their decrease. Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. II, Gin Shops.' The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. II, Gin Shops' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350207/028/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350207/028/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-07 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. "Sketches of London, No. II." The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoII_Gin_Shops</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (7 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. It is a very remarkable circumstance that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable: and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the the trades is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety - they are very regular in their irregularities. You know the period at which the emergency will arise, and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad you are all ready for him - kill or cure - pills or bullets - calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket barrel. If a dog happen to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue out of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets; nay, worse; for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease; moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it diffuses itself almost incredible.  We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were, an inordinate love of plate glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops, in different parts of town, were pilled down; spacious premises, with stuccoed fronts, and gold letters, were erected instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets, roofs supported by massive pillars, doors knocked into windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, one shopman into a dozen - and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in time, that the Commissioners of Bankrupt were as competent to decide such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement, and gentle examination did wonders. The disease abated; it died away; and a year or two of comparative tranquility ensued. Suddenly it burst out again among the chemists; the symptoms were the same with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany varnish, and expensive floor-cloth; then the hoslers were infected and began to pill down their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congratulate themselves upon its entire disappearance when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans and keepers of "wine vaults;" from that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms; and onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public houses, and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rose-wood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks at the corner of every street. The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them is divided into branches, is most amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you "To the Counting-House," another to the "Bottle Department," a third to the "Wholesale Department," a fourth to "The Wine Promenade," and so fourth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a "Brandy Bell," or a "Whiskey Entrance." Then ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community, as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between "The cream of the valley," "The out and out," "The no mistake," "The good for mixing," "The real knock-me-down," "The celebrated butter gin," "The regular flare up," and a dozen other equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with in every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin shops in and near Drury-lane, Holborn, St. Giles', Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London - there is more of filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-lane through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the "Rookery." The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two, or even three; fruit and "sweet-stuff" manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlors, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a "musician" in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one - filth everywhere - a gutter before the houses and a drain behind them - clothes drying at the windows, slops emptying from the ditto; girls of 14 or 15, with matted hair, walking about bare-footed, and in old white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes, and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging about, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as "Old Tom, 549;" "Young Tom, 360;" "Samson, 1421." Behind the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and "compounds." They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. Look at the groups of customers and observe the different air with which they call for what they want, as they are more or less struck by the grandeur of the establishment. The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour of the young ladies who officiate; and receive their half-quarters of gin and peppermint with considerable deference, prefacing a request for "one of them soft biscuits," with a "Just be good enough, ma'am," &c. They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in the brown-coat and bright buttons, who ushering in his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless a manner as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a "kervorten and a three-out glass," just as if the place were his own. "Gin for you, sir?" says the young lady when she has drawn it, carefully looking every way but the right one to show that the wink had no effect upon her. "For me, Mary, my dear," replies the gentleman in brown. "My name an't Mary as it happens," says the young girl in a most insinuating manner as she delivers the change. "Vell, if it an't, it ought to be," responds the irresistible one; "all the Marys as ever I see was handsome gals." Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent misunderstanding that "this gentleman pays," calls for "a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar," the drinking which, and sipping another, accompanied by sundry whisperings to her companion, and no small quantity of giggling, occupies a considering time. Observe the group on the other side: those two old men who came in "just to have a drain," finished their third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying drunk, and the fat, comfortable-looking elderly women, who had "a glass of rum-srub" each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that "grief never mended no broken bones, and as good people's wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on'em, and that's all about it;" a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers - cold wretched-looking creatures, in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and threatening the life of, each other for the last hour, become furious in their disputes; and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the infallible expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. Out rush the man in the fur cap, and the potboy; a scene of riot and confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; in come the police; and the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because if it were pursued farther it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken, besotted men, and wretched, broken-down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; - forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch, not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were. Until then, we almost despair of their decrease.  https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._III_Early_Coaches/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_No.III_Early_Coaches.pdf 74407d4b49189c6281d799ebb2a32299 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350219 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a succession of early coaches an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel would be nothing to breaking his rest, his peace, his heart—everything but his fast—between four and five; and the punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by the bye, who has discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful Churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a small coach, which travelled day and night; and securing the remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last travels, leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on his line of road, might think proper to inflict. Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey? You receive an intimation from your place of business—wherever that may be, or whatever you may be—that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an express is immediately dispatched to the washer-woman’s; everybody is in a bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking office to secure your place. Here a painful consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills, the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-dozen people are "booking" brown paper parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness, which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so many Atlas's, keep rushing in and out with large packages on their shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking office clerks can have been before they were booking office clerks; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the passengers’ names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—actually whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead!— In frosty weather, too! They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—"What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?"—"Six o’clock," replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk. "Rather before than arter," adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street, ruminating, as you bend your steps homewards, on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty by custom. If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, over night, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small-hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been "going off" before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether" one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow, on the off-leader: anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard, an old school-fellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don’t take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering! —rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be; you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he’s talking now—what’s that he said? Five o’clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed as if you were rehearsing the tent scene in Richard. The vision is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker’s shop is your own bedroom, and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles, or the pannels of the door. You proceed to dress yourself with all possible dispatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the things you want are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete your toilette, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham great coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet bag in your right hand, you walk lightly down stairs lest you should awake any of the family; and after pausing in the sitting-room for one moment just to have a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the crumbs of last night’s supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the street door, and find yourself fairly in the street. A thaw, by all that's miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is "coming in" in every area—the pipes have burst—the water butts are running over—the kennels seem to be doing matches against time—pump-handles descend of their own accord—horses in market-carts fall down, and there’s no one to help them up again— policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass—here and there a milk woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping—boys who "don’t sleep in the house," and an't allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did. It strikes a quarter-past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your way to the Golden-cross, and you discover for the first time that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back; there is no place open to go into, and you have therefore no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham High-flyer, which, for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether; for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the booking-office, which, with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to "The Tap"—not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,—when the kettle boils; an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s church steeple just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy and water in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office with breathless rapidity. The place which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of "Times, gen’lm’n, Times," "Here’s Chron—Chron—Chron," "Herald, ma’am," "Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n," "Curious case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies," &.c &c. The inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the appearance of chrystallized rats tails, one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan’s pipes. "Take off the cloths, Bob," says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue great coat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart that you can’t see them both at the same time. "Now, gen’lm’n," cries the guard, with the way-bill in his hand. "Five minutes behind time already!" Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling, and pushing, and helping, and trouble, which she repays by expressing her solemn conviction that she'll never be able to get down again. "All right," sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards in proof of the soundness of his wind. "Let ’em go, Harry, give 'em their heads," cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were "all right," as well as the coach, and looking forward as anxiously to the termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done long since, to the conclusion of our article. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches.' The Evening Chronicle (19 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-19 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0001315/18350219/008/0001" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0001315/18350219/008/0001</a>.  Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. III, Early Coaches' (19 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-19_Sketches_of_London_NoIII_Early_Coaches</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (19 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a succession of early coaches an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel would be nothing to breaking his rest, his peace, his heart—everything but his fast—between four and five; and the punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by the bye, who has discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful Churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a small coach, which travelled day and night; and securing the remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last travels, leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on his line of road, might think proper to inflict. Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey? You receive an intimation from your place of business—wherever that may be, or whatever you may be—that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an express is immediately dispatched to the washer-woman’s; everybody is in a bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking office to secure your place. Here a painful consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills, the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-dozen people are "booking" brown paper parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness, which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so many Atlas's, keep rushing in and out with large packages on their shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking office clerks can have been before they were booking office clerks; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the passengers’ names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—actually whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead!— In frosty weather, too! They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—"What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?"—"Six o’clock," replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk. "Rather before than arter," adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street, ruminating, as you bend your steps homewards, on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty by custom. If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, over night, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small-hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been "going off" before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether" one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow, on the off-leader: anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard, an old school-fellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don’t take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering! —rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be; you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he’s talking now—what’s that he said? Five o’clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed as if you were rehearsing the tent scene in Richard. The vision is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker’s shop is your own bedroom, and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles, or the pannels of the door. You proceed to dress yourself with all possible dispatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the things you want are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete your toilette, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham great coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet bag in your right hand, you walk lightly down stairs lest you should awake any of the family; and after pausing in the sitting-room for one moment just to have a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the crumbs of last night’s supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the street door, and find yourself fairly in the street. A thaw, by all that's miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is "coming in" in every area—the pipes have burst—the water butts are running over—the kennels seem to be doing matches against time—pump-handles descend of their own accord—horses in market-carts fall down, and there’s no one to help them up again— policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass—here and there a milk woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping—boys who "don’t sleep in the house," and an't allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did. It strikes a quarter-past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your way to the Golden-cross, and you discover for the first time that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back; there is no place open to go into, and you have therefore no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham High-flyer, which, for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether; for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the booking-office, which, with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to "The Tap"—not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,—when the kettle boils; an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s church steeple just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy and water in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office with breathless rapidity. The place which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of "Times, gen’lm’n, Times," "Here’s Chron—Chron—Chron," "Herald, ma’am," "Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n," "Curious case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies," &.c &c. The inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the appearance of chrystallized rats tails, one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan’s pipes. "Take off the cloths, Bob," says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue great coat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart that you can’t see them both at the same time. "Now, gen’lm’n," cries the guard, with the way-bill in his hand. "Five minutes behind time already!" Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling, and pushing, and helping, and trouble, which she repays by expressing her solemn conviction that she'll never be able to get down again. "All right," sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards in proof of the soundness of his wind. "Let ’em go, Harry, give 'em their heads," cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were "all right," as well as the coach, and looking forward as anxiously to the termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done long since, to the conclusion of our article. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._IV_The_Parish/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.4_The_Parish.pdf 81f01a6a7cbbf36d5ac8e383969da484 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350228 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish? There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish." Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish.' The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' (28 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish?  There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys.  Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle.  His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise.  The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle.  Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once.  It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power.  He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish." https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._V_The_House/1835-03-07_Sketches_of_London_No.V_The_House.pdf 0dd8f44e2c592fcc3e0b20976c611878 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350307 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at the rather ominous title we have chosen for our fifth sketch. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of "the House" and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate would be productive of some amusement; and as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time—have attended it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our own personal peace and comfort—we have determined to accept the description. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Sergeants at Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier feeds, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once, into the building, and upon our subject. Half-past four o'clock, and at five the mover of the Address will be "on his legs," as the newspaper announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads. What a scene of bustle and excitement! The members are pouring in one after the other in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages scrutinize them as they pass with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally becomes a person of great importance. Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of "That's Sir John Thompson." "Which? him with the gilt order round his neck?" "No, no; that's one of the messengers—that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson." "Here's Mr. Smith." "Lor! Yes, how dy'e do, sir?—(He is our new member)—How do you do, sir?" Mr. Smith stops; turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning), seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, rushes into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his "fellow townsman." The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer crowned, broad brimmed hat, white corderoy breeches and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That's the great conservator of the peace of Westminster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they've been here. "Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr.—?" timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office. "How can you ask such questions, sir?" replies the functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand. "Pray do not, sir, I beg of you; pray do not, sir." Here the little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just as this moment, some unfortunate individual appears, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable down stairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. "Go back sir—you must not come here!" shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. "Do you hear, sir—will you go back?" continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some dozen yards. "Come, don't push me," replies the stranger, turning angrily round. "I will, sir;" "You won't, sir;" "Go out, sir:" "Take your hands off me, sir;" "Go out of the passage, sir." "You're a Jack-in-office, sir." "A what?" ejaculates he of the boots. "A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow," reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion. "Pray do not force me to put you out, sir," retorts the other— "pray do not—my instructions are to keep this passage clear—it's the Speaker's orders, sir." "D—n the Speaker, sir," shouts the intruder. "Here, Wilson!—Collins!" gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; "take this man out— take him out, I say! How dare you, sir?" &c., and down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the Commander-in-Chief and his supernumeraries. "Make way, gentlemen, —pray make way for the Members, I beg of you;" shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of the liberal and independent. You see this ferocious-looking personage, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustaches would give him the appearance of a figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance possessed one ray of the intelligence communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is a militia-man, with a brain slightly damaged, and (quite unintentionally) the most amusing person in the House. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm—they are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. You must often have seen him in the box-lobbies of the theatres during the vacation. He is very punctual in his attendance at the house, and his self-satisfied "He-ar-He-ar," is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter. This is the man who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers' Gallery in the old House of Commons to inquire the name of a gentleman who was using an eye-glass, in order that he (the Militia-man) might complain to the Speaker that the individual in question was quizzing him! On another occasion he repaired to Bellamy's kitchen—a refreshment room where persons who are not members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper who he was aware were not Members, and could not in that place very well resent his insolence, he indulged in the exquisite pleasantry and gentlemanly facetiousness of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! Poor creature! he is generally harmless, and his absurdities are amusing enough. By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the house, as the door is opened for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topic of the day. That smart looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facing and cuffs, who wears his D'Orsay hat so rakishly, is "Honest Tom," a metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague. That quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief and gloves, whose closely buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The elderly man with the bald head and thin face, who is leaning against the wall perusing the leading articles of the soi-disant "Leading Journal," is the identical "old country gentleman" who has lived for two-thirds of his whole existence exactly one minute and a quarter's walk from Black-friars'-bridge. The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good specimen of that class of men—now nearly extinct. He is also a county member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose wide brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side; the knee breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver-watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and white handkerchief tied in a great bow with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt frill. It is a costume one seldom sees now-a-days, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be extinct too. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o-clock except on regular field days, of which everybody was apprized before-hand. He has a great contempt for all young members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he has sat in the house for fifteen years at least, without saying anything at all. He is of opinion that "That young Macaulay" was a regular imposter; he allows that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but he's too young Sir—too young. He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how the house once divided on the question, that fresh candles be new brought in; how the Speakers was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three hours, till some member could be knocked up, and brought back again to move the adjournment—and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound contempt, and conjuring up before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old house in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism, flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great coat is, who has accosted every member who has entered the House since we have been standing here. He is not a member; he is only an "hereditary bondsman," or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who had just procured his forty-second frank from a member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again—another! Bless the man, he has got his hat and pockets full already. We'll try our fortune at the Strangers' Gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success. What on earth are you about? Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open? Nonsense. Just preserve the order for an autograph, if its worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and fore-finger expressively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper. "Any room?" "Not an inch—two or three dozen gentlemen waiting downstairs on the chance of somebody's going out." Pull out your purse—"Are you quite sure there's no room?"—I'll go and look," replies the door-keeper, with a wishful glance at your purse, "but I'm afraid there's not." He returns, and with real feeling, assures you that it's morally impossible to get near the gallery. It's no use waiting. When you are refused admission into the Stranger's Gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be re-markably full indeed. Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary door-way adjoining the King's entrance to the House of Lords. We will endeavour to smuggle you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you may peep into the House for one instant, but not longer, for its against orders our being there at all. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best: through this little wicket—there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. You heard the "hear, hear," which occasioned that laugh; it proceaded from our warlike friend in the mustachios; he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look round you, and retire; the body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members, some with their legs on the back of the opposite seat; some with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all of them talking, laughing, lounging, coughin, o-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion to be met with in no other place in existence. There are a few more portraits—some in the body of the house—others in one of the galleries—which we should like to lay before our readers. We have exhausted our space, and most therefore reserve them for our next sketch, which will be entitled "Bellamy's." Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. V, The House.' The Evening Chronicle (7 March 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. V, The House' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350307/019/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350307/019/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-03-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. V, The House' (7 March 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoV_The_House</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (7 March 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at the rather ominous title we have chosen for our fifth sketch. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of "the House" and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate would be productive of some amusement; and as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time—have attended it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our own personal peace and comfort—we have determined to accept the description. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Sergeants at Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier feeds, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once, into the building, and upon our subject. Half-past four o'clock, and at five the mover of the Address will be "on his legs," as the newspaper announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads. What a scene of bustle and excitement! The members are pouring in one after the other in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages scrutinize them as they pass with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally becomes a person of great importance. Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of "That's Sir John Thompson." "Which? him with the gilt order round his neck?" "No, no; that's one of the messengers—that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson." "Here's Mr. Smith." "Lor! Yes, how dy'e do, sir?—(He is our new member)—How do you do, sir?" Mr. Smith stops; turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning), seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, rushes into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his "fellow townsman." The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer crowned, broad brimmed hat, white corderoy breeches and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That's the great conservator of the peace of Westminster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they've been here. "Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr.—?" timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office. "How can you ask such questions, sir?" replies the functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand. "Pray do not, sir, I beg of you; pray do not, sir." Here the little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just as this moment, some unfortunate individual appears, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable down stairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. "Go back sir—you must not come here!" shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. "Do you hear, sir—will you go back?" continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some dozen yards. "Come, don't push me," replies the stranger, turning angrily round. "I will, sir;" "You won't, sir;" "Go out, sir:" "Take your hands off me, sir;" "Go out of the passage, sir." "You're a Jack-in-office, sir." "A what?" ejaculates he of the boots. "A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow," reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion. "Pray do not force me to put you out, sir," retorts the other— "pray do not—my instructions are to keep this passage clear—it's the Speaker's orders, sir." "D—n the Speaker, sir," shouts the intruder. "Here, Wilson!—Collins!" gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; "take this man out— take him out, I say! How dare you, sir?" &c., and down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the Commander-in-Chief and his supernumeraries. "Make way, gentlemen, —pray make way for the Members, I beg of you;" shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of the liberal and independent. You see this ferocious-looking personage, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustaches would give him the appearance of a figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance possessed one ray of the intelligence communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is a militia-man, with a brain slightly damaged, and (quite unintentionally) the most amusing person in the House. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm—they are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. You must often have seen him in the box-lobbies of the theatres during the vacation. He is very punctual in his attendance at the house, and his self-satisfied "He-ar-He-ar," is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter. This is the man who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers' Gallery in the old House of Commons to inquire the name of a gentleman who was using an eye-glass, in order that he (the Militia-man) might complain to the Speaker that the individual in question was quizzing him! On another occasion he repaired to Bellamy's kitchen—a refreshment room where persons who are not members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper who he was aware were not Members, and could not in that place very well resent his insolence, he indulged in the exquisite pleasantry and gentlemanly facetiousness of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! Poor creature! he is generally harmless, and his absurdities are amusing enough.  By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the house, as the door is opened for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topic of the day. That smart looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facing and cuffs, who wears his D'Orsay hat so rakishly, is "Honest Tom," a metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague. That quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief and gloves, whose closely buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The elderly man with the bald head and thin face, who is leaning against the wall perusing the leading articles of the soi-disant "Leading Journal," is the identical "old country gentleman" who has lived for two-thirds of his whole existence exactly one minute and a quarter's walk from Black-friars'-bridge. The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good specimen of that class of men—now nearly extinct. He is also a county member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose wide brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side; the knee breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver-watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and white handkerchief tied in a great bow with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt frill. It is a costume one seldom sees now-a-days, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be extinct too. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o-clock except on regular field days, of which everybody was apprized before-hand. He has a great contempt for all young members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he has sat in the house for fifteen years at least, without saying anything at all. He is of opinion that "That young Macaulay" was a regular imposter; he allows that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but he's too young Sir—too young. He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how the house once divided on the question, that fresh candles be new brought in; how the Speakers was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three hours, till some member could be knocked up, and brought back again to move the adjournment—and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound contempt, and conjuring up before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old house in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism, flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great coat is, who has accosted every member who has entered the House since we have been standing here. He is not a member; he is only an "hereditary bondsman," or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who had just procured his forty-second frank from a member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again—another! Bless the man, he has got his hat and pockets full already. We'll try our fortune at the Strangers' Gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success. What on earth are you about? Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open? Nonsense. Just preserve the order for an autograph, if its worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and fore-finger expressively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper. "Any room?" "Not an inch—two or three dozen gentlemen waiting downstairs on the chance of somebody's going out." Pull out your purse—"Are you quite sure there's no room?"—I'll go and look," replies the door-keeper, with a wishful glance at your purse, "but I'm afraid there's not." He returns, and with real feeling, assures you that it's morally impossible to get near the gallery. It's no use waiting. When you are refused admission into the Stranger's Gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be re-markably full indeed. Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary door-way adjoining the King's entrance to the House of Lords. We will endeavour to smuggle you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you may peep into the House for one instant, but not longer, for its against orders our being there at all. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best: through this little wicket—there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. You heard the "hear, hear," which occasioned that laugh; it proceaded from our warlike friend in the mustachios; he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look round you, and retire; the body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members, some with their legs on the back of the opposite seat; some with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all of them talking, laughing, lounging, coughin, o-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion to be met with in no other place in existence. There are a few more portraits—some in the body of the house—others in one of the galleries—which we should like to lay before our readers. We have exhausted our space, and most therefore reserve them for our next sketch, which will be entitled "Bellamy's." https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._VI_London_Recreations/1835-03-17_Sketches_of_London_No._VI_London_Recreations.pdf a238431fef3737e16a246d9384dbb3bb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350317 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent among the small gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with Court Journal-reading families, and circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up tavern assemblies in humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy "large room" of some second rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some "fancy fair in high life," suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a languishing condition; Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s nursery ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few other weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the contemptible attempt at imitation, to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement in our walks and musings; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes a great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young fellows, who are holding parasols over them - of course only to keep the sun off, while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week day he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of the dining room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you - who are a young friend of the family - with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town - say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife - who is as clean and compact a little body as himself - have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it by the hour together. He has always something to do in it, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and messing about, with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour window, and geranium-pots in the little front court testify. She takes a great pride in the garden too, and when one of the four fruit-trees produces a rather larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass, on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it with his own hands. On a summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers - No bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch; there used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days - whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings - has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing - we hope not. Let us turn, now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived - we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural "Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women - boys and girls - sweethearts and married people - babies in arms, and children in chaises - pipes and shrimps - cigars and perriwinkles - tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, "cutting it uncommon fat!") - ladies, with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass, in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen - husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of "srimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort - boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked 'em - gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes - and children of every age and size in incredible numbers, from the boy of one in a straw hat and lace cockade, to the girl of twelve in a little scanty spencer, with a beaver bonnet and green veil. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile; but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a "ma’am" at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them - that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother, a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of "Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for it's a matter of course here. Every woman in "the gardens" who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it's impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of "tea for four: bread and butter for forty;" and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper "pigtail" on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently "keeping company" with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints - such as "Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know." "I shall look out for the cake, Sally." "I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy" and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she's in perfect ecstacies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the "gin-and-water warm with," of which Uncle Bill ordered "glasses round" after tea, "jist to keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch a day, which certainly was 'rayther warm,' as the child said when it fell into the fire." It's getting dark, and the people begin to move: the field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along: the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep - the mothers begin to wish they were at home again - sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives - the gardens look mournful enough by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers - and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. There are many other classes who regularly pursue the same round of reaction. The better description of clerks form rowing clubs, and dress themselves like sailors at fancy balls; others resort to the billiard table. Some people think the greatest enjoyment of existence is to stew in an unwholesome vault for a whole night, drinking bad spirits and hearing worse singing; and others go half-price to the theatre regularly every evening. A certain class of donkeys think the chief happiness of human existence is to knock at doors and run away again; and there are other men whose only recreation is leaning against the posts at street-corners, and not moving at all. Whatever be the class, or whatever the recreation, so long as it does not render a man absurd himself, or offensive to others, we hope it will never be interfered with, either by a misdirected feeling of propriety on the one hand, or detestable cant on the other. (Footnote): On consideration, we postpone for a week or two the sketch we announced in our last. We have various reasons for doing so, among which the inevitable sameness of the subject is not the least. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations.' The Evening Chronicle (17 March 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350317/033/0003" class="waffle-rich-text-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350317/033/0003</a>. Source is faded and illegible in places. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-03-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. VI, London Recreations' (17 March 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-03-17_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVI_London_Recreations</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (17 March 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent among the small gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with Court Journal-reading families, and circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up tavern assemblies in humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy "large room" of some second rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some "fancy fair in high life," suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a languishing condition; Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s nursery ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few other weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the contemptible attempt at imitation, to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement in our walks and musings; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes a great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young fellows, who are holding parasols over them - of course only to keep the sun off, while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week day he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of the dining room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you - who are a young friend of the family - with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town - say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife - who is as clean and compact a little body as himself - have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it by the hour together. He has always something to do in it, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and messing about, with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour window, and geranium-pots in the little front court testify. She takes a great pride in the garden too, and when one of the four fruit-trees produces a rather larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass, on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it with his own hands. On a summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers - No bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch; there used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days - whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings - has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing - we hope not. Let us turn, now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived - we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural "Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women - boys and girls - sweethearts and married people - babies in arms, and children in chaises - pipes and shrimps - cigars and perriwinkles - tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, "cutting it uncommon fat!") - ladies, with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass, in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen - husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of "srimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort - boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked 'em - gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes - and children of every age and size in incredible numbers, from the boy of one in a straw hat and lace cockade, to the girl of twelve in a little scanty spencer, with a beaver bonnet and green veil. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile; but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a "ma’am" at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them - that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother, a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of "Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for it's a matter of course here. Every woman in "the gardens" who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it's impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of "tea for four: bread and butter for forty;" and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper "pigtail" on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently "keeping company" with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints - such as "Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know." "I shall look out for the cake, Sally." "I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy" and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she's in perfect ecstacies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the "gin-and-water warm with," of which Uncle Bill ordered "glasses round" after tea, "jist to keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch a day, which certainly was 'rayther warm,' as the child said when it fell into the fire." It's getting dark, and the people begin to move: the field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along: the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep - the mothers begin to wish they were at home again - sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives - the gardens look mournful enough by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers - and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. There are many other classes who regularly pursue the same round of reaction. The better description of clerks form rowing clubs, and dress themselves like sailors at fancy balls; others resort to the billiard table. Some people think the greatest enjoyment of existence is to stew in an unwholesome vault for a whole night, drinking bad spirits and hearing worse singing; and others go half-price to the theatre regularly every evening. A certain class of donkeys think the chief happiness of human existence is to knock at doors and run away again; and there are other men whose only recreation is leaning against the posts at street-corners, and not moving at all. Whatever be the class, or whatever the recreation, so long as it does not render a man absurd himself, or offensive to others, we hope it will never be interfered with, either by a misdirected feeling of propriety on the one hand, or detestable cant on the other.  (Footnote): On consideration, we postpone for a week or two the sketch we announced in our last. We have various reasons for doing so, among which the inevitable sameness of the subject is not the least.  https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._VII_Public_Dinners/1835-04-07_Sketches_of_London_No.VII_Public_Dinners.pdf f7f7af887d4eb0406d927410d95ee4ae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350407 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. All public dinners in London—from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the chimney-sweepers' "hanniversary" at White Conduit-house; from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers'; from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victuallers—are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments of this description, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity is the most amusing. At a Company's dinner the people are nearly all alike—regular old stagers who make it a matter of business, and a thing not to be laughed at; at a political dinner everybody is disagreeable and inclined to speechify—much the same thing, by the bye; but at a charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions: the wine may not be remarkably special, to be sure, and we have heard some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the collection; but we really think the amusement to be derived from the occasion sufficient to counterbalance even these disadvantages. Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of this description—"Indigent Orphans' Friends' Benevolent Institution," we think it is. The name of the charity is a line or two longer, but you have forgotten the rest. You have a distinct recollection, however, that you purchased a ticket at the solicitation of some charitable friend, and you deposit yourself in a hackney-coach, the driver of which—no doubt that you may do the thing in style —turns a deaf ear to your earnest entreaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen-street, and persists in carrying you to the very door of the Freemasons', round which crowded people are assembled to witness the entrance of the indigent orphans' friends. You hear great speculations, as you pay the fare, on the possibility of your being the Noble Lord who is announced to fill the chair on the occasion, and are highly gratified to hear it eventually decided that you are only a "wocalist." The first thing that strikes you on your entrance is the astonishing importance of the committee. You observe a door on the first landing, carefully guarded by two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen, with very red faces, keep running with a degree of speed highly unbecoming the gravity of persons of their years and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at the bustle; and thinking, in your innocence, that two or three people must have been carried out of the dining-room in fits at the very least. You are immediately undeceived by the waiter—"Up stairs, if you please, sir; this is the committee room." Up stairs you go, accordingly; wondering as you mount, what the duties of the committee can be and whether they ever do anything beyond confusing each other, and running over the waiters. Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange (which as a matter of course you lose before you require it again), you enter the hall, down which there are four long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross table on a raised platform at the upper end for the reception of the very particular friends of the indigent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody’s card in it, you wisely seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decanters of Sherry down the tables, at very respectable distances. Melancholy-looking salt-cellars, and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth, and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London since the accession of George the First; the musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously—playing no notes but notes of preparation; and several gentlemen are gliding along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and more dismal as they meet with everybody’s card but their own. You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and—not being in the habit of attending public dinners—are somewhat struck by the appearance of the party on which your eye rests. One of its principal members appears to be a little man, with a long and rather inflamed face, and grey hair brushed bolt upright in front; he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck, without any stiffener, as an apology for a neck-kerchief, and is addressed by his companions by the familiar appellation of—"Fitz." Near him is a stout man in a white neck-kerchief and buff waistcoat; with shiny dark hair, cut very short in front, and a great, round, healthy-looking face, on which he studiously preserves a half sentimental simper. Next him, again, is a large-headed man, with black hair and bushy whiskers; and opposite them are two or three others, one of whom is a little round-faced person, in a dress-stock and blue under-waistcoat. There is something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly describe what it is; you cannot divest yourself of the idea that they have come for some other purpose than mere eating and drinking. You have no time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters (who have been arranged in lines down the room, placing the dishes on table) retire to the lower end; the dark man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has the direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls out "band" in a very loud voice; out burst the orchestra, up rise the visitors; in march fourteen stewards, each with a long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a pantomime; then the Chairman, then the titled visitors; they all make their way up the room, as fast as they can, bowing, and smiling, and smirking, and looking remarkably amiable. The applause ceases; grace is said; the clatter of plates and dishes begins; and every one appears highly gratified either with the presence of the distinguished visitors, or the commencement of the anxiously-expected dinner. As to the dinner itself—the mere dinner—it goes off much the same everywhere. Tureens of soup are emptied with awful rapidity—waiters take plates of turbot away to get lobster-sauce, and bring back plates of lobster-sauce without turbot. People who can carve poultry are great fools if they own it, and people who can’t have no wish to learn—the knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber’s music, and Auber’s music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner, if you could hear anything besides the violoncello—the substantials disappear—moulds of jelly vanish like lightning—hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent exertions— people who have looked very cross hitherto, become remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine in the most friendly manner possible—old gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies’ gallery, and take great pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly favoured in this respect—every one appears disposed to become talkative—and the hum of conversation is loud and general. "Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for Non nobis," shouts the toast-master with stentorian lungs—a toast-master’s shirt-front, waistcoat, and neck-kerchief, by-the-bye, always exhibit three distinct shades of cloudy-white.—"Pray, silence, gentlemen, for Non nobis." The singers, whom you discover to be no other than the very party that excited your curiosity at first, after "pitching" their voices immediately begin too tooing most dismally, on which the regular old stagers burst into occasional cries of—"Sh Sh-waiters! Silence— waiters." "Stand still, waiters—keep back, waiters." and other exorcisms, delivered in a tone of indignant remonstrance. The grace is soon concluded, and the company resume their seats. The uninitiated portion of the guests applaud Non nobis as vehemently as if it were a capital comic song, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the regular diners, who immediately attempt to quell this sacrilegious approbation, by cries of "Hush, hush," whereupon the others, mistaking these sounds for hisses, applaud more tumultuously than before, and, by way of placing their approval beyond the possibility of doubt, shout "Encore!" most vociferously. The moment the noise ceases, up starts the toast-master:—"Gentlemen, charge your glasses, if you please." Decanters having been handed about, and glasses filled, the toast-master proceeds, in a regular, ascending scale:—"Gentlemen—air—you—all charged? Pray—silence —gentlemen—for—the cha-i-r." The Chairman rises, and, after stating that he feels it quite unnecessary to preface the toast he is about to propose with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze of sentences, and flounders about in the most extraordinary manner, presenting a lamentable spectacle of mystified humanity, until he arrives at the words, "constitutional sovereign of these realms," at which elderly gentlemen exclaim "Bravo!" and hammer the table tremendously with their knife-handles. "Under any circumstances, it would give him the greatest pride, it would give him the greatest pleasure—he might almost say, it would afford him satisfaction [cheers] to propose that toast. What must be his feelings, then, when he has the gratification of announcing, that he has received her Majesty’s commands to apply to the Treasurer of her Majesty’s Household, for her Majesty’s annual donation of 25l. in aid of the funds of this charity." This announcement (which has been regularly made by every chairman since the first foundation of the charity forty-two years ago) calls forth the most vociferous applause; the toast is drunk with a great deal of cheering and knocking; and "God save the King" is sung by the "professional gentlemen;" the unprofessional Gentlemen joining in the chorus, and giving the national anthem an effect which the newspapers, with great justice, describe as "perfectly electrical." The other "loyal and patriotic" toasts having been drunk with all due enthusiasm, a comic song having been sung by the man with the small neckerchief, and a sentimental ditto by the second of the party, we come to the most important toast of the evening—"Prosperity to the Charity." Here again we are compelled to adopt newspaper phraseology, and express our regret at being "precluded from giving even the substance of the Noble Lord’s observations." Suffice it to say, that the speech, which is somewhat of the longest, is rapturously received, and the toast having been drunk, the stewards (looking more important than ever) leave the room, and presently return, heading a procession of indigent orphans, boys and girls, who walk round the room, curtseying, and bowing, and treading on each other’s heels, and looking very much as if they would like a glass of wine apiece, to the high gratification of the company generally, and especially of the Lady Patronesses in the gallery. Exeunt children, and re-enter stewards, each with a blue plate in his hand. The band plays a lively air; the majority of the company put their hands in their pockets, and look rather serious; and the noise of sovereigns rattling on crockery, is heard from all parts of the room. After a short interval, occupied in singing and toasting, the Secretary puts on his spectacles, and proceeds to read the report and list of subscriptions the latter being listened to with great attention. "Mr. Smith, one guinea; Mr. Tompkins one guinea— Mr. Wilson one guinea—Mr. Hickson one guinea—Mr. Nixon, one guinea—Mr. Charles Nixon one guinea—[hear, hear!]—Mr. James Nixon one guinea —Mr. Thomas Nixon, one pound one [tremendous applause]. Lord Fitz Winkle, the chairman of the day, in addition to an annual donation of fifteen pounds—thirty guineas [prolonged knocking; several gentlemen knock the stems off their wine-glasses in the vehemence of their approbation]. Lady Fitz Winkle, in addition to an annual donation of ten pound—twenty pound" [protracted knocking and shouts of "Bravo!"]. The list being at length concluded, the chairman rises, and proposes the health of the secretary, than whom he knows no more zealous or estimable individual. The secretary, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more excellent individual than the chairman—except the senior officer of the charity, whose health he begs to propose. The senior officer, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more worthy man than the secretary—except Mr. Walker, the auditor, whose health he begs to propose. Mr. Walker, in returning thanks, discovers some other estimable individual, to whom alone the senior officer is inferior—and so they go on toasting and lauding and thanking: the only other toast of importance being "The Lady Patronesses now present," on which all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the ladies’ gallery, shouting tremendously; and little priggish men, who have imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their hands and exhibit distressing contortions of visage, supposed to be intended for ogling. We have protracted our dinner to so great a length, that we have hardly time to add one word by way of grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine because we have attempted to extract some amusement from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate either the excellence of the Benevolent Institutions, with which London abounds, or the estimable motives of those who support them. (Footnote) The sketch entitled "Bellamy's," which we announced as a continuation of "The House," shall form the next number of our series. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-04-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVII_Public_Dinners.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. VII, Public Dinners.' The Evening Chronicle (7 April 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. VII, Public Dinners' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350407/010/0001" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350407/010/0001</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-04-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-04-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVII_Public_Dinners Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. VII, Public Dinners' (7 April 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVII_Public_Dinners">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-07_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVII_Public_Dinners</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (7 April 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. All public dinners in London—from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the chimney-sweepers' "hanniversary" at White Conduit-house; from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers'; from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victuallers—are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments of this description, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity is the most amusing. At a Company's dinner the people are nearly all alike—regular old stagers who make it a matter of business, and a thing not to be laughed at; at a political dinner everybody is disagreeable and inclined to speechify—much the same thing, by the bye; but at a charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions: the wine may not be remarkably special, to be sure, and we have heard some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the collection; but we really think the amusement to be derived from the occasion sufficient to counterbalance even these disadvantages.  Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of this description—"Indigent Orphans' Friends' Benevolent Institution," we think it is. The name of the charity is a line or two longer, but you have forgotten the rest. You have a distinct recollection, however, that you purchased a ticket at the solicitation of some charitable friend, and you deposit yourself in a hackney-coach, the driver of which—no doubt that you may do the thing in style —turns a deaf ear to your earnest entreaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen-street, and persists in carrying you to the very door of the Freemasons', round which crowded people are assembled to witness the entrance of the indigent orphans' friends. You hear great speculations, as you pay the fare, on the possibility of your being the Noble Lord who is announced to fill the chair on the occasion, and are highly gratified to hear it eventually decided that you are only a "wocalist." The first thing that strikes you on your entrance is the astonishing importance of the committee. You observe a door on the first landing, carefully guarded by two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen, with very red faces, keep running with a degree of speed highly unbecoming the gravity of persons of their years and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at the bustle; and thinking, in your innocence, that two or three people must have been carried out of the dining-room in fits at the very least. You are immediately undeceived by the waiter—"Up stairs, if you please, sir; this is the committee room." Up stairs you go, accordingly; wondering as you mount, what the duties of the committee can be and whether they ever do anything beyond confusing each other, and running over the waiters. Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange (which as a matter of course you lose before you require it again), you enter the hall, down which there are four long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross table on a raised platform at the upper end for the reception of the very particular friends of the indigent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody’s card in it, you wisely seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about you.  Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decanters of Sherry down the tables, at very respectable distances. Melancholy-looking salt-cellars, and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth, and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London since the accession of George the First; the musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously—playing no notes but notes of preparation; and several gentlemen are gliding along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and more dismal as they meet with everybody’s card but their own. You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and—not being in the habit of attending public dinners—are somewhat struck by the appearance of the party on which your eye rests. One of its principal members appears to be a little man, with a long and rather inflamed face, and grey hair brushed bolt upright in front; he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck, without any stiffener, as an apology for a neck-kerchief, and is addressed by his companions by the familiar appellation of—"Fitz." Near him is a stout man in a white neck-kerchief and buff waistcoat; with shiny dark hair, cut very short in front, and a great, round, healthy-looking face, on which he studiously preserves a half sentimental simper. Next him, again, is a large-headed man, with black hair and bushy whiskers; and opposite them are two or three others, one of whom is a little round-faced person, in a dress-stock and blue under-waistcoat. There is something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly describe what it is; you cannot divest yourself of the idea that they have come for some other purpose than mere eating and drinking. You have no time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters (who have been arranged in lines down the room, placing the dishes on table) retire to the lower end; the dark man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has the direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls out "band" in a very loud voice; out burst the orchestra, up rise the visitors; in march fourteen stewards, each with a long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a pantomime; then the Chairman, then the titled visitors; they all make their way up the room, as fast as they can, bowing, and smiling, and smirking, and looking remarkably amiable. The applause ceases; grace is said; the clatter of plates and dishes begins; and every one appears highly gratified either with the presence of the distinguished visitors, or the commencement of the anxiously-expected dinner. As to the dinner itself—the mere dinner—it goes off much the same everywhere. Tureens of soup are emptied with awful rapidity—waiters take plates of turbot away to get lobster-sauce, and bring back plates of lobster-sauce without turbot. People who can carve poultry are great fools if they own it, and people who can’t have no wish to learn—the knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber’s music, and Auber’s music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner, if you could hear anything besides the violoncello—the substantials disappear—moulds of jelly vanish like lightning—hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent exertions— people who have looked very cross hitherto, become remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine in the most friendly manner possible—old gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies’ gallery, and take great pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly favoured in this respect—every one appears disposed to become talkative—and the hum of conversation is loud and general. "Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for Non nobis," shouts the toast-master with stentorian lungs—a toast-master’s shirt-front, waistcoat, and neck-kerchief, by-the-bye, always exhibit three distinct shades of cloudy-white.—"Pray, silence, gentlemen, for Non nobis." The singers, whom you discover to be no other than the very party that excited your curiosity at first, after "pitching" their voices immediately begin too tooing most dismally, on which the regular old stagers burst into occasional cries of—"Sh Sh-waiters! Silence— waiters." "Stand still, waiters—keep back, waiters." and other exorcisms, delivered in a tone of indignant remonstrance. The grace is soon concluded, and the company resume their seats.  The uninitiated portion of the guests applaud Non nobis as vehemently as if it were a capital comic song, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the regular diners, who immediately attempt to quell this sacrilegious approbation, by cries of "Hush, hush," whereupon the others, mistaking these sounds for hisses, applaud more tumultuously than before, and, by way of placing their approval beyond the possibility of doubt, shout "Encore!" most vociferously. The moment the noise ceases, up starts the toast-master:—"Gentlemen, charge your glasses, if you please." Decanters having been handed about, and glasses filled, the toast-master proceeds, in a regular, ascending scale:—"Gentlemen—air—you—all charged? Pray—silence —gentlemen—for—the cha-i-r." The Chairman rises, and, after stating that he feels it quite unnecessary to preface the toast he is about to propose with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze of sentences, and flounders about in the most extraordinary manner, presenting a lamentable spectacle of mystified humanity, until he arrives at the words, "constitutional sovereign of these realms," at which elderly gentlemen exclaim "Bravo!" and hammer the table tremendously with their knife-handles. "Under any circumstances, it would give him the greatest pride, it would give him the greatest pleasure—he might almost say, it would afford him satisfaction [cheers] to propose that toast. What must be his feelings, then, when he has the gratification of announcing, that he has received her Majesty’s commands to apply to the Treasurer of her Majesty’s Household, for her Majesty’s annual donation of 25l. in aid of the funds of this charity." This announcement (which has been regularly made by every chairman since the first foundation of the charity forty-two years ago) calls forth the most vociferous applause; the toast is drunk with a great deal of cheering and knocking; and "God save the King" is sung by the "professional gentlemen;" the unprofessional Gentlemen joining in the chorus, and giving the national anthem an effect which the newspapers, with great justice, describe as "perfectly electrical." The other "loyal and patriotic" toasts having been drunk with all due enthusiasm, a comic song having been sung by the man with the small neckerchief, and a sentimental ditto by the second of the party, we come to the most important toast of the evening—"Prosperity to the Charity." Here again we are compelled to adopt newspaper phraseology, and express our regret at being "precluded from giving even the substance of the Noble Lord’s observations." Suffice it to say, that the speech, which is somewhat of the longest, is rapturously received, and the toast having been drunk, the stewards (looking more important than ever) leave the room, and presently return, heading a procession of indigent orphans, boys and girls, who walk round the room, curtseying, and bowing, and treading on each other’s heels, and looking very much as if they would like a glass of wine apiece, to the high gratification of the company generally, and especially of the Lady Patronesses in the gallery. Exeunt children, and re-enter stewards, each with a blue plate in his hand. The band plays a lively air; the majority of the company put their hands in their pockets, and look rather serious; and the noise of sovereigns rattling on crockery, is heard from all parts of the room. After a short interval, occupied in singing and toasting, the Secretary puts on his spectacles, and proceeds to read the report and list of subscriptions the latter being listened to with great attention. "Mr. Smith, one guinea; Mr. Tompkins one guinea— Mr. Wilson one guinea—Mr. Hickson one guinea—Mr.  Nixon, one guinea—Mr. Charles Nixon one guinea—[hear, hear!]—Mr. James Nixon one guinea —Mr. Thomas Nixon, one pound one [tremendous applause]. Lord Fitz Winkle, the chairman of the day, in addition to an annual donation of fifteen pounds—thirty guineas [prolonged knocking; several gentlemen knock the stems off their wine-glasses in the vehemence of their approbation]. Lady Fitz Winkle, in addition to an annual donation of ten pound—twenty pound" [protracted knocking and shouts of "Bravo!"]. The list being at length concluded, the chairman rises, and proposes the health of the secretary, than whom he knows no more zealous or estimable individual. The secretary, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more excellent individual than the chairman—except the senior officer of the charity, whose health he begs to propose. The senior officer, in returning thanks, observes that >he knows no more worthy man than the secretary—except Mr. Walker, the auditor, whose health he begs to propose.  Mr. Walker, in returning thanks, discovers some other estimable individual, to whom alone the senior officer is inferior—and so they go on toasting and lauding and thanking: the only other toast of importance being "The Lady Patronesses now present," on which all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the ladies’ gallery, shouting tremendously; and little priggish men, who have imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their hands and exhibit distressing contortions of visage, supposed to be intended for ogling. We have protracted our dinner to so great a length, that we have hardly time to add one word by way of grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine because we have attempted to extract some amusement from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate either the excellence of the Benevolent Institutions, with which London abounds, or the estimable motives of those who support them. (Footnote) The sketch entitled "Bellamy's," which we announced as a continuation of "The House," shall form the next number of our series.  https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._VIII_Bellamy_s/1835-04-11_Sketches_of_London_No.VIII_Bellamys.pdf 98d82c097f09f34b047c861931964c31 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350411 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 redemptions of the promise which we appended to the last number of our series, we now propose to introduce our readers to Bellamy's kitchen, or in other words, to the refreshment room, common to both houses of Parliament, where Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals and Destructives, Peers and Reporters, strangers from the gallery, and the more favoured strangers from below the bar, are alike at liberty to resort; where divers honourable members prove their perfect independence by remaining during the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature comforts; and from whence they are summoned by whippers-in, when the House is on the point of dividing; either to give their "conscientious votes" on questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything whatever, or to find a vent for the playful exuberance of their wine-inspired fancies in boisterous shorts of "Divide," occasionally varied with a little howling, barking and crowing, or other ebullitions of senatorial pleasantry. When you have ascended the narrow staircase which, in the present temporary House of Commons leads to the place we are describing, you will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand with tables spread for dining, neither of these is the kitchen, although they are both devoted to the same purpose; the kitchen is further on to your left, up these half-dozen stairs. Before we ascend the staircase, however, we must request you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the sash-windows; and beg your particular attention to the steady, honest-looking old fellow in black, who is its sole occupant. Nicholas (we do not mind mentioning the old fellow's name, for if Nicholas isn't a public man, who is?—and public men's names are public property). Nicholas is the butler of Bellamy's, and had held the same place, dressed exactly in the same mannor, and said precisely the same things ever since the oldest of its present visitors can remember. An excellent servant Nicholas is—an unrivaled compounder of salad-dressing—an admirable preparer of soda-water and lemon—a special mixer of cold grog and punch, and, above all, an unequalled judge of cheese. If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition, this is certainly his pride; and if it be possible to imagine that anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be the doubting his judgement on this important point. We needn't tell you all this however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek knowing-looking head and face—his prim, white neck-kerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill, and his comfortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of black—would give you a better idea of his real character than a column of our poor description could convey. Nicholas is rather out of his element now; he can't see the kitchen as he used to do in the old house; there, one window of his glass-case used to open into the room, and many a time, long after day-break on a summer's morning, have we amused ourself in drawing the cautious old man out by asking deferential questions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows who beside, which he would answer with manifest delight, always inserting a "Mister" before every name. Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was our astonishment to discover, shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory! 'Twas very odd: some men change their opinions from necessity, other from expediency, others from inspiration; but that Nicholas should undergo any change in that respect, was an event we had never contemplated, and should have considered impossible. His strong opinion against the clause which empowered the metropolitan districts to return Members to Parliament, too, was perfectly unaccountable. We discovered the secret at last; the metropolitan Members always dined at home. The Rascals! As for giving additional Members to Ireland, it was even worse—decidedly unconstitutional. Why, sir, an Irish Member would go up there, and eat more dinner than three English Members put together. He took no wine; drank table beer by the half-gallon; and went home to Manchester-buildings, or Milbank-street, for his whiskey and water, and what was the consequence? Why the concern lost—actually lost by their patronage. A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself. We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the upper windows when the flames were at their height, and declared his resolution intention of falling with the floor. He must have been got out by force. However, he was got out— here he is again, looking, as he always does, as if he had been in a band box ever since last session. There he is at his old post every night, just as we have described him: and as characters are scarce, and faithful servants scarcer, long may he be there say we. The two persons who are seated at the table in the corner, at the further end of the room, have been constant guests here for many years past, and one of them has feasted within these walls many a time with the most brilliant characters of a brilliant period. He has gone up to the other house since then: the greater part of his boon companions have shared Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few. If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have dined? A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three-quarters by the clock over the window. Was there ever such a perfect personification of Falstaff? Mark the air with which he gloats over this Stilton as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched expressly for him in the pewter pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that voice kept down as it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular gourmond; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch upon as having been tho partner of Sheridan's Parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of the hackney coach that took him home, and the Involuntary upsetter of the whole party? What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who, elevating a little cracked bantum sort of voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the commencement of every sentence he utters. "The Captain," as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's; much addicted to stopping "after the house is up" (an inexpiable crime in Jane's eyes), and a complete walking reservoir of spirits and water. The old Peer—or rather, the old man; for his peerage is of recent date—has a huge tumbler of hot-punch brought him. The other damns and drinks, and drinks and damns and smokes—Members arrive every moment in a great bustle to report that "The Chancellor of the Exchequer's up," and to get glasses of brandy and water to sustain them during the division—people who have ordered supper countermand it, and prepare to go down stairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with tremendous violence, and a cry of "Di-vi-sion" is heard in the passage. This is enough; away rush the members pell-mell; the room is cleared in an instant; the noise rapidly dies away; you hear the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and we are left alone with the Leviathan of Rump-steaks. We are sensible that we owe some apology to many of our readers for selecting for the second time, a subject involving allusions which they may not understand. If this be the case, we hope they will not object to our having written on these occasions for those who are more particularly connected with, or interested in, the scenes we have attempts to sketch, on our assurance that it always has been, and always will be, our object to sketch people and places which all our readers, in common with ourselves, have had opportunities of observing. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-04-11_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVIII_Bellamys.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. VIII, Bellamy's.' The Evening Chronicle (11 April 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. VIII, Bellamy's' Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (11 April 1835). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350411/031/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350411/031/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-04-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-04-11_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVIII_Bellamys Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. VIII, Bellamy's' (11 April 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-11_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVIII_Bellamys">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-11_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoVIII_Bellamys</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. In redemptions of the promise which we appended to the last number of our series, we now propose to introduce our readers to Bellamy's kitchen, or in other words, to the refreshment room, common to both houses of Parliament, where Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals and Destructives, Peers and Reporters, strangers from the gallery, and the more favoured strangers from below the bar, are alike at liberty to resort; where divers honourable members prove their perfect independence by remaining during the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature comforts; and from whence they are summoned by whippers-in, when the House is on the point of dividing; either to give their "conscientious votes" on questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything whatever, or to find a vent for the playful exuberance of their wine-inspired fancies in boisterous shorts of "Divide," occasionally varied with a little howling, barking and crowing, or other ebullitions of senatorial pleasantry.  When you have ascended the narrow staircase which, in the present temporary House of Commons leads to the place we are describing, you will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand with tables spread for dining, neither of these is the kitchen, although they are both devoted to the same purpose; the kitchen is further on to your left, up these half-dozen stairs. Before we ascend the staircase, however, we must request you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the sash-windows; and beg your particular attention to the steady, honest-looking old fellow in black, who is its sole occupant. Nicholas (we do not mind mentioning the old fellow's name, for if Nicholas isn't a public man, who is?—and public men's names are public property). Nicholas is the butler of Bellamy's, and had held the same place, dressed exactly in the same mannor, and said precisely the same things ever since the oldest of its present visitors can remember. An excellent servant Nicholas is—an unrivaled compounder of salad-dressing—an admirable preparer of soda-water and lemon—a special mixer of cold grog and punch, and, above all, an unequalled judge of cheese. If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition, this is certainly his pride; and if it be possible to imagine that anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be the doubting his judgement on this important point. We needn't tell you all this however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek knowing-looking head and face—his prim, white neck-kerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill, and his comfortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of black—would give you a better idea of his real character than a column of our poor description could convey. Nicholas is rather out of his element now; he can't see the kitchen as he used to do in the old house; there, one window of his glass-case used to open into the room, and many a time, long after day-break on a summer's morning, have we amused ourself in drawing the cautious old man out by asking deferential questions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows who beside, which he would answer with manifest delight, always inserting a "Mister" before every name. Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was our astonishment to discover, shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory! 'Twas very odd: some men change their opinions from necessity, other from expediency, others from inspiration; but that Nicholas should undergo any change in that respect, was an event we had never contemplated, and should have considered impossible. His strong opinion against the clause which empowered the metropolitan districts to return Members to Parliament, too, was perfectly unaccountable. We discovered the secret at last; the metropolitan Members always dined at home. The Rascals! As for giving additional Members to Ireland, it was even worse—decidedly unconstitutional. Why, sir, an Irish Member would go up there, and eat more dinner than three English Members put together. He took no wine; drank table beer by the half-gallon; and went home to Manchester-buildings, or Milbank-street, for his whiskey and water, and what was the consequence? Why the concern lost—actually lost by their patronage. A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself. We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the upper windows when the flames were at their height, and declared his resolution intention of falling with the floor. He must have been got out by force. However, he was got out— here he is again, looking, as he always does, as if he had been in a band box ever since last session. There he is at his old post every night, just as we have described him: and as characters are scarce, and faithful servants scarcer, long may he be there say we.  The two persons who are seated at the table in the corner, at the further end of the room, have been constant guests here for many years past, and one of them has feasted within these walls many a time with the most brilliant characters of a brilliant period. He has gone up to the other house since then: the greater part of his boon companions have shared Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few. If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have dined? A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three-quarters by the clock over the window. Was there ever such a perfect personification of Falstaff? Mark the air with which he gloats over this Stilton as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched expressly for him in the pewter pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that voice kept down as it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular gourmond; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch upon as having been tho partner of Sheridan's Parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of the hackney coach that took him home, and the Involuntary upsetter of the whole party? What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who, elevating a little cracked bantum sort of voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the commencement of every sentence he utters. "The Captain," as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's; much addicted to stopping "after the house is up" (an inexpiable crime in Jane's eyes), and a complete walking reservoir of spirits and water. The old Peer—or rather, the old man; for his peerage is of recent date—has a huge tumbler of hot-punch brought him. The other damns and drinks, and drinks and damns and smokes—Members arrive every moment in a great bustle to report that "The Chancellor of the Exchequer's up," and to get glasses of brandy and water to sustain them during the division—people who have ordered supper countermand it, and prepare to go down stairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with tremendous violence, and a cry of "Di-vi-sion" is heard in the passage. This is enough; away rush the members pell-mell; the room is cleared in an instant; the noise rapidly dies away; you hear the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and we are left alone with the Leviathan of Rump-steaks.  We are sensible that we owe some apology to many of our readers for selecting for the second time, a subject involving allusions which they may not understand. If this be the case, we hope they will not object to our having written on these occasions for those who are more particularly connected with, or interested in, the scenes we have attempts to sketch, on our assurance that it always has been, and always will be, our object to sketch people and places which all our readers, in common with ourselves, have had opportunities of observing. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._IX_Greenwich_Fair/1835-04-16_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.IX_Greenwich_Fair.pdf 2e4ad4684ced1cc60ed0de49d6a8af85 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. 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If the Parks be "the lungs of London," we wonder what Greenwich fair is—a periodical breaking out, we suppose:—a sort of spring-rash—a three days' fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards; and, at the expiration of which, London is restored to its old habits of plodding industry, as suddenly and completely as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them. In our earlier days, we were a constant frequenter of Greenwich fair for years. We have proceeded to, and returned from it, in almost every description of vehicle. We cannot conscientiously deny the charge of having once made the passage in a spring van, accompanied by thirteen gentlemen, fourteen ladies, an unlimited number of children, and a barrel of beer; and we have a vague recollection of having in later days found ourself the eighth outside no the top of a hackney-coach at something past four o-clock in the morning, with a rather confused idea of our own name, or place of residence. We have grown older since then, and quiet and steady: liking nothing better than to spend our Easter, and all our other holidays in some quiet nook, with people of whom we shall never tire; but we think we remember enough of Greenwich Fair, and those who resort to it, to make a sketch of at this seasonable period. The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday presents a scene of animated bustle, which cannot fail to amuse the most indifferent observer. Cabs, hackney-coaches, "shay" carts, coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises—all crammed with people (for the question never is what the horse can draw, but what the vehicle will hold), roll along at their utmost speed—the dust flies in clouds—ginger-beer corks go off in vollies—the balcony of every public-house is crowded with people, smoking and drinking—half the private-houses are turned into tea-shops—fiddles are in great request—every little fruit-shop displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny toys—turnpike-men are in despair—horses won’t go on, and wheels will come off—ladies in "carawans" scream with fright at every fresh concussion, and their admirers find it necessary to sit remarkably close to them, by way of encouragement—servants of all work who are not allowed to have followers, and have got a holiday for the day, make the most of their time with the faithful admirer who waits for a stolen interview at the corner of the street every night, when they go to fetch the beer—apprentices grow sentimental, and straw-bonnet makers kind; everybody is anxious to get on, and actuated by the common wish to be at the fair or in the park as soon as possible. Pedestrians linger in groups at the road-side, unable to resist the allurements of the stout proprietress of the "Jack-in-the-box—three shys a penny," or the more splendid offers of the man with three thimbles and a pea on a little round board, who astonishes the bewildered crowd with some such address as, "Here’s the sort o’ game to make you laugh seven years arter you’re dead, and turn ev’ry air on your ed grey vith delight! Three thimbles and vun little pea—with a vun, two, three, and a two, three, vun: catch him who can, look on, keep your eyes open, and niver say die; niver mind the change, and damn the expense: all fair and above board: them as don’t play can’t vin, and luck attend the ryal sportsman. Bet any gen’lm’n any sum of money, from arf-a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn’t name the thimble as kivers the pea.’ Here some greenhorn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw the pea roll under the middle thimble —an impression which is immediately confirmed by a gentleman in top boots who is standing by, and who in a low tone regrets his own inability to bet in consequence of having unfortunately left his purse at home, but strongly urges the stranger not to neglect such a golden opportunity. The "plant" is successful; the bet is made; the stranger of course loses, and the gentleman with the thimbles consoles him as he pockets the money, with an assurance that it’s all "the fortin of war: this time I vin, next time you vin: niver mind the loss of two bob and a bender! do it up in a small parcel and break out in a fresh place. Here’s the sort o’ game,’ &c.—and the eloquent harangue with such variations as the speaker’s exuberant fancy suggests, is again repeated to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the accession of several new comers. The chief place of resort in the day-time, after the public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the observatory, and then drag them down again at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers on from below. "Kiss in the ring," and "Threading my Grandmother’s Needle," too, are sports which receive their full share of patronage. Love-sick swains, under the influence of gin and water, and the tender passion, become violently affectionate: and the fair objects of their regard enhance the value of stolen kisses, by a vast deal of struggling, and holding down of heads, and cries of "Oh! Ha’ done, then, George—Oh, do tickle him for me, Mary —Well, I never!" and similar Lucretian ejaculations. Little old men and women, with a small basket under one arm, and a wine-glass without a foot, in the other hand, tender "a drop o’ the right sort" to the different groups; and young ladies, who are persuaded to indulge in a drop of the aforesaid right sort, display a pleasing degree of reluctance to taste it, and cough afterwards with great propriety. The old pensioners, who for the moderate charge of a penny, exhibit the mast-house, the Thames, and shipping, the place where the men used to hang in chains, and other interesting sights through a telescope, are asked questions about objects within the range of the glass which it would puzzle a Solomon to answer; and requested to find out particular houses in particular streets, which it would have been a task of some difficulty for Mr. Horner (not the young gentleman who eat mince pies with his thumb, but the man of Colosseum notoriety) to discover. Here and there, where some three or four couple are sitting on the grass together, you will see a sun-burnt woman in a red cloak "telling fortunes" and prophesying husbands which it requires no extraordinary observation to describe, for the originals are before her. Thereupon, the lady concerned laughs and blushes, and ultimately buries her face in an imitation-cambric handkerchief, and the gentleman described looks extremely foolish, and squeezes her hand, and fees the gipsey liberally; and the gipsey goes away perfectly satisfied herself, and leaving those behind her perfectly satisfied also, and the prophecy, like many other prophecies of greater importance, fulfils itself in time. But it grows dark: the crowd has gradually dispersed, and only a few stragglers are left behind. The light in the direction of the church shows that the fair is illuminated; and the distant noise proves it to be filling fast. The spot, which half an hour ago was ringing with the shouts of boisterous mirth is as calm and quiet as if nothing could ever disturb its serenity: the fine old trees, the majestic building at their feet, with the noble river beyond, glistening in the moon light, appear in all their beauty, and under their most favourable aspect; the voices of the boys, singing their evening hymn, are borne gently on the air; and the humblest mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so pleasant to the feet that beat the same dull round from week to week in the paved streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the scene before him, that he belongs to the country which has selected such a spot as a retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the decline of their lives. Five minutes’ walking brings you to the fair; a scene calculated to awaken very different feelings from those inspired by the place you have just left. The entrance is occupied on either side by the venders of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up, the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and unbonneted young ladies, in their zeal for the interest of their employers, seize you by the coat, and use all the blandishments of "Do, dear"—"There’s a love"— "Don’t be cross, now," &c., to induce you to purchase half a pound of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular fair-goers carry a pound or two as a present supply, tied up in a cotton pocket handkerchief. Occasionally, you pass a deal table, on which are exposed pen’orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of snail (wilks, we think they are called), floating in a somewhat bilious looking green liquid. Cigars, too, are in great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic cigar box, with a lighted tallow candle in the centre. Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which swings you to and fro and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of speaking trumpets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a dozen bands, with three drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows, and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair. This immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat, is "Richardson’s," where you have a melo-drama (with three murders and a ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental music, all done in five and twenty minutes. The company are now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs, spangles, red-ochre, and whitning. See with what a ferocious air the gentleman who personates the Mexican Chief paces up and down, and with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat may be all very well for the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman dresses, with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination and vengeance, and everything else that's grand and solemn. Then, the ladies—were there ever such innocent and awful-looking beings as they walk up and down the platform in twos and threes, with their arms round each other’s waists, or leaning for support on one of those majestic men! Their spangled muslin dresses and blue satin shoes and sandals (a leetle the worse for wear) are the admiration of all beholders; and the playful manner in which they check the advances of the clown is perfectly enchanting. "Just a-going to begin! Pray come for’erd, come for’erd," exclaims the man in the countryman’s dress, for the seventieth time, and people force their way up the steps in crowds. The band suddenly strikes up; the harlequin and columbine set the example; reels are formed in less than no time; the Roman heroes place their arms a-kimbo and dance with considerable agility: and the leading tragic actress, and the gentleman who enacts the "swell" in the pantomime, foot it to perfection. "All in to begin" shouts the manager, when no more people can be induced to "come for’erd," and away rush the leading members of the company to do the dreadful in the first piece. A change of performance takes place every day during the fair, but the story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn’t beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment they are left alone, get up a little murder on their own account, the good one killing the bad one, and the bad one wounding the good one. Then the rightful heir is discovered in prison, carefully holding a long chain in his hands, and seated despondingly in a large arm-chair; and the young lady comes in to two bars of soft music, and embraces the rightful heir; and then the wrongful heir comes in to two bars of quick music, and goes on in the most shocking manner, throwing the young lady about as if she was nobody, and calling the rightful heir "Ar-recreant—ar-wretch!" in a very loud voice, which answers the double purpose of displaying his passion, and preventing the sound being deadened by the saw-dust. The interest becomes intense; the wrongful heir draws his sword, and rushes on the rightful heir; a blue smoke is seen, a gong is heard, and a tall white figure (who has been all this time, behind the arm-chair, covered over with a table cloth), slowly rises to the tune of, "Oft in the stilly night." This is no other than the ghost of the rightful heir’s father, who was killed by the wrongful heir’s father; at sight of which the wrongful heir becomes apoplectic, and is literally "struck all of a heap," the stage not being large enough to admit of his falling down at full length. Then the good assassin staggers in, and says he was hired, in conjunction with the bad assassin, by the wrongful heir, to kill the rightful heir; and he’s killed a good many people in his time, but he’s very sorry for it, and won’t do so any more—a promise which he immediately redeems by dying off hand without any nonsense about it. Then the rightful heir throws down his chain; and then two men, a sailor, and a young woman (the tenantry of the rightful heir) come in; and the ghost makes dumb motions to them, which they, by supernatural interference, understand—for no one else can; and the ghost (who can’t do anything without blue fire) blesses the rightful heir, and the young lady, by half-suffocating them with smoke, and then a muffin-bell rings, and the curtain drops. The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the "Wild-beast shows," where a military band in beef-eater’s costume, with leopard-skin caps, play incessantly; and where large highly-coloured representations of tigers tearing men’s heads open, and a lion being burnt with red-hot irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up outside, by way of attracting visitors. The principal officer at these places is generally a very tall, hoarse, man, in a scarlet coat, with a cane in his hand, with which he occasionally raps the pictures we have just noticed, by way of illustrating his description—something in this way, "Here, here, here; the lion, the lion (tap), exactly as he is represented on the canvass outside (three taps); no waiting, remember; no deception. The fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the gentleman’s head last Cambervel vos a twelvemonth, and has killed on the awerage three keepers a-year ever since he arrived at matuority. No extra charge on this account recollect; the price of admission is only sixpence." This address never fails to produce a considerable sensation, and sixpences flow into the treasury with wonderful rapidity. The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity: and as a dwarf, a giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian, "a young lady of singular beauty, with perfectly white hair and pink eyes," and two or three other natural curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small charge of a penny, they attract very numerous audiences. The best thing about a dwarf is, that he has always a little box, about two feet six inches high, into which, by long practice, he can just manage to get, by doubling himself up like a boot-jack; this box is painted outside like a six-roomed house, and as the crowd see him ring a bell, or fire a pistol out of the first-floor window, they verily believe that it is his ordinary town residence, divided like other mansions into drawing-rooms, dining-parlour, and bed-chambers. Shut up in this case, the unfortunate little object is brought out to delight the throng by holding a facetious dialogue with the proprietor: in the course of which, the dwarf (who is always particularly drunk) pledges himself to sing a comic song inside, and pays various compliments to the ladies, which induce them to "come for’erd" with great alacrity. As a giant is not so easily moved, a pair of indescribables of most capacious dimensions and a huge shoe are usually brought out, into which two or three stout men get all at once, to the enthusiastic delight of the crowd, who are quite satisfied with the solemn assurance that these habiliments form part of the giant’s every-day costume. The grandest and most numerously-frequented booth in the whole fair, however, is "The Crown and Anchor"—a temporary ball-room—we forget how many hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is one shilling. Immediately on your right hand as you enter, after paying your money, is a refreshment place, at which cold beef, roast and boiled—French rolls—stout—wine—tongue—ham—even fowls, if we recollect right, are displayed in tempting array. There is a raised orchestra, and the place is boarded all the way down in patches, just wide enough for a country dance. There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden—all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing in the gentlemen’s hats, and the gentlemen promenading "the gay and festive scene" in the ladies’ bonnets, or with the more expensive ornaments of false noses; and low-crowned, tinder-box looking hats: playing children’s drums, and accompanied by ladies on the penny trumpet. The noise of these various instruments, the orchestra, the shouting, the "scratchers," and the dancing, is perfectly bewildering. The dancing, itself, beggars description —every figure lasts about an hour, and the ladies bounce about with a degree of spirit which is quite indescribable. As to the gentlemen, they stamp their feet against the ground, every time "hands four round" begins; go down the middle and up again, with cigars in their mouths and silk handkerchiefs in their hands, and whirl their partners round, nothing loth, scrambling and falling, and embracing, and knocking up against the other couples until they are fairly tired out, or half undressed, and can move no longer. The same scene is repeated again and again (slightly varied by an occasional "row") until a late hour at night: and a great many clerks and ’prentices find themselves next morning with aching heads, empty pockets, damaged hats, and a very imperfect recollection of how it was they didn't get home. Our present sketch has encroached considerably on a second column. Fortunately, perhaps, for our readers, we have even now omitted many points we had originally intended to notice. As we purpose continuing our series until it reaches something under its two hundredth number, however, we shall watch an opportunity of including them under some other head. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-04-16_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIX_Greenwich_Fair.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. IX, Greenwich Fair.' The Evening Chronicle (16 April 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. IX, Greenwich Fair' Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (16 April 1835). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350416/020/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350416/020/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-04-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-04-16_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIX_Greenwich_Fair Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. IX, Greenwich Fair' (16 April 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-16_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIX_Greenwich_Fair">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-16_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIX_Greenwich_Fair</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. If the Parks be "the lungs of London," we wonder what Greenwich fair is—a periodical breaking out, we suppose:—a sort of spring-rash—a three days' fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards; and, at the expiration of which, London is restored to its old habits of plodding industry, as suddenly and completely as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them. In our earlier days, we were a constant frequenter of Greenwich fair for years. We have proceeded to, and returned from it, in almost every description of vehicle. We cannot conscientiously deny the charge of having once made the passage in a spring van, accompanied by thirteen gentlemen, fourteen ladies, an unlimited number of children, and a barrel of beer; and we have a vague recollection of having in later days found ourself the eighth outside no the top of a hackney-coach at something past four o-clock in the morning, with a rather confused idea of our own name, or place of residence. We have grown older since then, and quiet and steady: liking nothing better than to spend our Easter, and all our other holidays in some quiet nook, with people of whom we shall never tire; but we think we remember enough of Greenwich Fair, and those who resort to it, to make a sketch of at this seasonable period.  The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday presents a scene of animated bustle, which cannot fail to amuse the most indifferent observer.  Cabs, hackney-coaches, "shay" carts, coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises—all crammed with people (for the question never is what the horse can draw, but what the vehicle will hold), roll along at their utmost speed—the dust flies in clouds—ginger-beer corks go off in vollies—the balcony of every public-house is crowded with people, smoking and drinking—half the private-houses are turned into tea-shops—fiddles are in great request—every little fruit-shop displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny toys—turnpike-men are in despair—horses won’t go on, and wheels will come off—ladies in "carawans" scream with fright at every fresh concussion, and their admirers find it necessary to sit remarkably close to them, by way of encouragement—servants of all work who are not allowed to have followers, and have got a holiday for the day, make the most of their time with the faithful admirer who waits for a stolen interview at the corner of the street every night, when they go to fetch the beer—apprentices grow sentimental, and straw-bonnet makers kind; everybody is anxious to get on, and actuated by the common wish to be at the fair or in the park as soon as possible. Pedestrians linger in groups at the road-side, unable to resist the allurements of the stout proprietress of the "Jack-in-the-box—three shys a penny," or the more splendid offers of the man with three thimbles and a pea on a little round board, who astonishes the bewildered crowd with some such address as, "Here’s the sort o’ game to make you laugh seven years arter you’re dead, and turn ev’ry air on your ed grey vith delight! Three thimbles and vun little pea—with a vun, two, three, and a two, three, vun: catch him who can, look on, keep your eyes open, and niver say die; niver mind the change, and damn the expense: all fair and above board: them as don’t play can’t vin, and luck attend the ryal sportsman. Bet any gen’lm’n any sum of money, from arf-a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn’t name the thimble as kivers the pea.’ Here some greenhorn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw the pea roll under the middle thimble —an impression which is immediately confirmed by a gentleman in top boots who is standing by, and who in a low tone regrets his own inability to bet in consequence of having unfortunately left his purse at home, but strongly urges the stranger not to neglect such a golden opportunity. The "plant" is successful; the bet is made; the stranger of course loses, and the gentleman with the thimbles consoles him as he pockets the money, with an assurance that it’s all "the fortin of war: this time I vin, next time you vin: niver mind the loss of two bob and a bender! do it up in a small parcel and break out in a fresh place. Here’s the sort o’ game,’ &c.—and the eloquent harangue with such variations as the speaker’s exuberant fancy suggests, is again repeated to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the accession of several new comers. The chief place of resort in the day-time, after the public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the observatory, and then drag them down again at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers on from below. "Kiss in the ring," and "Threading my Grandmother’s Needle," too, are sports which receive their full share of patronage. Love-sick swains, under the influence of gin and water, and the tender passion, become violently affectionate: and the fair objects of their regard enhance the value of stolen kisses, by a vast deal of struggling, and holding down of heads, and cries of "Oh! Ha’ done, then, George—Oh, do tickle him for me, Mary —Well, I never!" and similar Lucretian ejaculations. Little old men and women, with a small basket under one arm, and a wine-glass without a foot, in the other hand, tender "a drop o’ the right sort" to the different groups; and young ladies, who are persuaded to indulge in a drop of the aforesaid right sort, display a pleasing degree of reluctance to taste it, and cough afterwards with great propriety. The old pensioners, who for the moderate charge of a penny, exhibit the mast-house, the Thames, and shipping, the place where the men used to hang in chains, and other interesting sights through a telescope, are asked questions about objects within the range of the glass which it would puzzle a Solomon to answer; and requested to find out particular houses in particular streets, which it would have been a task of some difficulty for Mr. Horner (not the young gentleman who eat mince pies with his thumb, but the man of Colosseum notoriety) to discover. Here and there, where some three or four couple are sitting on the grass together, you will see a sun-burnt woman in a red cloak "telling fortunes" and prophesying husbands which it requires no extraordinary observation to describe, for the originals are before her. Thereupon, the lady concerned laughs and blushes, and ultimately buries her face in an imitation-cambric handkerchief, and the gentleman described looks extremely foolish, and squeezes her hand, and fees the gipsey liberally; and the gipsey goes away perfectly satisfied herself, and leaving those behind her perfectly satisfied also, and the prophecy, like many other prophecies of greater importance, fulfils itself in time. But it grows dark: the crowd has gradually dispersed, and only a few stragglers are left behind. The light in the direction of the church shows that the fair is illuminated; and the distant noise proves it to be filling fast. The spot, which half an hour ago was ringing with the shouts of boisterous mirth is as calm and quiet as if nothing could ever disturb its serenity: the fine old trees, the majestic building at their feet, with the noble river beyond, glistening in the moon light, appear in all their beauty, and under their most favourable aspect; the voices of the boys, singing their evening hymn, are borne gently on the air; and the humblest mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so pleasant to the feet that beat the same dull round from week to week in the paved streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the scene before him, that he belongs to the country which has selected such a spot as a retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the decline of their lives. Five minutes’ walking brings you to the fair; a scene calculated to awaken very different feelings from those inspired by the place you have just left. The entrance is occupied on either side by the venders of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up, the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and unbonneted young ladies, in their zeal for the interest of their employers, seize you by the coat, and use all the blandishments of "Do, dear"—"There’s a love"— "Don’t be cross, now," &c., to induce you to purchase half a pound of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular fair-goers carry a pound or two as a present supply, tied up in a cotton pocket handkerchief. Occasionally, you pass a deal table, on which are exposed pen’orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of snail (wilks, we think they are called), floating in a somewhat bilious looking green liquid. Cigars, too, are in great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic cigar box, with a lighted tallow candle in the centre. Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which swings you to and fro and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of speaking trumpets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a dozen bands, with three drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows, and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair. This immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat, is "Richardson’s," where you have a melo-drama (with three murders and a ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental music, all done in five and twenty minutes. The company are now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs, spangles, red-ochre, and whitning. See with what a ferocious air the gentleman who personates the Mexican Chief paces up and down, and with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat may be all very well for the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman dresses, with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination and vengeance, and everything else that's grand and solemn. Then, the ladies—were there ever such innocent and awful-looking beings as they walk up and down the platform in twos and threes, with their arms round each other’s waists, or leaning for support on one of those majestic men! Their spangled muslin dresses and blue satin shoes and sandals (a leetle the worse for wear) are the admiration of all beholders; and the playful manner in which they check the advances of the clown is perfectly enchanting. "Just a-going to begin! Pray come for’erd, come for’erd," exclaims the man in the countryman’s dress, for the seventieth time, and people force their way up the steps in crowds. The band suddenly strikes up; the harlequin and columbine set the example; reels are formed in less than no time; the Roman heroes place their arms a-kimbo and dance with considerable agility: and the leading tragic actress, and the gentleman who enacts the "swell" in the pantomime, foot it to perfection. "All in to begin" shouts the manager, when no more people can be induced to "come for’erd," and away rush the leading members of the company to do the dreadful in the first piece. A change of performance takes place every day during the fair, but the story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn’t beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment they are left alone, get up a little murder on their own account, the good one killing the bad one, and the bad one wounding the good one. Then the rightful heir is discovered in prison, carefully holding a long chain in his hands, and seated despondingly in a large arm-chair; and the young lady comes in to two bars of soft music, and embraces the rightful heir; and then the wrongful heir comes in to two bars of quick music, and goes on in the most shocking manner, throwing the young lady about as if she was nobody, and calling the rightful heir "Ar-recreant—ar-wretch!" in a very loud voice, which answers the double purpose of displaying his passion, and preventing the sound being deadened by the saw-dust. The interest becomes intense; the wrongful heir draws his sword, and rushes on the rightful heir; a blue smoke is seen, a gong is heard, and a tall white figure (who has been all this time, behind the arm-chair, covered over with a table cloth), slowly rises to the tune of, "Oft in the stilly night." This is no other than the ghost of the rightful heir’s father, who was killed by the wrongful heir’s father; at sight of which the wrongful heir becomes apoplectic, and is literally "struck all of a heap," the stage not being large enough to admit of his falling down at full length. Then the good assassin staggers in, and says he was hired, in conjunction with the bad assassin, by the wrongful heir, to kill the rightful heir; and he’s killed a good many people in his time, but he’s very sorry for it, and won’t do so any more—a promise which he immediately redeems by dying off hand without any nonsense about it. Then the rightful heir throws down his chain; and then two men, a sailor, and a young woman (the tenantry of the rightful heir) come in; and the ghost makes dumb motions to them, which they, by supernatural interference, understand—for no one else can; and the ghost (who can’t do anything without blue fire) blesses the rightful heir, and the young lady, by half-suffocating them with smoke, and then a muffin-bell rings, and the curtain drops. The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the "Wild-beast shows," where a military band in beef-eater’s costume, with leopard-skin caps, play incessantly; and where large highly-coloured representations of tigers tearing men’s heads open, and a lion being burnt with red-hot irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up outside, by way of attracting visitors. The principal officer at these places is generally a very tall, hoarse, man, in a scarlet coat, with a cane in his hand, with which he occasionally raps the pictures we have just noticed, by way of illustrating his description—something in this way, "Here, here, here; the lion, the lion (tap), exactly as he is represented on the canvass outside (three taps); no waiting, remember; no deception. The fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the gentleman’s head last Cambervel vos a twelvemonth, and has killed on the awerage three keepers a-year ever since he arrived at matuority. No extra charge on this account recollect; the price of admission is only sixpence." This address never fails to produce a considerable sensation, and sixpences flow into the treasury with wonderful rapidity. The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity: and as a dwarf, a giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian, "a young lady of singular beauty, with perfectly white hair and pink eyes," and two or three other natural curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small charge of a penny, they attract very numerous audiences. The best thing about a dwarf is, that he has always a little box, about two feet six inches high, into which, by long practice, he can just manage to get, by doubling himself up like a boot-jack; this box is painted outside like a six-roomed house, and as the crowd see him ring a bell, or fire a pistol out of the first-floor window, they verily believe that it is his ordinary town residence, divided like other mansions into drawing-rooms, dining-parlour, and bed-chambers. Shut up in this case, the unfortunate little object is brought out to delight the throng by holding a facetious dialogue with the proprietor: in the course of which, the dwarf (who is always particularly drunk) pledges himself to sing a comic song inside, and pays various compliments to the ladies, which induce them to "come for’erd" with great alacrity. As a giant is not so easily moved, a pair of indescribables of most capacious dimensions and a huge shoe are usually brought out, into which two or three stout men get all at once, to the enthusiastic delight of the crowd, who are quite satisfied with the solemn assurance that these habiliments form part of the giant’s every-day costume. The grandest and most numerously-frequented booth in the whole fair, however, is "The Crown and Anchor"—a temporary ball-room—we forget how many hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is one shilling. Immediately on your right hand as you enter, after paying your money, is a refreshment place, at which cold beef, roast and boiled—French rolls—stout—wine—tongue—ham—even fowls, if we recollect right, are displayed in tempting array. There is a raised orchestra, and the place is boarded all the way down in patches, just wide enough for a country dance. There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden—all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing in the gentlemen’s hats, and the gentlemen promenading "the gay and festive scene" in the ladies’ bonnets, or with the more expensive ornaments of false noses; and low-crowned, tinder-box looking hats: playing children’s drums, and accompanied by ladies on the penny trumpet. The noise of these various instruments, the orchestra, the shouting, the "scratchers," and the dancing, is perfectly bewildering. The dancing, itself, beggars description —every figure lasts about an hour, and the ladies bounce about with a degree of spirit which is quite indescribable. As to the gentlemen, they stamp their feet against the ground, every time "hands four round" begins; go down the middle and up again, with cigars in their mouths and silk handkerchiefs in their hands, and whirl their partners round, nothing loth, scrambling and falling, and embracing, and knocking up against the other couples until they are fairly tired out, or half undressed, and can move no longer. The same scene is repeated again and again (slightly varied by an occasional "row") until a late hour at night: and a great many clerks and ’prentices find themselves next morning with aching heads, empty pockets, damaged hats, and a very imperfect recollection of how it was they didn't get home. Our present sketch has encroached considerably on a second column. Fortunately, perhaps, for our readers, we have even now omitted many points we had originally intended to notice. As we purpose continuing our series until it reaches something under its two hundredth number, however, we shall watch an opportunity of including them under some other head.  https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._X_Thoughts_About_People/1835-04-23_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.X_Thoughts_About_People.pdf 907c86fa7960b5d47f2fd76099744ebc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350423 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. 'Tis strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself, and he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive. There really are a very numerous class of people in this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by imperative necessity in the first instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment and the means of subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind us to our homes and friends; and harder still to efface the thousand recollections of happy days and old times, which have been slumbering in our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind to bring before it with startling reality associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have beheld, too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished, but may entertain no more. These men, however, happily for themselves, have long since forgotten such thoughts, old country friends have died or emigrated, former correspondents have become lost like themselves in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city, and they have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance. We were seated in the enclosure of St. James’s Park the other day, when our attention was attracted by a man whom we immediately set down in our own mind as one of this class. He was a tall thin pale person in a black coat, scanty grey trowsers, little pinched-up gaiters, and brown beaver gloves. He had an umbrella in his hand—not for use, for the day was fine; but evidently because he always carried one to the office in the morning; and he walked up and down before the little patch of grass on which the chairs are placed for hire, not as if he were doing it for pleasure or recreation, but as if it were a matter of compulsion—just as he walks to the office every morning from the back settlements of Islington. It was Monday—Easter Monday; he had escaped for four-and-twenty hours from the thraldom of the desk, and was walking here for exercise and amusement—perhaps for the first time in his life. We were inclined to think he had never had a holiday before, and that even now he didn't exactly know what to do with himself. Children were playing on the grass; groups of people were loitering about, chatting and laughing; but the man walked steadily up and down, unheeding and unheeded; his spare, pale face looking as if it were incapable of bearing the expression of curiosity or interest;—altogether there was something in his manner and appearance which told us, we fancied, his whole life, or rather his whole day, for a man of this sort has no variety. We almost saw the dingy little back office into which he walks every morning, hanging his hat on the same peg, and placing his legs beneath the same desk: first, taking off that black coat which lasts the year through, and putting on the one which did duty last year, and which he keeps in his desk to save the other. There he sits till five o’clock, only raising his head when some one enters the counting house, or when in the midst of some difficult calculation, he looks up to the ceiling as if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight with a green knot in the centre of every pane of glass; working the day through as regularly as the dial over the mantel-piece, whose loud ticking is almost as monotonous as his own existence. About five, or half-past, he slowly dismounts from his accustomed stool, and again changing his coat proceeds to his usual dining-place, somewhere near Bucklersbury. The waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather confidential manner—for he's a regular customer— and after inquiring, "What’s in the best cut?" and "what was up last," he orders a small plate of roast beef with greens, and half a pint of porter. He has a small plate to-day because greens are a penny more than potatoes, and he had "two heads" yesterday, with the additional enormity of "a cheese" the day before. This important point being settled, he hangs up his hat—he took it off the moment he sat down—and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it while he's at dinner he appears to eat it with much greater zest; balancing it against the water-bottle, and eating a bit of beef, and reading a line or two, alternately. Exactly at five minutes before the hour is up he produces a shilling, pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the change in his waistcoat pocket (first deducting a penny for the waiter) and returns to the office, from which, if it's not Foreign Post night, he again sallies forth in about half an hour. He then walks home at his usual pace to his little back room at Islington, where he has his tea; perhaps solacing himself during the meal with the conversation of his landlady’s little boy, whom he occasionally rewards with a penny for solving problems in simple addition. Sometimes there's a letter or two to take up to his employer’s in Bernard-street, Russell-square, and then the wealthy man of business hearing his voice, calls out from the dining-parlour, "Come in, Mr. Smith,"—and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at the feet of one of the hall chairs, walks timidly in, and being condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully tucks his legs under his chair, and sits at a considerable distance from the table while he drinks the glass of sherry which is poured out for him by the eldest boy, and after drinking which, he backs and slides out of the room in a state of nervous agitation, from which he does not perfectly recover until he finds himself once more in the Islington-road. Poor harmless creatures these men are; contented, but not happy; broken-spirited and humbled, they may feel no pain, but they never know pleasure. Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them have neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the result of their own choice. These are generally old fellows with white heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hessian boots, who, from some cause, real or imaginary—generally the former, the excellent reason being that they are rich and their relations poor—grow suspicious of everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking great delight in thinking themselves unhappy, and making everybody they come near miserable. You may see such men as these any where; you will know them at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the luxury of their dinners; at theatres by their always sitting in the same place, and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people near them; at church by the pomposity with which they enter, and the loud tone in which they repeat the responses; at parties, by their getting cross at whist, and hating music. An old fellow of this kind will have his chambers splendidly furnished, collecting books, and plate, and pictures about him in profusion; not so much for his own gratification as to annoy those who have the desire, but not the means, to compete with him. He belongs to two or three Clubs, and is envied, and flattered, and hated by the members of them all. Sometimes he will be appealed to by a poor relation—a married nephew perhaps—for some little assistance and relief, and then he will declaim with honest indignation on the improvidence of young married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a family, the atrocity of getting into debt with a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, and other unpardonable crimes; winding up his exhortation with a complacent review of his own conduct, and a delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies, some day after dinner of apoplexy, having bequeathed his property to a Bible Society; and the Institution erects a tablet to his memory expressive of their admiration of his Christian conduct in this world, and their comfortable conviction of his happiness in the next. Next to our very particular friends, hackney-coachmen, cabmen, and cads, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool impudence and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us more than London apprentices. They are no longer an organized body, bound down by solemn compact to terrify his Majesty’s subjects whenever it pleased them to take offence in their heads, and staves in their hands. They are only bound now by indentures; and, as to their valour, it is easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office, and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever such beautiful attempts at the grand and magnificent as they display in their own proper persons! We walked down the Strand a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group; and they furnished food for our amusement the whole way. They had come out of some part of the city; it was between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, and they were on their way to the Park. There were four of them, all arm-in-arm, white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms, light oh-no-we-never-mention-'ems, of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English language has as yet no name—a kind of cross between a great coat and a surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets peculiar to themselves. Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick with a large tassel at the top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round, and the whole four, by way of looking easy and unconcerned, were walking with a sort of paralytic swagger irresistibly ludicrous. One of the party had got a watch about the size and shape of a Ribstone pippin, jammed into his waistcoat-pocket, which he carefully compared with the clocks at St. Clement’s and the New Church, the illuminated clock at The Chronicle office, the ditto ditto at Exeter Change, St. Martin’s Church clock, and the Horse Guards; and when they at last arrived in St. James’s-park, the member of the party who had the best made boots on, hired a second chair expressly for his feet, and flung himself on this two-pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an air which, in our mind, levelled all distinctions between Brookes’s and Snooks’s, Crockford’s and Bagnigge Wells. It may be urged that if London apprentices continue to pursue these freaks, they will no longer be the distinct class which we shall attempt to show they now are, by tracing them through the different scenes we propose sketch. We feel the whole force of the objection; and we see no reason why the same gentleman of enlarged and comprehensive views who proposes to Parliament a measure for preserving the amusements of the upper classes of society, and abolishing those of the lower, may not with equal wisdom preserve the former more completely, and mark the distinction between the two more effectively, by bringing in a Bill "to limit to certain members of the hereditary peerages of this country and their families, the privilege of making fools of themselves as often as egregiously as to them shall seem meet." Precedent is a great thing in these cases, and Heaven knows he will have precedent enough to plead. There are so many classes of people in London, each one so different from the other, and each so peculiar in itself, that we find it time to bring our paper to a close before we have well brought our subject to a beginning. We are, therefore, induced to hope that we may calculate upon the permission of our readers to think about people again at some future time. TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-04-23_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoX_Thoughts_About_People.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. X, Thoughts About People.' The Evening Chronicle (23 April 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. X, Thoughts About People' Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (23 April 1835). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350423/016/0003" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350423/016/0003</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-04-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-04-23_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoX_Thoughts_About_People Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. X, Thoughts About People.' (23 April 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-23_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoX_Thoughts_About_People">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-04-23_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoX_Thoughts_About_People</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. 'Tis strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself, and he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive. There really are a very numerous class of people in this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by imperative necessity in the first instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment and the means of subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind us to our homes and friends; and harder still to efface the thousand recollections of happy days and old times, which have been slumbering in our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind to bring before it with startling reality associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have beheld, too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished, but may entertain no more. These men, however, happily for themselves, have long since forgotten such thoughts, old country friends have died or emigrated, former correspondents have become lost like themselves in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city, and they have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance. We were seated in the enclosure of St. James’s Park the other day, when our attention was attracted by a man whom we immediately set down in our own mind as one of this class. He was a tall thin pale person in a black coat, scanty grey trowsers, little pinched-up gaiters, and brown beaver gloves. He had an umbrella in his hand—not for use, for the day was fine; but evidently because he always carried one to the office in the morning; and he walked up and down before the little patch of grass on which the chairs are placed for hire, not as if he were doing it for pleasure or recreation, but as if it were a matter of compulsion—just as he walks to the office every morning from the back settlements of Islington. It was Monday—Easter Monday; he had escaped for four-and-twenty hours from the thraldom of the desk, and was walking here for exercise and amusement—perhaps for the first time in his life. We were inclined to think he had never had a holiday before, and that even now he didn't exactly know what to do with himself. Children were playing on the grass; groups of people were loitering about, chatting and laughing; but the man walked steadily up and down, unheeding and unheeded; his spare, pale face looking as if it were incapable of bearing the expression of curiosity or interest;—altogether there was something in his manner and appearance which told us, we fancied, his whole life, or rather his whole day, for a man of this sort has no variety. We almost saw the dingy little back office into which he walks every morning, hanging his hat on the same peg, and placing his legs beneath the same desk: first, taking off that black coat which lasts the year through, and putting on the one which did duty last year, and which he keeps in his desk to save the other. There he sits till five o’clock, only raising his head when some one enters the counting house, or when in the midst of some difficult calculation, he looks up to the ceiling as if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight with a green knot in the centre of every pane of glass; working the day through as regularly as the dial over the mantel-piece, whose loud ticking is almost as monotonous as his own existence. About five, or half-past, he slowly dismounts from his accustomed stool, and again changing his coat proceeds to his usual dining-place, somewhere near Bucklersbury. The waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather confidential manner—for he's a regular customer— and after inquiring, "What’s in the best cut?" and "what was up last," he orders a small plate of roast beef with greens, and half a pint of porter. He has a small plate to-day because greens are a penny more than potatoes, and he had "two heads" yesterday, with the additional enormity of "a cheese" the day before. This important point being settled, he hangs up his hat—he took it off the moment he sat down—and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it while he's at dinner he appears to eat it with much greater zest; balancing it against the water-bottle, and eating a bit of beef, and reading a line or two, alternately. Exactly at five minutes before the hour is up he produces a shilling, pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the change in his waistcoat pocket (first deducting a penny for the waiter) and returns to the office, from which, if it's not Foreign Post night, he again sallies forth in about half an hour. He then walks home at his usual pace to his little back room at Islington, where he has his tea; perhaps solacing himself during the meal with the conversation of his landlady’s little boy, whom he occasionally rewards with a penny for solving problems in simple addition. Sometimes there's a letter or two to take up to his employer’s in Bernard-street, Russell-square, and then the wealthy man of business hearing his voice, calls out from the dining-parlour, "Come in, Mr. Smith,"—and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at the feet of one of the hall chairs, walks timidly in, and being condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully tucks his legs under his chair, and sits at a considerable distance from the table while he drinks the glass of sherry which is poured out for him by the eldest boy, and after drinking which, he backs and slides out of the room in a state of nervous agitation, from which he does not perfectly recover until he finds himself once more in the Islington-road. Poor harmless creatures these men are; contented, but not happy; broken-spirited and humbled, they may feel no pain, but they never know pleasure. Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them have neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the result of their own choice. These are generally old fellows with white heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hessian boots, who, from some cause, real or imaginary—generally the former, the excellent reason being that they are rich and their relations poor—grow suspicious of everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking great delight in thinking themselves unhappy, and making everybody they come near miserable. You may see such men as these any where; you will know them at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the luxury of their dinners; at theatres by their always sitting in the same place, and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people near them; at church by the pomposity with which they enter, and the loud tone in which they repeat the responses; at parties, by their getting cross at whist, and hating music. An old fellow of this kind will have his chambers splendidly furnished, collecting books, and plate, and pictures about him in profusion; not so much for his own gratification as to annoy those who have the desire, but not the means, to compete with him. He belongs to two or three Clubs, and is envied, and flattered, and hated by the members of them all. Sometimes he will be appealed to by a poor relation—a married nephew perhaps—for some little assistance and relief, and then he will declaim with honest indignation on the improvidence of young married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a family, the atrocity of getting into debt with a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, and other unpardonable crimes; winding up his exhortation with a complacent review of his own conduct, and a delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies, some day after dinner of apoplexy, having bequeathed his property to a Bible Society; and the Institution erects a tablet to his memory expressive of their admiration of his Christian conduct in this world, and their comfortable conviction of his happiness in the next. Next to our very particular friends, hackney-coachmen, cabmen, and cads, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool impudence and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us more than London apprentices. They are no longer an organized body, bound down by solemn compact to terrify his Majesty’s subjects whenever it pleased them to take offence in their heads, and staves in their hands. They are only bound now by indentures; and, as to their valour, it is easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office, and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever such beautiful attempts at the grand and magnificent as they display in their own proper persons! We walked down the Strand a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group; and they furnished food for our amusement the whole way. They had come out of some part of the city; it was between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, and they were on their way to the Park. There were four of them, all arm-in-arm, white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms, light oh-no-we-never-mention-'ems, of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English language has as yet no name—a kind of cross between a great coat and a surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets peculiar to themselves. Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick with a large tassel at the top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round, and the whole four, by way of looking easy and unconcerned, were walking with a sort of paralytic swagger irresistibly ludicrous. One of the party had got a watch about the size and shape of a Ribstone pippin, jammed into his waistcoat-pocket, which he carefully compared with the clocks at St. Clement’s and the New Church, the illuminated clock at The Chronicle office, the ditto ditto at Exeter Change, St. Martin’s Church clock, and the Horse Guards; and when they at last arrived in St. James’s-park, the member of the party who had the best made boots on, hired a second chair expressly for his feet, and flung himself on this two-pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an air which, in our mind, levelled all distinctions between Brookes’s and Snooks’s, Crockford’s and Bagnigge Wells. It may be urged that if London apprentices continue to pursue these freaks, they will no longer be the distinct class which we shall attempt to show they now are, by tracing them through the different scenes we propose sketch. We feel the whole force of the objection; and we see no reason why the same gentleman of enlarged and comprehensive views who proposes to Parliament a measure for preserving the amusements of the upper classes of society, and abolishing those of the lower, may not with equal wisdom preserve the former more completely, and mark the distinction between the two more effectively, by bringing in a Bill "to limit to certain members of the hereditary peerages of this country and their families, the privilege of making fools of themselves as often as egregiously as to them shall seem meet." Precedent is a great thing in these cases, and Heaven knows he will have precedent enough to plead.  There are so many classes of people in London, each one so different from the other, and each so peculiar in itself, that we find it time to bring our paper to a close before we have well brought our subject to a beginning. We are, therefore, induced to hope that we may calculate upon the permission of our readers to think about people again at some future time.