

Transcribed from the 1903 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





                             SKETCHES BY BOZ


                      Illustrative of Every-Day Life
                           and Every-Day People

                                * * * * *

                            By CHARLES DICKENS

                                * * * * *

           _With Illustrations by George Cruickshank and Phiz_

                                * * * * *

                       LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
                                   1903




PREFACE


The whole of these Sketches were written and published, one by one, when
I was a very young man.  They were collected and republished while I was
still a very young man; and sent into the world with all their
imperfections (a good many) on their heads.

They comprise my first attempts at authorship--with the exception of
certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and
represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries.  I am conscious
of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing
obvious marks of haste and inexperience; particularly in that section of
the present volume which is comprised under the general head of Tales.

But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently and
favourably received when it was first made, I have not felt it right
either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here and
there.




OUR PARISH


CHAPTER I--THE BEADLE.  THE PARISH ENGINE.  THE SCHOOLMASTER


How much is conveyed in 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 sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of
nature, 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 children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very
bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her.  What
can he do?  To whom is he to apply for relief?  To private charity?  To
benevolent individuals?  Certainly not--there is his parish.  There are
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 so 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.  It is 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
boardroom, 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,
it's 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 curtained
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 when 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 turn-cock 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 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
10,000_l._ in his will, and revoked the bequest in a 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.



CHAPTER II--THE CURATE.  THE OLD LADY.  THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN


We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of our parish, because we
are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office.  We will
begin the present, with the clergyman.  Our curate is a young gentleman
of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within
one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young-lady
inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding
with love.  Never were so many young ladies seen in our parish church on
Sunday before; and never had the little round angels' faces on Mr.
Tomkins's monument in the side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as
they all exhibited.  He was about five-and-twenty when he first came to
astonish the parishioners.  He parted his hair on the centre of his
forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first
water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied to
his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep sepulchral voice of
unusual solemnity.  Innumerable were the calls made by prudent mammas on
our new curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he was
assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily accepted.  If his
manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his favour, the
sensation was increased tenfold, by his appearance in private circles.
Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading-desk rose in
value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a premium: an inch of room in
the front row of the gallery could not be procured for love or money; and
some people even went so far as to assert, that the three Miss Browns,
who had an obscure family pew just behind the churchwardens', were
detected, one Sunday, in the free seats by the communion-table, actually
lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry!  He began to
preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection.  He
got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night, to
half-baptise a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of
the parishioners knew no bounds--the very churchwardens grew generous,
and insisted on the parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on
wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the
funeral service in, in wet weather.  He sent three pints of gruel and a
quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman who had been brought to bed of
four small children, all at once--the parish were charmed.  He got up a
subscription for her--the woman's fortune was made.  He spoke for one
hour and twenty-five minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and
Boots--the enthusiasm was at its height.  A proposal was set on foot for
presenting the curate with a piece of plate, as a mark of esteem for his
valuable services rendered to the parish.  The list of subscriptions was
filled up in no time; the contest was, not who should escape the
contribution, but who should be the foremost to subscribe.  A splendid
silver inkstand was made, and engraved with an appropriate inscription;
the curate was invited to a public breakfast, at the before-mentioned
Goat and Boots; the inkstand was presented in a neat speech by Mr.
Gubbins, the ex-churchwarden, and acknowledged by the curate in terms
which drew tears into the eyes of all present--the very waiters were
melted.

One would have supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal
admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity.  No such thing.
The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the
Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service.  Here was a
discovery--the curate