

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