Selected Short Fiction Page 48
THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE
First published in the Evening Chronicle (14 July 1835) and included in the First Series of Skerches by Boz (1836). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of Sketches by Boz (1868). For a discussion of Dickens’s revisions in successive collections of the Sketches, see John Butt and Kathleen Tillotson, Dickens at Work (London: Methuen, 1957), chapter 2.
1 (p. 93) Watching-rates. Rates levied to pay local watchmen who were subsequently replaced by the police.
2 (p. 94) the old naval officer on half-pay, to whom we have already introduced our readers. Described in the second sketch dealing with ‘Our Parish’, omitted from this selection. ‘The Election for Beadle’ is the fourth in the ‘Parish’ section of Sketches by Boz.
3 (p. 97) his neighbour, the old lady. Likewise described in the second ‘Our Parish’ sketch.
4 (p. 97) high-lows. Laced boots which reached over the ankle, in contrast to shoes, but did not extend so far up the leg as top boots. 5· (p. 98) envy, and hatred, and malice and all uncharitableness. The Litany in the Book of Common Prayer petitions for deliverance ‘From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness’.
SEVEN DIALS
First published in Bell’s Life in London (27 September 1835) and included in the Second Series of Sketches by Boz (1837) [1836]. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of Sketches by Boz (1868).
1 (p. 100) Tom King and the Frenchman. Figures in Monsieur Tonson (1821), a farce by ‘William Thomas Moncrieff’ (William Thomas Thomas) based on a poem of the same title by John Taylor (1757-1832). Tom King’s coffee house in Covent Garden is depicted in Hogarth’s ‘Morning’ (1738).
2 (p. 100) Seven Dials. A district in London so named from the convergence of seven streets at a point once marked by a pillar with six dials, or circular faces, which was removed in 1773. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Seven Dials along with the adjoining area of St Giles was one of the worst slums in London, packed with criminals, vagrants, impoverished immigrants, and more affluent visitors attracted by the low-life atmosphere as well as the ballad-singers and sellers for which the location was famous.
3 (p. 100) names of Catnach and of Pitts. James Catnach (1792-1841) and John Pitts (1765-1844), rival printers of street literature whose shops were located in Seven Dials.
4 (p. 100) penny yards of song. Songs printed in three columns on sheets approximately a yard in length and sold for a penny. There is an illustration of a long-song seller as well as a discussion of this trade in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861; reprinted New York: Dover, 1968), vol. I, p. 221.
5 (p. 101) gordian knot. Anything intricate or difficult to unravel, like the knot securing the yoke to the wagon pole of Gordius, a peasant who became king of Phrygia. According to legend, whoever could untie the knot would rule over Asia; Alexander fulfilled the prophecy by cutting the knot with his sword.
6 (p. 101) Beulah Spa. One of the noted features of this place of recreation, which opened at Norwood in 1831, was a small maze.
7 (p. 101) Belzoni-like. Giovanni Baptista Belzoni (1778-1823), born in Padua and educated in Rome, came to England in 1803 to embark upon a colourful career. He won recognition first as a public performer, capitalizing upon his enormous strength and height (approximately six feet, seven inches) and then turned his attention to engineering and exploration. He made numerous journeys within Egypt and became famous for his discoveries of antiquities and his excavations of ancient tombs.
8 (p. 101) ‘three outs.’ From the slang phrase ‘to drink the three outs’, meaning to drink copiously.
9 (p. 103) put the kye-bosk on her. Slang for knock out either figuratively or literally.
10 (p. 103) Blucher boots. Named after the Prussian field-marshal, Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819). Sturdy boots which reached no higher than mid-calf in contrast to the taller Wellington boots.
11 (p. 104) increase and multiply. An allusion to the command in Genesis ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth’ given at the creation (1: 28) and repeated to Noah after the flood (9: 1).
12 (p. 104) jemmy. Slang for a cooked sheep’s head.
13 (p. 105) writes poems for Mr Warren. The blacking warehouse in which Dickens toiled for a few miserable months as a child bore the name of its original proprietor Jonathan Warren, a rival of the more famous Robert Warren. Like innumerable other manufacturers both then and now, Jonathan Warren advertised his product with rhyme, and Tony Weller’s comments about Sam Weller’s valentine in Chapter 33 of Pickwick Papers likewise poke fun at these rhyming propensities:
‘“Lovely creetur,” ’ repeated Sam
“Tain’t in poetry, is it?’ interposed his father.
‘No, no,’ replied Sam.
‘Werry glad to hear it,’ said Mr Weller. ‘Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ‘cept a beadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’, or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.’
In The Old Curiosity Shop (Chapter 28), the commercial poet Mr Slum persuades the proprietress of Jarley’s Wax-work to purchase an acrostic which he has already written for the name Warren but which he readily converts to Jarley.
MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET
First published in the Morning Chronicle (24 September 1836) and included in the Second Series of Sketches by Boz (1837) [1836]. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of Sketches by Boz (1868).
1 (p. 106) Monmouth-street. In London, noted for its second-hand clothing shops.
2 (p. 106) Holywell-street. In London, noted for its second-hand book shops.
3 (p. 107) half-boots. ,Boots extending half way up the leg to the knee. Sometimes equated with Blucher boots; see note 10 to ‘Seven Dials’ (P. 413).
4 (p. 110) pair of tops. High boots whose topmost portion was made of a contrasting colour.
5 , (p. 110) knee-cords. Corduroy trousers ending just below the knee.
6 (p. no) Denmark satin. Smooth surfaced, worsted material used for women’s shoes.
7 (p. 112) imperence. Slang for impudence.
A VISIT TO NEWGATE
First published in the First Series of Sketches by Boz (1836). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of Sketches by Boz (1868).
1 (p. 112) If Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin’s palace. In the oriental tale of ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp’, generally considered part of the collection known as the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Aladdin, the son of a poor tailor, acquires a lamp containing a genie who subsequently builds him a palace and enables him to marry a princess. At one point, he temporarily loses the lamp to an evil magician who causes both princess and palace to be transported to Africa, but Aladdin eventually triumphs and returns his wife and home to China. Bedlam (the word is a corrupt form of Bethlehem) was long a famous London hospital for lunatics.
2 (p. 112) Newgate. A famous London prison, demolished in 1902.
3 (p. 112) Old Bailey. The street in which the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, is located.
4 (p. 114) Bishop and Williams. The body-snatchers John Bishop and Thomas Head, alias Williams, were hanged on 5 December 1831 for murdering a young boy.
5 (p. 114) Jack Sheppard ... Dick Turpin. Jack Sheppard (1702-24) and Dick Turpin (1706-39) were notorious thieves and highwaymen. The former was famous for his daring escapes from prison, but both were eventually hanged, Sheppard at Tyburn and Turpin at York. Both figured in novels by Dickens’s contemporary Harrison Ainsworth.
6 (p. 118) stump bedstead. A bedstead whose framework ends at the level of the mattress.
7 (p. 119) Scotch cap. A brimless woollen cap with two tails.
8 (p. 120) turn, and flee from the wrath to come! Matthew 3: 7 and Luke 3: 7 read ‘O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’
A CHRISTMAS TREE
First published in the Christmas 1850 number of Household Words (21 December 1850) and included in Reprinted Pieces (1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens’s works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces (1868).
1 (p. 129) Barmecide. In the story of the Barber’s Sixth Brother in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, a member of the Barmecide family serves a beggar an imaginary banquet (see Chapter 5 of Edward William Lane’s translation).
2 (p. 129) Punch’s hands. In the Punch and Judy puppet show.
3 (p. 130) Jack, who achieved all the recorded exploits. The adventures described here appear in the fairy tales of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’.
4 (p. 130) ferocious joke about his teeth. ‘The better to eat you with, my dear’ - said by the wolf in the fairy tale just before swallowing Little Red Riding-Hood.
5 (p. 131) Robin Hood ... Valentine... the Yellow Dwarf... and all Mother Bunch’s wonders. The exploits of the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood, like the adventures of Valentine (raised at court as a knight) and his brother Orson (carried off by a bear and brought up in the woods) which were first recorded in an early French romance, formed part of young Dickens’s imaginative diet. The tale of the wicked Yellow Dwarf, who steals a beautiful princess and kills his rival only to have the princess die of a broken heart, is another of the traditional nursery stories, sometimes collected under the supposed aegis of ‘Mother Bunch’, which Dickens remembered with delight.
6 (p. 132) we all three breathe again. The allusions here, as in the previous paragraphs, are to the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, narrated by Scheherazade to forestall her execution by the Sultan: ‘trees are for Ali Baba to hide in’ and ‘cobblers are all Mustaphas’, from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves‘, traditionally considered part of this collection; ‘beef steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds’, from the second voyage of Es-Sindibád of the Sea (Chapter 20 of Lane’s translation); ‘the Vizier’s son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook’, from the story of Noor-ed-Deen and Shems-ed-Deen (Chapter 4 of Lane); cave which only waits for the magician‘, from ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp’ (see note I to ‘A Visit to Newgate‘, p. 414); ‘unlucky date‘, from the story of the Merchant and the Jinee (Chapter I of Lane): ‘fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant‘, from ‘The Story of Ali Cogia, Merchant of Bagdad‘, traditionally associated with the Arabian Nights; ‘apple ... which the tall black slave stole from the child‘, from the story of the three apples (Chapter 4 of Lane); ‘dog ... who ... put his paw on the piece of bad money’ and ‘rice which the awful lady ... could only peck by grains‘, from ‘The Story of Sidi-Nouman’ (like ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp’, ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’, and ‘Ali Cogia, Merchant of Bagdad’, included by Antoine Galland in his early eighteenth-century French translation of the Arabian Nights but omitted from many more recent versions including Lane’s translation of 1839-41); ‘fly away .., as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia’, from the story of the Magic Horse (Chapter 17 of Lane).
7 (p. 132) Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. From Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe.
8 (p. 132) Philip Quarll among the monkeys. From The Adventures of Philip Quarll (1727), describing the exploits of an imitation Robinson Crusoe, by ‘Edward Dorrington’ (Peter Longueville).
9 (p. 132) Sandford and Merton with Mr Barlow. From The History of Sandford and Mer:on (1783-9) by Thomas Day.
10 (p. 133) devoted dog of Montargis. Owned by Aubry de Montdidier who was murdered by Richard de Macaire in 1371. The story of the way in which the dog called attention to his master’s assassin, fought him in judicial combat, and forced him to confess his crime was popular in chapbooks as well as on the adult and toy theatre stage.
11 (p. 133) Jane Shore. Mistress of Edward IV but later accused of sorcery by Richard III and forced to do public penance. She is the subject of The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714) by Nicholas Rowe.
12 (p. 133) how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had. In The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell (1731) by George Lillo.
13 (p. 133) the Pantomime. For a contemporary account of this form of entertainment in which Dickens delighted, see the description by Francis Wey, reprinted in London in Dickens’ Day, ed. Jacob Korg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 144-7.
14 (p. 133) ‘Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.’ cf. Shakespeare’s Hamlet II, ii, 255-7: ’... there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
15 (p. 133) the toy-theatre. A favourite nineteenth-century amusement. The sheets of characters and stage fittings could be purchased at toy shops, and, as Dickens notes, hours of labour went into the ‘attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of’ plays such as The Miller and His Men and Elizabeth or the Exile of Siberia which had been successful in the adult theatres of the day. The actual toy-theatre performance undoubtedly provided a splendid forum for Dickens’s youthful imagination since all parts had to be read by the young producer, and the characters were frequently printed in a single attitude in which they necessarily appeared throughout the play, except for ‘a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition ... to become faint in the legs, at d double up, at exciting points of the drama)’. Much of the juvenile popularity of The Miller and His Men, in which the character of Kelmar appears, was probably attributable to the explosion with which it ended. See A. E. Wilson, Penny Plain Two Pence Coloured: A History of the Juvenile Drama (London: Harrap, 1932) and George Speaight, The History of the English Toy Theatre, revised ed. (Boston, Mass.: Plays, 1969).
16 (p. 134) ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Luke 23: 34.
17 (p. 134) Rule of Three. In mathematics, ‘a method of finding a fourth number from three given numbers, of which the first is in the same proportion to the second as the third is to the unknown fourth’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
18 (p 134) Terence and Plautus. Terence (190?-159 B.C.) and Plautus (254?- 184 B.C.), Roman dramatists.
19 (p. 138) the old King. George III, who became incurably insane in 1810.
20 (p. 140) Legion is the name of. cf. Mark 5: 9.
21 (p. 141) This, in remembrance of Me! Luke 22: 19.
A FLIGHT
First published in Household Words (30 August 1851) and included in Reprinted Pieces (1858), in the Library Edition of Dickens’s works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces (1868).
1 (p. 142) Deputy Chaff Wax. An officer responsible for preparing the wax used in sealing documents. The position was abolished in 1852.
2 (p. 142) Meat-chell. John Mitchell (1806-74), who had made the St James’s Theatre the London location for drama in French at the time of this sketch.
3 (p. 142) Abd-el-Kader (1807-83), an Arab leader noted for his skilful battles against the French. In 1847, he was forced to surrender and imprisoned in France until 1852.
4 (p. 142) Zamiel. A demonic spirit like Lucifer and Mephistopheles. He appears in Karl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821).
5 (p. 144) Parliamentary Train. By Act of Parliament, railways were required to run one cheap train, charging no more than a penny a mile, daily on all major lines; they were known as Parliamentary trains.
6 (p. 151) statue ... at Hyde Park Corner. Matthew Cotes Wyatt’s huge bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, erected at Hyde Park Corner on Decimus Burton’s arch in 1846 (and not removed until more than thirty years after Wellington’s death in 1852), was a frequent target of contemporary ridicule. Dickens was generally unsympathetic towards the idea of commemorative statues; among his set of dummy bookbacks invented for the library door at Tavistock House was a ten-volume Catalogue of Statues to the Duke of Wellington.
OUR SCHOOL
Fi
rst published in Household Words (11 October 1851) and included in Reprinted Pieces (1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens’s works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces (1868).
1 (p. 156) Dog of Montargis. See note 10 to ‘A Christmas Tree’ (p. 416).
2 (p. 158) solemn as the ghost in Hamlet. cf. I, i, iv, v and III, iv of Shakespeare’s play.
3 (p. 159) So fades ... all that this world is proud of. From William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814), VII, lines 976-8, loosely quoted.
LYING AWAKE
First published in Household Words (30 October 1852) and included in Reprinted Pieces (1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens’s works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces (1868).
1 (p. 159) My uncle ... just falling asleep. From ‘The Adventure of My Uncle’ in Irving’s Tales of a Traveller (1824).
2 (p. 160) ‘Get out of bed... sweet and pleasant.’ From Franklin’s ‘The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams’ (1786).
3 (p. 160) great actor ... playing Macbeth, and ... apostrophising ‘the death of each day’s life’. William Charles Macready (1793-1873), noted tragedian and close friend of Dickens. His last performance was at Drury Lane Theatre on 26 Feburary 1851 in the role of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The line quoted here occurs in the context of Macbeth’s impassioned description of sleep (II, ii, 35-40):