Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1836) - Chapter 1
SKETCHES BY BOZ
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 10,000l. 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.