It didn’t take much to amuse me as a child, fascinated not by toys, but by little objects around the house – a little brass elephant claw bell, two miniature brass candle sticks, a black and red Chinese tin tea canister, to name a few; and then there were these four small red leather books tucked up together mysteriously in a slender wooden bookcase.
Once in a while, in the dark but warmly lamp-lit living room, I would slowly approach the shelf and reach for one of those red leather books, one of which was Sketches by Boz. Of course, my literacy level was such that for many years I couldn’t read it; but it was the illustrations that told the stories over and over any time I secretly visited the pages. Yet for some unknown reason I never asked my parents who this Boz was, as if it was a secret to one day uncover myself.
Eventually the secret Boz code was cracked – it was the pseudonym of none other than Charles Dickens adopted in 1834. Before it took a book form, this selection of short sketches was published separately in newspapers and other periodicals up to 1836. Subtitled “Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People”, the book Sketches by Boz originally contained 62 illustrations by George Cruikshank & Phiz, though my edition (c.1920) has been shortened to 43.
What also makes the reading of this edition such a memorable experience is the delicate thin texture of the 786 pages made of Oxford India Paper. And what of that name Phiz? That too is a pseudonym of the artist Hablot Knight Browne who drew illustrations for many future novels by Dickens. However, it’s the front piece illustration by Cruikshank that sets the tone, depicting a cast of characters seeing off a hot air balloon with joyous hat waving hurrahs!
As to the sketches themselves, the subtitle says it all. Each story vividly depicts the characters in their times doing everyday things. Yet, as with all that same artistry with which Dickens writes his more well-known characters, these people appear much like people we observe today. 190 years later and human behaviours haven’t changed. Making contemporary comparisons, I recognize them, including versions of myself acting out in laughable peculiar ways.
Here’s but one for instance circumstance. If you have been to London and ridden on a double decker bus, you might relate easily to the sketch “Omnibuses” (well I certainly did). Riding along, Boz’s omnibus arrives at one of my favourite haunts – Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where the scene is set with timeless behaviour described – “…we drop a great many of our original passengers, and take up fresh ones, who meet with a very sulky reception. It is rather remarkable, that the people already in an omnibus always look at new-comers, as if they entertained some undefined idea that they have no business to come in at all…”
Perhaps the one behaviour that you might observe as more prevalent today is passengers on their smart phone screens, only annoyed by a split-second sudden nudge on the shoulder; which I would then argue pretty much substitutes for an annoyed passenger who had their head buried in a newspaper. In any case, much entertainment can be found in all the characters in all their various social engagements presented in the Sketches.
Reading done. Closing the book, my fingers brushed the soft red leather cover, and I drifted back to my first discovery of Boz, how it was the illustrations that amused me. So much so that now, after reading the Sketches, the words became the visuals, (if that makes sense); and I realized that many of my own memories, all my observations and learning from human interactions, can now somehow be seen as Boz- like moments, witty, sometimes wistful and all too transitory.
