Online Exhibition: Character Sketches from the World of Charles Dickens
This exhibition celebrates one of the most enduring legacies of Charles Dickens's genius: the unforgettable characters he brought to life.
George Cruikshank’s illustration shows the stalls where one could enter privately and avoid notice by neighbors. Years later this situation would be employed by Dickens, when the struggling young Martin Chuzzlewit uses one of these private stalls but is recognized.
George Cruikshank. Illustration to Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, Second Series. London: John Macrone, 1835-36.
In some of the less reputable districts of London were pawnbroker’s shops, where the down on their luck could trade their worldly goods for ready cash. Dickens was familiar with the steady decline of possessions that went hand-in-hand with his father’s poor management of family finances.
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Sketches by Boz.
A hackney coach was a coach for hire and a familiar sight in the metropolis. “The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and scream 'Coach!' with all their might and main.”
George Cruikshank. Illustration to Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, Second Series. London: John Macrone, 1835-36.
The Sketches were written at a time when the omnibus was replacing the private coach as a method of transportation. “Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. How we should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley's!”
George Cruikshank. Illustration to Sketches by Boz, Second Series. London: John Macrone, 1835-36.
One of the Sketches described people of the upper-class who couldn’t afford the upkeep. Dickens claims that they are unique to London and exclusively male: “. . . a woman is always either dirty and slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable.”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Sketches by Boz.
In Dickens’s time the broker’s man was the repo man. ”The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none; and there's a consolation even in being able to patch up one difficulty, to make way for another, to which very poor people are strangers.”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Sketches by Boz.
The Sketch “Seven Dials” recounts a brawl among some of the female residents of that notorious London slum. “Here's poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own . . . but what hussies must be a comin', and 'ticing away her own' 'usband. . .”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Sketches by Boz.