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"Are these gals 'andsome?" inquired Mr. Simpson of Mr. Septimus Hicks, another of the boarders, as they were amusing themselves in the drawing-room, before dinner, by lolling on sofas, and contemplating their pumps.

"Don’t know,"​replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who was a tallish, white-faced young man, with spectacles, and a black ribbon round his neck instead of a neckerchief —​a most interesting person; a poetical walker of the hospitals, and a​"very talented young man." He was fond of​"lugging"​into conversation all sorts of quotations from Don Juan, without fettering himself by the propriety of their application; in which particular he was remarkably independent. The other, Mr. Simpson, was one of those young men, who are in society what walking gentlemen are on the stage, only infinitely worse skilled in his vocation than the most indifferent artist. He was as empty-headed as the great bell of St. Paul's; always dressed according to the caricatures published in the monthly fashion; and spelt Character with a K.

"I saw a devilish number of parcels in the passage when I came home," simpered Mr. Simpson.

"Materials for the toilet, no doubt," rejoined the Don Juan reader. — "Tales," Chapter 1, "The Boarding House," p.​ 207.

Commentary

["The Boarding-House."] Two sketches, originally published in the Monthly Magazine (May, August 1834), describing romantic intrigues in Mrs. Tibbs's boarding house in Great Coram Street [Bloomsbury]. In the first, the three male boarders (Mr. Simpson, Mr. Septimus Hicks, and Mr. Calton) each arrange secret marriages to Mrs. Maplestone and her two daughters. In the second, the presence of Mrs. Bloss, a hypochrondriac widow, prompts romantic intrigues among the male boarders. — Paul Davis, p. 39.

As Frederic G. Kitton notes, Cruikshank, having designed a program of illustration for the February 1836 two-volume first edition of Sketches, had to re-engrave the original 1836 illustrations for the larger-paged Chapman and Hall serialisation, and the subsequent 1839 anthology, which contained thirteen entirely new plates:

During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy," which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following new subjects: "The Parish Engine," "The Broker's Man," "Our Next-door Neighbours" [sic], "Early Coaches," "Public Dinners," "The Gin-Shop," "Making a Night of It," "The Boarding-House," "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," "The Steam Excursion," "Mrs. Joseph Porter," and "Mr. Watkins Tottle." — "George Cruikshank, p. 4.

The copper-plate engravings contribute to the visual effects of these "sketches." As opposed to the modern short story, the Victorian "sketch" requires little character analysis or thematic organisation; rather, it places an emphasis on the amusing surfaces of quirky characters and the improbable situations of farce translated from the stage to the page — often a magazine page. True to the inferior genre, Dickens makes his rooming-house boarders mere types, odd young men with shallow personalities and superficial tastes; Tibbs, on the other hand, in "The Boarding-House" receives a sympathetic treatment verging on individualisation:

By combining the type with the individual, Dickens modified the convention and brought tension into his characters. . . . . In Boz, Dickens distinguished sketches from stories; the sketch lacks the plot and character development of short stories. The most immediate models for Dickens's sketches were those of Washington Irving, whose Sketch Book influenced Dickens's early work in particular. — Paul David, "Sketch," p. 354.

This is not to say that the two "Boarding-House" narratives of 1834 adhere to the strict definition that Edgar Allen Poe articulated for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1842), which, incidentally the great American short-story writer had published previously in various American magazines and annuals, so that his volume-title reflects the notion of "re-publication" in just the manner of Dickens's 1836 and 18398 anthologies. Dickens's title, however, Sketches by 'Boz,' Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People emphasizes the normal and contemporary nature of the pieces, as opposed to the more exotic and historical settings of Hawthorne and Scottish Romantic short-story writer Sir Walter Scott. In other words, in 1834, twenty-two-year-old Charles Dickens was still developing his conception as to what constituted a short story as opposed to a "sketch," but, by 1839 had begun to move away from mere sketches and had classified "The Boarding-House" as at least a "tale."

The pair of illustrations that Cruikshank developed especially for the 1839 collected anthology of Sketches by 'Boz' establish the characters of the male roomers, and then depict the comic "discovery" scene; unfortunately, the expository and descriptive nature of the first illustration renders it somewhat static and utterly devoid of the comic drama one finds in the second illustration.

The imminent arrival of Mrs. Maplesone's two "delightful" daughters is established early on — a pronouncement by Mr. Tibbs in the exposition that implies the dominated husband's more than passing interest in comely young women. Mrs. T. enact the part of a blocking figure, for she regards any marriage among her boarders as a death-knell for her establishment: "A marriage, indeed to rob me of my boarders — no, not for the world" (207). When in the scene following the dialogue between the Tibbses the eligible Mr. Simpson and his fellow boarder, Mr. Septimus Hicks, discuss whether the new arrivals are "'andsome," we can reasonably assured that, despite Mrs. Tibbs' best efforts at squelching incipient romances, the young men and the young women will develop relationships. As in the text, in the first illustration, Mr. Septimus Hicks (centre), an ardent admirer of Lord Byron's Don Juan (1819-24), is a thin, "a tallish, white-faced young man, with spectacles, and a black ribbon round his neck instead of a neckerchief" (207), to which Cruikshank has added a patterned silk dressing-gown. In accordance with his sentimental and poetical nature, Cruikshank makes him delicate, almost effeminate by giving him long hair and a slender build. The other figures in the drawing-room scene, awaiting the call for dinner and the opportunity to inspect the Miss Maplesones (Julia and Matilda) for themselves, are young Mr. Simpson (right, proposed by Mr. Tibbs as marriage material, and therefore not unattractive, "a magnificent dresser" but lacking the "charming" whiskers and luxuriant hair mentioned by the narrator) and either Mr. Evenson, the political radical, or Mr. Tibbs. The third man, seated right, is not identified in the text, in which the scene appears to contain only Hicks and Simpson; he is not "Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, [who] shortly afterwards made his appearance" (207) and whom Dickens describes as "a superannuated beau — an old boy" (207), a portrait not inconsistent with Cruikshank's third man.

The drawing-room scene has certainly been inspired by similar expository scenes in British comedy, but may have biographical antecedents, too. When Charles's father, John, was incarcerated in the Marshalea Prison for debt, the boy roomed in Little College Street with Mrs. Elizabeth Roylance. When on the 28th of May 1825 John Dickens was released from prison under the Insolvent Debtors' Act by coming to an arrangement with his creditors, he and his family moved in with Mrs. Roylance. Thus, the story written in 1834 may be based on reminiscences of the Camden Town boarding house ten years earlier. The area of Camden Town was familiar to the Dickenses from their having lived at No. 16 Bayham Street, the likely model for the Cratchits' home in A Christmas Carol. Dickens and his family lived in a second-floor flat above a grocer's shop in 1815 at age of three, before returning to live there as teenager between 1828 and 1831 in Fitzrovia, just across the road from the former Cleveland Street Workhouse. The setting of the story, however, is Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden, between Euston Road and Holborn, and Great Coram Street, the street on which the Tibbses have their boarding house, which lies near Russell Square.

Relevant Illustrations from Various Editions, 1839 through 1910

Left: George Cruikshank's​illustration for the second instalment of the two-part short story, The Boarding House, the discovery scene, when the boarders find Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson in a supposedly compromising position, in ​The Boarding House. — II (1839).​ Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.s's comic study of the drunken Mr. Tibbs's confronted by the shrewish landlady, The Boarding-House (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's comic study of a most animated Mr. Tibbs, trying​ to kiss one of the young, attractive housemaids, in The Boarding House: Mr. Tibbs (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Above: The Household Edition illustration for the first part of the story, depicting young Mr. Septimus Hicks ​abd the invalid, Mr. Calton, about to reveal to each other their secret marriage plans in "I received a note —" he said very tremulously, in a voice like a Punch with a cold. —"Yes," returned the other, "You did." —"Exactly."—"Yes." (1876).​ [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Fred Barnard's second illustration for the story, in which the new boarder, the wealthy widow Mrs. Bloss​is confused about Mrs. Tibbs's use of the expression "no stomach" (as in "no appetite"), "​No what?" inquired Mrs. Bloss with a look of the most indescribable alarm. "No stomach," repeated Mrs. Tibbs with a shake of the head (1876).​ [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

References

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. "Tales," Chapter 1, "The Boarding-House,"​Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. Illustrated by George​Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt., 1890. Pp. ​ 205-234.

Dickens, Charles. "Tales," Chapter 1, "The Boarding-House." Christmas Books and Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875 [rpt. of 1867 Ticknor & Fields edition]. Pp. 305-310.

Dickens, Charles. "Tales," Chapter 1, "The Boarding-House." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Pp. 130-148.

Dickens, Charles. "Tales," Chapter 1, "The Boarding-House." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 1. Pp. 263-300.

Dickens, Charles, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.

Hawksley, Lucinda Dickens. Chapter 3, "Sketches by Boz." Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012: Charles Dickens. San Rafael, California: Insight, 2011. Pp. 12-15.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.

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Last modified 12 May 2017