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Early Coaches á laDucrow
Harry Furniss
1910
14 cm x 10 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Sketches by Boz, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, "Scenes," Chapter 15, "Early Coaches," facing I, 129.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candlelight. If you have ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, overnight, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep —your thoughts grow confused— the stage-coaches, which have been "going off"before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip— the next you are exhibiting á la Ducrow, on the off-leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don't take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau.Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering!— rap, rap, rap— what an industrious fellow he must be! you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again— he's talking now— what's that he said? Five o'clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed. The vision is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker's shop is your own bedroom, and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles or the panels of the door. ["Scenes," Chapter 15, "Early Coaches," 126]
Extended caption adapted from the text: “The man who has to catch an early coach has a restless night and dreams that one moment he is driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip— the next he is exhibiting, á la Ducrow, the famous circus bare-backed rider.” — Sketches by Boz, 126.
The old coaching office that Dickens appreciatively describes was very much a thing of the past for Furniss's readers, but such was the fame of the star equestrian performer at Astley's that even British readers in 1910 might have understood Furniss's visual gloss of á la Ducrow, which is to say, in the dashing manner of circus horseman Andrew Ducrow (1793–1842), the "Father of British circus equestrianism" and "the Colossus of equestrians." The originator of acts of daring horsemanship and proprietor of Astley's Amphitheatre, London, from the age of three, Ducrow had been trained in expert horsemanship by his father, Peter, a Belgian emigre born in Bruges who had arrived in England in 1793. As an Astley's strongman, Peter was renowned as the "Flemish Hercules." Andrew Ducrow's most celebrated and exciting routine, known as the "Courier of St. Petersburg," was the forerunner of modern horse acts, and was still being performed at the turn of the century. Despite the popularity of such performances as The Battle of Waterloo (1824), King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Planché's drama Cortez, or the Conquest of Mexico (at Covent Garden Theatre in November 1823), Alfred Bunn's Drury Lane spectacle of St. George and the Dragon (1833), towards the end of his career Ducrow was beset by misfortune in that his amphitheatre burned down three times during his tenure. After the third fire (on 8 June 1841), he suffered a mental breakdown, and died shortly thereafter. He was buried in a magnificent Greco-Egyptian mausoleum in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. But at the time that Dickens wrote "Early Coaches" in 1835, Ducrow and his equestrian family were at the top of their game, and were renowned throughout Europe, although the brother, John, a noted circus clown, had died on 23 May 1834, not quite a year before the sketch originally appeared as "Sketches of London No. 3" in the Evening Chronicle for 19 February 1835.
Furniss's psychological construction involves realising elements of the nightmare in which the traveller himself — "Boz" — becomes the equestrian stuntman, riding bareback on the "off-leader" ("exhibiting á laDucrow, on the off-leader") and cracking the whip high above his head, while the ringmaster, whip in hand, observes from the wings (upper right, in front of a sketched-in circus tent), as if the coach and its fiery steeds are part of Dulcrow's act at Astley's amphitheatre. The moustached driver in his silk hat disregards the fact that he is about to run his equipage right off the snow-covered cliff, while behind him ostlers manage another team of horses, presumably for the next act.
Left: The original illustrator's severe description of the coaching office, George Cruikshank's realisation of Early Coaches. Centre: Cruikshank's more prosaic view of the second-hand clothing shops near Covent Garden, Monmouth Street. Right: Cruikshank's depiction of the interior of "uncle's" — a place no respectable bourgeois would wish to go, The Pawnbroker's Shop.
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. "Early Coaches," Chapter 15 in "Scenes," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt., 1890. 97-101.
_____. "Early Coaches," Chapter 15 in "Scenes," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. 62-65.
_____. "Early Coaches," Chapter 15 in "Scenes," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 1. 124-129.
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. 12-15.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. , 2009.
Created 2 May 2017
Last modified 2 February 2020