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"The Spaniards" at Hampstead Boz calls it "The Spaniard" is scarcely altered from the day of the Bardell visit, and is as picturesque as ever with its Tea Gardens and Bowers. I never pass it without seeming to see Jackson's hackney-coach waiting and the Sheriff's man at the gate taking his drink.
Do I mean at all that this earlier work stands on the same level of excellence as the masterpieces of the writer? Clearly not. It were absurd to expect the stripling, half-furtively coming forward, first without a name at all, and then under the pseudonym of Boz, to write with the superb practised ease and mastery of the Charles Dickens who penned "David Copperfield."
At all events, there were certain animate objects who were delighted to see us, or we must have been very bad decipherers of the human countenance. There stood Uncle Boz, Aunt Deborah, and Bambo, and another personage who presented a very great contrast in personal appearance to any one of the three.
The tide was carrying her somewhat along the beach, so that it seemed as if she would drift not far from the harbour itself. While we were watching, the snow ceased falling, and our interest was now turned towards the boat with Uncle Boz and Bambo in her. She had just reached the mouth of the harbour. It was perilous work. Huge seas were rolling in. A lull was waited for. Out dashed the boat.
This well drawn sketch of an ignorant, self-sufficient constable is admirable. I have little doubt that one of the incidents in which he figures was suggested to Boz by a little adventure of Grimaldi's which he found in the mass of papers submitted to him, and which he worked up effectively.
Credible persons asserted that since some of the trees had been felled, there had not been so much ice in the cave. In order to test the presence of salt, M. des Boz melted some of the ice, and evaporated the resulting water, but found no taste of salt in the matter which remained.
It was about this time that he put together a loose pile of papers, satires on institutions, pictures of private persons, fairy tales of the vulgarity of his world, odds and ends such as come out of the facility and the fierce vanity of youth. It was about this time at any rate that he decided to publish them, and gave them the name of Sketches by Boz.
He then acted as parliamentary reporter, first for The True Sun, and from 1835 for the Morning Chronicle. Meanwhile he had been contributing to the Monthly Magazine and the Evening Chronicle the papers which, in 1836, appeared in a coll. form as Sketches by Boz; and he had also produced one or two comic burlettas. In the same year he m.
The house was hot enough when we got inside, for there were blazing fires in each room, Uncle Boz presiding over one, Bambo over the other, with saucepans and spoons, and a strong smell of port-wine negus pervading the atmosphere. In the dining-room, into which Miss Deborah did not venture, were five or six rolls of rugs, with rough human heads sticking out of them.
There's One above hears me, and you'll soon meet Him, and know that I speak the truth." "Boz, you have always spoken the truth," whispered the dying lieutenant. "I trust in Him; I die happy." The action was still raging. Another round-shot took off Uncle Boz's leg.
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