United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I had an idea I knew the fellow, and but little honesty is there in him. Do you pull on as before, and I will follow if there comes a breeze, and lend a hand should you want me." There was no time for talking, and as the vessel was evidently honest, we tumbled into our boat and pulled on as lustily as before. We soon caught sight of another vessel. "Hurrah! there she is," cried Uncle Boz.
"Yes, dat we will," echoed Bambo, flourishing a heavy handspike over his head, with a vehemence which showed that age had not impaired his vigour. "We will treat dem as we did dem picarooning villains in de Vest Indies, ven you led de boarders, massa Boz, eh!" "And you followed close at my side, and saved my life, Bambo," cried Uncle Boz.
This original and very entertaining figure turned the scales, and almost instantly there was the greatest demand for the "Pickwick Papers." By the time the series was finished the name of "Boz" was constantly on almost every English tongue. Here again fortune had had much to do with deciding Dickens' career.
But the Great White Horse received an important cosmopolitan compliment from across the seas at the Chicago Exhibition when a large and complete model was prepared and set up in the building. V. Ipswich Theatre Boz, on his travels, with his strong theatrical taste, was sure to have gone to the little theatre in Tacket Street, now a Salvation Army meeting- house.
He had just published his Sketches by Boz, the copyright of which he sold for one hundred pounds, and was beginning the Pickwick Papers. About this time his publisher brought N. P. Willis down to Furnival's Inn to see the man whom Willis called "a young paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle."
It was at this hotel, when the show was over, and our agreeable supper cleared away, that I saw the pleasant Boz lying on the sofa somewhat tired by his exertions, not so much on the boards as in that very room. For he was fond of certain parlour gymnastics, in which he contended with his aide-de-camp Dolby.
When first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton. Strype says, "All this part was very meanly built ... and greatly inhabited by French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day. Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz."
It is certain that the whole description of the Theatre and its company, with the minute and intimate details of stage life, was drawn from this little house at Rochester. But we can go beyond mere speculation. In one of his retrospections, Boz tells us of a visit he paid to Rochester in the fifties, "scenes among which my early days were past."
Nay, Pickwick chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, and Weller corduroys in breeches-makers' advertisements; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets; and the portrait of the author of 'Pelham' or 'Crichton' was scraped down or pasted over to make room for that of the new popular favourite in the omnibuses."
Pickwick's time, with every other available inch of wall space now covered with portraits of the novelist and his memorable characters, pictures of scenes from his books, Dickensian relics and knicknacks, either associated with the book which brought it fame or with other books of the famous Boz.
Word Of The Day