"The Election for Beadle" and a change of plans

Yes, I have decided that I am changing the order in which I am going to read the Sketches by Boz. After all, I was not alive when they were appearing in the different magazines, so I'd better read them as they are intended to be read by a 21st-century audience. I reached that decision today, after reading "The Election for Beadle" (SB 4), originally published as "Sketches of London No 16" in The Evening Chronicle on  14th July, 1835. Yesterday, when I read "The Four Sisters", I already had the feeling that I was treading on ground that was unknown to me but which Dickens's readers must have known beforehand. The parish of which the narrator talked about had already been the subject of other sketches. Given that the Delphi Classics edition only includes 25 sketches in the section "Original Published Order of the Sketches", something must be amiss. Today, in "The Election for Beadle", I had no doubt. Four paragraphs into the story, the narrator, having introduced one character, tells us that "His great opponent in public life is Captain Purday, the old naval officer on half-pay, to whom we have already introduced our readers." There! No Captain Purday has been introduced to me so far, so I presume he must have appeared in one of the first two sketches. Therefore, tomorrow I start reading the Sketches by Boz from the very beginning, with the section entitled "Our Parish". I'll revisit the beadle election and the four sisters but I am sure to meet many other characters which I should like to be acquainted with already.

Sketches by Boz 8. "The Four Sisters" (Originally, "Sketches of London Nº 14"

A jewel of a sketch, "The Four Sisters" (SB 3) tells the story of the four Miss Willises who, after having lived in the parish for thirteen years, suddenly get married. All four at once? All married to the same man, Mr. Robinson? No, only one of them becomes Mrs. Robinson but, since all of them behave in exactly the same way during the ceremony and all of them go on living together as before, speculation can only be a matter of course. Nature eventually follows its course and in duetime the mystery is solved.

The four Brodie sisters, picture by Lewis Carroll

I see that this is part of a series of sketches which were published in the group "Our Parish" of Sketches by Boz. I am looking forward to reading them all. Its original title was "Sketches of London No.14) and it was published in The Evening Chronicle, on 18th June, 1935. Interesting anticipation of the description of Coketown in Hard Times, which would reach the press nineteen years later: "Everything was formal, still, and cold - so were the four Miss Willises. Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place - not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at the same hour". 


There are no illustrations in this sketch, so I looked for one.  I chose a photograph of Lilian, Margaret, Ida, and Ethel Brodie, daughters of Oxford Professor Benjamin Brodie, taken by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). You can access these and many others at http://mural.uv.es/carmapa2/arte8.html, a talk given by Edward Wakeling in various venues in 2003 after the publichation of Lewis Carroll, Photographer. There were, however, other options to illustrate this post. Pick your own:

 

To my lovely sister, Irene. Love you tons, sweetie!!!