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!!!