The Pickwick Club discussion
Sketches by Boz
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Scenes, 16: Omnibuses
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Even though there is no illustration in the sketches for this sketch, I went and looked up an omnibus anyway, here is one:
Dickens makes me pity the rider. The photograph makes me pity the horses. Horses aside, I can only assume that this public conveyance was quite an improvement for those of lesser means to walking, or having the expense of hiring a private carriage to get around town.
His sketch made me never want to get on an omnibus, but reading what you said, I suppose it would be better than walking every single day in every kind of weather.
Yes. I wonder what would be worse. Walking on the streets where all the horses "relieved" themselves or being crammed into an omnibus where perhaps some of your fellow passengers had not bathed in a few days. Having travelled by subway, at rush hour, I can attest to the fact that even in the 21C simple practices of cleanliness seem wanting.In the beginning of Basil, by Wilkie Collins, there is a description of a man seeing a woman with whom he becomes infatuated as he rides on an omnibus. In terms of Dickens, I seem to remember Pickwick and the crew travelling by omnibus ... Or is that a stagecoach?
Best, perhaps, to be rich. Own your own carriage and pay the likes of Jo from BH to walk in front of you while you were on the streets.
Mary Lou wrote: "Dickens makes me pity the rider. The photograph makes me pity the horses. Horses aside, I can only assume that this public conveyance was quite an improvement for those of lesser means to walking..."
Thanks, Mary Lou - your reference to pitying the horses made me laugh and lightened up my rather unpleasant day ;-)
Nevertheless, from the looks of it, an omnibus must have been a very uncomfortable vehicle because the inside does not look too spacious for me. I would rather have gone by bike, although they were not yet invented and when they were, they first had those large front wheels which would not have been too safe on Victorian cobblestone.
There is a nice ghost story by E.F. Benson called "The Bus-conductor", which is, I think, also about an omnibus ...
Kim wrote: "Dear Pickwickians,Hello all, for the next few weeks we will be reading some of the Sketches and this week we are reading five of them from the "Scenes" section of the book. I have been rather dis..."
Kim,
thank you very much for putting so much time and heart into these recaps!
The pale little boy also reminded me of David Copperfield, but in my Penguin edition of the Sketches, there is a note which runs like this: "This may be a memory of Dickens's own journey at the age of eleven when he came up from Chatham to the Cross Keys, referred to in 1860 in 'Dullborough Town', Uncommercial Traveller, p.116."
Maybe he used the same memory to create a similar scene in David Copperfield.
Hello all, for the next few weeks we will be reading some of the Sketches and this week we are reading five of them from the "Scenes" section of the book. I have been rather distracted these last few weeks, family visiting, going to nursing homes, and of course decorating, and I am sorry I didn't open the thread on Sunday like we usually do, but it didn't even occur to me until yesterday. Then the distractions didn't stop yesterday so I didn't get the threads finished until this morning. Anyway, here they are.
The first sketch in this section is Chapter 16 and titled "OMNIBUSES". This sketch first appeared in The Morning Chronicle on September 26, 1834. In the sketch Dickens made traveling in an omnibus or a coach for that matter sound awful and I am very glad I have never been in either one. Dickens tells us early on that:
"Of all the public conveyances that have been constructed since the days of the Ark—we think that is the earliest on record—to the present time, commend us to an omnibus."
That had me thinking for awhile trying to come up with any type of public conveyances that may have been around before the ark, but I'm not coming up with any, in fact I'm not coming up with much travel at all taking place in the first few chapters of Genesis. He doesn't make coach traveling appealing at all, the same six people traveling together, getting grumpy and sleepy after twelve hours, telling long, long stories, things like that. This next line reminded me of David in DC and made me wonder if Dickens had done something similar as a young boy:
"We have also travelled occasionally, with a small boy of a pale aspect, with light hair, and no perceptible neck, coming up to town from school under the protection of the guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for."
But now Dickens moves from coaches to omnibuses telling us:
"Yes, after mature reflection, and considerable experience, we are decidedly of opinion, that of all known vehicles, from the glass-coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus."
He tells us that unlike a coach the passengers in an omnibus change often, and that no one has ever slept in one. I like what he says about long stories in omnibuses:
"As to long stories, would any man venture to tell a long story in an omnibus? and even if he did, where would be the harm? nobody could possibly hear what he was talking about."
As for children he says:
"Again; children, though occasionally, are not often to be found in an omnibus; and even when they are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the case, somebody sits upon them, and we are unconscious of their presence. "
Dickens describes things so that, even though I have never even seen an omnibus, at least I don't think I have, I can picture all the people in it as he tells us about them. I wished there had been an illustration for this chapter, but we don't get one yet. Most of them I can picture anyway, the young men who laugh at everything, the little testy old man, shabby-genteel man, and the cad. Thinking of the shabby-genteel man reminds me that we have a sketch coming up in Characters that has that for the title, I wonder if it will be the same omnibus riding man, for some reason it also reminds me of Gridley in BH. And now I am leaving the omnibus and moving on without it, although I may go and look for a picture of one first.