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Passage Illustrated: The Second Type of Sunday, "II. As Sabbath Bills Would Make It"

Turn into the streets, and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over every thing around. The roads are empty, the fields are deserted, the houses of entertainment are closed. Groups of filthy and discontented-looking men, are idling about at the street corners, or sleeping in the sun; but there are no decently-dressed people of the poorer class, passing to and fro. Where should they walk to? It would take them an hour, at least, to get into the fields, and when they reached them, they could procure neither bit nor sup, without the informer and the penalty. Now and then, a carriage rolls smoothly on, or a well-mounted horseman, followed by a liveried attendant, canters by; but with these exceptions, all is as melancholy and quiet as if a pestilence had fallen on the city.

Bend your steps through the narrow and thickly-inhabited streets, and observe the sallow faces of the men and women who are lounging at the doors, or lolling from the windows. Regard well the closeness of these crowded rooms, and the noisome exhalations that rise from the drains and kennels; and then laud the triumph of religion and morality, which condemns people to drag their lives out in such stews as these, and makes it criminal for them to eat or drink in the fresh air, or under the clear sky. Here and there, from some half-opened window, the loud shout of drunken revelry strikes upon the ear, and the noise of oaths and quarrelling — the effect of the close and heated atmosphere — is heard on all sides. See how the men all rush to join the crowd that are making their way down the street, and how loud the execrations of the mob become as they draw nearer. They have assembled round a little knot of constables, who have seized the stock-in-trade, heinously exposed on Sunday, of some miserable walking-stick seller, who follows clamouring for his property. The dispute grows warmer and fiercer, until at last some of the more furious among the crowd, rush forward to restore the goods to their owner. A general conflict takes place; the sticks of the constables are exercised in all directions; fresh assistance is procured; and half a dozen of the assailants are conveyed to the station-house, struggling, bleeding, and cursing. The case is taken to the police-office on the following morning; and after a frightful amount of perjury on both sides, the men are sent to prison for resisting the officers, their families to the workhouse to keep them from starving: and there they both remain for a month afterwards, glorious trophies of the sanctified enforcement of the Christian Sabbath. Add to such scenes as these, the profligacy, idleness, drunkenness, and vice, that will be committed to an extent which no man can foresee, on Monday, as an atonement for the restraint of the preceding day; and you have a very faint and imperfect picture of the religious effects of this Sunday legislation, supposing it could ever be forced upon the people. ["II. As Sabbath Bills Would Make It," pp. 30-31]

Commentary: Phiz as Successor to Seymour with Chapman and Hall

John Buchanan-Brown has speculated that the noted publisher, Frederick Chapman, partner in Chapman and Hall, London, had already been impressed by Phiz's prize-winning engraving John Gilpin's Race (1832) for the Society of Arts' Silver Medal for best illustration of an historical subject, executed when Phiz was just seventeen. This same scene in William Cowper's poem The Diverting History of John Gilpin had been realised previously by George Cruikshank's minute wood-engraving of 1828. In early 1836, "Browne was then engaged, as successor to Seymour and Buss, to provide designs for the woodcut illustrations in Chapman's short-lived The Library of Fiction, comprising one signed and perhaps some eight others" (Buchanan-Brown, 11).

The chaotic scene occurs somewhere near the London docks, if the sign reading "Marine Stores" (left) is any indication. The young women lolling from the windows, the text implies, are prostitutes. The three uniformed Constables have their work cut out for them, as they arrest drunks and fend off quarrelsome prostitutes. By the clock it is 12:15 P. M., but the revelry from the night before surges on, unabated. In this nightmarish rendition of early Sunday afternoon in the squalid dockyards district, the pinnacle of order and discipline is the tall constable with an almost avuncular arm around the ill-dressed street waif, centre. The uniformed pillar of legally restraint has replaced the figure of good order, the welcoming baker of McDough Street in Sunday as it is. Whereas the "Bread Street" scene featured children eager for their meal, here an unfortunate infant lies abandoned and protrate, lower centre, on the cobblestones as a woman struggles to hold onto her child (extreme left) as the second constable grapples with two unruly urchins. The working-class cap abandoned, lower right, presumably belongs to the inebriate over whom the two young harridans and the constable are quarrelling (right). A neat compositional trick to emphasize the central action is Phiz's making the head of the lead constable the apex of a pyramid formed by the raucous crowd behind him and his stalwart subordinates, left and right. For Dickens and Phiz, several agents are responsible for this chaotic scene of mass drunkenness: the popular recourse to relatively inexpensive and readily available hard liquor (gin), general store closures and an absence of recreation caused by the harsh Sabbatarian laws advocated by the first two of the three "heads": the Archbishop of London, the Reverend Charles Bloomfield (1786-1857), and Scottish Member of Parliament Sir Andrew Agnew (1793-1849).

Bibliography

Buchanan-Browne, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1978.

Davis, Paul. "Sunday under Three Heads." Charles Dickens A top Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998. 371.

Dickens, Charles. Sunday Under Three Heads. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. In One Vol. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: August 19, 2024. Rpt.London: J. W. Jarvis & Son, 28, King William Street, Strand, 1 February 1884. Pp. v + 49.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Chapter Six, "The Collaborators." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 39-51.

Slater, Michael. Chapter 4: "Break-through Year: 1836." Charles Dickens. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. 59-83.

Sparks, Timothy. [Charles Dickens] Sunday Under Three Heads — As it is; as Sabbath Bills would make it; as it might be made. London: Chapman and Hall, 1836.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978.

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Created 15 September 2024