Sketches by Boz | Page 2

to that solemn functionary. As to
taking out a summons, it's quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it,
on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by
heart; states the case without a single stammer: and it is even reported
that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord
Mayor's head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an
intimate friend, confidentially, was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler's.
See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and cocked-hat, with a
large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in
his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places!
and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys
them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to
beadles! The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their
curtained pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected
expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention
between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the
commencement of the communion service, when the whole
congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the
voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone
floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of
the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one
of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had
not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right
leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money
ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle,
gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears
above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane
before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent
pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the
sermon.
Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle--a
gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under

our observation, except when the services of that particularly useful
machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle.
Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them,
and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring
chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply
of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle
over the pavement, the beadle, running--we do not exaggerate--running
at the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of soot, at
the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for
half-an-hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and
the turn-cock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst
the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the
beadle 'pulls up' the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount
of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but
once. It came up in gallant style--three miles and a half an hour, at least;
there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang
went the pumps--the people cheered--the beadle perspired profusely;
but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the
fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was
filled with water; and that eighteen boys, and a man, had exhausted
themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the
slightest effect!
The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the
workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody
knows, is a short, pudgy little man, in black, with a thick gold
watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a
key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so,
than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves
crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As
to the churchwardens and overseers, we exclude them altogether,
because all we know of them is, that they are usually respectable
tradesmen, who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who
occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground, in some
conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having
being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt.

The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish--nor is he usually in
any other--one of that class of men the