Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
Interesting.
Is it possible in reproducing the speech, Mr Dickens had originally run across an immigrant stagecoach driver?
|
No, that's the way that working-class Cockneys spoke (and, to a large extent, still do today), reversing "W" and "V" and dropping a lot of final sounds from words.
Quote:
|
Or not knowing English customs worth a darn, was stagecoach driving a lower, middle or higher class job?
|
It was a very, very skilled "lower-class" job, and Mr Weller, in the book, regards himself as being among the "aristocracy" of working-class people. He would have been one of the extremely few people at the time who travelled widely; most people never went more than a few miles from where they were born in their whole lives.
Quote:
Now one might argue that while the stagecoach has disappeared, drivers of others still exist.
The vehicles just changed.
I know the stagecoach here in America was largely replaced by the railroad.
|
Absolutely. Exactly the same happened in England. In Dickens's early books, people travel around by stagecoach, but in his later books they use trains.