REMEMBRANCES OF DICKENS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1859, 7 February 1880, Page 3

REMEMBRANCES OF DICKENS.

In the “ Illustrated Household Magazine,” Mr J. H. Siddons writes of Dickens, whom he knew from boyhood, and whose companion he used to be—John Dickens, father of Charles, was in the Admiralty Office, and once a quarter came down on duty to Chatham Navy yard, where Mr Siddoas’s uncle held a similar clerkship Siddons was eighteen and Dickens nine, but the difference, the former says, was more than made up by Charles’s bright intelligence. The scenes of their youthful walks were used by Dickens in his “ Pickwick,” of which he sent Siddons a presentation copy. John Dickens lost his appointment in the Navy department through malversation of office—at all events, the administration desired his dismissal for irregularities. At this point, Mr Forster, Dickens’s biographer, has been discreetly silent. Being without a pension, John Dickens had to seek his bread as a reporter in a Pol ce Court, for which he got three guineas a week. His family at the time consisted of five or six persons, the lodgings! two small rooms) poorly accommodated them, Charles went out every day with his father to the borough police. In the hall of justice he acquired much of his knowledge of low life. It was iu that neighbourhood he saw the “ Boots who furnished him with the character of Sam Weller, and in Lant street he fixed the lodgings of Bob Sawyer and Allen. Subsequently promoted, owing to his dexterity as a stenographer, John Dickens was sent to the higher courts, always accompanied by Charles ; and in the Queen’s Bench presided Judge Enzelee, who sat for the picture of Justice Stareleigh ; and there, too, pract'sed Serjeant Bumpus, the original of Buzfuz. All this I had from Dickens’s own lips, on a furlough. I returned to India for a couple of years, and then went back to England for good; and as I moved much about the country, it happened that I found myself one night, very late—in fact it was three in the morning—at the railway station, near Northwich, in Cheshire. Here I had to stop. Scarcely had I sat foot on the platform, when I was accosted by a tall young man of the yeoman type, who had come to fetch the lett?.r-bag. “Do you wish for a bed, sir?” asked he, “or are you going on ? ” I told him that I was bound for Northwich, two miles off. “ You cannot get there, sir, till later in the morning. I will drive you thore, as I go with the mailcart at eight o’clock.” Accordingly, I cone nded to accept a bed, and a supper if possible, at the hostelry close at hand. I entered the kitchen, where a bright fire was burning, and sat myself before it. There was a kettle on the hob, singing a duet with a chirping cricket. A large wiry terrier came and crouched at my feet. There was nothing strange in this. But presently I heard “clock, clock,” behind me, and turning round I beheld Tilly Slowboy in a pair of wooden clogs ! The idea dawned upon mo that I was among some of the dramatis persona of the “Cricket on the Hearth.” Supposition soon grew into conviction, for in a few minutes a pretty, little, round woman came in and informed me that my supper was ready in an adjoining parlour. “Dot, my love! ” I more than muttered. I ate my supper and went to bed. My host roused me at half-past seven, gave me a cup of coffee, and bore me off in his little chaise to Northwich. On the way be passed a fine old-fashioned house. “Who lives there?” I asked. “That, sir,” was John Peerybingle’s reply, “ belongs to Mr Hogarth, a musical gentleman.” “Hogarth! Why he must be Mr Dickens’s father-in-law.” “He is, sir, and Mr Dickens do not often come down here ; and he has been and took off me and all my family and put us into a Christmas story, which he do call ‘ The Cricket on the Hearth’; but it ain’t all true, for there a no blind toy-maker in these parts, and Dot and me never had a dispute about her brother,”