MR FORSTER'S LIFE OF CHAS. DICKENS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 110, 15 February 1872, Page 3

MR FORSTER'S LIFE OF CHAS. DICKENS.

A\ E publish the following review of the lifo of Charles Dickens, which we feel sure will be read with great interest by all classes of the community. Owing to its length, we arc obliged to divide it in two parts : Years ago, the late Ah- Charles Dickens gave utterance to the wish that his friend Mr John Forster should become his biographer. A close and affectionate intimacy, commencing with the early part of 1887, and terminating only with Ihedeaih of the great novelist in June, 1870, especially fitted Air Forster for the interesting task, while every other qualification that a biographer could possess he perhaps beyond any other living writer commanded. It hardly need be said that Air Forster lias fully justified the confidence reposed in him by his friend. The first volumn of the work has just boon given to the world, and thousands of eager readers will be anxious to learn something ofits contents. Born at Landpoil in Portsea, on Friday, 7th February, 1812 Charles Dickens was (lie second chi)and eldest son of Air John Dickens, clerk in the Navy Pay Cilice. Of h childhood and early youth we get ver ample details in the volumn before us For the most part they are of a pain i n character, but of a nature to heighten not a. little t; r.diinrat su and sympathy with '•’H.ei: A. : v Dickens m ominnnly regarde,i. Attuning to cue e: iherr.ddnrf experiences o', hff early, ragged life. Dickens, in an auiohiogr: pineal fragment, written in 18ti7, says “From that hour until tliis at which i write, no word of that part of my childhood, which I have now gladly brought, to a close,_ has passed my lips to any human being. I have no’ idea how long it lasted ; whether for a year, or much more, er less. From that hour until this my father and mother have been stricken dumb upon it. [ have never hoard the least allusion to it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I. have never, until 1 impart it to this paper, in any hurst of confidence to anyone, my own wife not accepted, raised the curtain I then dropped, thank God.” In the following terms Mr Foster relates how tie became acquainted with the story of Dickon’s struggles while yet a boy:—

“Ihe incidents to he told now would probably never have been known to me, or indeed any of the occurrences of his childhood and youth, hut for (| u; accident of a question which i put to him one dav in the March or April of l.vJ7. 1 asked if he remembered ever having seen in his boyhood our friend the elder Mr Dilke. his father’s acquaintance and contemporary, who nan oecn a clerk in the same office in Somerset House to which Mr John Dickens belonged. Yes, lie said he. recollected seeing him at a house in Gerard Street, ;where his uncle Barrow lodged during an illness, and MrDilko had visited him. Never at any other time. Upon which I told him that some one else had been intended in the mcnlion made to me tor that the roierenee implied not merely Ids being met accidentally, hut his having had some juvenile employment in a warehouse near the Strand ; at which place Air Dilke, being with (lie elder Dickens one day, had noticed him, and received, in return for the gift of a half-crown, a very low hov. lie was silent tor several minutes ; I felt that 1 had unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory; and to All Dilke, 1 never spoke of the subject again. It was not. however, then but some weeks later, that Dickens made further allusions to my thus having struck unconsciously upon a time of which lie never could lose the remembrance while he remembered anything, and the recollection of which,’ at intervals, haunted him and made him miserable, even at tnat boor. Very shortly afterwards 1 learnt in all their detail the incidents tn at had been so painful to him, and what then was said to me or written respecting them .revealed the story of his boyhood. The idea of 1 David Coppeifiold,’ which was to take all the - world into his confidence, had not, at this lime occurred to him : hut what it had so startled me to know, His readers were afterwards told with only such change or addition as for the time might sufficiently disguise himself under cover of his hero. For the pour little lad, with good ability" and a most sensitive nature, turned at linage of ten into a “ labouring hind ” in ii service of “ At urdstonc and Grinby," ~n conscious already of what made ‘it’ sen, very strange to him that lie could so easily have been thrown away at sm.-h an am. was indeed himself. His was the secret agony of soul at. finding himself * eom--1 ani.pn to A tick Walker, and Mealy Potaam. :.:o tr-nrs. winch mingled with t:n- water ,n wmen i:c- ai.d they rinsed and washed our hot! Hr. h had „)) het>l) wiiitc-u, as fact, before in i.iought of auv other use for it : ami it was not until seveial months later when the fancy of ‘David Coppeifield,’ itself M.nrvested ],.• what tie had so yvriifi-n of liis early Doubles began to take shape in his mind that lie abandoned his first intention of writing liis own life. Those warehouse experiences then fell so aptly into the sm.jeet lie had chosen, that lie could not resist the tomplatiuii of immediately using them : and the manuscript iveordibg theng which was but the first portion oi what; lie had designed to write, was embodied in the substance of the eleventh and earlier chapters of liis novel. AVlia! has already sent to me, however, and proofsheets of the novel interlined at the tinu., enable me now to separate (lie fact hum the fiction : and to supply to tlie s lory of the author s childhood those passages omitted from the book, which, apart from their illustration of the growth of his character, present to ns a picture of tragical suffering, and <4 tender as well as humorous fancy, iin.- in p.-msed in even the wonders of his pnl.fi.-Ind writings.” When only ten /pears of age, the straitened circMinstanees of l,i. s parents induced th. in to pirns Dickens in a blacking yy arebonse, whe’s- he was employed in a menial.yapa-m,',- at a. . alary of six or seven shdiings a week. To hr . .