MR FORSTER’S LIFE OF CHAS. DICKENS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 113, 19 February 1872, Page 3

MR FORSTER’S LIFE OF CHAS. DICKENS.

( Continued.)

“ The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless ; of the shame I felt in my position ; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that, day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up to, was passing away from me, never to be brought bade any more, cannot be written. ”My whole nature was penetrated with grief and humiliation of such considerations, that even now, famous caressed and happy, 1 often forget in my dreams that 1 have a dear wife and children ; even that I am man; and wander dooslatelyly back to that time of my life. My mother and my brothers and sisters (excepting Fanny in the Royal Academy of Music) were still encamped with a young girl from Chatham-work - liouse, in the two parlours in the emptied house in Gowcr-strcet North. It was a long way to go and return within the dinner-hour, and usually, I either carried my dinner with me, or went and bought it at some neighbouring shop. In the latter case, it was commonly a saveloy and a penny loaf ; sometimes a fourpenny plate of beef from a cook’s shop ; sometimes a plate of bread and cheese, and a glass of beer from a miserable old publichouse over the way—the Swan, if I remember right, or the Swan and something and something else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember tucking my own bread (whicn I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book and going into the best dining room in Johnson’s alamode beef-house, in Charles Court, Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of alamode beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition, coming in all alone, I don’t know ; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish, now, that he hadn’t takenlit.”

Later on the pecuniary difficulties of Mr John Dickens became overwhelming, and be was compelled to break up the establishment in Gower-strcet North for the Marshalsea. Mr Dickens thus describes what followed :

“ The key of the house was sent back to the landlord, who was very very glad to get it; and I (small Cain that I was, except that I had never done harm to any one) was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady, long known to our family, in little College-Street, Camden Town, who took children to board, and had once done so at Brighton ; and who, with a few alterations and embellishments, unconsciously began to sit for Mrs Pipchin in “ Dombey” when she took in me. “She had a little brother and sister under her care then ; somebody’s natural children, who were very irregularly paid for; and a widow’s little son. 'ihc two boys and I slept in the same room. My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennywortn of milk, I provided for myself. I kept another small loaf, and a quarter of a pound of cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I came back at night. They made a hole in the six or seven snilliugs, I know well; and I was out at the blacking-warehouse all day, and had to support myself upon that money the whole of the week. I suppose my lodging was paid for by my father. I certainly did not pay it myself ; and I certainly had no other assistance whatever (the making of my clothes, I think, excepted), from Monday morning until Saturday night. No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support, from any one that I can call to mind, so help mo God. “ Sundays, Fanny and 1 passed in the prison. 1 was at the academy in Xcntci-don-street, Hanover square, at nine o’clock in the morning, to fetch her, and we walked back there together at night- “ I was so young and childish, and so little qualified —how could 1 be otherwise ? —to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that, in going to Hungerford stairs of a morning, I could notiesist the stale pastry put out at half-price on trays at the confectioners’ doors in Tottenhom Court Road ; and I often spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. r lhcn I went without my dinner, or bought a roll, or a slice of pudding There were two pudding shops between which I was divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin s Church (at the back of the church), which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear; two penn’orth not being larger than a penn'orth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand somewhere near where the Lowther Arcade is now. It was a stout, hale pudi ding, heavy and flabby, with great raisins ' in it, stuck in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about noon I every day, and many and many a day did I dine off it.

“We had lialf-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used to go to a cofiee shop, and have half-a-pint of

coffee, and a slice of bread and butter. When I had no money, I took a turn in Covent Garden Market, and stared at.Lhe pine-apples. The coffee-shops to which I most resorted were, one in Maiden Lane; one in a court (non-existant now) close to Hungerford Market; and one in St. Martin's Lane, of which I only recollect that it stood near the church, and that in the door there was an oval glass-plate, with coffee room painted on it, addressed towards the street. If I ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscriprion on glass, and rend it backward on the wrong side moor-ef.ffoc (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), a shock goes through my blood. “ I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given me by any one, I spent it in a dinner or a ten. I know that I worked from morning till night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that tried, but ineffectually, not to nnticipni money, and to make it last the wo* through ; by putting it away in a dray I bad in the counting-house, wrapped v six little parcels, each parcel contain! same amount, and labelled with a difi cut day. I know that I have loiin • about the streets, insufficiently and * satisfactorily fed. I know that, but the mere}’ of God, I might easily ba been, for any care that was taken of m a little robber or a little vagabond. “ Blit I held some station at the blacking warehouse. Besides that, my relative at the counting bouse did what a man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous could, to treat me as. ono different from the rest. I never said, to man or boy, bow it was that I came, to be be there, or gave the least indication ©f being sorry that I was there. That I suffered in secret, and that. I suffered exquisitely, no one ever. knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly unable to tell. No man's imagination can overstep the reality. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. 1 knew from the first that if 1 could not do my work as well as an}* ot the rest, I could not bold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least as expeditious and skilful with my hands as either of the other boys. Tlie«gl« perfectly familiar with thorn, my conduct and manners were different enough to from theirs to place a space between us. They, and the men, always spoke of me as the ‘ young gentleman.’ A certain man (a soldier once) named Thomas, who was the foreman, and another named Harry, wlio was the carman and wore a red jacket, used to call me ‘ Charles’ sometimes in speaking to me ; but I think it was mostly when we were very confidential, and when I bad made some efforts to entertain them over our work with the results of some of the old readings, which were fast perishing out of my mind,”