MR FORSTER'S LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 116, 22 February 1872, Page 3

MR FORSTER'S LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.

Continual.

Dh'KKXs’s experience of tbe Marsbalsea is thus given in his own words : “My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and I went up to bis room (on the top storey hut one) and cried very much. And he told me, I remember, to take warning l>v tbe Marsbalsea, and to observe that if a "man had .220 a year, and spent £11) IDs Gd, he would ho happy ; but that a shillinir spent the other way would make him wretched. I see the tire we sat before now ; with two bricks inside the rusted grate, one on each side to prevent its burning too many coals. Some other debtor shared the room with him, and came in hy-atid bye; and as tbe dinner was a joint stock repast, I was sent up to‘Captain Porter, in tbe room overhead, with Mr Dickens’s compliments, and I was his son, and could he, Captain P., lend me a knife and fork. The captain lent his knife and fork, with his compliments in return. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan girls, his daughters, with shock-heads of hair. I thought I should not have liked to borrow Captain Porter’s comb. The captain himself was in tbe last extremity of sbabbincss; and if 1 could draw at all, I would draw an accurate portrait of the old, old brown great coat lie wore, with no other coat below it. Ilis whiskers were large. 1 saw bis bed rolled up in a corner ; and what plates, and pots, and dishes lie had, on a shelf ; and I knew (God knows how) that the two girls with shock heads were Captain Porter’s natural children, and that the dirty lady was not married to Captain I’. My timid wondering station oil his threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes I daresay ; but I came down again to the room below with all this as surely in niv knowledge as the knife and fork were in iny hand.” Rut poverty and his ignominious position were insufficient to crush the spirit of the sensitive and suffering hoy, and Mr Forster thus accounts for his ability to triumph over these depressing conditions :

“ One good there was however (from tiie misery of that old time), altogether without drawback. 'The story of his childish misery has itself sufficiently shown that lie never throughout it lost his precious gift of animal spirits, or his native capacity of humorous enjoyment; and there were positive gains to him from what he underwent which were also rich and lasting. To what in the outset of his difficulties and trials gave the decisive bent to his genius, I have already made special reference; and we arc to observe, from what followed, that with the very poor and unprosperousjout of whose stragglings and sufferings, and the virtues as well as vices born of them, his not least splendid successes were wrought, his childish experiences had made him actually one. They were not his clients whose cause he pleaded with such pathos ami humour, and on whose side lie got the laughter and tears of all the world, but in some sort his very self. Nor was it a small part of this manifest advantage that he should have obtained his experience as a child, and not as a man ; that only th.e good part, the flower and fruit of it, was plucked by him ; and that nothing of the evil part —none of the earth in which the seed was planted—remained to soil him.”

In our first notice of (Ids deeplyinteresting volume we left the youthful Dickens still engaged in the drudgery of' his relative’s blacking manufactory. These were the darkest days of the great novelist’s career, and their effect upon his character and conduct in alter lilc is thus I raced by his biographer:— A difference between the elder Dickens and the Lamorts (llie proprietors of the blacking establishment) led to the withdrawal of Charles from the wretched occupation in which lie had spent two miserable years. lie was then sent to school, to the 11 Wellington House Academy,” in the Hampstead Hoad. Here he remained another two years—until lie had reached his fourteenth year. One. of his schoolfellows, in a letter to Mr Forster, gives the following description of his school companion : “My recollection of Dickens whilst, at school is that of a healthy-looking hoy, small, hut well-built, with a more than usual flow of spirits, inducing to harmless fun, seldom or never I think to mischief. He usually held his head more erect than lads ordinarily do, and there was a general smartness about him. . . . lie invented what we termed a “ lingo,’ produced by the addition of a few letters of the the same sound to every word ; and it was our ambition, walking and talking thus along the street, to he k considered foreigners.”

Dr Danson, another cotemporary of Dickens at the Wellington House Academy, lias a somewhat different recollection of Dickens in bis school-days. He says : “ I do not remember that Dickens distinguished himself in any way, or carried off any prizes. My belief is that he did not learn Greek or Latin there, and you will remember there is no allusion to tho classics in any of his writings. He was a handsome, curly-headed lad, full of animation and animal spirits, and probably was connected with every mischievous prank in the school. . . . Depend on it ho was quite a self-made man, and his wonderful knowledge and command of the English language must have been acquired by long and patient study after leaving bis last school. ... I think at that time Dickcnstook to writing small tales, and wc had a sort of club for lending and circulating thorn. We were very strong, too, in theatricals. We mounted small theatres, and got up very gorgeous scenery 1o illustrate tbe ‘Miller and bis Men’and ‘Cherry and Fair Star.’ Iremember the present Mr Beverley, the scene painter, assisted us in this. Dickens was always a leader at these plays. . .

Master Beverly constructed the mill for us iu such a way that it could tumble to pieces with the assistance of crackers. At one representation the fireworks in the last scene, ending with the destruction of the mill, were so very real that the police interfered, and knocked violently at the doors. . . . 1 quite remember Dickens

on one occasion heading ns in Drummond Street in pretending to be poor boys, and asking the passers by for charity—especially old ladies; one of whom told us she ‘ had no money for beggar-boys.’ On these adventures, when the old ladies were quite staggered by the impudence of the demand, Dickens would explode with laughter, and take to his heels.” From Wellington House, Dickens was transferred to a school in Brunswick Square, where he remained but a short time, before he became clerk to a Mr Molley, in New Square, Lincoln's Inn, which situation lie exchanged in May, 1827, for a similar position in the office of Mr Blackmore, of Gray’s Inn. Here ho remained till November, 1828. Mr Blackmore writes of him in the following

terms : '* He was a bright, clcver-looking youth ... I have now ail accounthook which lie used to keep of petty disbursements in the oilier*, in which he charged himself with the modest salary first of thirteen shillings and sixpence and afterwards of fifteen shillings a week., [Several incidents took place in the office of which he must have been a keen observer, as I recognised some of them in his 1 Pickwick’ and 1 Nicklebyand I am much mistaken if some of their character* had not their originals in persons l well remember. Jlis taste for theatiicals was much promoted by a fellow-clerk named Potter, since dead, with whom lie chiefly associated. They took every opportunity, then unknown to me, of going to a minor theatre, where (l afterwards heard) they not unfreqiiently engaged in parts.” Upon leaving Mr Blackmore’s ollicc, Dickens, following the example of his father, who had become a Parliamentary reporter, applied himself to the study of shorthand. He was now seventeen, and the next two years were spent in reporting proceedings in the law courts. At nineteen, lie obtained an engagement oil the Parliamentary staff of the True Sun, a paper with which Mr Forster was editorially connected. A strike amongst the reporters first brought Dickens into contact with his future friend and biographer. Mr Forster says : “I well remember noticing at this dread time, on the staircase of the magnificent mansion wc were lodged in, a

young man of my own age whose keen animation of look would have arrested attention anywhere, and whose name, upon enquiry, 1 then for the first time heard. It was coupled with the fact, which gave it interest even then, that ‘ young Dickens’ had been spokesman fo'* the recalcitrant reporters, and conducted their case triurn phnntly.” Tim* True Sun had hut a brief existence. When it was discontinued, Dickens, whose ability as a shorthand writer was unexcelled, if equalled, in the profession, worked for the Mirror ofTur/iitinrul, and in liis twenty-third year he joined the staff of the Moriiimj Chronicle. Of his press experience Mr Forster tells ms : “ To the wholesale training of severe newspaper work, when 1 was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes,” he said to the New York editors when he look leave of them. It opened to him a wide and varied range of experience, which his wonderful observation, exaet as it was humorous, made entirely his own. He saw the last of the old coaching days, and of the old inns that were a part of them ; hut it will he long before the readers of his living page see the last of the life of either. “ There never was,” he once wrote to me (in 18-15) “anybody connected with newspapers, who, in the same space of time, had so much express and post-chaise experience as I. And what gentlemen they were, to serve in such things, at the old J/orniiu/ Chronicle! Great or small it did not matter. I have had to charge for half-a-dozen break-downs in half-a-dozen times as many miles. I have had to charge for the damage of a great-coat from the drippings of a blazing wax candle, in writing through the smallest hours of the night in a swift-llying carriage and pair. 1 have had to charge for all soi ls of breakages, fifty times in a journey, without question, such being the ordinary results of the pace which we went at. 1 have charged for broken hats, broken luggage, broken chaises, broken harness—every thing hut a broken head, which is the only thing they would have grumbled to pay for.”