.'ro''^ ^'''' 
 
 " Our childhood, a time to be remembered like a happy 
 dream through all our after life." 
 
 Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. XXVIII. 
 
 THE 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
 OF 
 
" ' ' '' ' t. 
 
 U 
 
 < 
 
 < 
 
THE 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WITH RETROSPECTIVE NOTES, AND ELUCIDATIONS, 
 FROM HIS BOOKS AND LETTERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT LANGTON, 
 
 F. R. Hist. Soc, 
 
 Member of the Council of the Lancashire and Cheshire 
 Antiquarian Society. 
 
 V\'^''> i '' 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HUTCHINSON & CO., 
 
 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 1S91. 
 
 \_All rights reserz'ed.] 
 
J » , °'-mcli::l.b^, 
 
 - f . J « pH^R^?? piCKENS, IN, 1842, Aged 30. 
 /.\ ; »♦* j yiioiji a -J^r^twing ))y^ D. JMaclise, R.A.) 
 

 TO 
 
 MARY (MAMIE) DICKENS 
 
 AND 
 
 GEORGINA HOGARTH 
 
 [The Editors of the Letters of Charles Dickens'] 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH THE UNAFFECTED 
 
 ADMIRATION AND REGARDS 
 
 OF THE WRITER. 
 
 253317 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO ENLARGED AND REVISED EDITION. 
 
 IN 1883 9- small edition of this book (for sub- 
 scribers onh'j was issued privately. 
 Since that time many new and interesting facts 
 have come to my knowledge, all of them tending 
 to confirm the opinion then expressed, as to the 
 close connection between the works of Charles 
 Dickens and his own LiFE, and tending especially 
 to show how his earlier experiences and surround- 
 ings, were coloured and reflected in his books. 
 • Of the new matter (dispersed through the book) 
 much is taken into the text, the remainder is in 
 footnotes. A few additional engravings have also 
 been added. 
 
 It is a saddening thought, that of the friends 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 who helped me with the first edition, and whose 
 names appear in the original Preface, far more than 
 half have been removed by Death, in the few years 
 that have since elapsed. Of these two or three 
 only are mentioned in footnotes. 
 
 R. L. 
 
 December T^rd, 1890. 
 
C O N r E N T S . 
 
 Chapter ' Page 
 
 I. Introductory ....... i 
 
 II. The Marriage of John Dickens ... 9 
 
 III. The Birth of Charles Dickens ... 13 
 
 IV. Ordnance Terrace, Chatham . . . .21 
 V. The Mitre 35 
 
 VI. The House on the Brook 42 
 
 VII. Giles's School 54 
 
 VIII. Leaves Chatham for London . - . .64 
 IX. Begins Life on his own Account, and don't 
 
 like it 72 
 
 X. School again 81 
 
 XI. In the Law 93 
 
 XII. Reporting and Writing for Magazines . 100 
 
 XIII. Gad's Hill 112 
 
 XIV. Retrospective Notes and Elucidations . . 134 
 Index 255 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1. Half Title, Signature of Charles Dickens. 
 
 2. Frontispiece, Gad's Hill Place. 
 
 3. Back of Title Page, Portrait of Charles Dickens from 
 
 Maclise's drawing at South Kensington. 
 
 4. Preface Initial Letter, The Arms of Gravesend' 
 
 5. Initial Letter, Rochester Cathedral . 
 
 6. High Street, Rochester . 
 
 7. Tailpiece, "Nobody" . 
 
 8. Initial Letter, Crown and Anchor . 
 
 9. Signatures, John Dickens and Elizabeth 
 
 10. Initial Letter, St. Mary's, Portsea . 
 
 11. Old Font, St Mary's, Portsea . 
 
 12. Birthplace of Charles Dickens 
 
 13. Arms of Portsmouth . 
 
 14. Ordnance Terrace, Chatham . 
 
 15. Initial Letter, Arms of Kent . 
 
 16. Theatre Royal, Rochester 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ^esend 
 
 . xvu 
 
 . 
 
 I 
 
 . 
 
 5 
 
 . 
 
 . 8 
 
 • 
 
 • 9 
 
 Barrow 
 
 1 1 
 
 . 
 
 • 13 
 
 . 
 
 14 
 
 • 
 
 15 
 
 • 
 
 19 
 
 . 
 
 . 20 
 
 . 
 
 . 21 
 
 . 
 
 28 
 
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 17. The Mitre Inn, Chatham 3^ 
 
 18. The House on the Brook, Chatham 31 
 
 19. Initial Letter, Mitre y}) 
 
 20. Pay-Ofifice Yacht 2>7 
 
 21. View of Rochester from Chatham t^^j 
 
 22. Initial Letter, Tower and Spire of Rochester Cathedral 
 
 (1825) 4^ 
 
 2T,. St. Mary's Church, Chatham 45 
 
 24. The Navy-Pay Office, Chatham Dockyard , . .45 
 
 25. Convict Hulk, formerly at Chatham Dockyard . . 50 
 
 26. Initial Letter, Giles's School, Chatham . . . .54 
 
 27. Initial Letter, ''Going," Mr, Sapsea's Father . . 64 
 
 28. Initial Letter, Ideal Portrait of Charles Dickens as a boy 72 
 
 29. Cat and Boot, Warren's. Advertisement . . . .75 
 
 30. 30 Strand, ditto . . . .75 
 
 31. Cock and Boot, ditto . . . -75 
 ^2. Initial Letter, Monument to Richard Watts, Rochester 
 
 Cathedral 
 
 33. Wellington House Academy . . . . 
 
 34. Plan of Schoolroom, ditto 
 
 35. Elevation of Schoolroom, ditto .... 
 
 36. Initial Letter, Porch of Restoration House, Rochester 
 
 37. Initial Letter, Cobham Hall ..... 
 
 38. MS. of Charles Dickens, at the age of 21 
 
 39. Signature of John Dickens (1842) .... 
 
 81 
 84 
 86 
 
 87 
 
 93 
 
 100 
 
 107 
 107 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS xv 
 
 40. Initial Letter, Gad's Hill Place 
 
 41. Milestone, near Gad's Hill 
 
 42. The Falstaff Inn, Gad's Hill . 
 
 43. Charles Larkins' Monument, Gad's Hill 
 
 44. The Cedars, Gad's Hill . 
 
 45. The Uoor of Library, Gad's Hill Place 
 
 46. Fac-simile of Letter to Mr. W. B. Rye 
 
 47. The Swiss Chalet, formerly at Gad's Hill Place 
 
 48. Initial Letter, Seal, and Arms of Rochester 
 
 49. Eastgate, Rochester .... 
 
 50. Staircase at the Bull, Rochester 
 
 51. Orchestra in Ball-room at the Bull Hotel 
 
 52. Rochester Castle from Old Bridge . 
 
 53. Rochester Bridge and Castle from Frindsbur} 
 
 54. The Leather Bottle, Cobham, Kent . 
 
 55. Leather Bottle formerly used as the Sign 
 
 56. ditto (Interior) . 
 
 57. Cobham Church, Kent .... 
 
 58. Sowster, Beadle of Mudfog (after Cruikshank) 
 
 59. Mile-end Cottage, near Exeter 
 
 60. Signature of Charles Dickens . 
 
 61. Signature of Mark Lemon 
 
 62. Watts' Charity, Rochester 
 
 63. Rochester Castle .... 
 
 64. Rochester Cathedral and Castle 
 
XVI 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FACE 
 . 197 
 
 . 200 
 
 . 201 
 
 • 215 
 
 65. Minor Canon Row, Rochester 
 
 66. Signature of Richard Watts 
 
 67. Priors' Gate, Rochester 
 
 68. Rochester Old Bridge 
 
 69. Gatehouse and Cathedral Precincts,Rochester (unfinished) 219 
 
 70. Cooling Church by Moonlight 231 
 
 71. Restoration House ^^2> 
 
 'J2. ''Satis" House 22,2^ 
 
 JT^. The Guildhall . . . . . • • • • 235 
 
 74. Gatehouse of Cathedral Close • 2^7 
 
 75. " Jasper's Gatehouse " 242 
 
 76. The Crypt, Rochester Cathedral 245 
 
 ']']. Restoration House, Rochester 247 
 
 78. Eastgate House 249 
 
 79. West Door, Rochester Cathedral 251 
 
 80. Memorial Brass in ditto 251 
 
 81. Grave of Charles Dickens (tailpiece) .... 254 
 
 82. Strood Hill, Rochester in the distance . . . .255 
 
"God help all who turn to the Jerusalem of their younger 
 days, and have an altar-fire upon the cold hearth of their 
 fathers." — American Notes, Chap. VI. 
 
 " I have always observed within my experience, that the men 
 who have left home young have, many long years aftersvards, 
 had the tenderest love for it, and for all associated with it. 
 That's a pleasant thing to think of, as one of the wise and 
 benevolent adjustments in these lives of ours." — Letter to Hoji. 
 Mrs. Watson^ October 7th, 1856. 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO SUBSCRIBERS' EDITION, 
 
 FEW words of explana- 
 tion ma}' be necessary^ 
 in introducing the 
 following pages to my 
 readers. About Mid- 
 summer, 1879, in 
 consequence of a con- 
 versation with m\' 
 friend, ]\Ir. J. C. Lock- 
 hart, the Treasurer of the Manchester Literary Club, 
 I promised to do what I could to produce and read 
 
 b 
 
 ^ 
 
 r 
 
• xviii CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 during the next Session of the Club, an essay on Charles 
 Dickens and his connection with Rochester. 
 
 Following up this idea, in the August following I 
 went to Rochester in company with the late Mr. William 
 Hull, in order to make sketches to illustrate the paper. 
 That paper was duly read and printed in the Club 
 volume for 1880, and was afterwards enlarged, reprinted, 
 and published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. 
 
 Since that time I have had so many valuable and 
 voluntary communications, containing hints and new 
 facts on this most interesting subject, that I determined 
 to widen the scope of the work, and instead of bringing 
 out a third edition of my pamphlet,^ to try how far I 
 could ^ive a sketch of the life of Charles Dickens from 
 childhood up to youth and early manhood. 
 
 The work has grown upon me, and I have in the 
 present volume not only utilised all the illustrations to 
 the smaller book, but have in addition engraved from 
 original and other drawings more than sixty new sub- 
 jects. The biographical portion of this volume is on the 
 lines of the early part of Mr. Forster's Life of Charles 
 Dickens, and could not well have been otherwise, for 
 without Mr. Forster's book I should have been working 
 ■ in the dark ; could not, indeed, in this connection, have 
 worked at all ! 
 
 ' Up to this time (1S89) five editions of this little work, Charles Dickens 
 and Rochester.^ have been published. 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 It will, however, at once be apparent that many of my 
 facts are totally at variance with Mr. P^orster s text, and 
 consequently at variance, too, with the numerous writers 
 who have followed in his steps. It will also be seen 
 that there is much that is quite new, and especially so 
 during the early years at Chatham. 
 
 My thanks are due for valuable assistance to the 
 following ladies and gentlemen, viz., Mrs. Andrews 
 (Bexley Heath), Mrs. Austin (sister of Charles Dickens), 
 Mr. Stephen T. Aveling, Mr. John Barksby, Mr. Jno. 
 W. Bowden, Major and Mrs. Budden, Mr. Charles 
 Bullard, Mr. L. Biden, F.R.H.S., Mr. John Brooker, 
 Dr. Henry Danson, Mr. C. R. Foord, J. P., Mrs. Gibson, 
 Mr. Jno. Gill (Royal Academy of Music), Mrs. Godfrey 
 (Prince's Park, Liverpool), Mr. R. G. C. Hamilton, 
 Mr. Vincent Hills, J. P., Mr. R. G. Hobbes, Miss Hogarth, 
 Mr. Franklin Homan, Mr. John Jackson, Captain Henry 
 James, R.N., Mr. S. Dyer Knott, Mr. A. Murphy, 
 General Chas. Pasley, Mr. Pearce, Miss Grace Pearce, 
 Mr. George Robinson, Mr. C. W. Sutton, Mr. S. 
 Steele, J.P., Rev. H. B. Stevens, M.A., Mr. Chas. Roach 
 Smith, F.S.A., Mr. Sketchly, Mr. Aid. John Tribe, 
 Mr. Owen P. Thomas, Rev. Jno. Taylor, M.A., Mr. 
 Humphrey Wickham, Mr. Wiggins, and in an especial 
 manner to Mr. William Brenchley Rye, who has given 
 me much valuable information which I could not other- 
 wise have obtained. 
 
XX CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Last, but not least, I wish to thank Mr. VV. T. Wildish, 
 of The Rochester and CJiatJiain Journal, who, with a rare 
 generosity, threw open the columns of his newspaper to 
 assist me in my inquiries. My thanks to him must 
 include several unknown correspondents of his and 
 mine. 
 
 In conclusion, I may truly say that, from early 
 associations of my own, and still more from a genuine 
 admiration of the writings of Charles Dickens, this work 
 has been to me a labour of love, for I recognise in 
 Dickens a writer who, in his far-seeing humanity, has 
 (more than any one in modern times, perhaps more than 
 any one since Shakespeare) consecrated the English 
 tongue to some of the highest purposes of which speech 
 , is capable. 
 
 Robert Langton. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 " Every little incident, and even slight words and looks of 
 
 those old days, came fresh and thick before him many and 
 
 many a time, and, rustling above the dusty growth of years, 
 came back green boughs of yesterday." 
 
 Nicholas Nicklcby, Part 2, Chap. XXXI 11. 
 
 HE above paragraph is 
 suggestive enough ; it 
 was written in 1838, 
 when the author was 
 twent}--six years of 
 acre, and will serve for 
 a theme for this and 
 all the following chap- 
 ters of this book. It 
 is, besides, perhaps 
 one of the earliest 
 examples of the blank 
 
 B 
 
2 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 verse to be found occasionally in the earlier writings 
 of Charles Dickens. 
 
 It would be an easy matter to show that, in the past, 
 nearly all our really great writers of fiction have left 
 us, in their imaginative flights, more or less perfect 
 sketches of their Autobiography ; and it is sometimes 
 difficult (as indeed it should be) to determine where 
 fiction terminates and fact begins. This is perhaps 
 more especially true of Charles Dickens than of any 
 other writer. 
 
 I shall endeavour to show in the following brief 
 narrative of his early years, how his own " childish 
 imaginings " and experiences were, from the very first 
 opening of his brilliant literary career, reproduced in 
 his works. 
 
 This was apparent to many (though not to a full 
 extent) long before Mr. Forster in his first volume of 
 the life of his friend, astonished the reading world with 
 his revelations in Chapter II., a chapter which has been 
 somewhat heartlessly described by a contemporaneous 
 writer as " The Blacking Bottle period." 
 
 Since these revelations were made it has become 
 not only possible, but comparatively easy to trace the 
 author's life in his books. 
 
 During the last few years, accordingly, we have had 
 several attempts, both in England and America, to show 
 how many of Dickens' characters, and incidents in his 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 tales, are recollections of his own early experiences. 
 These attempts, too, are (as indeed are most of the later 
 criticisms of his works) all on one side — all friendly to 
 the author. 
 
 In some of these essays, it is true, fiction is intro- 
 duced, and in others the facts are funnier than the 
 fiction ; as for instance where Portsea is said to be in 
 Kent, and where we are told that Mr. Pickwick was 
 imprisoned in Fleet Street ! Others have apparently 
 " wandered and lost their way " in a fruitless attempt to 
 identify places that are past finding out, places indeed, 
 which are intentionally a*nd effectually beyond identifica- 
 tion.^ 
 
 So also, with many of the characters of Dickens. 
 Not only have the works themselves a strong element of 
 immortality about them, but this quality would seem to 
 have descended upon some of the characters in his 
 writings ; for if one could only believe all one is told, 
 three separate and individual examples of " Bob Crat- 
 chit " are still in the flesh, all warranted to be 
 indisputably the real Bob ! 
 
 There are also still living two Sam Wellers, one of 
 them described to me as " an aged man now " ; and one 
 
 ' Throughout the whole of the writings of Charles Dickens nothing is 
 more noteworthy than the way in which many of the scenes of tales and 
 incidents are only half revealed, or, as will be seen further on, purposely 
 obscured or confused with other places. 
 
4 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 each of Uriah Heep, Captain Cuttle, and Barnaby Rudge. 
 The latter is farther reported to have been seen recently 
 rushing through the streets of Rochester, his dilapidated 
 dress by no means improved by the flight of time ! ! 
 
 How far the fact that these and similar stories are 
 believed by numbers of people all over England, should 
 entitle them to some respect, I will not determine ; but 
 I can answer for it that, save for the absolute impossibility 
 of the existence of a dual " Sam " and a triple " Bob," 
 other stories quite as remarkable and improbable have 
 come to my knowledge, which stories have the additional 
 attraction of being strictly true. - 
 
 A single iiistance will suffice here. It is over fifty 
 years since Mr. John Dickens (to be presently more par- 
 ticularly mentioned) left Mile-end Cottage, Alphington, 
 near Exeter, and it is very nearly forty years since 
 he departed this life. Yet, within the last few years, a 
 letter was sent to him from America, to his old address. 
 It was of course returned through the Dead Letter Office, 
 and was most probably, says my informant (Mr. Rye), 
 '' a request from a Yankee collector for his autograph ! " 
 
 It will be seen in the following chapters that much of 
 my information is derived directly from aged persons of 
 both sexes, who speak from their own personal recollec- 
 tions of Dickens when a boy. It is now twenty years 
 since his death, and in that time many others of these 
 old friends have departed to " the land where all things 
 
INTRODUCTORY. J 
 
 arc forgotten," and of those that remain " how few," as 
 Scott sings — 
 
 " How few, all weak and withered of their force, 
 Wait, on the verge of dark eternity." 
 
 It is great!}' to be regretted that Mr. Forster did not, 
 twenty years ago, when writing the first volume of the life 
 of his friend, go thoroughl)' into these remembrances 
 of a noble boyhood, so much easier to be got at then 
 than noA\'. 
 
 In the prosecution of my search for the new facts in 
 the early life of Dickens now first given to the world, I 
 was at one time somewhat staggered by the question— 
 " Do you suppose the family of an illustrious man like 
 Charles Dickens will thank you for raking up all these 
 details of his boyhood ? " 
 
 This query, coupled \\ith the sentiments of Dickens 
 himself, expressed in a letter to Mr. William Sand}-s, dated 
 June 13th, 1847, required careful consideration. He says 
 (writing of Shakespeare), "It is a great comfort, to my 
 thinking, that so little is known concerning the poet. It 
 is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something 
 should come out. If he had had a Boswell, society 
 wouldn't have respected his grave, but would calmly 
 have had his skull in the phrenological shojo windows." 
 
 On mature reflection, however, it appeared to me 
 that, as I had found absolutely nothing in the early 
 
8 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 childhood or surroundings of this great man that any one 
 need be ashamed of, or that could give pain to relatives 
 or friends, and that as the task would be certain to be 
 attempted hereafter, when, for obvious reasons, much of 
 this new matter would have been irrevocably lost, I 
 could no longer hesitate. 
 
 I therefore send out this little book as another small 
 contribution to the long list of works on Charles Dickens 
 already before the public, a list that is growing longer 
 every year, and in doing so earnestly hope that the 
 narrative of these earl}- days may interest many, and 
 offend NOBODY ! 
 
 From Hogarth's Peregrinations at Rochester and elsewhere. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF JOHN DICKENS. 
 
 "And it is pleasant to write down that they reared a family ; 
 because any propagation of goodness and benevolence is no 
 small addition to the aristocracy of nature, 
 and no small subject of rejoicing for man- 
 kind at large." — Old Ctcriosity Shop, Chap, 
 last. 
 
 "The chimes of the Church of St. Mar}' 
 in the Strand." — Ujicominej'cial Traveller . 
 
 OME genealogists tell us, and with 
 perfect accuracy, that every man now 
 living, .whether Prince or Peasant, is 
 sprung (only twenty generations back) 
 from more than OXE MILLION FATHERS AND 
 Mothers ! The chief conclusion to be drawn from 
 this very levelling fact (the truth of A\-hich may 
 readily be proved by any one) is, that the whole 
 world is kin, in a much more literal sense than is 
 commonl)' supposed. 
 
lO CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 But not to go twenty generations back, nor five, how 
 many comfortable, middle-class people, can tell even the 
 surnames of their four Great Grandfathers ? 
 
 With a ready appreciation of this Vanity of Vanities, 
 Dickens tells us, in the opening chapter of Martin 
 CJiuzzlewit, that " it may be laid down as a general 
 principle that the more extended the ancestry, the greater 
 the amount of violence and vagabondism." 
 
 Again, " The Chuzzlewits were connected by a bend 
 sinister, or kind of Heraldic over the left, with some un- 
 known noble and illustrious house." [Chap. I.] And 
 looking at the matter from another side, in Nicholas 
 NickMy [Chap. VI.], he says, " a man who was born three 
 or four hundred years ago, cannot reasonably be expected 
 to have had so many relations before him, as a man who 
 is born now." 
 
 Of the ancestry of Charles Dickens I can learn nothing. 
 The only mention of a third generation in Mr. Forster's 
 book is that in vol. i., page 42, where the little boy is 
 said to have been possessed of " a fat old silver watch," 
 which had been given him by his grandmother ; but 
 whether paternal or maternal grandmother cannot 
 probably now be known. 
 
 f John Dickens, the father of Charles Dickens, was 
 descended on both sides from well-to-do middle class 
 parents, and that is all that is known, or can be said with 
 certainty, of his pedigree.^ 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF JOHN DICKENS. II 
 
 He was born in 1786, probably In London, and is first 
 traceable in the books of the Navy-Pay Office, at Somerset 
 House, under date of 5th April, 1805, as seventh assist- 
 ant clerk, with a salary of £'$>0 per annum. He was 
 then nineteen years of age ; and four years afterwards, at 
 the age of twenty- three, we can follow him across the 
 street, to the beautiful church of St. Mary-le-Strand, where 
 he was married to Elizabeth Barrow. The entry in the 
 church register, and a facsimile of the signatures of the 
 principal contracting parties, is given below. 
 
 [The Year 1809.] Page 5. 
 
 No. 17. John Dickins of this Parish Bachelor and 
 Elizabeth Barrow of this Parish, spinster a minor, were 
 married in this church by licence by consent of her Father 
 this Thirteenth day of June in the Year One Thousand 
 Eight Hundred and Nine. By me, 
 
 J. J. Ellis, Curate. 
 This marriage was solemnised between us 
 
 T , r \ Charles Barrow 
 
 In the presence of | ^^^^ ^^^^^^^ g^^^j^ j5^„^^^. 
 
 And no doubt, though it be not written down, in the 
 
12 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 presence of some of the junior clerks of the Navy-Pay, 
 the more so as one of them, Mr. Thomas Barrow, was, by 
 this ceremony, to become the brother-in-law of the 
 bridegroom, Mr. John Dickens. 
 
 In the above entry, it is noticeable, first, that the 
 curate has mis-spelt the name Dickens, for he has put a 
 second i in the place of e ; and secondly, John was 
 evidently a little nervous, for he has commenced to write 
 his name in the wrong place, the " Jo " remaining to this 
 day to testify to the fact 
 
 Immediately after their marriage (Mr. John Dickens 
 having been "detached," as the phrase was in his de- 
 partment at that time, to attend the paying off of ships 
 at Portsmouth) the young couple went to reside at 
 Portsea, as is proved by Mr. Pearce's rent-book, the first 
 quarter's rent (^8 1 5^-.) having been paid September 29th, 
 1809. Here Fanny Dickens (Frances Elizabeth) was 
 born, and the writer lately found the entry of her 
 baptism in the register of St. Mary's, Portsea, under 
 date November 23rd, 18 10. Here they lived three 
 years at the house shown in the engraving. It was in 
 this house that our great humourist, Charles John 
 Huffam Dickens (Charles after his maternal grandfather 
 and John after his father) first saw the light. Another 
 son, Alfred, who died in his infancy, was also born at 
 Portsea. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 "That boy, sir," said the Major, "will Hve in history. That 
 boy, sir, is not a common production." 
 
 Dumbey and Son, Chap. X. 
 
 WAS born (as I have 
 been informed and be- 
 lieve) on a Friday, 
 at twelve o'clock at 
 night." Thus David 
 Copperfield, and this 
 is literally accurate of 
 Charles Dickens, who 
 was born at Portsea on Friday, the 7th February, 
 1 81 2 (Leap Year), at a few minutes before midnight. 
 When less than a month old, he was baptised at 
 
14 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 St. Mary's, Kingston, the parish church of Portsea, The 
 entry in the register is briefly thus ^ : — 
 
 1812 
 March 4th 
 
 BAPTISMS. 
 
 — Charles John Hu^'-am S of John 
 and Elizabeth Dickens. 
 
 On the first page of Mr. Forster's Life of Oiarles 
 Dickens, we find the entry of baptism as given above, 
 
 Old Font, St. Mary's, Portsea. 
 
 with the remark, " though on the very rare occasions 
 when he subscribed that name, he wrote Huffam." 
 On this it is necessary to add that Huffam is 
 
 * The parish authorities at St. Mary's did not know they had the 
 register of his baptism, till after his death, when the executors wrote for it. 
 
.'''?% 
 
 » » > J 
 
 The House at Portsea in which Charles Dickens 
 
 WAS BORN. 
 
THE BIRTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 17 
 
 undoubtedly the right spelHng, and that the speUing in 
 the register is an error. Besides bearing the name of his 
 maternal grandfather, and father, as above-mentioned, 
 the boy was named Huffam after his Godfather, Chris- 
 topher Huffam," ^ described in the London Post Office 
 Directory as " Rigger to His Majesty's Nav}^, Limehouse 
 Hole." 
 
 The birthplace is No. 387, Commercial Road, Mile- 
 end, Landport, formerly known as Mile-end Terrace, 
 and is so far in Portsea, as being in the island of that 
 name. It is now occupied by Miss Grace Pearce, the ■ 
 daughter of the owner who was the landlord of Mr. 
 John Dickens when Charles was born there. 
 /Of the infancy of Charles Dickens at Portsea little 
 can now be known ; it is, however, certain that in June 
 quarter 18 12 Mr. John Dickens left Mile-end Terrace 
 and went to reside in Hawke Street, Portsea, the second 
 house, in fact, past the boundary of Portsea. Captain 
 Henry James* R.N., writes me (June 1885) : "The chief 
 recollection I have of the family of Mr. Dickens was 
 in 1 812. They had left the house in which the great 
 man was born, and I once saw the babe in long 
 petticoats in their lodging in Portsea." 
 
 It is said that, in after years, Charles Dickens could 
 remember places and things at Portsmouth that he had 
 
 ' The name of Christopher occurs in three of Dickens' characters — 
 Christopher Nubbles, Christopher Casby. and Christopher a waiter. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 not seen since he was an infant of little more than two 
 years old ; and there is no doubt whatever, that many 
 of the earliest reminiscences of David Copperfield were 
 also tender childish memories of his own infancy at 
 this place. 
 
 For his sister Fanny mentioned above, it may be 
 appropriately said here that Dickens evinced through 
 life the tenderest attachment, and there are many 
 unmistakable allusions to her in his works. In the 
 Haunted Man, written in 1848, shortly after his sister's 
 death, this passage occurs : " My sister, doubly dear, 
 doubly devoted — lived on to sec me famous, — and then 
 died — died gentle as ever, happy, and with no concern 
 but for her brother." Her name (Fanny) occurs as the 
 names of characters in his books, and shorter tales, 
 no less than eleven times ! In the Experiences of a 
 Barristers Life, by Serjeant Ballantine, vol. i., p. 138, 
 the writer describes Fanny Dickens as " a young lady 
 of great talents and accomplishments, who unfortunately 
 died when still quite young." Again, in vol. ii., p. 137 
 (written January loth, 1838), he says: "Evening party 
 at Levien's. Met Eoz — looks quite a boy. His sister 
 was there ; she sang beautifully, is pretty, and I should 
 think clever." 
 
 Fanny Dickens, afterwards Mrs. Burnett, died of 
 consumption at the early age of thirty-eight. 
 
' ' :> ' 
 
 Arms of Portsmouth, 
 
< 
 
 H 
 < 
 
 X 
 
 u 
 
 < 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
 Q 
 Pi 
 
 O 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. 
 
 " My Boyhood's Home." — Dullborough Town. 
 " Second house in the Terrace." — Ibid. 
 
 T is believed that Mr. John 
 Dickens removed to Chatham 
 in 1816, and Mr. Forster's 
 account leans to this view, 
 but if this be correct, it can- 
 not now be settled where he 
 lived for the first few months 
 after his arrival at Chatham. 
 
 An exhaustive search in the Rate-books proves 
 conclusively, however, that in 18 17 (probably from Mid- 
 summer) Mr. Dickens was living at the house at first 
 No. 2, but since altered to No. 11, Ordnance Terrace, 
 Chatham. A view of the terrace is given on the oppo- 
 site page, and the house is indicated by figures that will 
 pass alike for 11 or 2, marked on the front. 
 
22 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Here he resided till Lady-Day, 1821, and in this 
 house were born Harriet Ellen, in the autumn of 18 19, 
 and Frederick William in 1820. Both of these infants 
 died in their childhood. 
 
 There are probably ten or twelve persons still living 
 at Chatham or Rochester, who can remember his occu- 
 pying this house, as also the house to be presently 
 named, on the Brook. 
 
 It was during his residence here that some of the 
 happiest years of the childhood of little Charles were 
 passed, as his father was at this time in a fairly good 
 position in the Navy-Pay Office, and was (without extras) 
 from June 181 5 to 18 19 in receipt of i^200 per annum, 
 and in 1820 his salary was augmented to i^350 per 
 annum, at which latter sum it remained till he left the 
 service, March 9th, 1825. 
 
 Mr. William Thomas Wright, for many years head of 
 the Navy-Pay Office at Chatham Dockyard, remembered 
 John Dickens at this time very well, and described him 
 to my informant, Mr. W. B. Rye, formerly of the British 
 Museum, late of Exeter, as " a fellow of infinite humour, 
 chatty, lively, and agreeable ; and believed him capable 
 to have imparted to his son Charles materials for some 
 of the characteristic local sketches of men and manners, 
 so graphically hit off in the early chapters of Pickwick." 
 
 He is described by another gentleman still living as 
 being a thorough good fellow, and, speaking of the family 
 
ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. 23 
 
 residing at Ordnance Terrace ^at this time consisting of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, Fanny, Charles, Letitia, and 
 their maternal Aunt Mrs. Allen) he says, " they were a 
 most crenial, loveable familv," and no doubt " with some- 
 thing more than a ghost of gentility hovering in their 
 company." ^ 
 
 Ordnance Terrace is known to have furnished the 
 locality and characters for some of the early Sketches by 
 Boz. The Old Lady was a ^Irs. Xewnham who lived at 
 No. 5, which was then the last house in the Terrace, and 
 was, by all accounts, very kind to the Dickens children, 
 the youngest girl Letitia Mary, a very pretty child, 
 being her especial favourite. The Half-Pay Captain 
 was also a near neighbour of the Dickens famih', and 
 was quite unconsciously sitting for his portrait to one 
 (a very little one) who was afterwards to immortalise 
 him in his earlier writings. 
 
 / The next-door neigfibours at No. i, the corner house, 
 were the Stroughills, and George Stroughill the son, // 
 somewhat older than Charles Dickens, was his greatest 
 friend during these happy years. Some characteristics 
 of George, a frank, open, and somewhat daring boy, are 
 reproduced as Steerforth in David Copperfield. His 
 sister Lucy, the Golden Luc>- of The Wreck of the Golden 
 Mary, from her beautiful golden locks, was the especial 
 favourite and little sweetheart of Charles at this time. 
 
 ' Our French ivateriug place. 
 
24 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 A quotation from Sketches of Young Couples. — The 
 old Couple will fitly introduce here " an aged woman who 
 once lived servant" — with the Dickens family, — "she 
 nursed the children on her lap, and tended those who 
 are no more — Death has not left her alone, and this 
 with a roof above her head, and a warm hearth to sit 
 by, makes her cheerful and contented, — she was as smart 
 a young girl then as you'd wish to see." This old lady, 
 still living in the neighbourhood, was in the service of 
 the Dickens family both in Ordnance Terrace and in 
 the house on the Brook. 
 
 Her vivid recollections of these far-off, happy days 
 are "like the ghost of a departed time."^ Her very 
 suggestive maiden name was Mary Weller ! ! ! She is 
 now the wife of Mr. Thomas Gibson (formerly a ship- 
 wright in the Dockyard), to whom she has been married 
 fifty-nine years ! 
 
 This aged couple can both of them remember little 
 Lucy,^ the blue-eyed, golden-haired fairy, of whom little 
 Charles (himself at this early age very fair) was the 
 constant companion. 
 
 In BirtJiday Celebrations we come on a reminiscence 
 of these early days which is unmistakable in this 
 connection. 
 
 ' Our Mutual Friend^ vol. i.. p. 311. 
 
 - The name Lucy occurs in five of the works of Dickens, as the 
 Christian names of characters, and Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities, 
 is al^o said to have had golden hair ! ! 
 
ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. 25 
 
 " I can very well remember being taken out to visit some 
 peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, 
 whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birthdays. Upon 
 seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining presents, that glorified 
 young person seemed to me to be exclusively reared. At so 
 early a stage of my travels did I assist at the anniversary of 
 her nativity (and became enamoured of her), that I had not 
 yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the 
 common property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a 
 special gift bestowed by the favouring heavens on that one 
 distinguished infant. There was no other company, and we 
 sat in a shady bower — under a table, as my better (or worse) 
 knowledge leads me to believe — and were regaled with saccha- 
 rine substances and liquids, until it was time to part." 
 
 ["When will there come in after life a passion so 
 earnest, generous, and true as theirs? What even in 
 its gentlest realities can have the grace and charm that 
 hover round such fairy lovers ? "] The Young Couple, 1 840. 
 
 Mrs, Gibson says : " Little Charles was a terrible boy 
 to read, and his custom was to sit with his book in his 
 left hand, holding his wrist with his right hand, and 
 constantly moving it up and down, and at the same time 
 sucking his tongue. Sometimes Charles would come 
 downstairs and say to me, ' Now, Mary, clear the kitchen, 
 we are going to have such a game,' and then George 
 Stroughill would come in with his Magic Lantern, and 
 they would sing, recite, and perform parts of plays. 
 
26 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Fanny and Charles often sang together at this time, 
 Fanny accompanying on the pianoforte. Though a 
 good and eager reader in these days (about 1819) he had 
 certainly not been to school, but had been thoroughly 
 well taught at home by his aunt and mother, and " (adds 
 Mrs. Gibson, speaking of the latter) " she was a dear, 
 good mother, and a fine woman." 
 
 " A rather favourite piece for recitation by Charles at 
 this time was ' The Voice of the Sluggard ' from Dr. Watts, 
 and the little boy used to give it with great effect, and 
 with such action and such attitudes.'" 
 
 Readers will remember that Captain Cuttle introduces 
 " the voice of the sluggard, announcing a quotation with 
 his hook," also how in Martm Chuzzlewit, Chap. IX., Mr. 
 Pecksniff, when urged to get to bed, makes a tipsy speech 
 from the top landing of Mrs. Todger's, and treats his 
 young friends to a full verse of this same "Moral Song." 
 
 Little Charles Dickens lives in Mrs. Gibson's memory 
 as " a lively boy of a good, genial, open disposition, and 
 not quarrelsome, as most children are at times." 
 
 In a note to Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, vol. i., 
 p. 3, there is a portion of a letter dated Gad's Hill, 24th 
 September, 1857, to this effect : " I feel much as I used to 
 do when I was a small child a few miles off, and somebody 
 (who I wonder, and which way did She go, when she 
 died ?) hummed the Evening Hymn to me, and I cried 
 on the pillow — either with the remorseful consciousness 
 
Theatre Royal, Rochester. 
 
ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. 29 
 
 of having kicked Somebody else, or because still Some- 
 body else had hurt my feelings in the course of the day." 
 
 There is little reason to doubt that this singer of the 
 Evening Hymn still survives in the person of Mrs. 
 Gibson ; ^ for on asking her plainly without preparation, 
 " Did you ever sing the Evening Hymn to the children ? " 
 she replied, after a little reflection, *' Yes, many a time," 
 and seemed very much surprised b\' so unexpected a 
 question. 
 
 Charles was now at from six to seven years of age in 
 the fullest enjoyment of that happ}' period of life, when 
 infancy is gradually giving place to bo}'hood, a period 
 which he in later years remembered so tenderl)-, and 
 described so well, " where everj'thing was happ>-, where 
 there was no distance and no time." " 
 \ From an early age he had been taken to the Theatre 
 Royal at the foot of Star Hill, Rochester, and his 
 experiences there will be found in another place. , The 
 Theatre remains unaltered external 1\' to the present day. 
 It may be mentioned in passing that this theatre was 
 built by a Mrs. Baker, whose daughter married the able 
 and well-known actor Dowton, also that Edmund Kean, 
 Charles Matthews, Joseph Grimaldi, and other great 
 theatrical lights have in their time played man\- parts 
 in this old house. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Mary Gibson died April 22nd, 1S88, aged eighty-four years. 
 - Martin ChuzzleToit, Chap, LI 1 1. 
 
30 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Charles was eight years of age and still living in " the 
 Terrace," when he was taken to see Grimaldi, the cele- 
 brated clown, whose life he afterwards edited. " I was 
 brought up from remote country parts in the dark ages 
 of 1819 and 1820, to behold the splendour of Christmas 
 Pantomime and the humour of Joe, in whose honour I 
 am informed I clapped my hands with great precocity." 
 Forster's Life, vol. i., p. 121. 
 
 It was chiefly during these halcyon days that Charles 
 Dickens, being by this time stronger on his legs, made 
 himself acquainted with the beauties of the surrounding 
 country ; that he first saw Gad's Hill, the Falstaff, Chalk, 
 and Cobham, Snorridge (Snowledge) bottom, Tom-all- 
 alone's, and Frindsbury, and that he " peeped about the 
 old corners " of the city of Rochester " with interest and 
 wonder," imbibing as he delightedly did so that strong 
 and enduring love for the locality, \^'hich was to last him 
 thenceforward for the rest of his life ; when, fully fifty 
 years afterwards in the neighbouring parish of Higham 
 he too " went out with the tide." ^ 
 
 ^ David Copperfield, Chap. XXX, 
 

 The Mitre Inn, Chatham. 
 
 The House on the Brook, -Chatham. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MITRE. 
 
 "There was an inn in the Cathedral Town where 1 went to 
 school, that had pleasanter recollections about it than any of 
 these. ... It had an ecclesiastical sign . . . The Alitre, . . . 
 and a bar, that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, 
 it was so snug. I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to dis- 
 traction, but let that pass. It was in this inn that I was cried 
 
 over by my rosy little sister,' because I had acquired a black eye 
 in a fight. ' And though she had been, that holly-tree night, for 
 many a long year where all tears are dried, the i\Iitre softened 
 me yet." — The Holly Tree, 1858. 
 
 ^, HE Mitre Inn and 
 Clarence Hotel is noted 
 in Wright's Guide to 
 Rochester and Chatham 
 (1838), as being ''the 
 ?^Ianor House, and a 
 very old - established 
 Hotel." An advertise- 
 ment elsewhere in this 
 states that " it is the first posting-house in the 
 
 guide 
 
 town.' 
 
 ' His sister Fanny died in 1848. 
 
 D 
 
34 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 In 1820-21, a Mr. Tribe was the landlord and owner 
 of this fine old house ; and to this day it is the property, 
 though not in the occupation, of his son, Mr. John Tribe, 
 Alderman and ex-Mayor of Rochester. 
 
 At this old inn, about the close of the last century, 
 Lord Nelson used to reside when on duty at Chatham, 
 a room he occupied being known as " Nelson's Cabin " to 
 this day. Here, too. King William the Fourth, when 
 Duke of Clarence, used occasionally to stay, and hence 
 the supplementary part of its sign, The Clarence 
 Hotel, 
 
 The Mitre is now very much as it was when Charles 
 Dickens knew it as a boy : its beautiful grounds remain 
 as they were, a surprise and a delight to the stranger. 
 " None of the old rooms were ever pulled down ; no old 
 tree was ever rooted up ; nothing with which there was 
 any association of byegone times was ever removed or 
 changed." ^ 
 
 It was here (the families of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Tribe 
 beine on visitincf terms) that little Charles used occasion- 
 ally to sing, in a clear treble voice, some of those old 
 songs which he was always fond of, and which he has 
 since recalled many times in his writings. Sea-songs 
 were at this time his especial favourites, and at a memor- 
 able party here, Mr. Tribe well remembers Charles and 
 his sister Fanny mounted on a dining table for a stage, 
 » Nicholas Nicklehy, Chap. XXXIII. 
 
THE MITRE. 35 
 
 singing what was then a popular duet. Here are the 
 first four stanzas (there are seven in all) : — 
 
 Long time I've courted 3'ou, miss, 
 
 And now I'm come from sea ; 
 We'll make no more ado, miss, 
 
 But quickly married be. 
 
 Sing fal de ral, etc. 
 
 I ne'er will wed a tar, sir, 
 
 Deceitful as yourself ; 
 'Tis very plain you are, sir, 
 
 A good-for-nothing elf. 
 
 Sing fal de ral, etc. 
 
 I ne'er deceived you yet, miss. 
 
 Though like a shrew you rave ; 
 But prithee, scold and fret, miss, — 
 
 A storm I well can brave. 
 
 Sing fal de ral, etc. 
 
 False man, you courted Sally, 
 
 You filled with vows her head ; 
 And Susan in the valley. 
 
 You promised you would wed. 
 
 Sing fal de ral, etc. 
 
 The song ends, as of course it should, in mutual for- 
 bearance, and a complete reconciliation. 
 
 A most interesting relic of these Ordnance Terrace 
 and Mitre evenings, is still in the possession of Mr. Aid. 
 John Tribe. It is a card of invitation written by Charles 
 
36 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 when between eight and nine years of age. Unfortunately 
 the card itself, an address card of his father's, has been 
 temporarily mislaid, or it would have been reproduced 
 here in fac-siniile, as the earliest piece of writing of 
 Charles Dickens known to be in existence. Mr. Tribe 
 can, however, remember it is to this effect.^ 
 
 
 '€ ft 
 
 'l€ (W^V€^C^/ta ^"^l . . . [date, etc.] 
 
 At birthday parties. Twelfth night parties, and ordi- 
 nary evening parties, at the Mitre, at Ordnance Terrace, 
 and elsewhere, and in juvenile picnics in the hayfield in 
 front of the terrace (now swallowed up by the Chatham 
 Railway Station), the accomplishments of Charles 
 and his sister were often utilised to amuse the 
 company. 
 
 The mention of the comic smging to his friend, Mr. 
 Forster, many long years afterwards, was accompanied 
 with a modestly expressed fear that " he must have been 
 
 ' Mr. Aid. John Tribe is since dead. 
 
'>' ^v?^T ! 
 
 ( A:.:T:i!.b- 
 The Old Pay-Office Yacht (Chatham), 
 
 View of Rochester from Chatham. 
 {After Dadson.) 
 
THE MITRE. 39 
 
 a horrible little nuisance to many unoffending grown-up 
 people who were called upon to admire him." The 
 evidence is, however, all the other way, and Mr. Tribe, 
 Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Godfrey (a sister of Mr. William Giles, 
 his schoolmaster), and others, can remember perfectly 
 that these songs were warmly applauded by all, and 
 justly so, for they were admirably sung. 
 
 Many of these old ditties are, however, aptly described 
 in Great Expectations, thus : " I thought (as I still do) the 
 amount of Too-ral somewhat in excess of the poetry." 
 Chap. XV. 
 
 For very many years both before and after this time, 
 there was stationed at Chatham an old-fashioned, high- 
 sterned sailing-yacht, pierced with circular ports, and 
 dating from the time of the Commonwealth. She was 
 called the Chatham, and was indifferently known as the 
 Commissioners' Yacht, or the Navy-Pay Yacht. In this 
 vessel Charles and his sisters were sometimes taken for a 
 sail on the Mcdway by their father, when he went to 
 Sheerness, on the business of the Pay Office. "It was 
 a grand treat," says one who has himself enjoyed it, 
 " but it was expressly stipulated that great order and 
 decorum should be observed on board." 
 
 The accompanying engraving of this yacht is from 
 Milton's large Plan of Chatham Dockyard in 1755. 
 With a light wind she was a sluggish sailer, but in a 
 
 ' Mr. \V. B. Rye. 
 
40 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 stiff breeze, she sometimes fairly astonished the blue- 
 jackets engaged in sailing her, by her great speed and 
 fjeneral handiness. 
 
 The old craft was, after a career extending over 
 considerably more than two centuries, finally broken 
 up at Chatham in 1868. 
 
 While living in Ordnance Terrace the name of John 
 Dickens frequently occurs in local subscription lists 
 raised for a variety of purposes ; it appears, for in- 
 stance, in the printed list of subscribers to Wildash's 
 History of Rochester, published in 1817. In 1820 (March 
 3rd) a calamitous fire occurred in Chatham, by which 
 thirty-eight houses were consumed, and many families 
 rendered houseless and desolate. A relief committee 
 was immediately formed, and of this Mr. John Dickens 
 was an active and conspicuous member, and a subscriber 
 of two guineas to the fund. In his report, printed in 
 1 82 1, the treasurer, Mr. W. Jefferys, returned thanks for 
 the efficient and valuable services rendered by Mr. 
 Dickens at that time. 
 
 It will perhaps interest readers to know that the 
 second or supplementary account of this fire, in the 
 Times of the 4th March, 1820, was written by Mr. 
 John Dickens ! 
 
 " But, alas ! these high and palmy days had taken to 
 themselves boots, and were already walking off."^ The 
 
 ' Nicholas Nicklcby, Chap VI. 
 
THE MITRE. 4 1 
 
 money involvements of Mr. Dickens, and consequent 
 necessary retrenchment mentioned by Mr. Forster as 
 beincf first noticeable in London on his recall from 
 
 o 
 
 Chatham, were really in existence in 1821. The cause 
 of his difficulties can be traced with certainty ; he was by 
 all obtainable accounts an open-handed, most generous, 
 and easy-going man, and this is doing him but the barest 
 justice. 
 
 On the other hand he is known to have been somewhat 
 too lavish in his expenditure, and in short, in the lan- 
 guage of the immortal Sam, " He run a match agin tlie 
 constable and vun it."^ 
 
 ^ Pickwick J Chap. X LI. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 
 
 " The home of his infancy — to which his heart had yearned 
 with an intensity of affection not to be described." 
 
 Pickwick, Chap. VI. 
 
 " This has been a Happy Home, John ! " 
 
 Cricket ofi the Hearth. 
 
 HE account given by Mr. 
 Forster of the residence of 
 Mr. John Dickens, at Chat- 
 ham, on page 3 of vol. i. of 
 the Life, is that it was " in St 
 Mary's Place, otherwise called 
 the Brook, and next door to a 
 Baptist meeting-house called 
 Providence Chapel, of which 
 a Mr. Giles, to be presently mentioned, was minister. 
 Charles at this time was between four and five years 
 old; and here he stayed till he was nine.". 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 43 
 
 That the biographer of Dickens should have omitted 
 all mention of the house in Ordnance Terrace, where, 
 as has been shown, his friend hved for four pregnant 
 years of his youthful life, is a curious fact ; it is also 
 an instance of his frequent inaccuracy as to these early 
 days ! 
 
 Charles was beyond all question over nine years of 
 age when he left Ordnance Terrace, and his father 
 occupied the smaller house on the Brook for fully a year 
 and a half, as will be shown farther on. It will therefore 
 be evident that, instead of Charles Dickens being nine 
 years old when he left Chatham, as stated by Forster, 
 he must have been nearly if not quite eleven. His own 
 account in a letter to Mr. Wilkie Collins, June 6th, 1856, 
 is, " I was taken to Chatham when I was very young, 
 and lived and was educated there till I was twelve or 
 thirteen, I suppose." Of this, however, more will be said 
 in its place. 
 
 It was early in the year 1821 that for reasons already 
 indicated, Mr. Dickens removed from No. 2 in Ordnance 
 Terrace, and took up his abode in a much smaller house 
 on the Brook, originally so named from a stream of water 
 (now covered over) that comes down from the higher 
 grounds, and falls into the Medway. 
 
 The house itself, No. 18, St. Mary's Place, is absolutely 
 unaltered in the sixty years that have elapsed since John 
 Dickens and his young and growing family lived there ; 
 
44 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 it must, however, be admitted that time has made a sad 
 change for the worse in the character of this neighbour- 
 hood. The engraving will enable the reader to identify 
 the house ; it is the one next door to the little Baptist 
 Chapel (now the Salvation Drill Hall !) where the Rev. 
 William Giles, father of Mr. Giles, the schoolmaster at 
 this time, officiated. 
 
 While Mr. Dickens lived here, Mary Weller again 
 took service in his family, and she (Mrs. Gibson) sorrow- 
 fully remembers the altered circumstances under which 
 they now lived. " There were," she says, " no such 
 juvenile entertainments at this house as I had seen 
 at the Terrace." 
 
 The house on the Brook is near St. Mary's, the 
 Parish Church of Chatham, where three children of John 
 and Elizabeth Dickens, viz., Harriett Ellen (September 
 3rd, 1 8 19), and Frederick William (August 4th, 1820), 
 born at Ordnance Terrace, and another son to be presently 
 mentioned, w^ere baptized. A view of this church from 
 a lithograph of the time by Mr. William Dadson, 
 drawing-m_aster of Rochester, is given here, as is also a 
 view of Rochester from, near the Sun Pier, Chatham, by 
 the same artist. The latter engraving illustrates an 
 effect Dickens was very fond of, and which he uses 
 repeatedly in his works, that of a long path of light 
 either from the moon, as in David Copperfidd^ ^ or from 
 the setting sun reflected on the water. 
 
' ' , J • , 
 
 
 St. Mary's Church, Chatham. 
 C^/ier W. Dawson.) 
 
 The Navy-Pay Office, Chatham Dockyard. 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 47 
 
 This engraving also shows the distant cathedral 
 with a spire^ as it was till the year 1825, when the 
 church restorers of those days took it down and altered 
 the tower as we see it now. 
 
 From an upper window in the side of this house in 
 St. Mary's Place, the parish church and churchyard can 
 be seen, exactly as described in A Child's Dream of 
 a Star, written in 1850. This little tale is a very 
 touching reminiscence of his own and his sister's 
 childhood here. 
 
 The new residence was also much nearer to the 
 dockyard, and Charles, who " strolled about a good deal, 
 and thought of a number of things " - now formed an 
 accurate and lasting idea of the " Yard." 
 
 Near the handsome substantially built row of houses 
 where the leading officials of the yard reside, stands 
 the Navy-Pay Office, an old-fashioned, red brick pile, 
 with heavily barred windows, and strong rooms lined 
 throughout with iron. Through the courtesy of the 
 Admiral Superintendent, I am enabled to give here 
 a sketch of this unpretending eminently practical 
 looking building. 
 
 It was here, in the room lately occupied by the 
 
 ' " I remember how I seemed lo float, then down the melancholy 
 glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams," — 
 David Copperfield, Chap. XIII. See also American Notes, Chaps. XV. 
 ai4XVI. 
 
 -'The Chihfs Dream of a Star. 
 
48 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 cashier, Mr. R. G. Hobbes, that Mr. John Dickens 
 attended to his duties for six years, and here Charles 
 came with him many a time. The building both ex- 
 ternally and internally is, at the present day, exactly 
 as it was during Dickens' childhood at Chatham. 
 
 In The Uncoimnercial Traveller, we are told of Chat- 
 ham Dockyard, that " There is a gravity upon its red 
 brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having 
 nothing worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of di*s- 
 play, which I never saw out of England." 
 
 Here, as a boy, Dickens was never tired of watching 
 the rope-makers, the anchor-smiths (nine of them at 
 once, like " the muses in a ring "), and the block-makers 
 at their work, and he seems to have taken more than a 
 childish interest in the gradual development of the huge 
 " wooden walls " on the slips. 
 
 In his boyhood a custom prevailed at Chatham Dock- 
 yard, for the blacksmiths to get up a pageant in honour 
 of their patron saint, on St. Clement's Day, the 23rd 
 November. The procession was usually headed by a 
 band, and " Old Clem." ^ was enacted by a sturdy young 
 smith, disguised for the occasion in a mask and flowing 
 wig, and sitting in a chair of state. Speeches were made, 
 doggrel rhymes recited, and black mail collected on their 
 way through the town. 
 
 ' "Old Clem." was, of course, merely a familiar term of endearment 
 for St, Clement, 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 49 
 
 In Great Expectations, written in i860, we find a 
 distinct allusion to this custom in a song sung by Joe 
 Gargery, Old Orlick, and Pip ; it occurs several times in 
 the tale, and readers will probably remember the refrain 
 " Beat it out, beat it out, — Old Clem I with a clink for 
 the stout— Old Clem ! " 
 
 These were the days when mechanics, fitters, and 
 rivetters had not in a great measure taken the place of 
 shipwrights. He tells us in his Nurses Stories that 
 '■' nails and copper are shipwrights' sweethearts, and ship- 
 wrights will run away with them whenever they can." 
 This, however, is almost a thing of the past, not so much 
 because wooden ships are now partially superseded by 
 ironclads, nor that copper nails and bolts are less used 
 than formerly, but because the copper being " portable 
 property " is better looked after, and also, let us hope, 
 because there is an improvement in the men them- 
 selves. 
 
 A change, too, has come over this yard in many 
 ways. In the first place it is incomparabh' larger than 
 before, and a novel feature is the introduction of loco- 
 motive engines for carrying the heavy iron-work used 
 for shipbuilding. Instead of this, in Dickens' early days 
 and long since then, long files of convict labourers, 
 guarded by soldiers, might be seen carrying planks of 
 oak, the tall men bearing all the weight, and the little 
 men walking in their places with their shoulders two or 
 
50 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 three inches below the plank, and contentedly carrying 
 nothing ! 
 
 But although to some extent the very air of the place, 
 once redolent of oak chips and shavings, of oakum, 
 tarred ropes, and canvas, has changed ; yet, on the 
 
 The Convict Hulk, formerly lying off Chatham Dockyard. 
 
 whole, the appearance of the older part of the yard 
 is much the same now as when Charles Dickens was a 
 boy there. 
 
 Lying off the dockyard at this time was the 
 *' receiving ship " (see illustration), one of the hulks to 
 which the convicts " with great numbers on their backs 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 5 1 
 
 as if they were street doors," ^ returned after their labour 
 ill the dockyard, every man being searched before he 
 went on board for the night. To this particular hulk all 
 the fresh arrivals from London were drafted, and these 
 were the " ships roofed like Xoah's Arks/' that the little 
 boy would, no doubt, take an absorbing interest in. 
 
 "And please, what's Hulks ?" inquires little Pip, and 
 his sister replies : " Hulks are prison ships right 'cross" 
 the meshes (marshes). People are put in the Hulks 
 because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, 
 and do all sorts of bad ; and they always begin by 
 asking questions." Great Expectations^ Chap. H. 
 
 There are in this tale many allusions to con\'ict life 
 at Chatham, and among them an account of how in the 
 old coaching days convicts were removed from London ; 
 and how passengers on the box seat were disagreeably 
 made aware of their presence, by feeling their breath on 
 the back of their necks, and by their ''bringing with 
 them that curious flavour of bread- poultice, baize, rope- 
 yarn, and hearthstone, which attends the convict 
 presence" (Chap. XXVHL). 
 
 During their residence on the Brook, a wedding took 
 place in the Dickens famil\-, v.hich it may be well to 
 mention with some fulness here ; perhaps the better way 
 to introduce it, will be to give the entry from the Church 
 Register. 
 
 1 Great Expectations, Chap. XXVIII. 
 
52 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Page lOI. 
 
 Marriages solemnized in the Parish of Chatham, in the 
 County of Kent, in the year 182 1. . 
 
 Matthew Lamert of this Parish, Surgeon, Widower, and 
 
 Mary Allen of this Parish, Widow were married in this 
 
 Church by licence this eleventh day of December in the 
 
 year one thousand eight hundred and twenty one. 
 
 By me W. H. Drage Curate. 
 
 This marriage was solemnized f Matthew Lamert 
 between us | Mary Allen 
 
 T ^1 r \ Elizabeth Uickens 
 
 In the presence of i -r u ^^■ 1 
 
 ^ y John Dickens 
 
 George Elliott 
 Jno. H. Barrow. 
 No. 302 
 
 At the wedding of their aunt " Fanny " (called so by 
 the children, though her name was Mary), Charles and 
 his sister were also present, and on the departure of the 
 married couple, James Lamert came to live with the 
 family for the first time. Jane Bonny, a fellow-servant 
 with Mary Weller, at Ordnance Terrace, went to L'cland 
 with Mrs. Lamert, as her servant, and was with her when 
 she died there, soon afterwards. It will be remembered 
 that the rather remarkable name of this old servant 
 occurs as the name of one of the characters in Nicholas 
 Nicklcby. 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE BROOK. 53- 
 
 The above James Lamert, mentioned also in ]\Ir. 
 Forster's Life of Dickens, vol. i., page 11, as "a sort of 
 cousin by marriage," was simply Dr. Lamert's son by 
 his former wife. Mrs. Allen was not his step-mother ; 
 Mrs. Lamert undoubtedly was. 
 
 James Lamert was considerably older than his cousin 
 Charles, but was, no doubt, attracted by a certain preco- 
 cious smartness and intelligence in the little fellow's 
 appearance and manner, qualities which endeared him at 
 once to all who became acquainted with him, and which 
 are remembered to this da}' b}' a few of his contem- 
 poraries still surviving at Chatham and Rochester. 
 
 Young Lamert not onl}' took Charles to the theatre 
 at Rochester, but himself got up some pri\-ate theatricals 
 in the spacious buildings of the Ordnance Hospital, not 
 far from the dockyard, and his father. Dr. Lamert, some- 
 times took a part in these performances. Dr. Lamert 
 and Dr. Slammer (of Pickwick) are of course the same 
 person. 
 
 The regimental surgeon's kindh' manner, and his 
 short, odd wa}\s of expressing himself, still survive in 
 the recollections of a few old people. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GILES'S SCHOOL. 
 
 " It (the school) was vety gravely and decorously ordered, 
 and on a sound system : with an appeal in everythins:, to the 
 honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to 
 rely on their possession of those qualities, unless they proved 
 themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders." » 
 
 David Copperfieldy Chap. XVI. 
 
 T is the opinion of 
 persons who can in 
 their own memories 
 bridge over the gulf 
 of more than sixty 
 years, that Charles 
 Dickens never went to a regular 
 school till about Lady-Day, 
 1 82 1. A preparatory school in Rome Lane (now 
 Railway Street) is confidently mentioned by Mr. 
 Forster, and it may be that for a short time he did 
 attend such a school, but there is no obtainable 
 evidence of the fact now. 
 
 / 
 
GILES'S SCHOOL. 55 
 
 It seems to me that the biographer of Dickens has 
 gone a httle out of his way to cast a slur upon the 
 parents of his friend, when he says on page 6 of his 
 first volume, " It will not appear, as my narrative 
 moves on, that he owed much to his parents," because 
 what follows would seem to falsify that statement ; 
 " but he (Charles Dickens) has frequently been heard 
 to say that his first desire for knowledge, and his 
 earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his 
 mother, who taught him the first rudiments not only 
 of English, but also, a little later, of Latin. She taught 
 him every day for a long time, and taught him, he 
 was convinced, thoroughly well." 
 
 His description of himself to Washington Irving, as 
 " a small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy," 
 cannot fairly be said to apply to this early, happy period 
 of his life. 
 
 It was during the residence at Ordnance Terrace 
 
 that the mother and aunt educated the children at 
 
 . home, and on moving to the Brook, Charles and 
 
 his sister Fanny were at once sent to Mr. Giles's 
 
 school. 
 
 Some confusion has arisen as to which of the three 
 houses in which Mr. Giles resided at Chatham was the 
 school of Charles Dickens, but the evidence, that of 
 Mr. Dickeson and others, who went to this school, is at 
 once clear and beyond question. 
 
56 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Mr. William Giles, the son of the Rev. William Giles, the 
 minister of Providence Chapel on the Brook, commenced 
 school-keeping at a house in Clover Lane, now Clover 
 Street, Chatham, and at that time his scholars consisted 
 of his own younger brothers and sisters, of the children 
 of some of the officers of the garrison, and a few of 
 the children of the neighbours. 
 
 He shortly afterwards moved to the large house still 
 standing at the corner of Rhode Street and Best Street 
 shown in the initial letter of this chapter, and closely 
 adjoining Clover Lane, and here Charles and Fanny 
 Dickens attended as scholars. Finally he moved to 
 Gibraltar Place on the new road. The school still lives 
 in the memory of numbers of people resident in these 
 towns (Strood, Rochester, Chatham, and Brompton), 
 and a doggerel survives which runs thus : — 
 
 Baker's Bull Dogs, 
 
 Giles's Cats, 
 New-road scrubbers, 
 
 Troy Town Rats. 
 
 And in this rhyme four of the principal educational 
 establishments of sixty years ago (in these towns) are 
 named. 
 
 Mr. Giles had been educated at Oxford, was an 
 accomplished scholar, and a very conscientious, pains- 
 taking man. He seems to have been much struck (could 
 
GILES S SCHOOL. 57 
 
 not fail to have been so) with the bright appearance and 
 unusual intelligence of his little pupil, and, giving him 
 ever)- encouragement in his power, even to making a 
 companion of him of an e\-ening, he \\-as soon rewarded 
 b}- the marked improvement that followed. Charles made 
 rapid progress, and there is no doubt whatever that his 
 wonderful knowledge and felicitous use of the English 
 language in after life was, in a great measure, due to the 
 careful training of :\Ir. Giles, who was widel\- known as a 
 cultivated reader and elocutionist. 
 
 Mrs. Godfrey, the eldest sister of ^Ir. Giles, a venerable 
 lady, now (1882) in her eight\--ninth \-car, residing at 
 Liverpool, has kindly given me her recollections of 
 Charles Dickens as a school-boy. She was some fifteen 
 or sixteen years older than Charles, and was, conse- 
 quentl}-, well able to form an opinion of the appearance, 
 manners, and capabilities of her brother's little pupil. 
 Her recollection of him is, that he was a ver\- handsome 
 boy, with long curl\- hair of a light colour, and that he 
 was of a very amiable, agreeable disposition. He was 
 capital compan}' e\-en then 'at nine or ten }-ears of age), 
 and she saw a great deal of him. 
 
 She clearly remembers both the house at Ordnance 
 Terrace, and that on the Brook ; she also recognised the 
 drawing of Providence Chapel as her father's chapel. 
 She remembered the Mitre Inn very well — had dined 
 there, and had a vivid recollection of the crrounds at the 
 
58 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 back. She can remember that " Charles was quite at 
 home at all sorts of parties, junketings, and birthday 
 celebrations, and that he took great delight in Fifth of 
 November festivities round the bonfire." 
 
 Mrs. Godfrey denies with some warmth the statement 
 of Mr. Forster, that her brother taught his old pupil 
 the bad habit of taking snuff, even " in very moderate 
 quantities." She holds that the presentation of a silver 
 snuffbox does not necessarily bind the recipient to any 
 such habit. 
 
 At Mr. Giles's school the boys were expected to wear 
 (and did w^ear) white beaver hats ; Charles Dickens was 
 wearing such a hat when he left Chatham, and it will be 
 remembered that in Forster's Life, vol. i., page 42, 
 Charles went, during his father's difficulties, to the official 
 appraiser, in order that his clothes might be inspected, — 
 " certajnly, the hardest creditor would not have been 
 disposed to avail himself of my poor white hat," etc. 
 So also in David Copperfield, Chap. X. : " Behold me on 
 the morrow in a much worn little white hat ; " see also 
 the late Mr. Hablot K. Browne's etching, where David 
 appears before his aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, at Dover, 
 in a much-battered white hat. 
 
 Notwithstanding the trouble and difficulties that had 
 come upon the family, the children were happy enough 
 at this time. There was — as Hood quaintly says — " sky- 
 blue in their cup," they had many a romp in the Fort 
 
GILES'S SCHOOL. 59 
 
 Pitt Fields with Mar}' W'ellcr, and the young shipwright, 
 her sweetheart, ''they were not ahvays learning; they 
 had the merriest games that ever were pla}-ed. The)' 
 rowed upon the river in summer, and skated upon the ice 
 in winter.— They had holidays, too, and Twelfth cakes, 
 and parties, where they danced till midnight. — As to 
 friends, they had such dear friends, and so many of them, 
 that I want time to reckon them up. The}' were all 
 young, like the handsome bo}'." ^ 
 
 Then the theatrical entertainments were still kept up, 
 all through the closing months of 1821, and the spring of 
 1822. In the autumn of the former }'ear he had dis- 
 tinguished himself by writing a tragedy called Misnar, 
 the Sultan of India, and his singing, and recitation of 
 humorous pieces was still much admired. 
 
 Charles was much beloved b}' his juvenile friends at 
 school, and he was as full of fun Tand it must be added 
 of mischief) as any of them. The " lingo " said to have 
 been invented by Dickens at a later period of school 
 experiences in London, undoubtedl}' dated from this 
 time, and was \vell known here. 
 
 In the summer and autumn he was frcquenth' at 
 Tom-all-alone's with his schoolfellows and friends, and 
 witnessed the sham fights and siege operations, which at 
 that time were carried on there as well as on " Chatham 
 Lines." It will be remembered that in Bleak House 
 
 ' The Child's Story, 1852 
 
6o CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Tom-all-alone's is thus mentioned : " Twice, lately, there 
 has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing 
 of a mine, in Tom-all-alone's, and, each time, a house has 
 fallen." 
 
 Mr. Hobbes, the late cashier of Chatham Dockyard, 
 has kindly furnished me with the following account of 
 the origin of the curious name given to this place. 
 " About 1747 one Thomas Clark, living at what is now 
 called ' Old Brompton,' in order to break away from 
 companions of whom he desired to get quit, bought a 
 piece of waste ground some half-mile from the town, 
 and built himself a house there. There he lived about 
 twenty-five years by Jiimsclf, and when returning home 
 of an evening used to go crying or singing ' Tom's all 
 alone ! ' Hence the place became known as ' Tom-all- 
 alone's.' Tom by-and-by married, and had a large 
 family ; and, as the children grew up, they married, and 
 had large families too, and together they formed a little 
 distinct colony. The Convict Prison, however, was to be 
 built ; the ground on which ' Tom-all-alone's ' stood was 
 wanted, and it was taken, and now belongs to the 
 nson. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the above passage from 
 Bleak House was a reminiscence of the springing of a 
 veritable mine he had witnessed at Tom-all-alone's, and 
 that the name of the rookery where poor " Jo " lived in 
 London, is taken from that locality. His playful 
 
GILES'S SCHOOL. 5 1 
 
 description of the origin of the name in Chapter XVI. 
 has an additional meaning now the site is turned into a 
 Convict Prison ; " or, whether the traditional title is a 
 comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honest 
 company, and put out of the pale of hope, perhaps 
 nobody knows." 
 
 . During these school-days at Chatham, Charles had, 
 we are glad to know, access to his father's books, which, 
 by a happy coincidence, numbered among them some of 
 the best works of fiction to be found in our lan^uaee, — 
 those of Defoe, Smollett, Goldsmith, Fielding, and others ; 
 also The Spectator, The Tatler, The Idler, The Citizen of 
 tJie World, and Mrs. InchbahVs Collection of Farces. 
 These were studied over and over again, and the world 
 is probably the richer for his eager boyish perusal of 
 them ! 
 
 It will interest the reader to know that several of the 
 incidents and names of characters contained in these 
 famous works have been skilfully utilised by Dickens. 
 They will be more fully referred to in their proper places 
 in the Retrospective notes. 
 
 David Copperfield mentions these books as beine in 
 "a little room upstairs to which I had access (for it 
 adjoined my own), and \\hich nobody else in our house 
 ever troubled." Had David's alter ego this room in his 
 mind when in 1859 he wrote his Christmas story of TJie 
 Haunted House ? In The Ghost in Master Bis Room, 
 
62 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 in that talc he says, " Ah, me ; ah, me ! no other ghost 
 has haunted the boys' room, my friends, since I have 
 occupied it, than the ghost of my own childhood, the 
 crhost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy 
 
 belief" 
 
 That Dickens should in after life have manifested a 
 love for all things nautical, that he should himself have 
 looked at times like a sailor, and that the warmest 
 sympathies of a naturally warm heart were always at the 
 service of naval and merchant seamen, fishermen. Deal 
 boatmen, and " great sea-porkypines " generally, where is 
 the wonder ? 
 
 Was he not born within hearing of " the great voice 
 of the sea, with its eternal nevermore " ? ^ Was he not the 
 son, the grandson, and the godson of men directly 
 connected with shipping and the sea ? Finally, was he 
 not till eleven years of age brought' up at a great Naval 
 Depot ? 
 
 That his age was really eleven and not nine, as has 
 been stated when he left Chatham, I shall now endeavour 
 to show. The family of Mr. John Dickens were all this 
 ^ time, while Charles was at Giles's School, still living on 
 the Brook. We have seen that they were living there at 
 the time of the marriage of Mrs. Allen to Dr. Lamert, 
 in December 1821. They were living there when, in the 
 spring of 1822 (March nth), another son was born, and 
 
 ' David Copperfield, Chap. XLVI. 
 
Giles s school. 63 
 
 here is a copy of the register of his baptism at St. ^MaryV'^ 
 Church. 
 
 April 3rd, 1822.- — Alfred Lamert, Son of John and 
 Elizabeth Dickens, Xavy-Pay Office, Chatham.^ 
 
 Mr. Dickens and his family continued to reside here, 
 it is believed, all through this \'ear, though no record of 
 the date of his recall exists in the books at Somerset 
 House ; and they left for London, according to such 
 evidence as can be obtained, in the winter of 1822 and 
 1S23, taking with them as a ''small servant a girl from 
 Chatham Workhouse." Her name cannot now be traced, 
 as the books of that date are no longer in existence. 
 The family left Chatham by coach, and their heavy 
 goods were sent by water.- 
 
 Mrs. Godfrey believes that when the Dickens famil}- 
 finally left Chatham, Charles was (almost at the last 
 minute) left with her brother ]\Ir. Giles, with whom he 
 remained for some little time longer ; and this would 
 appear to be corroborated b}- his own account of the 
 journey in the next chapter. 
 
 ' He died in ^^auchestel, July i860. 
 
 - Mr. Gibson, who married Mary Waller, purchased Mr. John Dickens' 
 parlour chairs on his leaving Chatham for London. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LEAVES CHATHAM FOR LONDON. 
 
 ** The light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the 
 world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all be3^ond 
 was so unknown and great." 
 
 Great Expectations, Chap. XIX. 
 
 ^OIRG AWAY,sadlyenough, 
 from all that had 
 " given his ailing little life its 
 picturesqueness or sunshine.' 
 This must be the burden of 
 the present chapter ! 
 
 It is most probable 
 that Charles Dickens 
 left Chatham in the 
 early months of 1823. 
 His own account in 
 DiLllboroiigh Town 
 (i860) is as follows : " As I left Dullborough in the days 
 
LEAVES CHATHAM FOR LONDON. 65 
 
 when there were no raihoads in the land, I left it in a 
 stage-coach. Through all the years that have since 
 passed have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in 
 which I was packed — like game — and forwarded, carriage 
 paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London? 
 There was no other inside passenger, and I consumed 
 my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained 
 hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had 
 expected to find it. The coach that carried me away 
 was melodiously called Timpson's Blue-eyed Maid, and 
 belonged to Timpson, at the coach office up street." 
 
 This unmistakable reminiscence of his own journey 
 to London, where he describes himself as being the only 
 inside passenger, appears to confirm Mrs. Godfrey's 
 account of the detention of Charles at Chatham, at his 
 good schoolmaster's, till the family could get settled in 
 a new home. It may be mentioned that Timpson was 
 (with the alteration of a single letter) Simpson the 
 coach proprietor, and that The Blue-eyed Maid^ was a 
 veritable coach, which as it started from Brompton 
 would be more convenient for the Dickens family when 
 resident on the Brook than the Conunodore mentioned 
 by Mr. Forster. 
 
 From some reminiscences of Rochester by the Rev. 
 Walter A. Vaughan, his friend Mr. W. B. Rye has kindly 
 sent me the following note: "The Commodore Coa'ch 
 
 ^ The Blue-eyed Maid is also mentioned in Little Dorrit, Chap. III. 
 
 F 
 
66 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 was driven by old Cholmeley (or Chumley), who was 
 entrusted with all young ladies going to town. He 
 made that celebrated speech about coaches when rail- 
 ways came in, ' If a railway blows up — where are ye ? 
 Now if a coach upsets t/iere ye are ! ' I believe that 
 originally came from him." Mr. Rye adds, " Old Chumley 
 was a cJiai^acter, and was a first-rate whip ; some amusing 
 anecdotes of him are told in Ninirod's N^orthern Tour'' 
 
 It would seem that shortly after the return of the 
 Dickens family to London, one of the younger children 
 born at Ordnance Terrace had died, and Charles was 
 sent home to the funeral. The following quotation from 
 one of the Christmas Stories, The Haunted House, is too 
 probably a literal description of what now occurred. 
 
 " I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as 
 well as Death, and we had a sale there. My own little 
 bed was so superciliously looked upon by a power 
 unknown to me, hazily called ' The Trade,' that a brass 
 coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a bird-cage, were obliged 
 to be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for 
 a song, — so I heard mentioned, and I wondered what 
 song, — and thought what a dismal song it must have 
 been to sing." 
 
 The whole story of this sad period of the boy's life is 
 indeed a dismal song to sing, and the only satisfaction 
 to be derived from a perusal of Mr. Forster's painful 
 account is, that good did really come out of his hard 
 
LEASES CHATHAM FOR LONDON. 6y 
 
 experiences at last ; for not only have we his humorous 
 and comprehensive sketches of struggling, hopeless 
 poverty in London and elsewhere, but he has left us that 
 which will live still longer, — his kindly, pathetic tribute 
 to the good qualities often to be found amongst those 
 who are in necessity and tribulation. 
 
 On the arrival of Charles in London, in the spring of 
 1823, he entered at once upon a new life, and had to face 
 a world of uncongenial surroundings abroad, and an ever 
 increasing poverty at home. He now lived (for a few 
 months only) at Camden Town, and whilst there his 
 sister Fanny was admitted as a pupil at the Royal 
 Academy of Music, then recently established. My note 
 from the books of the Academy shows the date of entry : 
 " Frances Elizabeth, daughter of John Dickens, Clerk in 
 the Navy-Pay Office, of 16, Bayham Street, Camden 
 Town, entered for the Piano. /\dmitted April 9th, 1823. 
 Recommended and nominated by Thomas Tomkisson, 
 Esq.^ Left at Midsummer, 1827." 
 
 The family soon after left Bayham Street, and went 
 to reside in a house in Gower Street, with a view, we are 
 told, of Mrs. Dickens trying what she could do to help 
 their resources by keeping a school. It was thought, 
 says Mr. Forster, that the godfather, the rigger and block 
 maker at Limehouse Hole, might introduce pupils, as he 
 
 ' This Mr. Tomkisson was a Pianoforte Maker, of 77, Dean Street, 
 Soho. 
 
68 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 was a man of some influence and position, and had an 
 Indian connection. 
 
 It was trusting to a broken reed, for he too succumbed 
 to the general mercantile depression of the disastrous 
 years 1823 and 1824, and was made a bankrupt, about 
 the same time that Mr. John Dickens' misfortunes 
 culminated in his arrest. 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Micawber ! She said she had tried to 
 exert herself ; and so, I have no doubt, she had. The 
 centre of the street door was perfectly covered with a 
 great brass plate, on which was engraved : ' Mrs. 
 Micawber's Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies ; ' 
 but I never found that any young ladies had ever been 
 to school there ; or that any young lady ever came, or 
 proposed to come ; or that the least preparation was 
 ever made to receive any young lady." ' 
 
 With the alteration of the name only, this, says Forster, 
 accurately describes this futile attempt to open a school. 
 There is another distinct and humorous reference to 
 these times in Our Mutual Friend^ Chap. IV. ■ 
 
 " ' Yes,' said Mrs. Wilfer, ' the man came himself with 
 a pair of pincers, and took it off, and took it away. He 
 said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid 
 for it, and as he had an order for another Ladies' School 
 door-plate, it was better (burnished up) for the interests 
 of all parties.' " 
 
 * David Copperjield, Chap. XI. 
 
LEAVES CHATHAM FOR LONDON. 69 
 
 At length, all attempts to conciliate hostile creditors, 
 or to get farther time, having failed, the father of the 
 family was arrested, and conveyed to one of the debtors' 
 prisons on the Surrey side of the Thames. There is 
 some doubt or confusion as to which, and it arises thus : 
 Mr. Forster makes the strange mistake of saying, on 
 page 23 of his first volume of the Life, " The readers of 
 Mr. Micawber's history, who remember David's first visit 
 to the Marshalsea Prison," — when we are distinctly 
 told in the seventh chapter of David Copperfield, " At 
 last, Mr. Micawber's difficulties came to a crisis, and he 
 was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the 
 Ki7igs Bench prison, in the Borough. He told me as he 
 went out of the house, that the God of day had now 
 gone down upon him, and— I really thought his heart 
 was broken, and mine too." 
 
 Also in Chapter XLIX., in a letter, Mr. Micawber 
 makes an appointment to meet David and Traddles at 
 this spot, "among other havens of domestic tranquillity 
 and peace of mind, my feet will naturally tend towards 
 the King's Bench Prison. In stating that I shall be (d.V.) 
 on the outside of the south wall of that place of incarce- 
 ration on civil process, the day after to-morrow, at seven 
 in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary 
 communication is accomplished." And, says David, on 
 getting to the place, " we found Mr. Micawber already 
 there. He was standing with his arms folded, over 
 
JO CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top, 
 with a sentimental expression, as if they were the 
 interlacing boughs of trees that had shaded him in his 
 youth." 
 
 For this and other reasons it seems probable that 
 Mr. Dickens was confined in the King's Bench, and here 
 is a rather singular and suggestive fact, which would 
 seem to confirm that view. During the time Mr. John 
 Dickens is known to have been in a debtor's prison 
 (1824), a Mr. Dorrett (of Rochester too) was a prisoner 
 for debt in the King's Bench ! This is, perhaps, beyond 
 question, as it is from the London Gazette of that date ! 
 
 Mention is made of the King's Bench Prison in 
 Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. XLVL, where Walter Bray^ 
 is said to have lived within the rules of the King's 
 Bench, in David Copperfield, quoted above, and in the 
 Uncommercial Traveller (night walks), where in a few 
 powerful lines the author traces the progress of Dry- Rot 
 in men, and tells how it " carried Horace Kinch inside 
 the wall of the old King's Bench Prison, and it had 
 carried him out with his feet foremost" 
 
 Mention is also mxade of the Marshalsea in Pickwick 
 as the prison where George Heyling was incarcerated, 
 and in Little Dorrit the first half of the book centres 
 in the Marshalsea. 
 
 Of his description of the Fleet Prison, and of the 
 
 Richard Bray was an old schoolfellow at Wellington House Academy. • 
 
LEAVES CHATHAM FOR LONDON. 7 1 
 
 monstrous cruelty and injustice practised there, and in 
 all such places, the readers of the works of Charles 
 Dickens will be quite familiar ; scarce!}- three-score )-ears 
 have elapsed since these hard experiences overtook his 
 famil}-, but it has sufficed, and all these vile dens, with 
 their accompanying retinue of sponging-house keepers, 
 tipstaffs, and bailiffs, have passed awa}', and it is certain 
 that, in the near future, their ver\' sites will be known 
 only to the antiquar}- and the historian. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HE BEGINS LIFE ON HIS OWN ACCOUNT, 
 AND DON'T LIKE IT. 
 
 "When my thoughts go back now, to that slow agony of 
 my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented, for 
 such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered 
 i3iCts\''— David Copperfield, Chap. XL 
 
 ''He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years 
 of age. 
 
 -Child's History of England. 
 
 '/// 
 
 IMULTANEOUSLY 
 
 with his father's incar- 
 ceration Charles Dickens 
 was sent to the Blacking 
 manufactory carried on 
 by the Lamerts (James 
 and George) under the 
 name of "Warren." 
 This was a not very suc- 
 cessful attempt to rival the extensive business of Robert 
 Warren, of 30, Strand. It was at first estabHshed by a 
 
HE BEGIXS LIFE ON HIS OWN ACCOUNT. 73 
 
 ]\Ir. Jonathan Warren, a relative of Robert Warren, who 
 claimed to have been the original inventor of the blacking 
 recipe ; and, as far as I can ascertain, the two houses 
 appear to have pushed business on precisel}' the same 
 lines, and to have used the same illustrations, or some of 
 them, to their numerous advertisements. 
 
 From fifty to sixty-five years ago these woodcuts 
 were to be seen in all the provincial newspapers of any 
 standing, and the covers of magazines and periodicals 
 were full of them, the blank walls of London and 
 its suburbs, too, were ablaze with their illustrated 
 posters. 
 
 But this was at a time when the Trade Marks Acts 
 were unknown, and apparenth' these rival firms used 
 each others' pictorial de\-ices with impunit}-. 
 
 I give here (see page 75) three of the best known of 
 these engravings (there are many others), and those 
 of my readers who can go back in their memories 
 to the magazine and newspaper literature of sixty 
 years since, will recognise these fac-simile reproduc- 
 tions as old acquaintances. Mr. Forster says, page 50 
 of vol. i., " the}' were all ver\' proud, he told me, of 
 the cat scratching the boot, which was their house's 
 device." 
 
 I do not propose to dwell upon this period of the 
 boy's life, or to go into an}' description of his emplo}'- 
 ment ; that " an innocent romantic bo}' " like Charles 
 
74 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Dickens should have been so utterly thrown away is sad, 
 indeed, but perhaps enough has been said and written 
 on this subject already. 
 
 Of these times David Copperfield says (Chap. XL), 
 speaking of himself in the first person, " a child of ex- 
 cellent abilities, and with strong power of observation, 
 quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally, 
 it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made 
 any sign in my behalf" That he should have escaped 
 serious mental and bodily deterioration during these 
 months is also wonderful ! 
 
 Most readers of Mr. Forster's Life of his friend 
 will, I think, derive satisfaction from these two points : 
 first, that after all, he took some pride in doing the work 
 he was put to thoroughly well ; and, secondly, that at 
 a time when the family circumstances were at a deplor- 
 ably low ebb, he, a boy of twelve, could, in however 
 wretched a fashion, maintain himself. 
 
 Bit by bit all the furniture had been sold, the boy had 
 become familiar with the nature of " pawnbrokers' dupli- 
 cates — those turnpike tickets on the road of poverty ; " ^ 
 even his favourite books from Chatham had been dis- 
 posed of, and he now felt the position he had fallen into 
 very keenly ; but it is something to know that, in these 
 dark times, he never quite lost his youthful flow of spirits. 
 Companions suitable to his age and former position he 
 
 ' Bleak House, Chap. XI. 
 
' > J- ^ J 5 
 
 < V > ' > J , 
 
 STRAND 
 
HE BEGINS LIFE ON HIS OWN ACCOUNT. yy 
 
 had none, but he managed to extract some fun both then 
 and afterwards in his works, from the pecuHarities of 
 Thomas, the old soldier ; of Harry, the good-natured 
 carman ; of Mick Walker, of Bob Fagin, and of Poll 
 Green. Of the latter he says, " I think his little sister 
 did imps in the pantomime." 
 
 Mr. Forster tells us, " I perfectly recollect that he 
 used to describe Saturday night as his great treat. It 
 was a grand thing to walk home with six shillings in his 
 pocket, and to look in at the shop windows, and think 
 what it would buy." 
 
 Hunt's roasted corn, as " a British and patriotic sub- 
 stitute for coffee," w^as in vogue just then (1824), and this 
 he occasionally purchased ; it was another of the curiosi- 
 ties advertised pretty freely in those days, and had an 
 extensive sale for a time, and then came to an end. He 
 used also to purchase The Portfolio, \\'hich he had a 
 great fancy for taking home with him. This was a 
 weekly illustrated periodical, which would he a great 
 treat to an imaginative boy. It commenced in the year 
 1823, and the title-page was in this wise, " The Portfolio 
 of Entertaining and Instructive Varieties in History, 
 Science, Literature, the Fine Arts, etc. Price Twopence." 
 The Portfolio bore a strong resemblance to The Mirror, 
 The Vehicle, and several other magazines started about 
 the same time ; it had an existence of about three years' 
 duration, and then it, too, came to an end. 
 
 ,^^'- 
 
78 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Some of the pieces in The Portfolio were burlesques 
 of well-known plays, and outrageous parodies of poems. 
 There is, I fancy, internal evidence in some of Dickens' 
 very earliest printed works, of his having studied these 
 burlesques and travesties to some purpose. There 
 is still stronger evidence of this study, I am told, 
 in some other early attempts of his that were never 
 printed. 
 
 It was probably at the end of the year 1824 that 
 Fanny Dickens received a prize at the Royal Academy 
 of Music, and Charles and some others of the family 
 attended at Tenterden Street, to witness the presentation. 
 I have been unable to fix the date of this presentation, 
 as no record of it exists in the books of the Academy. 
 Mr. Forster mentions this event, and adds that in a frag- 
 ment of autobiography Dickens has remarked on the 
 presentation, " I could not bear to think of myself — 
 beyond the reach of all such honourable emulation and 
 success. The tears ran down my face. I felt as if my 
 heart were rent. I prayed when I went to bed that 
 night to be lifted out of the humiliation and neglect in 
 which I was. I never had suffered so much before. 
 There was no envy in this." And, adds Mr. Forster, 
 with a generous word for his friend, " there was little 
 need that he should say so." 
 
 There is no record of the duration of this period of 
 the boy's life, but the date of his father's petition is 
 
HE BEGINS LIFE ON HIS OWN ACCOUNT. 79 
 
 May 4th, 1824, and the first hearing was on Thursday, 
 May 27th, of the same year. 
 
 His own account of it is, " I have no idea how long 
 it lasted, whether for a year, or much more, or less." 
 That it terminated soon after his father's release is 
 certain, so that the probability is that little Charles 
 Dickens was employed at the blacking warehouse for 
 less than one year, and that he left it somewhere in 
 the summer of 1824. 
 
 It is a curious fact, and one to reflect on, that, knowing 
 as the reading world does from Mr. Forster's book, how 
 strongly and enduringly Dickens was affected by these 
 sad times, we yet find him, in nearly all his books, from 
 the very first to the last, continually recurring to the 
 subject of the blacking business. 
 
 This topic seems constantly to have forced itself 
 upon him, and to have had a certain fascination for him, 
 which he could not resist. Taking his works in their 
 order of publication, I find he mentions in his Sketches by 
 ■ Boz the shabby genteel man in the Seven Dials, who 
 wrote poems for "Warren." It is mentioned twice in 
 Pickwick, once in Oliver Tiuist, in NicJwlas Nickleby 
 several times, and notably in Chapter XL. ; it occurs 
 in the Old Curiosity Shop, where Mr. Slum, the writer 
 of poetical advertisements, is introduced. In David 
 Copperfield it is veiled under cover of the Wine Stores. 
 In Hard Times, where Josiah Bounderby brags that the 
 
8o CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 only pictures he possessed when a boy were the illus- 
 trated labels " of a man shaving himself in a boot on the 
 blacking bottles." In Little Dorrit^ in Great Expecta- 
 tions, in Our Mutual Friend, and in Edwin Drood, are 
 also to be found brief but unmistakable allusions to this 
 business. 
 
 At this time Charles was living in Lant Street, in the 
 Borough, where he continued to lodge till his father's 
 affairs were arranged, and the family, after a brief sojourn 
 in Little College Street, went to reside in Johnson Street, 
 between Seymour Street and Old St. Pancras Church. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SCHOOL AGAIN. 
 
 " My school-days ! The silent gliding on of my existence 
 — the unseen, unfelt progress of my life— from Childhood up to 
 Youth ! Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, 
 now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any 
 
 marks along its course, by which I 
 can remember how it ran." 
 
 David Copperficld, Chap. XVITL 
 
 N David Copperfidd the boy 
 terminates his sordid uncon- 
 genial drudgery by running 
 away, and, knowing what we 
 now do of the facts, the direc- 
 tion of his flight (Kent) ap- 
 pears to be quite sufficiently 
 accounted for. But in the 
 case of Charles Dickens him- 
 self, he was removed from the 
 Blacking Warehouse by his 
 father, and sent to school 
 again for about two years. 
 
82 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 From data given in the last chapter, he must have 
 been a httle over twelve years of age when he entered the 
 school of Mr. Jones, known as the Wellington House 
 Academy, Granby Street, Mornington Place, Hampstead 
 Road. " It was a school of some celebrity in its neigh- 
 bourhood, nobody could have said why. The master 
 was supposed among us to know nothing, and one of the 
 ushers was supposed to know everything. We are still 
 inclined to think the first-named supposition perfectly 
 correct." 
 
 There is probably, in the description of Our School, 
 an intentional mixing up of some of his earlier recollec- 
 tions of the school life at Chatham, \vith the more recent 
 experiences at Wellington House Academy. At this 
 latter school we are told " the boys trained the mice " 
 (white mice) " better than the master trained the boys." 
 This refers to the very lax discipline which obtained 
 in the school, as may be inferred from the fact that 
 all sorts of small animals were kept as pets in the 
 school desks. 
 
 The master, however, appears to have made up 
 for laxity in almost every other direction by soundly 
 thrashing the boys on the merest pretext, and a thick 
 mahogany ruler was as often as not the weapon used. 
 But the day scholars, of which Charles Dickens was one, 
 generally escaped these visitations, from a wholesome 
 fear of the wrath of the parents. 
 
SCHOOL AGAIN. 83 
 
 There is, no doubt, a reminiscence of Wellington 
 House Academ\% in the Salem House of David Copper- 
 field, and Mr. Creakle probably stands for the irate 
 Welshman, Air. Jones. There would also seem to be 
 some reference to this school in TJie Schoolboy's Story, 
 where " Old Cheeseman " fthe name of a veritable school 
 fellow at Chatham) is introduced. Old Cheeseman had 
 to remain at school during the holidays. " But he was a 
 favourite in general. Once a subscription \\'as raised for 
 him, and to keep up his spirits he was presented before 
 the holidays with two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, 
 and a beautiful pupp}'. Old Cheeseman cried about it 
 — especially soon afterwards, when the\' all eat one 
 another." 
 
 Something of the feeling described in Copperfield 
 must have been experienced b}' Charles Dickens, when 
 he, fresh from the societ}' of Bob Fagin, Poll Green, arid 
 the others, was first sent to W^ellington House Academy, 
 and the company of respectable middle-class boys. " I 
 was so conscious of having passed through scenes of 
 which the}" could ha\'e no knowledge, and of having 
 acquired experiences foreign to my age, appearance, and 
 condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an 
 imposture to come there as an ordinar}- little schoolboy. 
 My mind ran upon what they would think, if they knew of 
 my familiar acquaintance with the King's Bench Prison."^ 
 
 ' David CoppcTjield, Chap. XVI. 
 
84 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 But if this was so at first we have the direct assurance 
 of Mr. Owen P. Thomas, his schoolfellow, that he soon 
 recovered his youthful spirits, and, says Mr. Thomas 
 (Forster, vol. i., page 58), " He usually held his head 
 more erect than lads ordinarily do, and there was a 
 general smartness about him." 
 
 Wellington House Academy, Hampstead Road. 
 
 To Mr. Thomas, and the two other gentlemen men- 
 tioned below (all of whom are still resident in London), 
 I am indebted for the following original information as 
 to these school-days at Wellington House Academy. A 
 view of the school-house, as it still stands, is given here 
 
SCHOOL AGAIN. 85 
 
 from a sketch by Mr. Edward Hull, and it is noteworthy 
 that George Cruikshank, the eminent artist, lived for 
 many years, and died in one of the houses in the row 
 to the right of the engraving. 
 
 Dr. Henry Danson thinks that Dickens " was there 
 two years, viz., during 1824 and 1825, and that he left 
 the school at Christmas of the last-named year. He was 
 my schoolfellow during the whole of that period." Dr. 
 Danson also tells us in Forster, vol. i., page 62, that " he 
 was a handsome, curly-headed lad, full of animation and 
 animal spirits, and probably was connected with every 
 mischievous prank in the school." 
 
 Mr. Thomas writes as to the date of Dickens leaving 
 this school : " I have referred to a memorandum-book, 
 now literally in its ' sere and yellow leaf,' belonging to 
 my grandfather, Owen Peregrine, by whom I was brought 
 up, wherein is entered that I ' went to Mr. Jones's school, 
 February 22nd, 1824.' C. Dickens (as he has since told 
 me) was not there then, but came very soon after. So 
 that you may take it as certain that C. D. became a 
 scholar there during that spring. 
 
 " I am sorry I cannot fix upon the exact month, but it 
 would not be later than June of that year (1824). I was 
 C. Dickens' senior in age by a few months." 
 
 I am also indebted to Mr. Thomas for the following 
 diagrams of the school itself 
 
S6 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 REFERENCE TO DIAGRAM. 
 
 No. I — Mr. Jones's desk, " the chief." 
 ,, 2— Mr. Manville's do., Latin, etc., Master. 
 „ 3 — Mr. Taylor's do., EngHsh, etc. 
 „ 4 — Mr. Shier's do.. Junior. 
 
 and near him the French Master's chair. 
 „ 5 — Charles Dickens sat about here.* 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 Plan of Schoolroom. ' 
 
 No. J. is described in Oitr School as " the chief." 
 ,, 2 the "Latin master" with "ends of flannel, etc.," 
 rather coloured, as C. U. himself remarked 
 to me, Mr. Manville was then but a middle- 
 aged man at most. 
 .. 3 described as the "Clerical looking young man," he 
 appears also in David Copperfield, I think 
 Mr. Jones was the " Creakle," and other 
 severe schoolmasters in C. D.'s books. The 
 boys sat on each side of the desks, which were 
 continuous, but most of them had locked up 
 portions to themselves." 
 
SCHOOL AGAIN. 8/ 
 
 Mr. Thomas further says the " sketches give an accurate 
 idea of our departed schoolroom, which, I think, was a 
 timber structure, standing in a rather large playground, 
 and parallel with Granby Street, and a little space behind 
 Mr. Jones's house, which latter remains in its original 
 state. I am glad you secured a view of the house. I 
 suggested this to Mr. Forstcr, but when, I believe, it was 
 too late. 
 
 *'' C. Dickens, the Dansons, Tobin, Bray, and myself 
 were all day-scholars ; Bowden was a boarder. Amongst 
 
 Elevation of Schoolroom fronting Granby Street. 
 
 the boarders were the three Keys, and their sisters, 
 mulattos, the latter, of course, under Mrs. Jones's care. 
 They were the children, it ^^'as understood, of parents 
 who resided in the East Indies.^ One of the boys, 
 Frederick, had repeated experiences of the severe 
 scourgings Mr. Jones was so prone to administer." 
 
 " It was only on my accidentally finding his juvenile 
 note (printed by Forster, vol. i., 59), that I was led to 
 think the then renowned author was the same I had 
 formerly known so well, and this, strangely enough, 
 
 ^ The brother and sister Landless, introduced in Edwin Drood, are very 
 probably a recollection of the Keys. 
 
88 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 happened to Dr. Danson as well When I at length 
 met him again, I found him as agreeable and friendly 
 as he had been so many years before as a boy. Mr. 
 Dickens intimated to me, when speaking of our old 
 school, that it had been in his power to render service 
 to Mr. Jones, as well as to Mr. Manville. 
 
 " Mr. D. never omitted anything it was in his power to 
 do for old friends, ' he was a man, take him for all in 
 all ' that we shall (hardly) ' look upon his like again.' 
 
 " I do not remember the exact house in Johnson Street 
 (where C. D. lived at this time), but Dr. Danson believes 
 that it is only a few doors from Seymour Street ; he 
 remembers, with C. D., searching a cupboard in the front 
 parlour for a book, probably the pamphlet I had lent 
 him, and which, in the note to me, he says he will send 
 by Harry (Dr. Danson) to-morrow.' The ' Leg ' men- 
 tioned is the legend of something just referred to, but 
 we have never been able to understand the exact meaning 
 of ' I have weighed yours every Saturday night.' 
 
 " I rather differ from Dr. Danson when he says that 
 C. D. did not, he believes, learn Latin there, because all 
 the senior boys (and C. D. became one) learned the 
 elements of that language, or at least, were supposed 
 to do so, there being an efficient Master always." 
 
 Mr. Jno. W. Bowden, another schoolfellow at Wel- 
 lington House, believes ''it was the year 1827, when 
 Dickens left Mr. Jones's Academy. He and I occupied 
 
SCHOOL AGAIN. 89 
 
 adjoining desks, and I remember we jointly used to 
 issue,— written on scraps of copy-book paper — almost 
 weekly, what we called Our Newspaper, lending it to 
 read on payment of marbles, and pieces of slate pencil 
 This paper used to contain sundry bits of boyish fun — 
 the following I recollect — 
 
 'Lost. Out of a gentleman's waistcoat pocket, an 
 
 acre of land ; the finder shall be rewarded on 
 
 restoring the same.' 
 'Lost. By a boy with a long red nose, and grey 
 
 eyes, a very bad temper. Whoever has 
 
 found the same may keep it, as the owner is 
 
 better without it' 
 " The ' Lingo ' mentioned by Mr. Forster, as being 
 invented by Dickens, was what we call gibberish, and 
 was spoken before Dickens came to the school. The 
 view you send (of the school-house) is very correct." 
 
 Mr. Bowden says that Mr. Taylor, the English master, 
 " who was a constant flute-player," ^ left Mr. Jones, and 
 opened a school for himself, known as "the Retreat, 
 South Lambeth," and that Charles Dickens went to this 
 school for some time. He says also that at Wellington 
 House, music was taught in the front room on the ground 
 floor, and here he himself and Charles Dickens received 
 lessons on the violin, which study Dickens could by no 
 means make any progress in, and had to relinquish. 
 
 ' The original, prol^ably, of J/r. Mellxw David Coppcrfield. 
 
90 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Among his schoolfellows at this time was (according 
 to Dr. Danson) a Master Beverley, afterwards the great 
 scene painter, and his early artistic efforts were now 
 utilised to paint scenic effects for the boys' theatres. 
 There cannot be a doubt that, under the joint manage- 
 ment of two such boys as Dickens and Beverley these 
 theatrical performances must have been considerably in 
 advance of the ordinary juvenile theatricals to be then 
 found in schools ! 
 
 .While at Wellington House (where all sorts of 
 mechanical ingenuities were practised by the boys) 
 Charles Dickens is not likely to have learned a great 
 deal, certainly not much of Latin or Greek, or indeed of 
 many other things that in these days of educational 
 pressure are thought to be absolutely indispensable. 
 This has been disparagingly commented on by some, but 
 there are those who think that, on the whole, it is better 
 for the world at large that things were as they were. 
 
 Charles Dickens was learning all the time, and few 
 indeed have put their knowledge of human nature 
 (forced on them by " harsh evidence " in their youth) to 
 a better purpose ! The works of Dickens have done 
 more to perpetuate kindly feelings between rich and poor 
 " than half the homilies that have ever been written by 
 half the Divines that have ever lived." ^ 
 
 At this school, we are told, Tales and Plays were 
 
 ' Sketches by Boz. A Christmas Dinner. 
 
SCHOOL AGAIN. 9 1 
 
 written, recited, and performed, and the current works of 
 fiction eagerly sought after and studied by '' a sort of 
 club " consisting of some of the older boys. 
 
 In Our School, which is supposed to represent gener- 
 ally the school of Mr. Jones in the Hampstead Road, 
 mention is made of " a serving man, whose name was 
 Phil." This oddity was really in existence at Chatham 
 in the Ordnance Terrace days, where he was well known. 
 He afterwards appears as Phil Sc[uod in Bleak House I 
 In Our ScJiool it is said of him " when we had the scarlet 
 fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of his 
 own accord, and was like a mother to them." The 
 reader will remember, too, how in Bleak House, Chap. 
 XLVIL, Phil Squod nursed the poor crossing-sweeper, 
 " Jo," in his last illness. 
 
 One of the ushers from Mr. \Vm. Jones' Academy 
 afterwards became tutor to ]\Ir. Macready's son, and to 
 this fact, says Mr. Forster, " Dickens used to point for 
 one of the illustrations of his favourite theory as to the 
 smallness of the world, and how things and persons 
 apparently the most unlikely to meet were continuall}' 
 knocking up against each other." Or, as Dickens himself 
 says in Bleak House, Chap. XVI., " What connection can 
 there have been between many people in the innumerable 
 histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great 
 gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought 
 together ? " 
 
92 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Charles Dickens appears, then, to have left Wellington 
 House Academy in 1826, and though in the first edition 
 of this work (following Mr. Forster's Life of Charles 
 Dickens, vol. i.) it was stated that he afterwards, " pro- 
 bably for a few months only," went to another school in 
 Brunswick Square, it has since been conclusively shown 
 that Wellington House Academy was Dickens' last 
 school. 
 
 His younger brothers however, were at Mr. Danson's, 
 the Brunswick Square School, with Thomas Mitton, who 
 thus became acquainted with Charles Dickens. 
 
 Mr. Owen P. Thomas writes me under date May 6th, 
 1885, and speaking of one of his interviews with his 
 illustrious schoolfellow in after life, he says, '' I put the 
 question to him whether he went to any other school 
 after leaving Mr. Jones', and he said ' No.' " 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 IN THE LAW. 
 
 "I am not in a condition to report further of him than that he 
 had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's clerk." 
 
 Uficonijnercial Traveller, Titbull'S. 
 
 " Though necessity has no law, she has her lawyers." 
 
 Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. LXVI. 
 
 OON after leaving 
 school Charles was 
 for a short time em- 
 ployed as clerk to a 
 Mr. Molloy,a solicitor 
 in New Square, Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields, and 
 young Mitton, " Dear 
 Tom," as he was 
 
 m-mm •- afterwards addressed 
 
 in many admirable letters, was with him at this time. It 
 cannot but be interesting to know that little more than 
 ten years after his being a fellow-clerk with Thomas 
 
94 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Mitton, he instructed his old friend to make his will for 
 him, on his undertaking a journey into the North of 
 England by coach. The date of the letter is simply 
 1838, without month or day of month, and he concludes 
 thus, " and so pray God that you may be gray, and 
 Forster bald, long before you are called upon to act as 
 my executors." 
 
 At a later date (1844) some of his most brilliant 
 letters from Italy were addressed to Mr. Mitton. 
 
 I cannot fix any precise date for his leaving school, 
 nor for the time of his entering or quitting Mr. MoUoy's 
 employ, but his next appointment to a clerkship in a 
 lawyer's office can fortunately be fixed w^ith accuracy. 
 He was fifteen years and three months old when he 
 entered the office of Mr. Edward Blackmore, attorney, of 
 Gray's Inn, in May 1827, and nearly seventeen years 
 of age when he left in November 1828. 
 
 Durine these eiditeen months Charles Dickens must 
 have seen a great deal of the ordinary routine of a 
 lawyer's office, and accordingly we have throughout his 
 works lawyers of almost every possible shade and 
 variety, from Mr. Sampson Brass to Mr. Tulkinghorn, 
 and from Solomon Pell to Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 Of firms of solicitors besides those introduced into 
 the tales, such as Snitchey and Craggs, Dodson and 
 Fose, Kenge and Carboys, and others, are some highly 
 characteristic names of firms incidentally mentioned in 
 
IN THE LAW. 95 
 
 Pickii'ick, where at Serjeants' Inn they were called 
 out as it were antiphonally, in tenor and bass voices, 
 " Sniggle and Blink, Porkin and Snob, Stumpy and 
 Deacon ! " 
 
 Of lawyers' clerks there are " the managing clerk, 
 common-law clerk, conveyancing clerk, chancery clerk, 
 every refinement and department of clerk," ^ from Mr. 
 Lowten to Dick Swiveller, and from John Wemmick to 
 young Blight. Of the numerous Dickens books to be 
 written hereafter, it requires no spirit of prophecy to 
 perceive that this attractive subject, TJie Laivyers of 
 Dickens and their Clerks, will most certainly be under- 
 taken by some one. 
 
 From first entering a solicitor's office the prospects of 
 
 Charles Dickens were improving ; he was now entering 
 
 upon life in earnest, and it may be said of him from this 
 
 time that " his life lay fair before him." ^ For the 
 
 study of the peculiar phases of English manners which 
 
 he has everywhere in his books so happily pourtrayed, 
 
 he could not well have been more advantageously 
 
 placed. It was in Mr. Edward Blackmore's offices, 
 
 we are expressly told by that gentleman in Forster 
 
 (vol. i., page 67), that some of the incidents took 
 
 place which are mentioned in Pickwick and Nickleby, 
 
 and, says Mr. Blackmore, " I am much mistaken if 
 
 • Ottr Ahitnal Fiiend, vol. i., p. 65. See also Pickwick Papers, 
 Chap. XXXI. 
 
 - Chihfs History of England^ Chap. XTI. 
 
g6 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 some of his characters had not their originals in 
 persons I well remember." 
 
 There can be no doubt of this, but who the persons 
 were that Mr. Blackmore alludes to, and what were the 
 incidents mentioned as having transpired in his office, 
 we shall probably never know. 
 
 It must have been chiefly during these months at 
 the office in Gray's Inn, that Charles Dickens made 
 his early acquaintance with the ins and outs of London 
 life, and that he acquired that wonderfully accurate 
 knowledge of London itself, which, when published 
 as SkeicJies by Boz^ suddenly astonished the reading 
 world of 1834-5-6. 
 
 But whether in the lawyer's office, the minor theatres 
 (where he is said occasionally to have taken parts), or 
 in the streets of London, his keen faculty of observation 
 was now in the fullest activity, " I looked at nothing that 
 I know of, but I saw everything," says David Copper- 
 field for Charles Dickens, Chap. XXVII. 
 
 Charles had probably been but a short time in the 
 attorney's office, when he began to seek other more con- 
 genial and remunerative employment. He was quick to 
 see that his prospects of gaining honourable distinction 
 in life did not lie in the way of the mere drudgery of a 
 clerk of whatever grade, and he sought to add to his 
 income by qualifying himself as a short-hand writer to 
 report law cases in the courts. 
 
IN THE LAW. 97 
 
 This at first was what he had in his mind, and so we 
 see that his double Copperfield speaks for him thus in 
 Chap. XXXVI. : " I'll buy a book," said I, " with a good 
 scheme of this art in it ; I'll work at it at the Commons, 
 where I ha\-en't half enough to do ; I'll take down the 
 speeches in our court for practice." 
 
 So " I bought an approved scheme of the noble art 
 and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten-and-six- 
 pence), and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought 
 me in a few weeks to the confines of distraction." This 
 book was Gitrneys BracJiygraphy ; or, an Easy and Com- 
 pendious System of Shorthand, 15th edition, 1824. 
 
 The difficulties of thoroughly mastering this system 
 as Dickens mastered it, are scarcely exaggerated in the 
 tale, and were far greater than in the more modern 
 system of phonography now very generally used by the 
 most expert parliamentary reporters. 
 
 As these studies were going on during the greater part 
 of the time he was a clerk or office boy, he could not 
 obviousU' ha\'e given much of his spare time to theatri- 
 cals, private or otherwise, nor to any of those cheap 
 enjoyments which were and are so much sought after by 
 very many youths in his position. 
 
 During the latter year of his time with Mr. Blackmore, 
 that is in the year 1828, Charles had a brief holiday, 
 and visited some old friends of his family residing at 
 Luton, near Chatham, and there is a sort of traditional 
 
 H 
 
98 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 recollection of this visit still remaining in the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 The New York Tribune is responsible for the following 
 anecdote, \yhich is probably strictly true, the more so as 
 it confirms the story of Charles Dickens revisiting the 
 scenes of his childhood in this year, and as it is itself 
 confirmed by a short article in Good Words for July 
 1882. The anecdote from the New York Tribune is 
 this : — 
 
 "The late Dr. John Brown, when a young man, spent 
 a year as an assistant-surgeon at Chatham, with which place 
 Charles Dickens had so many associations. 
 
 " Many years after the Doctor met the novelist for the 
 first and only time, and, the conversation turning on 
 nationalities, Dickens said that he had been cured of any 
 cockney prejudice against Scotchmen which he might have 
 had by the heroic conduct of a young Scotch surgeon 
 which he had witnessed at Chatham during the time of 
 cholera. 
 
 "Strange, to say, this young surgeon was none other than 
 the friend to whom he was telling the story." 
 
 The article in Good Words, from which the following 
 is extracted, was written by Walter C. Smith, D.D., and 
 is a sketch of the life of Dr. Brown : — 
 
 "When he was some eighteen years old (1828), for in 
 those days university education began with boys of twelve or 
 thirteen, he went up to Chatham as assistant to a surgeon 
 
IN THE LAW. 99 
 
 or physician there, and remained a year, brightening, I daresay, 
 many a sick bed by his sweet boyish face, and his gaiety and 
 sympathy." 
 
 This Dr. Brown was the well known charming 
 writer, the author of Rab and his Friends, etc. 
 
 Although he was now, as Mr. Forster says, merely 
 " one of the office lads," Charles Dickens was no doubt 
 employed for part, at least, of his time, in copying 
 documents, and most likely sometimes in serving process. 
 
 His knowledge of law terms and expressions is 
 every^where seen in his books, and if we knew nothing 
 of his early history it would surely strike even careless 
 readers of Dickens that he must at some time have been 
 in a lawyer's office himself. 
 
 But he was now about to try a complete change of 
 employment, and in the next chapter it will be seen that 
 he had during these later months been steadily acquiring 
 the means of bettering his position in the world, — had, in 
 fact, been bettering his position all the time. 
 
 ' See also another account of this incident in The Century illustrated 
 monthly magazine for December 1882, 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. 
 
 " I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery." 
 
 David Cop^perfield, Chap. XLIII. 
 
 " Night after niglit I record predictions that never come to 
 pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are 
 only meant to mystify." — Ibid. 
 
 LEAR of the valley of 
 the shadow of the 
 LaWjCharles Dickens 
 applied himself with 
 his customary energy 
 and intensity of will, 
 to the practice of 
 shorthand writing and 
 repoi-ting as a means 
 of livelihood. He was now seventeen, and his first 
 employment as a reporter was in the Lord Chancellor's 
 
REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. lOI 
 
 Court taking notes of the cases, and here Mr. Blackmore, 
 the solicitor, says he occasionally saw him after he left 
 his service. 
 
 Of the Law itself, apart from the administration of it, 
 he seems to have held at no period of his life any very 
 high opinion, and his experience of the utterances it was 
 his duty to record in the various courts (the Admiralty, 
 the Arches, and the Prerogative Courts amongst the 
 number) did not, as may be readily inferred from a study 
 of his works, impress him very favourably with the 
 majesty of the Law. A passage from a letter to Mrs. 
 Frederick Pollock, written late in life,^ seems to uphold 
 this view : " I have that high opinion of the law of 
 England generally, which one is likely to derive from 
 the impression that it puts all the honest men under 
 the diabolical hoofs of all the scoundrels." 
 
 At Doctors' Commons he is said to have practised 
 stenography for nearly two years, but there is no doubt 
 that, during this period, he also reported police cases in 
 the various Metropolitan Police Courts. 
 
 In the first volume of the Life of CJiarles Dickens, 
 Mr. Forster sfives a detailed account of the difficulties 
 that had to be overcome, and the time that had to be 
 spent, before his friend could sufficiently master the 
 mysteries of his new calling, to ensure him employment 
 as an efficient verbatim reporter. He closes a rather 
 
 > Monday, May 2nd, 1870. (^Vide Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. ii.) 
 
102 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 long sentence on page 69 thus, " his father already having 
 taken to it (reporting) in these latter years, in aid of the 
 family resources." 
 
 It is true Mr. Forster was not writing the life of John 
 Dickens, but one naturally wonders (if it was so difficult 
 a task for a young man) how the father, now arrived at 
 middle age, could so readily have acquired the art of 
 reporting ! ! 
 
 The fact that Mr. John Dickens could and did, at the 
 age of forty-five, take up with a new and difficult study, 
 and attain a place in the Reporters' Gallery of the House 
 of Commons, as one of the staff of a dail}^ paper, is, to say 
 the least, a convincing proof of his energy and applica- 
 tion, and is, I think, deserving of being recorded with 
 some emphasis in any worthy biography of his talented 
 son ! 
 
 During these earlier reporting days the name of 
 Charles Dickens is first found in the books of The 
 British Museum. He read there for the first time on 
 the 8th February, 1830, aged eighteen, and is described 
 as then living at No. 10, Norfolk Street, Fitzroy Square. 
 In the reading-room, books he is further described, on 
 the 2nd February, 1833, as of 18, Bentinck Street, 
 Cavendish Square. 
 
 It cannot fail to interest the reader to know that he 
 attended the British Museum as a reader the day after 
 he had attained the then prescribed age^viz., eighteen. 
 
REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. 1 03 
 
 Young Dickens was from this time a frequent and 
 most eager student at the reading room, and it is certain 
 that he not only greatly benefited by his reading 
 there, but that, to have the resources of a noble library, 
 " rich with the stores of time " at his command, was to 
 him a constant and increasing source of delight.^ 
 
 The first parliamentary reporting of Charles Dickens 
 was on his being appointed to a seat in the gallery, as 
 one of the staff of the Tiiie Sun, a paper with which 
 Mr. Forster was intimately connected, and to which he 
 contributed articles ; and it was at the office of this paper 
 that a friendship commenced which, stretching over a 
 third of a century, terminated only with the life of 
 Dickens. Mr. Forster says that there was at this time a 
 strike of the reporters of their paper, and that Dickens, 
 a youth of nineteen, \vas chosen by the reporters as their 
 spokesman, "and conducted their case triumphantly!" 
 It may be noted here that, speaking of his early 
 reporting days at the Newspaper-press Fund dinner. 
 May 20th, 1865, he says, " I went into the gallery of the 
 House of Commons as a parliamentary reporter when I 
 was a boy not eighteen, and I left it — I can hardly believe 
 the inexorable truth — nigh thirty years ago." 
 
 ' Mr. W. B. Rye says in answer to a question as to what books Dickens 
 read at this time : " There is now no possibility of ascertaining at the 
 British jNIuseum what books C. D. used when a reader ; no record was 
 kept of these until many years afterwards. In all probability they were 
 books on Shorthand, which C. D. then assiduously set to work to acquire." 
 
I04 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 I am not able to fix any date for his ceasing to 
 report for the Tnte Sun, nor for his commencing an 
 engagement on the staff of his maternal uncle's paper, 
 The Mirror of Paidiameitt, but it was probably in the 
 year 1832. 
 
 The Mirror of Parliament has been described by 
 several writers as " short lived " and " ephemeral," but a 
 paper that lasts through ten sessions of Parliament, and 
 a corresponding numxber of years, can scarcely be cor- 
 rectly said to have had a " brief life ! ! " 
 
 TJie Mirror of Parliament commenced on the 29th 
 January, 1828, and was originated and edited by John 
 Henry Barrow, Esq.,^ of the Honourable Society of 
 Gray's Inn, barrister-at-law, and was first published by 
 Messrs. Winchester and Varnham, of 61, Strand. It 
 went steadily on till the end of the session of 1837, when 
 it collapsed, the publishing office at the close of its career 
 being at 3, Abingdon Street, Westminster. From an 
 examination of all the volumes, the reports of the 
 speeches seem to have been unusually full for the date 
 at which they were printed, and to have been faithfully 
 and carefully done. 
 
 In his monograph of Charles Dickens (1870) Mr. 
 G. A. Sala says : " In his time Charles Dickens must have 
 
 ' John Henry Barrow was one of the witnesses to the marriage of his 
 sister Mary, at Chatham, in 1821. (See ante^ Chap. VI.) His Mirror 
 of Parliament was originally published by subscription. 
 
REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. 105 
 
 listened to and taken down the words of the speeches of 
 nearly every public man of the last generation. He 
 reported Brougham's great speech at Edinburgh, 
 after his resignation of the Chancellorship. He 
 may have reported Lord Stanley's famous oration 
 on the Irish Church. He must have reported habi- 
 tually the speeches of Peel and Grey, of Denman, of 
 Lyndhurst, of Ellenborough, of Hume, and Melbourne, 
 and Grote." 
 
 " Twenty years after he left the gallery he retained 
 enoueh of his ancient craft to teach the art of shorthand 
 very thoroughly and completely to a young brother-in- 
 law, who was entering on the career of journalism." 
 
 While still busy reporting for his uncle's Mirror of 
 Parliament, and when just turned twenty-one years of 
 age, he wrote for performance among the members of his 
 own family a sort of travesty of Othello. For the fol- 
 lowing literary curiosity I am indebted to Mr. W. B. 
 Rye, and to Mr. S. Dyer Knott, of Alphington, near 
 Exeter, who kindly allowed Mr. Rye to transcribe and 
 in part trace the fragment now printed for the first 
 time. 
 
 Mr. Knott was a neighbour of Mr. John Dickens 
 when the latter lived at Mile-end Cottage,^ Alphington, 
 in 1842, and had many a friendly chat with him. This 
 
 ' It is a curious coincidence that, when Charles was bom, his father was 
 living at Mile-end Terrace, Portsea (see ante). 
 
I06 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 was just after the publication of Nicholas Nicklchy. He 
 remembers also his son Augustus, and more than once 
 saw the great humourist at Alphington, when on a visit 
 to his father. 
 
 Mr. Knott describes Mr. John Dickens " as a chatty, 
 pleasant companion, possessing a varied fund of anecdote, 
 and a genuine vein of humour. He was a well-built 
 man, rather stout, of very active habits, a little pompous, 
 and very proud (as well he might be) of his talented 
 son. He dressed well, and wore a goodly bunch of 
 seals suspended across his waistcoat from his watch- 
 chain." ^ 
 
 Of the travesty two pages numbered i and 2, at the 
 bottom of the MS., were given to Mr. Knott by Mr. 
 John Dickens, who has placed his name and the date 
 in the corner. How many folios of this production were 
 g-iven to other friends it would be hard to tell, but I have 
 direct evidence that other portions of it are in existence 
 at the present time ! 
 
 The extract given here will serve to show the hand- 
 writing of Dickens at this early age ; it very closely 
 resembles the manuscript of Oliver Twist, and contrasts 
 strangely with the portion of Edwin Drood, given in 
 facsimile, in the third volume of Mr. Forster's Life of 
 Charles Dickens, page 430, 
 
 ' Note by Mr. Rye. 
 
i 
 
 1 
 
 tj 
 
 ^^ '^ 
 
 O 
 
 
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 4 
 
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 V <• 
 
 ) 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 yf 
 
 p 
 
 o 
 
 z 
 
 a 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^5^ 
 
 <^ 
 
 
i08 childhood and youth of charles dickens. 
 
 Solo — Cassio. 
 
 _A{r — " When in death I shall calm recline. "^ 
 
 When in sleep I shall calm recline, 
 
 Oh ! take me home to my " missus " dear ; 
 Tell her I've taken a little more wine 
 
 Than I could carry, or very well bear ; 
 Bid her not scold me on the morrow 
 
 For staying out drinking all the night ; 
 But several bottles of soda borrow, 
 
 To cool my coppers and set me right. 
 
 ' It was not till his twenty-third year that he became a 
 reporter on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and by 
 all obtainable accounts he was then at the very head of 
 his profession ; he is said, indeed, to have been the best 
 reporter of his time. 
 
 In David Copperficld (Chap. XLIII.) he says : " I have 
 come out in another way. I have taken with fear and 
 trembling to authorship. I wrote a little something, in 
 secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published 
 in the magazine." 
 ' It was while still acting as a reporter on the Morning 
 
 Chronicle that the first of his Sketches was published in 
 the December number of the Monthly Magazine for 
 
 1833. It was entitled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk; 
 
 " 2 
 
 ' Moore's Melodies. 
 
 - Afterwards (in the collected Sketches) entitled " Mr. Minns and his 
 Cousin." 
 
REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. '109 
 
 and wc read in Mr. Forster's book, vol. i., page 76, how 
 the young author purchased a copy of this number at 
 a shop in the Strand, and " walked down to Westminster 
 Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because his eyes 
 were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could 
 not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there." 
 On referring to these old volumes of the Monthly 
 Magazine, I find the first Sketch, " A Dinner at Poplar 
 Walk," commences on page 617, and the cousin's name 
 is there given as Bagshaw ; this became Budden in the 
 collected volume of Sketches. There are in it also some 
 other minor alterations. The second Sketch appeared in 
 the January number for 1834, and is called " Mrs. Joseph 
 Porter over the Way." This was followed by " Horatio 
 Sparkins " in February, " The Bloomsbury Christening " 
 in April, the first part of " The Boarding House " in 
 May, and the second part, signed " Boz," in August, 
 followed by " The Steam Excursion " in October. 
 
 Charles Dickens, after some eight or ten of these had 
 appeared, continued the series in the Evening Chronicle. 
 
 It was in this evening paper, and under the name of 
 " Boz," that he scored his first great success ; and from 
 these early days, even while still engaged as a reporter 
 in the gallery of the House of Commons, there was for 
 the young author really no looking back ! 
 
 Dr. Johnson tells us, .solemnly enough, 
 
 "Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd," 
 
no CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 but his " mournful truth " was altogether without force 
 in the case of Charles Dickens ; for even in these 
 pre-Pickwick times the Sketches had achieved a wide 
 popularity, a popularity the more remarkable, for the 
 reason that the subjects written about, and still more, 
 the manner of treating them, had attracted all classes 
 of the reading public, while as yet no one knew who 
 the brilliant writer was. ^ 
 
 Who the dickens " Boz " could be * 
 
 Puzzled many a curious elf, 
 Till time unveiled the mystery, 
 
 And " Boz " appeared as Dickens' self. 
 
 Bentley's Aliscellany, No. 2, March 1837. 
 
 The account in Mr. Forster's Life of Charles Dickens 
 of the origin of the word '' Boz " is no doubt correct, and 
 the fact of Dickens having adopted as his own the pet 
 name of a younger brother, is an additional and inter- 
 esting proof of his love for all recollections of his early 
 years, and for the associations of home. 
 
 It cannot now be necessary to' point out the vast 
 renown that immediately fell to the lot of the young 
 writer, for it has been thoroughly well done over and 
 over again. 
 
 " Here was a young man," says Mr. G. A. Sala, " as 
 destitute of a patron as he was of a degree, who suddenly 
 uprose and took the literary world by storm." 
 
 The brilliant circle that now opened to Dickens might 
 
REPORTING AND WRITING FOR MAGAZINES. l l i 
 
 very excusably have turned an older head, but, in his 
 case, it is on record that through the whole of his literary 
 career, extending over a period of more than thirty-six 
 years, he was unspoiled to a wonderful degree, and 
 remained so to the last. 
 
 This concludes my brief sketch of the early life of 
 Charles Dickens ; it will be seen that, in this history, I 
 have taken very little on trust, but have, so far as 
 practicable, gone to head-quarters for every scrap of 
 information that would be likely to interest the reader. 
 
 After giving in the next chapter some account of 
 Gad's Hill, past and present, I shall endeavour to point 
 out, in a series of notes, some of the more obvious 
 passages in the writings of Charles Dickens, which may 
 be considered to have autobiographical features, and 
 which are undoubtedly reminiscences of his own early 
 recollections and tender youthful experiences. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 GAD'S HILL. 
 
 " This is Falstaff's own Gad's Hill, and I live on the top of it. 
 My eldest daughter keeps my house, and it is one I was ex- 
 traordinarily fond of when a child." 
 
 Letter to the Earl of Carlisle, August 8th, i860. 
 
 " It's a place you may well be fond of, and attached to, for it's 
 the prettiest spot in all the country round." 
 
 Village Coquettes, Act III., Scene 1. 
 
 GREAT deal of inge- 
 nuity has been wasted 
 by writers on this 
 locality in an en- 
 deavour to account 
 for the name Gad's 
 HiLL.i There can be and is, however, no doubt that 
 the true derivation is God's Hill. There is, it may 
 be remembered, a parish of this name (God's Hill) 
 
 ' There is another Gad's Hill at Gillingham, near Chatham. 
 
GAD'S HILL. I 13 
 
 in the Isle of Wight, spelt Gaddi skill, when referred 
 to in The Paston Letters, August 20th, 1499, also a 
 tithing, so called, in the parish of Fordingbridge, co. 
 Southampton. 
 
 A passage in the Prayer-Book version of the Psalms 
 will occur to many in this connection, " Why hop ye so, 
 ye high hills? This is God's Hill, in the which it 
 pleaseth Him to dwell. Yea, the Lord will abide in it 
 for ever." — Psalm Ixviii. 16. 
 
 Gad's Hill is situate on the High Dover Road, and is 
 
 four and a half miles from Gravesend, and two and a 
 
 half from Rochester. Here is a pleasant description of 
 
 its geographical bearings from the Ingoldsby Peuafice, by 
 
 the Rev. R. H. Barham : — 
 
 " Cobham woods to the right — on the opposite shore 
 Laindon Hills in the distance, ten miles off or more ; 
 Then you've Milton and Gravesend behind— and before 
 You can see almost all the way down to the Nore ; 
 
 So charming a spot it's rarely one's lot 
 
 To see, and when seen it's as rarely forgot,'' 
 
 As a "High old Robbing Hill" (as an early writer 
 describes it), it has long enjoyed a bad eminence, and 
 many notorious robbbers are known to have frequented 
 this spot long before Shakespeare immortalised it in his 
 play of Henry the Fourth. 
 
 Gad's Hill is also mentioned as a "high place" for 
 
 robbers in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, 
 
 Act IV. Scene 5. 
 
 I 
 
114 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 A " story is extant," and if not "writ in choice Italian " 
 yet in very quaint English, that, in 1676, at Gad's Hill, 
 one " Swift Nicks," or Nevisham, robbed a gentleman at 
 " four of the clock in the morning," and, passing the 
 Thames by ferry, rode through the day till he came to 
 York in the evening, and presenting himself on a bowling 
 green there, as a place of public resort where his presence 
 would be observed, asked the time of day of the Lord 
 Mayor of the city.^ 
 
 The fact of his being seen at York, at the time 
 named, having been proved on his trial for the robbery, 
 he was acquitted on the ground of its being impossible 
 for a man to ride from Gad's Hill to York in the space of 
 one day. The jury were no doubt right, and the story 
 (like many others of the sort) is probably a mere 
 invention. 
 
 But long since Charles the Second's time, and within 
 the last eighty years. Gad's Hill has been a favourite 
 haunt of footpads, their victims being often enough 
 sailors (whether " Mercantile Jack " or man-of-war's man) 
 who having just been paid off at Chatham, were on their 
 way to London, stopped and robbed here. 
 
 The natural beauties, commanding position, and 
 romantic history of Gad's Hill would be certain to make 
 
 * For a full account of this robbery see Records of York Cfistle, page 247, 
 also Pocock's History of Gravcsend, page 245. Nevisham was hanged at 
 York in 16S1. 
 
GAD'S HILL. 115 
 
 a lasting impression on the mind of any sensitive boy, 
 and that Charles Dickens was from a very tender age so 
 impressed, and that even then he was much attached to 
 the place, we have on record in his own words over and 
 over again. 
 
 In his Life, and also in his Letters, we are told of 
 his occasional visits to this spot, when out for a ramble 
 with his father. That he should have come to be the 
 owner of Gad's Hill Place, and to reside here is, besides 
 
 being a remarkable coincidence, another instance of the 
 truth of a favourite saying of his as to " the smallness of 
 the world." 
 
 In the Unconnnercial Traveller, chapter on " Tramps," 
 is a wonderfully truthful picture of this spot : — 
 
 " I have my eye on a piece of Kentish road, bordered on 
 either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the 
 road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild 
 flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and 
 airy, with a distant river stealing away to the ocean, like a 
 man's life. To gain the milestone here, which the moss, 
 primroses, violets, blue -bells, and wild-roses would soon render 
 
Il6 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with 
 their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way 
 you may. §o all the tramps with carts or caravans — the gipsy 
 tramp, the show tramp, the Cheap Jack — find it impossible to 
 resist the temptations of the place, and all turn the horse 
 loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place, 
 I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched its 
 grass ! 
 
 The Falstaff Inn, Gad's Hill. 
 
 "Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though 
 not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at 
 door can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which 
 no man possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm 
 weather. Before its entrance are certain pleasant trimmed 
 limes ; likewise a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle 
 that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick up 
 his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off." 
 
GAD'S HILL. 117 
 
 This is the Falstaff, a delightfull}- old-fashioned road- 
 side inn of the coaching days. Although the well and 
 bucket are still there, the limes, with one solitary excep- 
 tion, have disappeared, as has also the quaint swinging 
 sign, representing in impossible colours scenes from T/ie 
 Meriy Wives of Windsor and Henry the FourtJi. 
 
 In other respects, however, the whole neighbourhood 
 of Gad's Hill is very little changed in forty years, and 
 w^ayfarers are apparently still unable to pass the old inn 
 without gi\'ing a call. 
 
 A short distance from this historical tavern, on the 
 north side of the road, on an eminence, stands an 
 obelisk erected some fifty years since 
 to the memory of Charles Larkin, of 
 Rochester. It is of brick, covered with 
 cement, and is a prominent object in 
 the landscape, especially from the 
 lower reaches of the Thames. This 
 monument is incidentally mentioned 
 in a letter to Mr. Wilkie Collins, dated --^^^^^^^^Sr^ 
 October 26th, i860, which see for an amusing account 
 of the laying of a ghost ! {Letters of Charles Diekens, 
 vol. ii., page 131.) 
 
 The neighbourhood of Gad's Hill is, among other 
 pleasant memories, noted for the number and variety of 
 its singing birds, and the glorious voice of the nightingale 
 is heard here in the spring in full perfection. 
 
Il8 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The house, Gad's Hill Place, now the property of 
 the Hon. Francis Law Latham, is, notwithstanding the 
 large sums of money laid out on it by the late Charles 
 Dickens, much the same in appearance (so far as the 
 front is concerned) as it was forty or fifty years ago. 
 Indeed, but for the rapid growth of his lime trees skirting 
 the road, the place is, as seen by a passing traveller, 
 quite unaltered. Major Budden writes me, and I am 
 sorry to record it, that Dickens' favourite May trees, 
 planted by him in the middle of the meadow at the back 
 of the house, were destroyed by the great gale of wind 
 on the 14th October, 1881. 
 
 In the shrubbery, on the opposite side of the road, 
 are the two fine cedars {Cedrus Libmii), for which the 
 neighbourhood is celebrated. In my recollection these 
 cedars were certainly not half the size they have now 
 attained. 
 
 Each tree covers a circular area of about eighty feet 
 diameter. 
 
 They are still growing rapidly, and though so very 
 large and fine, were planted when the house was built, 
 by the father of a man still living. Mr. John Rrooker, of 
 Higham .(in whom one recognises some of the better 
 qualities and peculiarities of Durdles in Edwin Drood), 
 told me that his father planted these trees well nigh a 
 hundred years ago, and that they were originally placed 
 there in boxes. Mr. Brooker is halfway between eighty 
 
G^D'S HILL. 121 
 
 and ninety years of age, and bears his years wonderfully 
 well. There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt of the 
 perfect accuracy of his statement, but nine persons out 
 of ten would take Brooker to be much younger than he 
 is, and the trees to be much older than we know they 
 are ! 
 
 The engraving gives a good idea of their present 
 aspect,^ and the steps leading to the shrubbery can be 
 seen in the sketch. They are approached by a tunnel 
 passing under the high road, direct from the lawn in 
 front of the house. 
 
 Behind the shrubs in the north-west corner of these 
 grounds formerly stood the Swiss chalet (now at Cobham 
 Hall) presented to Charles Dickens by Mr. Fechtcr. In 
 the upper story of this pretty building the last pages of 
 Edwin Drood were written, and here the great \\Titer's 
 last quiet hours of consciousness were passed. The 
 chalet was, as it were, surrounded with and nearly con- 
 cealed by lofty trees, with an opening only to the 
 north, and from that side there was one of the finest 
 views to be found in the county of Kent. 
 
 Major Budden, the former owner of Gad's Hill Place, 
 wrote me that, among the numerous visitors to Gad's 
 Hill Place, are many Americans, who would consider 
 their journey to England incomplete without seeing the 
 
 ' Under the spreading boughs of one of the cedars lies "Linda,"" a 
 favourite dog. 
 
122 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 last residence of their favourite author, Charles Dickens. 
 He adds, " Many people suppose the house is closed to 
 visitors, but it is not really so, and any respectable 
 person wishing to see it will have no difficulty." 
 
 In the case of American friends, they will always 
 experience courteous attention and recognition on pre- 
 senting the card of the American Consul. 
 
 In the Library may still be seen the counterfeit book- 
 backs, arranged on shelves to fit the door of the room. 
 An engraving is given here of the general appearance of 
 this door, and a complete list of the titles of the volumes 
 follows. Those distinguished by an asterisk were also 
 used for a similar purpose at Tavistock House, London, 
 and are printed in the Letters of CJiarles Dickens, vol. i., 
 page 266. 
 
 *Commonplace Book of the Oldest Inhabitant. 2 vols. 
 
 ^Growler's Gruffiology, with Appendix. 4 vols. 
 
 *The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols. 
 
 *Burke (of Edinburgh) on the Sublime and Beautiful. 
 
 2 vols. 
 *King Henry the Eighth's Evidences of Christianity. 
 
 5 vols. 
 Haydn's Commentaries. 
 *Miss Biffin on Deportment. 
 *Morrison's Pills Progress. 2 vols. 
 *Lady Godiva on the Horse. 
 ^Munchausen's Modern Miracles. 4 vols. 
 *Richardson's Show of Dramatic Literature. 12 vols. 
 
The Door of Library, Gad's Hill Place. 
 
GAD'S HILL. 125 
 
 ^Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep. (Many vols.) 
 
 Strutt's Walk. 
 
 Socrates on Wedlock. 
 
 Optics. (Hooks and Eyes.) 
 
 Acoustics. (Cod's Sounds.) 
 
 The Locomotive Engine explained by Colonel Sibthorpe. 
 
 Catalogue of Statues to the Duke of Wellington. 10 vols 
 
 Noah's Arkitecture. 2 vols. 
 
 Butcher's Suetonius. 
 
 Hoyle on the Turnip. 
 
 Critts' Edition of Meller. 2 vols. 
 
 The Delphin Oracle. 
 
 The Cook's Oracle. 
 
 Mag's Diversions. 4 vols. 
 
 Drouett's Farming. 5 vols. 
 
 Chickweed. 
 
 Groundsel, (By the author of Chickweed.) 
 
 Cats' Lives. 9 vols. 
 
 The Scotch Fiddle. (Burns.) 
 
 Shelley's Oysters. 
 
 Waterworks. (By Father Matthew.) 
 
 Swallows on Emigration. 2 vols. 
 
 Cockatoo on Perch. 
 *Five Minutes in China. 3 vols. 
 *Abernethy on the Constitution. 2 vols. 
 *Green's Overland Mail. 
 *Orson's Art of Etiquette. 
 
 Adam's Precedents. 
 
 Hudson's Complete Failure. 
 *Downeaster's Complete Calculator. 
 *History of the Middling Ages. 6 vols. 
 * Jonah's Account of the Whale. 
 
126 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 *Kant's Eminent Humbugs. lo vols. 
 
 *Bowwowdom. 
 
 *The Quarrelly Review. 4 vols. 
 
 *The Gunpowder Magazine. 4 vols. 
 
 *Steele, by the Author of " Ion." 
 
 *The Art of Cutting Teeth. 
 
 *Malthus's Nursery Songs. 2 vols. 
 
 *Paxton's Bloomers. 5 vols. 
 
 *0n the XJse of Mercury by the Ancient Poets. 
 
 *Drowsy's Recollections of Nothing. 
 
 Treatise on the Tapeworm by Tim Bobbin. 
 *Heavysides Conversations with Nobody. 3 vols. 
 
 Phrenology (Italian Organ). 
 *Teazer's Commentaries. 
 
 Woods and Forests. By Peter the Wild Boy. 
 
 The Wisdom of our Ancestors. I. — Ignorance. II. — 
 Superstition. III.— The Block. IV.— ^J^he Stake. V. 
 —The Rack. VI.— Dirt. VII.— Disease. 
 
 General Tom Thumb's Modern Warfare. 2 vols. 
 
 Was Shakespeare's Mother Fair ? 4 vols. 
 
 Had Shakespeare's Uncle a singing Face ? 5 vols. 
 
 Was Shakespeare's Father Merry ? 6 vols. 
 
 The Pleasures of Boredom. (A Poem.) 
 
 History of a Short Chancery Suit. 2 1 vols. 
 *Forty Winks at the Pyramids. 2 vols. 
 *Captain Cook's Life of Savage. 2 vols. 
 *A Carpenter's Bench of Bishops. 2 vols. 
 *Toot's Universal Letter-Writer. 2 vols. 
 
 Life and Letters of the Learned Pig. 
 *Captain Parry's Virtues of Cold Tar. 
 
 On Monday, September 3rd, i860, Charles Dickens 
 
GAD'S HILL. 127 
 
 made a remarkable bonfire at Gad's Hill, a bare recital 
 of which will be read with regret by those who can 
 recall the many illustrious correspondents whose letters 
 must then have fed the flames. A mere list of their 
 names would, if closely printed, fill several of these 
 pages. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. W. H. Wills, from A// the Year 
 Roimd O^CQ, dated Tuesday, September 4th, i860, he 
 thus describes the immolation : — 
 
 " Yesterday I burnt in the field, at Gad's Hill, the accumu- 
 lated letters and papers of twenty years. They sent up a 
 smoke like the Genie when he got out of the casket on the 
 sea-shore, and as it was an exquisite day when I began, and 
 rained very heavily when I finished, I suspect my correspond- 
 ence of having overcast the face of the heavens." 
 
 Letter to Macready, March 1st, 1865 : — 
 
 " My reply to Professor Agassiz is short, but conclusive. 
 Daily seeing improper uses made of confidential letters in 
 addressing them to a public audience that have no business 
 with them, I made, not long ago, a great fire in my field at 
 Gad's Hill, and burnt every letter I possessed. And now I 
 always destroy every letter I receive not on absolute business, 
 and my mind is so far at ease. Poor dear Felton's letters 
 went up into the air with the rest, or his highly distinguished 
 representative should have had them most willingly." 
 
 In Mr. O'Driscoll's Life of Maclise, he says, in the 
 
128 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Preface, he received the following letter from Charles 
 Dickens a few days before his lamented death : — 
 
 " Gad's Hill Place, Hicham ey Rochester, 
 " Wednesday, May iSZ/z, 1870. 
 "Mv DEAR Sir, — I beg to assure you, in reply to your letter, 
 that I have not one solitary scrap of the late Mr. Maclise's 
 handwriting in my possession. A few years ago I destroyed 
 an immense correspondence, expressly because I considered it 
 had been held with me, and not with the public, and because 
 I could not answer for its privacy being respected ivhen I should 
 be dead.''^ 
 
 It is impossible, however, to escape the reflection 
 that, had others made similar bonfires, where would have 
 been the three charming volumes of The Letters of 
 Charles Dickens ? 
 
 A friend ^ has sent me a printed broadside of some 
 sports held at Gad's Hill Place, December 26th, 1866. 
 It appears to have been a programme of one part only 
 of the day's amusements, and reveals internal evidence 
 of having been the work of some young but ardent 
 amateur printer. The sports were held on this occasion- 
 in the field at the back of the house, and Mr. Trood, the 
 then landlord of the Falstaff, had, by permission of the 
 generous owmer, a booth erected in the field for the 
 refreshment of the crowds of people who attended 
 the games : — 
 
 ^ Mr. Charles Bullard, of Rochester, since dead. 
 
GADS HILL. 
 
 CHRISTMAS SPORTS. 
 
 THE ALL comers' RACE. 
 
 Distance — Once round the field. 
 
 First Prize, los. ; Second, 5s. ; Third, 2s. 6d. 
 
 Entries to l)e Made in Mr. Trood's tent before 
 
 12 o'clock. To start at 2-45. 
 
 Starter — M. Stone, Esq. 
 
 Judge and Referee — C. Dickens, Esq. 
 
 Clerk of the Course — C. Dickens, Junr., Esq. 
 
 Stewards and Keepers of the Course — Messrs. A. H. 
 
 Layard, M.P., H. Chorley, J. Hulkes, and H. Dickens. 
 
 129 
 
 Between 2,000 and 3,000 people attended these 
 sports, and there was not a single case of misconduct or 
 damage to property. Writing to Mr. Forster next day, 
 Dickens says, '' The road between this and Chatham was 
 like a fair all day, and surely it is a fine thing to o-et 
 such perfect behaviour out of a reckless seaport town." 
 
 There is, it ma)' be noted, a passage in The Holly 
 Tree, where Dickens— perhaps unconsciously— in the 
 person of " Boots " thus describes his own well-known 
 partiality for all wholesome open-air games and sports, 
 thus — " and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, 
 and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful." 
 
 A fac-simile letter from Charles Dickens to Mr. W. 
 B. Rye, thanking him for a copy of his little book, 
 
 * K 
 
C5 nil's WW ^lace, 
 ^igljam bj) liloci)estn,ment. 
 
 V 
 
 ^^^^ C-iA*u«xv^ LV*^^^ i,v>*--/1^rA<? /^ <5^-v^ ^>^ ^^-i/V\ «9<£/>,-— ^ 
 
 
 '^.^- y^^c ^ 
 
 Fac-simile of Letter from Charles Dickens to Mr. W. B Rye. 
 
GADS HILL. 
 
 131 
 
 Visits to Rochester, and dated Gad's Hill Place, November 
 3rd, 1865, may not be out of place here. (See opposite.) 
 
 On the 9th August, 1870 (just two months after 
 the death of Charles Dickens), the writer was in the 
 upper room of the chalet at Gad's Hill Place ; and but 
 for the screaming of the swifts as they now and again 
 swept past in their mysterious flight, the silence of the 
 place was absolutely unbroken. The quill pens used 
 in writing the last pages of Edzvin Drood, and stained 
 with the author's favourite blue ink, were still l}'ing on 
 the table, and one could not but feel " the appalling 
 vacancy in the room he had occupied so recently, where 
 his chair and table seemed to wait for him." ^ 
 
 Over the way, however, the quiet of the place was 
 invaded to some purpose, " herds of shabby vampires 
 Jew and Christian, over-ran the house. The capital 
 modern household furniture, etc., is on view." - 
 
 In the library Mr. Luke Fildes, the illustrator of Edivin 
 Drood, was making a sketch in oils of the interior of the 
 room, since published and known as " The Empty Chair." 
 
 In the yard were still to be seen evidences of the 
 master's love of out-door games. A set of bowls, a set 
 of croquet, some American carriage bells, and, reared 
 against a large dog-kennel, was " Aunt Sally," sticks and 
 all, in a box. 
 
 ' David Copperfield, Chap. XXXVIII. 
 ' Dombey and Son, Chap. LIX. 
 
PCs >o> 
 Swiss Chalet, formerly at Gad's Hill Place. 
 
 '• My room is up among the branches of the trees ; and the birds and 
 the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in at the open 
 windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go with the 
 rest of the company." — Letter to American Fricird, 
 
GADS HILL. , 133 
 
 In another sort of box — a loose box in the stable — 
 was an extremely h'iendly grey pony. He was, I believe, 
 the only living thing belonging to the departed writer 
 then left on the premises. He immediately fixed my 
 attention as embodying at once, in his own person, two 
 of his master's well-known characters ; for was he not 
 " Trotty Veck " by name, and " the x-\ged " by reason of 
 his years ? While I patted his neck over the half-door, 
 he w^as diligently searching my pockets for possible 
 dainties in the shape of biscuits or apples, as if quite 
 used to it ; but at the same time with an unmistakably 
 woe-begone expression of countenance, as if, with him, 
 too, " regrets were the natural property of grey hairs." ^ 
 
 " Trotty Veck " was sold to a Mr. Abrahams for 
 twenty guineas, and is probably (like the hypothetical 
 " Gray " alluded to by Mr. Weller, senr.) long since " up 
 the universal spout o* natur." ^ 
 
 It is infinitely more agreeable, however, to turn from the 
 week of the sale at Gad's Hill Place, and to remember the 
 favourite residence of Charles Dickens as it is now, for the 
 house and grounds, beautifully kept by its present own^i-, 
 bring back to our memory Bret Harte's noble lines — 
 
 " let its fragrant story 
 
 Blend with the breath that thrills 
 With hop-vines, incense all the pensive glory 
 
 That fills the Kentish hills." 
 
 ' Martiti Chuzzlezoit, Chap. X. 
 
 - blaster Humphrey's Clock, page 422, Original Edition. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE NOTES AND ELUCIDATIONS. 
 
 " For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages 
 was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to 
 haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as 
 my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my 
 younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away." 
 
 David Copper field, Chap. XXII. 
 
 0ttost^r 
 
 and its 
 
 Historic Picturesque 
 surroundings, whether 
 humourously de- 
 scribed as " Mudfog," 
 as " Dullborough," as 
 *' Our Town," or as 
 " Cioisterham," ' will, as years roll on, become more and 
 more closely associated with the life and work of Charles 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 35 
 
 Dickens ; and will, for all time to come, be acknowledged 
 to have been " the birthplace of his fancy," his " boy 
 hood's home ! " 
 
 In the reminiscences of his early life, of which his 
 books are full, we find, accordingly, man\' traces of his 
 childhood at Chatham, many also of his struggling 
 boyhood in London, and of his years of adolescence, 
 remembrances not a few. 
 
 In these Notes and Elucidations very little criticism 
 will be attempted, the object being, as before stated, to 
 show how Dickens, throughout the whole course of his 
 brilliant literary career, delighted to return to the scenes 
 and recollections of his early boyhood. 
 
 Passing on, therefore, at once to his earliest printed 
 pieces, the Sketches by Bo::, Illustrative of every-day Life 
 and every-day People, and taking them as they appear in 
 the collected volumes, and not in the order in which 
 they were written, we find in the second chapter of Our 
 Parish, The Old Lady, who was the Mrs. Newnham, 
 mentioned in Chapter IV. \iinte^ 
 
 The row of houses there described is Ordnance 
 Terrace, in which there are eleven houses, while in the 
 Sketch the row is called Gordon Place, and the numbers 
 run much higher than they do in the original. Gordon 
 Place, it may be noted as a curious coincidence, is a short 
 street out of Tavistock Square ! 
 
 The Half-Pay Captain was also a resident of Ordnance 
 
136 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Terrace, and lived next door to the Old Lady, and his 
 well-remembered oddity of behaviour was a constant 
 source of amusement to the neighbours. " He is a 
 charitable, open-hearted old fellow at bottom, after all ; 
 so although he puts the Old Lady a little out occasionally, 
 they agree very well in the main, and she laughs as much 
 at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over, as 
 anybody else." 
 
 In Chapter III., The Four Sisters, we are told, "The 
 row of houses in which the Old Lady and her troublesome 
 neighbour reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater 
 number of characters within its circumscribed limits, than 
 all the rest of the parish put together." 
 
 This Sketch was written in 1834, and from a passage 
 in it, telling us that the four sisters "settled in'our parish * 
 thirteeii years ago,'' we are taken back to the y-ear 1821, v 
 when Dickens was living in Ordnance Terrace. There > 
 cannot, therefore, be a doubt that this, too,, is some ^ 
 recollection of his boyhood. • '^ 
 
 The greater part of these Sketches contain^, reminis- 
 cences of more recent times, possibly, in the days when 
 he was in Mr. Blackmore's employ. 
 
 Scotland Yard is situated within less than a quarter 
 of a mile of the Blacking Works at Old Hungerford 
 Stairs, and The Sketch is a graphic account of a curious 
 district of London at that time (1823-4). "A few years 
 hence and the antiquary of another generation, looking 
 
' > J > ', J > 5 ■ 
 
 Eastgate, Rochester. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 139 
 
 into some mouldy record of the strife and passion that 
 agitated the world in these times, may glance his eye 
 over the pages we have just filled ; and not all his know- 
 ledge of the history of the past, not all his black-letter 
 lore, or his skill in book collecting, not all the dry 
 studies of a long life, or of the dusty volumes that have 
 cost him a fortune, may help him to the whereabout, 
 either of Scotland Yard, or of any one of the landmarks 
 we have mentioned in describing it." 
 
 Seven Dials is wonderfully described : " Where is there 
 such another maze of streets, courts, lanes, and alleys ? 
 Where such a pure mixture of Englishmen and Irishmen 
 as in this complicated part of London ? " This is true, to 
 some extent, to the present day, as is also the curious 
 account of the various articles of live and dead stock to 
 be bought and sold there. 
 
 Here is a characteristic description of one of the 
 dwellers in this strange locality : " The shabb>--gentee] 
 man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life 
 of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything 
 beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, 
 penny loaves, and ha'porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very 
 naturally suppose him to be an author, and rumours are 
 current in the Dials that he writes poems for Vlx. Warren." 
 
 In Doctors Conunous are many glimpses of the 
 London of Dickens' reporting days, and here as else- 
 where in his works, so vivid, so truthful, are his 
 
I40 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 descriptions of places and things now no longer in 
 existence, that already the antiquaries of our day are 
 taking a new and lively interest in Dickens, for the very 
 love of his descriptions of these old times ! 
 
 He gives here, in very few words, an account of a 
 trial in the Arches Court, " the office of the Judge 
 promoted by Bumple against Sludberry," which termi- 
 nated in " the awful sentence of excommunication for 
 a fortnight, and payment of the costs of suit" against 
 Sludberry, " who was a little, red-faced, sly-looking 
 ginger-beer seller," and who remarked " that if they'd 
 be good enough to take off the costs, and excommuni- 
 cate him for the term of his natural life instead, it 
 would be much more convenient to him, " 
 
 Through all these Sketches there runs a fine original 
 vein of humour, set off here and there by a tender pathos 
 which all can understand. Thus it came about that 
 these Sketches were eagerly looked for long before the 
 name of Charles Dickens was known, and even before he 
 wrote under the name of Boz. 
 
 His first Sketch appeared in December 1833, and the 
 first piece signed Boz was not published till August of 
 the next year. It was the second chapter of The 
 Boarding House. 
 
 Astlefs and Early Coaches are juvenile experiences 
 of his own, and he truly sketches himself as " a small 
 boy of a pale aspect, with light hair, — coming up to 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. I4I 
 
 town from school, under the protection of the guard, 
 and directed to be left at the Cross Ke\-s till called 
 for." 
 
 Very interesting reading now is a ParUauicutary 
 Sketch, and in it we are taken back to the reporting 
 days in the House of Commons, just after the great fire 
 there, in October 1834, about which time this Sketch was 
 undoubtedly written. 
 
 In Chap. XXII., Gin-Shops, a vivid picture of one 
 of these glittering, brilliantly lighted saloons, is followed 
 by a sentence or two worth thinking about. " Gin- 
 drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness 
 and dirt are a greater. If Temperance Societies would 
 suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air, or 
 could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribu- 
 tion of bottles of Lethe-water, gin-palaces would be 
 numbered among the things that were." 
 
 \n A C J wist mas Dinner and TJie New Year (1836) 
 are some very striking reminiscences " of happy days 
 and old times ; " in the latter Sketch we are introduced 
 to Mr. Dobble, who was in a public office : " \\c know the 
 fact by the cut of his coat, the tie of his neckcloth, and 
 the self-satisfaction of his gait — the ver\' green blinds 
 themselves have a Somerset House air about them." 
 
 In SJiabby-Genteel People are some ver)- tender touches 
 of description, as to what does and what does not entitle 
 a man to be considered shabby-genteel. 
 
142 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 " We will endeavour to explain jDur conception of the 
 term which forms the title ^f this^paper. If you meet a 
 man, lounging up Drury Lane, or leaning with his back 
 against a post in 'Long Acre, with his hands in the 
 pockets of a pair of drab^trousers plentifully besprinkled 
 with grease-spots ; the trousers made very full over the 
 boots, and ornamented with two^cords down the outside 
 of each leg — wearing, also, what has been a brown coat 
 with bright buttons, and a hat very much pinched up 
 at the sides, cocked over his ^ight eye — don't pity him. 
 He is not shabby-genteel." 
 
 " We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man ; 
 he was bodily present to our senses all day, and he was 
 in our mind's eye all night. He fipst attracted our notice 
 by sitting opposite to us in the reading room of tJie 
 British Museum ; and what made the man more I'emark- 
 able was, that he always had before him a couple of 
 shabby-genteel books." 
 
 In Mr. Minns and his Cousin, we find another 
 Somerset House clerk, " or, as he said himself, he ' held a 
 responsible situation under Government.' " The cousin 
 was a Mr. Budden, vvhich is a well-known name at 
 Rochester. [See Gad's Hill.] 
 
 Of TJie Tuggss at Ramsgate, it may be noted that 
 in Our Boys, as acted, this Sketch is laid under contribu- 
 tion for a joke or two ; here is one of them in exactly the 
 same "words. Mr. Tuggs (who dealt in Dorset butter) 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 43 
 
 was asked by his new acquaintance, the captain, how he 
 would go to Pegwell ? " ' A shay ? ' suggested Mr. Joseph 
 Tuggs. ' Chaise,' whispered Mr. Cymon. ' I should think 
 one would be enough,' said ]\Ir. Joseph Tuggs. " However, 
 two shays, if you like.' " 
 
 The notes on the SkctcJics may terminate with Tlie 
 Great Wifiglebury Duel, which abounds with recollections 
 of Rochester, the description of the " long, straggling, 
 quiet High Street, the small building with the big clock," 
 etc., is unmistakable. 
 
 The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 
 known all the world over by the shorter title of Pickwick^ 
 are brim full of reminiscences of the writer's early 
 life, from his boyish experiences at Chatham to his 
 reporting days ! This is, on the whole, the most 
 humourous of all his works, and still holds its place 
 as the first favourite with the great bulk of the readers 
 of Dickens. 
 
 Towards the middle of its publication it had attained 
 a popularity that had probably never been equalled in the 
 annals of fiction. It was about the time of the publica- 
 tion of the tenth part of the Pickzvick Papers that the 
 Rev. William Giles (for he had since the Chatham days 
 been ordained as a Baptist minister) presented Charles 
 Dickens with a silver snuffbox, in token of his admira- 
 tion of the brilliant talents displayed by his old pupil. 
 On the inside of the lid was his name, with a suitable 
 
144 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 inscription " to the Inimitable Boz," and the Inimitable 
 he continued to be among his more intimate friends for 
 the rest of his life. 
 
 In his Letters it will be seen that he \\^as fond of play- 
 fully describing himself as " the inimitable," and it is 
 probably a title which posterity will finally accept. 
 
 The origin of Pickwick is too well known to need 
 recapitulation here, and it is only necessary to say that 
 the scene opens in Goswell Street, London, and that Mr. 
 Pickwick is at the outset driven to the Golden Cross 
 Coach Office, to meet his friends, who are to take a 
 journey with him into Kent, in search of adventures. 
 
 In the second chapter, the four Pickwickians take 
 their seats on the Commodore Coach for Rochester, and 
 Mr. Jingle joins them. Asked if he has any luggage, he 
 replies, " Who— ^I ? Brown-paper parcel here, that's all, 
 otJier luggage gone by ivater, — packing cases, nailed up, — 
 big as houses," — a clear reminiscence of the mode of 
 carriage adopted by Mr. John Dickens when removing 
 his heavier household goods from Chatham to London. 
 
 On reaching Rochester Bridge, and sighting the 
 Castle, Jingle indulges in broken soliloquy till the coach 
 stops at the Bull Hotel. Here the friends put up, and 
 engage a private sitting-room. 
 
 The year 1827 (summer) is given as the date of this 
 visit, and it may be remarked that the Bull Hotel is very 
 little altered in appearance, inside or outside, since that 
 
Staircase at the Bull. 
 
 Orchestra in Ball-Room, at the Bull Hotel. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 47 
 
 time. The staircase shown in the engraving is now just 
 as it was, with the addition, however, of a few more 
 prints on the walls, and of the handsome hall-lamp from 
 Gad's Hill Place. The ball-room, or assembly-room, 
 where in times past many charity and county balls have 
 been held, is just as it was in the Pickwick days. 
 
 '' It was a long room, with crimson- covered benches, 
 and wax-candles in glass chandeliers. The musicians 
 were securely confined in an elevated den." ... Mr. 
 Hull's sketch is a capital representation of the entrance 
 end of this room, and shows the little orchestra as it 
 was and is to the present day. 
 
 It is rather difficult to realise, looking at this old 
 room by the cold light of day, that " the Commissioner — 
 head of the yard," and the no less important " Head of 
 the Garrison (like two Alexander Selkirks, monarchs of 
 all they surveyed) " should have met the Smithies, the 
 Snipes, and the Tomlinsons of a bygone age, but it is 
 quite true that (omitting the names) the wealth and 
 fashion of the county of Kent have many a time been 
 present at the grand balls formerly held in this hotel. 
 
 But on this particular occasion (the ball attended by 
 Mr. Tupman and Jingle) an old acquaintance was present, 
 and here is his portrait : he " was a little fat man, with a 
 ring of upright black hair round his head, and an ex- 
 tensive bald plain on the top of it— Dr. Slammer, surgeon 
 to the 97th. The doctor took snuff with everybody, 
 
148 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 laughed, danced, made jokes, played whist, did everything, 
 and was everywhere." 
 
 The next day the unoffending Winkle accepted the 
 challenge sent by the irate little doctor, and at sunset 
 the combatants, with their seconds, met in the well- 
 remembered fields at the back of Fort Pitt, the very 
 place where the schools of Rochester and Chatham used 
 to meet to settle their difficulties, and to contend in the 
 more friendly rivalry of cricket ! 
 
 " The whole population of Rochester and the adjoining 
 towns rose from their beds at an early hour of the fol- 
 lowing morning, in a state of the utmost bustle and 
 excitement. A grand review was to take place upon the 
 Lines. The manoeuvres of half-a-dozen regiments were 
 to be inspected by the eagle eye of the commander-in- 
 chief; temporary fortifications had been erected, the 
 citadel was to be attacked and taken, and a mine was 
 to be sprung." (Chap. III.) 
 
 Mr. Pickwick and his friends Winkle, Tupman, and 
 Snodgrass,^ were there, of course, and experienced the 
 pleasure of waiting two hours in a front place, under 
 
 ' With reference to this curious surname, it is perhaps something more 
 than a coincidence, that there was formerly a Mr. Gal)riel Snodgrass, an 
 eminent shipbuilder at Chatham Dockyard, where he learned his business. 
 For a full account of him, with his portrait, see T/ie Eitropean Ma-azitie, 
 July 1799. He was resident at Chatham for many years, and would 
 probably, almost certainly, be known to Charles Dickens when a boy, at 
 least by repute. 
 
Rochester Castle from Old Bridge. 
 {After Dadson.) 
 
 Rochester Bridge and Castle from Frindsbury. 
 {^Ajtcr Dadson.) 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 151 
 
 pressure of an unruly crowd behind them, and a military 
 guard in front. Here the party make the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Wardle, and are hospitabl}- entertained, and 
 afterwards invited to visit Manor Farm, Dingley Dell. 
 On the morning of the next day, 'Mr. Pickwick " leant 
 on the balustrades of Rochester Bridge (the old Bridge) 
 contemplating Nature, and waiting for breakfast." 
 
 " On the left of the spectator lay the ruined wall, 
 broken in many places, and in some overhanging the nar- 
 row beach below in rude and heavy masses.- . . . Behind 
 it rose the ancient castle, its towers roofless, and its 
 massive w^alls crumbling away, but telling us proudly of 
 its old might and_strength. . . . On either side the banks 
 of the ]\Iedway, covered with cornfields and pastures, 
 with here and there a windmill or a distant church, 
 stretched away as far as the eye could see, presenting 
 a rich and varied landscape, rendered more beautiful 
 by the changing shadows which passed switth' across it, 
 as the thin and half-formed clouds skimmed away in the 
 light of the morning sun." 
 
 The view so happily described was precisely that 
 shown in the engraving, from a drawing by the late 
 William Dadson, and the other engraving on the same 
 page, also after Dadson, assists the reader by showing 
 an extended view of the valley of the ^ledway. 
 
 On consulting the waiter at breakfast, the friends 
 are told, " Dingley — Dell — gentlemen — fifteen miles, 
 
152 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 gentlemen — cross road — post-chaise, sir ? " Dingley Dell 
 is of course wholly " in the air," but Muggleton ? — " every- 
 body whose genius has a topographical bent, knows per- 
 fectly well that Muggleton is a corporate town, with a 
 mayor, burgesses, and freemen; — Mr. Pickwick stood in 
 the principal street of this illustrious town, and gazed with 
 an air of curiosity, not unmixed with interest, on the 
 objects around him. There was an open square for the 
 market-place ; and in the centre of it, a large inn with 
 a sign-post in front, displaying an object very common 
 in art, but rarely met with in Nature — to wit, a blue 
 lion with three bow-legs in the air, balancing himself 
 on the extreme point of the centre claw of his fourth 
 foot." 
 
 Where, then, is Muggleton ? Well — no one can say 
 positively, but from the direction taken by the friends, as 
 Mr. Winkle's horse went " drifting up the High Street," 
 preceded by the chaise, I fancy they turned into the 
 Maidstone Road out of Eastgate, past Restoration 
 House, past the Blue-Bell, and through some of the 
 most delightful country to be met with even in Kent, 
 to Aylesford, and so over the bridge to West Mailing 
 or Town-Mailing. 
 
 This place does not answer to much of the description, 
 but I think it was in the mind of Dickens when he 
 wrote the tale, the more so as it is certainly on a cross- 
 road from Rochester, that the distance given by the 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. I 53 
 
 waiter is about right, and that when VVardle and Pick- 
 wick were chasing the runaway Jingle, they went by the 
 direct road from Malhng to London, without coming 
 back through Rochester, which woukl have been a much 
 longer way. 
 
 One of the cricketers at Dingley Dell was Mr. 
 Struggles, which was the nickname of George Stroughill 
 (pronounced Stro'hill), the friend of Dickens when a boy 
 at Ordnance Terrace, Chatham ! 
 
 The morning after the chase of Jingle and Miss 
 Wardle, Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Wardle, and Mr. Perker 
 enter the yard of the White Hart Inn in the Borough, and 
 introduce themselves at once to Sam Weller, who in his 
 turn a few days later on in the narrative, introduces his 
 father, Mr. Tony Weller, of the Marquis of Granby, 
 Dorking. A recent writer has tried to locate this hostelry 
 in one of the pleasant Surrey towns near London ; the 
 real origin, however, of the names of both the inn and its 
 master must be looked for at Chatham, where, in the old 
 Ordnance Terrace days, a Mr. Thomas^ Weller kept the 
 Granby Head in the High Street ! ! 
 
 *' On the opposite side of the road was a large sign- 
 board on a high post, representing the head and shoulders 
 
 ' The transition from Tommy Weller to Tony Weller is not a very 
 violent one, and the origin of this celebrated character is obvious enough. 
 See also Mary Weller, in Chap. IV., ante — 
 
 Arn't that 'ere " Boz " a tip-top feller ! 
 Lots writes well, but he writes Weller ! 
 
 To/n Hood, in review of blaster Hiiiiiphrcys Clock. 
 
154 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 of a gentleman with an apoplectic countenance, in a red 
 coat, with deep blue facings, and a touch of the same 
 blue over his three-cornered hat, for a sky, . . . and the 
 whole formed an expressive and undoubted likeness of 
 the Marquis of Granby of glorious memory." — Pickwick 
 Papers^, Chap. XXVII. 
 
 Having returned to Dingley Dell by the Muggleton 
 heavy coach, Mr. Pickwick found that Mr. Tupman had 
 gone away during his absence, but was to be heard of 
 at "the Leather Bottle, Cobham, Kent, and the three 
 friends at once resolve to follow him there." " At 
 Muggleton they procured a conveyance to Rochester, 
 where they had an early dinner, and having procured 
 the necessary information relative to the road, the three 
 friends set forward again in the afternoon to walk to 
 Cobham." 
 
 " A delightful walk it was, for it was a pleasant after- 
 noon in June, and their way lay through a deep and 
 shady wood, cooled by the light wind which gently 
 rustled the thick foliage, and enlivened by the songs of 
 birds that perched upon the boughs. The ivy and the 
 moss crept in thick clusters over the old trees, and the 
 soft green turf overspread the ground like a silken mat." 
 
 (The friends were following the track of the Roman 
 Watling Street, which runs almost in a straight line from 
 Rochester to London, and a very considerable portion of 
 which is still in existence as a country road.) 
 
< 
 
 X 
 
 o 
 u 
 
 H 
 H 
 O 
 
 Pi 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 < 
 
 K 
 
 a: 
 H 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. I 57 
 
 " They emerged upon an open park, with an ancicnf 
 Hall, displaying the quaint and picturesque architecture 
 of Elizabeth's time. Long vistas of stately oaks and 
 elm-trees appeared on every side, large herds of deer 
 were cropping the fresh grass, and occasionally a startled 
 -hare scoured along the ground with the speed of the 
 shadows thrown by the light clouds which swept across 
 a sunny landscape like a passing breath of summer. 
 
 " ' If this,' said Mr. Pickwick, looking about him, ' if 
 this were the place to which all who are troubled with 
 our friend's complaint came, I fancy their old attachment 
 to this world would very soon return.' 
 
 " ' I think so, too,' said Mr. Winkle. 
 
 " ' And really,' added Mr. Pickwick, after half-an- 
 hour's walking had brought them to the village, ' really, 
 for a misanthrope's choice, this is one of the prettiest 
 and most desirable places of residence I ever met 
 with.' " 
 
 Having been directed to the Leather Bottle, the 
 friends entered, and were at once shown into the parlour, 
 " a long, low-roofed room, furnished with a large number 
 of high-backed, leather-cushioned chairs, of fantastic 
 shapes, and embellished with a great variety of old 
 portraits and roughly coloured prints of some antiquity. 
 At the upper end of the room was a table, with a white 
 cloth upon it, well covered with a roast fowl, bacon, ale, 
 and et ceteras ; and at the table sat Mr. Tupman, looking 
 
158 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 as unlike a man who had taken his leave of the world as 
 possible." 
 
 As this old house is, within and without, exactly as 
 it was fifty years ago, I have given correct views of the 
 exterior, and of the parlour. The portraits in oil (quite 
 a number of them) are still there, and, although the 
 house has changed hands several times since the days of 
 Pickwick, the furniture is the same. 
 
 Leather Bottle formerly used as the Sign. 
 
 At the time Pickwick was written, the veritable 
 Leather Bottle shown here was to be seen attached to 
 the sign over the door. It is still preserved in the bar. 
 
 It is worth noting that this description of Cobham, 
 and its Leather Bottle, was undoubtedly written while 
 Charles Dickens was staying at Chalk immediately after 
 his marriage. He was at this time in lodgings, and his 
 old landlord, Thomas White, is still living (1882). 
 
 Charles Dickens stayed a day and a night at the 
 
o 
 U 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. l6l 
 
 Leather Bottle with Mr. Forster in September 1S41 
 {vide Forster's Life). That in his early days he stayed 
 there on other occasions is certain, and in February 1845 
 Charles Dickens, Mrs. Dickens, Miss Hogarth, D. Maclise, 
 Douglas Jerrold, and John Forster, visited Cobham 
 Church and Park on a Sunday, their head-quarters being 
 the Bull at Rochester.^ 
 
 The fine old church of St. Mary Magdalen, Cobham, 
 frequently alluded to by Dickens in his works, is shown 
 here, from a careful drawing by Mr. Edward Hull. 
 
 The church is immediately in front of the Leather 
 Bottle, and on the occasion of the visit of the four 
 friends, Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman withdrew to this 
 quiet spot, and " for half an hour their forms might ha\-e 
 been seen pacing the churchyard to and fro." 
 
 Charles Dickens was particularly fond of this delight- 
 ful part of a delightful county, and his last walk, when 
 his feet had well nigh " completed their journey," was on 
 the evening of a beautiful summer day (the 7th June, 
 1870), when, with his sister-in-law,- he rambled through 
 the shady lanes that surround Cobham Park. 
 
 Here is a fine description of the stillness and quiet to 
 be found in a small village in the depths of the country 
 at night. " It was past eleven o'clock — a late hour for 
 
 ' The Leather Bottle was partially destroyed by fire on Good P^riday, the 
 8th-Apri], 1887. 
 - Miss Hogarth. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 the little village of Cobham — when Mr. Pickwick retired 
 to the bedroom which had been prepared for his recep- 
 tion. He threw open the lattice window, and setting his 
 light upon the table, fell into a train of meditation on the 
 hurried events of the two preceding days. 
 
 " The hour and the place were both favourable to con- 
 templation ; Mr. Pickwick was roused by the church 
 clock striking twelve. The first stroke of the hour 
 sounded solemnly in his ear ; but when the bell ceased, 
 the stillness seemed insupportable ; — he almost felt as if 
 he had lost a companion." 
 
 On the morrow the friends walk on to Gravesend, a 
 place frequently mentioned in the letters of Charles 
 Dickens, and in several of his books, and where in later 
 life he was often seen with his pony-chaise and dogs. 
 
 A few da}^s after the discovery of the celebrated 
 stone at Cobham, Mr. Pickwick has an adventure at 
 Bury St. Edmunds, at a red-brick house called IVestgate 
 House, and which, like the now famous East Gate House 
 at Rochester, was a ladies' school ! 
 
 At the Magpie and Stump Mr. Pickwick makes the 
 acquaintance of several lawyers' clerks, and some 
 wonderful tales are told by old Jack Bamber of the 
 " Inns," and the chambers therein, the " Queer Client " 
 being, it would seem, his favourite. In it, at the opening 
 of the tale, the High Street in the Borough, with the 
 Marshalsea Prison, are introduced, and at the end 
 

 
 u 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 165 
 
 reference is made to " one of the most peaceful and 
 secluded churchyards in Kent, where wild-flowers mingle 
 with the grass, and the soft landscape around forms the 
 fairest spot in the Garden of England." This is pro- 
 bably another allusion to Cobham, or it will answer 
 equally well for the adjoining parish of Shorne, which 
 was also a favourite locality with Dickens. 
 
 In this tale, Heyling, the " queer client," finds his 
 enemy, a decrepit old man, living at Little College 
 Street, in Old Pancras Road, the same street Charles 
 Dickens had lodged in when a boy, and where the 
 original of Mrs. Pipchin was then living ! 
 
 On the breaking up of the Christmas party at Dingley 
 Dell, Mr. Bob Sawyer invites Mr. Pickwick and friends 
 to come and see him at his lodgings in Lant Street, in 
 the Borough, where Dickens had also lived in his boy- 
 hood, and it is noteworthy that one of Bob's friends, Mr. 
 Jack Hopkins, a medical student from St. Bartholomew's, 
 was the namesake of one of the prominent characters in 
 the prison scenes at the King's Bench given in Copperfield. 
 
 The visit to Bath and Bristol is probably a recollec- 
 tion of the reporting days ; the Bush, at Bristol, was 
 Dickens' Hotel at that time. {Vide Forster's 
 Life) 
 
 In the Fleet Prison one of the interesting party on 
 whom Mr. Pickwick was " chummed " was a butcher of 
 whom Mr. Roker remarks, " as he gazed abstractedly out 
 
1 66 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 of the grated window before him, as if he were fondly 
 recalHng some peaceful scene of his early youth ; it seems 
 but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down 
 Fox-under-the-hill by the wharf there," — the locality 
 being that of the blacking manufactory, and the fight, 
 probably enough, an actual occurrence. 
 
 Some of the most telling fun in all Pickivick is in 
 Chap. XL v., where old Weller visits Sam in the Fleet, 
 and the most pathetic part is that leading up to the 
 death of the poor Chancery prisoner in the preceding 
 chapter. 
 
 Oliver Twist is a standing protest against the 
 atrocious poor-laws of a past generation. The hero of 
 the tale, " a child of a noble nature and a warm heart," 
 was a workhouse boy of unknown parentage, and in the 
 opening of the story we are told that " Hunger and 
 recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; 
 and Oliver cried very naturally indeed." 
 
 In a letter to Rev. Thomas Robinson (April 8th, 
 1841), bearing on poor-law mal-administration, Dickens 
 says, " I will pursue cruelty and oppression, the enemy of 
 all God's creatures of all codes and creeds, so long as I 
 have the energy of thought and the power of giving it 
 utterance." 
 
 Again, in 1844, having just returned from Venice, he 
 remarked to his friend and biographer, " Ah ! when I saw 
 those places, how I thought that to leave one's hand upon 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. \Gy 
 
 the time, lastingly upon the time, with one tender touch 
 for the mass of toiling people that nothing could 
 obliterate, would be to lift oneself above the dust of all 
 the Doges," — and, says Forster, truly enough, " in vary- 
 ing forms this ambition was in all his life." — Forster, 
 vol. ii., page 122. 
 
 There is in this work some evidence of the influence 
 (it may have been an unconscious influence) exerted 
 upon him at this time by his friend William Harrison 
 Ainsworth ; it is less, perhaps, in the style of the writ- 
 ing, than in some of the more highly dramatic situations 
 of the plot. This feeling is, I think, heightened by the 
 fact that the illustrations to Oliver were designed and 
 etched by George Cruikshank, who at this time was in 
 the enjoyment of the full measure of his extraordinary 
 powers, and was, besides, engaged during its publication 
 in illustrating the works of Ainsworth. 
 
 Though none of the incidents of the tale can be said 
 to resemble points in the early life of the author, there 
 is yet a sufiflcient general resemblance in thought and 
 feeling between the imaginative hardly used Oliver and 
 his originator when a boy, to make it easy of recognition 
 to the student, or even to the ordinary careful reader of 
 the works of Dickens. 
 
 The sketch of Mr. Fang, the police magistrate, whose 
 eccentric outbursts of temper were continually bringing 
 him into unenviable notice, is a recollection of the 
 
1 68 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 reporting days. In reading it we are reminded of a 
 sally of Mr. Samuel Weller, where he says, " This is a 
 very impartial country for justice. There ain't a magis- 
 trate going as don't commit himself twice as often as he 
 commits other people." 
 
 It may perhaps interest readers to note the similarity 
 in thought and style of the following two passages, one 
 in Oliver Twisty Chap. V., where Oliver runs away from 
 the undertaker Sowerberry, who has tried to show him 
 that, however he disliked the business at first, he would 
 in time get used to it, the other in David Copperjield, 
 Chap. II. 
 
 " Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had 
 taken a very long time to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it. 
 But he thought it better not to ask the question." 
 
 In David Copperfield (written in the first person) little 
 David tells how there was a mural tablet in the church 
 to the late- Mr. Bodgers, whereon, among other things, 
 it stated that " physicians were in vain," and, says David, 
 " I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he 
 was in vain ; and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it 
 once a week." 
 
 These two passages are fair specimens of the quaint, 
 precocious thoughtfulness that Dickens has thrown into 
 the utterances of many of his youthful characters ! 
 
 MuDFOG Association, 1837-38. '' Mudfog is a 
 pleasant town — a remarkably pleasant town — situated 
 
RE TR OSPE C TI VE .\0 TES. 
 
 169 
 
 in a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which 
 river Mudfog derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, 
 coals, and rope-yarn, a roving population in oil-skin hats, 
 a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen, and a 
 great many other maritime advantages." 
 
 This is evidently a humorous description of Chatham, 
 and it is more than probable that Rochester is included 
 in the general satire. 
 
 Of the mayor, :\Ir. Nicholas Tulrumble, we are told 
 that he began life as a coal-dealer, with a capital of 
 two-and-ninepence. 
 
 " Time, which strews 
 a man's head with 
 silver, sometimes fills 
 his pockets with gold." 
 It was so with Nicholas 
 Tulrumble, and it is 
 recorded that he after- 
 wards became mayor 
 of ]\Iudfog, and lived 
 at Mudfog Hall, on 
 Mudfog Hill. 
 
 It is curious to note 
 that among the names 
 of eminent men at- 
 tending the meetings of the Mudfog Association was a 
 Mr. Waghorn, a well-known and respected family name 
 
\yO CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 at Chatham, of which the late Lieutenant Waghorn was 
 a member. Sowster is also an old Chatham name. " I 
 have procured a local artist to make a faithful sketch of 
 the tyrant Sowster (the Beadle of Mudfog). His whole 
 air is rampant with cruelty, nor is the stomach less 
 characteristic of his demoniac propensities." 
 
 The curious Inn signs mentioned in these papers, 
 such as the Black-Boy-and-Stomach-ache, the Boot-Jack 
 — and Countenance, and the Original-Pig, it might be 
 difficult to find ! 
 
 In Nicholas Nickleby the reader may get many 
 glimpses of the early life of Dickens himself, and although 
 it would be difficult to say which of the actual incidents 
 of this great work are fact, and which fiction, in the full 
 acceptation of the word, there can be no doubt that 
 many of the experiences of Nicholas are recollections of 
 the early associations of the author. 
 
 The tale opens with allusions to Devonshire, a county 
 which he has mentioned in several other books. Towards 
 the close of NicJwlas Nickleby Charles Dickens went into 
 Devonshire, and took and furnished Mile-end Cottage, 
 Alphington, near Exeter, for his father and mother, as 
 mentioned in a previous chapter. A very humorous 
 account of his negotiations with the proprietor of this 
 house is given in Mr. Forster's book, vol i., p. 163. 
 
 " I took a little house for them this morning (5th 
 March, 1839, from the New- London Inn), and if they 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 
 
 171 
 
 arc not pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. 
 Exactly a mile be}'ond the city, on the Plymouth Road, 
 there are two white cottages : one is theirs, and the 
 other belongs to their landlady. I almost forget the 
 number of rooms, but there is an excellent parlour, with 
 two other rooms, on the ground floor ; there is really a 
 
 Mile-end Cottage, near Exeter. 
 
 beautiful little room over the parlour, which I am fur- 
 nishing as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid 
 garden." 
 
 The accompanx'ing engraving of this cottage is from 
 a sketch kindly made by Mr. \V. B. Rye, expressly for 
 this work, and with it the reader may compare a descrip- 
 tion of this same cottage, which is to be found in 
 NicJiolas Nickkby, Part 2, Chap. XXIII., where it is 
 
1/2 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 specially mentioned by Mrs. Nickleby as " the beautiful 
 little thatched white house one storey high, covered all 
 over with ivy and creeping plants, with an exquisite 
 little porch with twining honeysuckles and all sorts of 
 things." 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Mitton of about the same date, 
 Dickens says of this white cottage, " I don't think I ever 
 saw so cheerful or pleasant a spot." ^ 
 
 Of the places dear to him in his infancy, Dickens 
 mentions in this book Portsmouth, where Nicholas and 
 Smike performed at the theatre, under the management 
 of Mr. Vincent Crummies. The description of the 
 theatre and the company is as good as anything in the 
 tale, and " a strong smell of orange-peel and lamp-oil, 
 with an under-current of sawdust," may almost be per- 
 ceived as we read Chapter XXII. 
 
 There are references, too, to some old places in 
 London, well known to him in his boyhood, and in the 
 Preface he says, " I cannot call to mind, now, how I 
 came to hear about Yorkshire schools when I was a not 
 very robust child, sitting in bye-places near Rochester 
 Castle, with a head i^uU of PARTRIDGE, STRAP, TOM 
 Pipes, and Sancho Panza." 
 
 ' At a property sale held in Exeter, March 30th, 1885, Lot i was thus 
 described : "A house at Alphington, called Mile-end Cottage, at one time 
 occupied by Charles Dickens, held for forty-seven years, unexpired, from 
 the Right Hon. Earl of Devon, at ;,^io a year, and in a very dilapidated 
 condition." Sold to Mr. Smith for;i^83. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. I 73 
 
 In severe weather, early in 1838, Charles Dickens, 
 and Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), names which must 
 be henceforward inseparably connected for all time, 
 undertook a long journey by coach into the North of 
 Yorkshire to see for themselves something of these 
 Yorkshire schools. 
 
 One result of their joint work in pen and pencil has 
 been the complete obliteration of these pestilent and 
 " cruel habitations." Probably not a single example of 
 this low type of schools remains to the present day. 
 
 Master Humphrey's Clock, with its two con- 
 tinuous tales, and introductory chapters, cannot be said 
 to contain many recollections of the early life of the 
 author ; but there is probabl}^ in the story of Joe Toddy- 
 high and his sad experience of " benefits forgot," some 
 hidden reminiscence of his own boyish days. Master 
 Humphrey also, when he says in an opening chapter, 
 " I do not know whether all children are imbued with 
 a cjuick perception of childish grace and beauty and a 
 strong love for it, but I was," does but echo the well- 
 known sentiments of his Creator ! 
 
 In the Preface we are told how Master Humphrey 
 and his friends would probably " trace some faint reflec- 
 tion of their past lives in the varying current of the tale." 
 I have always thought that in the life of Little Nell, 
 there is in some way such a reflection of his own life. 
 In Dick Swiveller and his friends, and in Sampson 
 
174 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Brass, and the Notary, there is, no doubt, a vivid sketch 
 of persons Dickens had himself encountered in the days 
 of the law. 
 
 In the Old Curiosity Shop, the characters introduced 
 seem to be real living men and women, and of its heroine, 
 Lord Jeffrey has well said, that there has been " nothing 
 so good as Nell since Cordelia." 
 
 Barnaby Rudge, being mainly a description of the 
 riots of 1780, and therefore an historical tale, has no 
 special allusions to the early days of the writer ; but 
 there is in that fine thirty-third chapter commencing, 
 " One wintry evening," etc., a most interesting recollec- 
 tion of his early reading of the works of Smollett. In 
 Peregiine Pickle, Chap. II., the landlord of a public- 
 house where Trunnion and his cronies met nightly, 
 hears a voice in the distance hailing : " Ho ! the house 
 ahoy ! " on which he, " clapping a hand to each side of 
 his head, with his thumbs fixed to his ears, rebellowed 
 in the same tone Hilloah ! " ,- 
 
 In Barnaby Rudge Dickens makes John Willet, on 
 hearing the cry of *' Maypole, ahoy ! " " clap his two 
 hands to his cheeks, and send forth a roar which made 
 the glasses dance and rafters ring — a long, sustained, 
 discordant bellow, that rolled onward with the wind," etc. 
 A Christmas Carol (1843) opens with a Christmas 
 Eve and a wonderful description of a London fog. 
 Scrooge having dismissed his clerk for the night, the 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 75 
 
 office was closed in a twinkling, and poor Bob Cratchit 
 having gone down a slide " at the end of a lane of boys 
 twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, ran 
 home to Camden Toiuji as hard as he could pelt to play 
 at Blind-man's-buff." 
 
 On going home to his old-fashioned roomy City house, 
 Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his deceased partner 
 Marie}', who introduces the spirits of Christmas past, of 
 Christmas present, and of Christmas yet to come. 
 
 The spirit of Christmas past takes Scrooge b\- the 
 hand, and they pass out into the open country, and, 
 incredible as it may seem to those who know how 
 different in every particular Charles Dickens was, to that 
 curious creation of his own fanc}', Scrooge, we yet find 
 that in some particulars the childhood of Scrooge was 
 the childhood of himself 
 
 " ' Good heaven ! ' said Scrooge, clasping his hands 
 together, as he looked about him, ' I was bred in this 
 place ; I was a bo}' here ! ' 
 
 'You recollect the way?' inquired the Spirit. 'Re- 
 member it I ' cried Scrooge, with fervour, ' I could walk 
 it blindfold.' 
 
 " They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising 
 every gate, and post, and tree, until a market town 
 appeared in the distance, witli its bridge, its church, and 
 winding river." — " They left the high-road by a well- 
 remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of 
 
176 CHILDHOOD AND YOVTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 dull red-brick, with a little weather-cock surmounted 
 cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging in it." 
 
 This curious mixing up of the boyhood of Scrooge 
 with his own, seems to have been something more than 
 a passing fancy, for in a letter to Mr. W. H. Wills, dated 
 Folkestone, September i6th, 1855, he writes thus :— 
 
 " My dear Wills, — Scrooge is delighted to find that 
 Bob Cratchit is enjoying his holiday in such a delightful 
 situation ; and he says (with that warmth of nature which 
 has distinguished him since his conversion), ' Make the 
 most of it, Rob ; make the most of it.' " 
 
 The purposely confused account of his old school near 
 Clover Lane, with his later school, and the red brick 
 house with the cupola (Gad's Hill Place), is at least 
 remarkable. The reader will find, too, that Master 
 Scrooge had a little sister Fanny, who came to fetch 
 him home from school ! 
 
 Further on in the tale the ghost of Christmas present 
 takes Scrooge to his nephew's house, and we are told 
 that " Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp ; and 
 played among other tunes, a simple little air (a mere 
 nothing, — you might learn to whistle it in two minutes) 
 which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge 
 from the boarding-school — when this strain of music 
 sounded, all the things that the ghost had shown him 
 came upon his mind, he softened more and more." 
 In Stave Four the ghost of Christmas yet to come 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. ijj 
 
 conducts Scrooge to the house of Bob Cratchit at 
 Camden Town (he had been there before with the 
 second spirit), " through several streets famiHar to his 
 feet," and he sees Bob Cratchit surrounded bv his 
 children, save one, Tiny Tim, who is lying dead upstairs. 
 Mrs. Cratchit and the girls are busy with the mourning, 
 and the funeral is to take place on Sunda}-. Poor Bob 
 has been to see the place where his child is to be buried, 
 and Mrs. Cratchit says, " You went to-day, then, Robert ? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear," returned Bob ; " I wish you could 
 have gone. It would have done \'ou good to see how 
 green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised 
 him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, 
 little child ! " cried Bob ; " my little child ! " 
 
 " He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If 
 he could have helped it, he and his child would have 
 been further apart, perhaps, than they were." 
 
 Thomas Hood, in a review of this matchless perform- 
 ance in the January number of Hood's Magazine for 
 1844, thus speaks of the CJiristinas Carol : — 
 
 " If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable cus- 
 toms, its social and charitable observances, were in 
 danger of decay, this is the book that would give them 
 a new lease. The very name of the author predisposes 
 one to the kindlier feelings ; — it was a blessed inspiration 
 that put such a book into the head of Charles Dickens, a 
 happy inspiration of the heart, that warms every page." 
 
 N 
 
178 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 As there is very little that can be considered to be 
 retrospective in the rest of the Christmas books, they 
 may be taken seriatim here instead of in the strict order 
 of time of publication. 
 
 The Chimes, written in Italy in 1844, and read from 
 the proofs on Monday, December 2nd, to the illustrious 
 company, represented in Daniel Maclise's celebrated 
 sketch,^ was avowedly " a great blow for the poor," but 
 is not otherwise noticeable here. Of the eleven persons 
 represented in the above-named sketch, not one now 
 survives ! 
 
 The Cricket on the Hearth, 1845, and The 
 Battle of Life, 1846, have no special interest for the 
 purposes of this book. Written in the middle period of 
 the working life of Dickens, they resemble some others 
 of his works in this particular, that there is in them 
 scarce a trace of the recollections of his own early life. 
 
 The original editions of these Christmas Books are 
 now very valuable, and are specially sought for by 
 collectors, on account of their choice illustrations by 
 Maclise, Stanfield, Leech, Doyle, Tenniel, and Stone. 
 
 The Haunted Man, 1848. Besides the allusion to 
 the death of his sister, quoted on page 17, ante^ there is 
 in this little book some recollection of the old College at 
 Cobham. It is somewhat obscured with the encroach- 
 ments " of the great city," but there can be little doubt 
 ' Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, vol. ii. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 79 
 
 as to the locality Charles Dickens had in his mind when 
 he wrote the following lines : " The last glimmering of 
 daylight died away from the ends of avenues ; and the 
 trees, arching overhead, were sullen and black. When in 
 parks and woods, the high wet fern and sodden moss and 
 beds of fallen leaves and trunks of trees were lost to 
 view, in masses of impenetrable shade. When lights in 
 old halls and in cottage windows were a cheerful sight. 
 When the mill stopped, the wheelwright and the black- 
 smith shut their workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, 
 the plough and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the 
 labourer and team went home, and' the striking of the 
 church clock had a deeper sound than at noon, and the 
 churchyard wicket would be swung no more that night." 
 
 He elsewhere describes the dwelling of the student 
 as " an empty old pile of building, on a winter night, 
 with the loud wind going by upon its journey of 
 mystery — whence, or whither, no man knowing since 
 the world began." . . . 
 
 Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843-4, is almost universally 
 acknowledged to be one of the best, and most deservedly 
 popular, of all the works of Charles Dickens. It abounds 
 in descriptive passages of the highest order, and is in 
 the great novelist's richest vein of humour. Written 
 to illustrate the various kinds and degrees of selfishness, 
 it introduces to the reader's notice some of the most 
 interesting and curious of all the characters of Dickens, 
 
l80 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The tale opens in the neighbourhood of SaHsbury, 
 and it will be noticed that Mark Tapley (a new develop- 
 ment, and in some degree an improvement on Sam 
 Weller) describes himself as " a Kentish man by birth." ^ 
 
 In Chap, v., while incidentally describing some of 
 the shop windows Tom Pinch delighted to gaze at in the 
 old city of Salisbury, he mentions a book shop " where 
 children's books were sold, and where poor Robinson 
 Crusoe stood alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, 
 goat skin cap and fowling-pieces, calmly surveying 
 Philip Quarll and the host of imitators round him, and 
 calling Mr. Pinch to witness that he, of all the crowd, 
 impressed one solitary foot-print on the shore of boyish 
 memory, whereof the tread of generations should not 
 stir the lightest grain of sand." 
 
 Farther on in this chapter (the evening service at the 
 Cathedral being over), " Tom took the organ himself It 
 was then turning dark, and the yellow light that streamed 
 in through the ancient windows in the choir was mingled 
 with a murky red. As the grand tones resounded 
 through the church, they seemed, to' Tom, to find an 
 echo in the depth of every ancient tomb, no less than in 
 the deep mystery of his own heart. Great thoughts and 
 hopes came crowding on his mind as the rich music 
 rolled upon the air, and yet among them — something 
 
 ' Tapley is one of the characters in Smollett's Sir Laiincelot Greaves, 
 where he is described as a Brewer. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. l8l 
 
 more grave and solemn in their purpose, but the same — 
 were all the images of that day, down to its very lightest 
 recollection of childhood." 
 
 Chapter VII. introduces those amusing rascals 
 Montacrue TIq-q- and Chevy Sh'me, the latter of whom is 
 detained at the Blue Dragon for an unpaid score, — " a 
 thing in itself essential!}' mean ; a low performance 
 on a slate, or possibly chalked upon the back of a 
 door." 
 
 Young Martin afterwards e4icounters Tigg at a pawn- 
 broker's in London, where in a pla\-ful fashion he assists 
 him in pawning his, watch, and farther on in the tale 
 (Chap. XXVII.), Tigg appears in ''clothes of the newest 
 fashion and the costliest kind — precious chains and 
 jewels sparkled on his breast ; his fingers clogged with 
 brilliant rings," — as chairman of the Anglo-Bengalee 
 Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Compan}'. 
 
 Tigg and his friend David, the pawnbroker's assistant 
 of former days, had " embarked in an enterprise of some 
 magnitude, in which they addressed the public in general 
 from the strong position of having ever^'thing to gain, 
 and nothing at all to lose." 
 
 To these impecunious scamps Jonas Chuzzlewit, a 
 sordid, ungainly man, was introduced, and took his seat 
 as a member of the board. There is, says Dickens, in 
 another place, " a simplicity of cunning no less than a 
 simplicity of innocence," and he then shows how Jonas 
 
1 82 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 was thrown off his guard by the magnificence of Tigg 
 and his surroundings. " It is too common with all of us, 
 but it is especially in the nature of a mean mind, to be 
 overawed by fine clothes and fine furniture.^ They had 
 a very decided effect on Jonas." 
 
 In Chap. XXXV. is a capital description of an old 
 waterside inn, where Martin and Mark went on being set 
 ashore, on their return from America ; the descriptive 
 sketch of this inn recalls to mind more than one old 
 tavern still to be, seen at Chatham. 
 
 "It had more corners in it than the brain of an 
 obstinate man ; was full of mad closets, into which 
 nothing could be put that was not specially invented and 
 made for that purpose ; had mysterious shelvings and 
 bulk-heads, and indications of staircases in the ceiling ; 
 and was elaborately provided with a bell that rung in 
 the room itself, about two feet from the handle, and had 
 no connection whatever with any other part of the 
 establishment." 
 
 Of all descriptions of the now vanished coaching-days 
 the ride from Salisbury to London in Chap. XXXVI. is 
 surely the best. Dickens describes the coachman as 
 doing things with his hat, " which nothing but an un- 
 limited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom 
 of the road, could ever have made him perfect in. 
 
 ' Rich clothes are oft by common sharpers worn, 
 And diamond rings felonious hands adorn. — Martial. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 83 
 
 The guard, too ! Seventy breezy miles a day were 
 written in his very whiskers. His manners were a 
 canter ; his conversation a round trot. He was a fast 
 coach upon a down-hill turnpike road ; he was all pace. 
 A waggon couldn't have moved slowly, with that guard 
 and his key-bugle on the top of it." 
 
 As a slight test of the hold Martin Chuzzlewit has 
 taken upon the public, it may be remarked, that, with 
 perhaps the single exception of Pickwick, no work of 
 fiction (b}' whomsoever written) contains so many 
 characters whose names ma}' be said to have " passed 
 into the language ! " 
 
 Bailey, jun., and Poll Sweedlepipe, Pecksniff, and 
 Pinch, and Slymc, Sairey Gamp, and her m}-thical friend 
 Mrs. Harris, Betsy Prig, Zephaniah Scadder, and 
 Jefferson Brick, Mark Tapley, Tigg, and Todgers ! 
 
 Writing to Mr. Forster when the work was in progress 
 (November 2nd, 1843), Dickens says, "You know, as well 
 as I, that I think CJiuzzlczvit in a hundred points im- 
 measureably the best of my stories," And so, up to that 
 time, it undoubtedly was. 
 
 DOMBEY AND SON, 1 846-7-8. On the authority of 
 Dickens himself (see Forster's Life of diaries Dicke^is, 
 vol. ii., p. 327), much of the early part of this tale, so 
 far as Paul Dombey is concerned, is in a manner auto- 
 biographical ! From internal evidence alone, we might 
 have been almost sure of this ; for there is, in little 
 
184 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Paul, the same kind of quick, precocious intelligence, 
 that we now know was so remarkable in little Charles 
 Dickens. 
 
 Little Paul Dombey, however, in his early boyhood, 
 knew nothing of the cheerful genial surroundings which 
 Lad so much to do with the after life and fame of Charles 
 Dickens ; and it is only when we come to the Pipchin 
 days that we can see that Paul and his originator were 
 identical. ' 
 
 " I hope you will like Mrs. Pipchin's establishment," 
 wrote Dickens to Mr. Forster. "It is from the life, and 
 I was there, — shall I leave you m}' life in MS. when I 
 die ? There are some things in it that would touch 
 you very much." This letter was written November 
 4th, 1846. 
 
 In Walter Gay, too, there is noticeable much of the 
 prompt impulsive action and indomitable energy of 
 Charles Dickens at his age ; and it is difficult to believe 
 otherwise than that the author himself knew this well, 
 and that his own youth was before his mind's eye when 
 he makes Walter propose to Florence on the eve of their 
 marriage, that they should go away on the morrow, and 
 stay in Kent until their ship was ready for them at 
 Gravesend. 
 
 Of the illustrations to Dombey and Son, it may be 
 said that " Phiz " (Mr. Hablot K. Browne) was probably 
 at his best during its publication, and many of these 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 1 85 
 
 plates are amongst his finest efforts. '' Browne is cer- 
 tainly interesting himself," says Dickens in a note to 
 Mr. Forster, " and taking pains. I think the cover very 
 good ; perhaps with a little too much in it, but that is an 
 ungrateful objection." It must be owned, however, that 
 a few of the earlier plates in Doinbey and Son were not 
 so happy, and Dickens said of one or two of them, that 
 they were so '' dreadfully bad " they made him " curl his 
 legs up." 
 
 The objection was that the artist did not keep strictly 
 to the text, and not that the illustrations were bad as 
 works of art. 
 
 David Copperfield, 1849-50, is so obviously and 
 transparently autobiographical, and has, moreover, been 
 so frequently alluded to and quoted in the course of this 
 work, that it cannot be necessary to do more than make 
 a few brief comments on it here. 
 
 The tale opens at Blunderstone or Blundeston in 
 Suffolk, six miles from Yarmouth, and farther on in the 
 story, David is at school at Canterbur)' ; but it is certain 
 that Dickens never was at Yarmouth till January 1849 
 (when he was thirty-seven years of age), and he probably 
 never saw Canterbury in his boyhood at all. It is very 
 likely, therefore, that but for an evident intention to 
 obscure his own identity in this tale, Charles Dickens 
 would have written Portsmouth instead of Yarmouth, 
 and Rochester instead of Canterbury ! 
 
1 86 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 So, also, with some of the leading characters and 
 incidents of the story, such as the brutal step-father 
 Murdstone, the eccentric but practical aunt, Betsy Trot- 
 wood, with her odd companion, Mr. Dick.^ Although 
 these and others of the characters in David Copperfield 
 are, if possible, more real than those of any other of the 
 books of Charles Dickens, they have, perhaps, been 
 introduced with the intention of making the autobio- 
 graphical character of aie work less easy of recognition. 
 
 In this tale, as in Donibey and Son, one of the greatest 
 favourites of all the characters introduced is a seafaring 
 man, or, as he styled himself, " a babby in the form of a 
 great Sea Porkypine." Daniel Peggotty and Ned Cuttle 
 are types of men still to be found in our seaport towns, 
 and with such men, it is well known, Dickens was 
 quite at home. It is perhaps worthy of notice, that 
 Peggotty as a Christian name for a woman was, and is 
 still, in use at Chatham, though many will think with 
 Miss Betsy Trotwood, that it has a somewhat heathenish 
 sound. 
 
 There is in Chap. XIII. an interesting account of 
 David's flight from London, and his passing through 
 Rochester, and sleeping by the side of a garrison gun, in 
 one of the batteries just above his old house on the 
 
 ' The name of this curious character was originally written "Mr. 
 Robert," as may be seen on Folios 8 and 9 of the MS. at South 
 Kensington. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 18/ 
 
 Brook. Also a life-like sketch of " Old Charley," a 
 drunken madman, who formerly dealt in second-hand 
 clothes at Chatham. 
 
 Of Wilkins Micawbcr, '' with that thecr bald head of 
 his," nothing new can be said, but that his genial loveable 
 disposition is likely to be remembered for all time, — 
 " in short — till something better turns up." 
 
 One other pleasant reminiscence of Dickens' own 
 early days it is difficult to pass over. Who can doubt 
 but that the light-hearted revels in the chambers in 
 Gray's Inn, tenanted by Tommy Traddles, is nothing 
 more than a recollection of the Furnival's Inn days so 
 dear to himself? We are also told in this same 
 chapter how Traddles (like Dickens himself, and like 
 Walter Gay) " had taken his young wife down into 
 Koit for a wedding trip." 
 
 The great secret of the success of David Copperficld 
 is undoubtedly this, that not only has Charles Dickens, 
 as it were, breathed into it the breath of his own life, but, 
 as his friend Mr. Forster has beautifully said, " Child- 
 hood and youth live again for all of us in its marvellous 
 boy-experiences." ^ 
 
 Bleak House, 1852-3. Of the twelve alternative 
 titles proposed for this book, see Forster's Life of CJiarles 
 Dickens, \o\. iii., page 31 ; eight of them commenced with 
 Tom-all-alone's (see ante, page 6oj, as in the following 
 
 ' Lift of Charles Dickens, vol. iii., page 15. 
 
1 88 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 examples : — Tom-all-alonc's. The Solitary House that 
 was always shut up. Tom-all-alone's. The Solitary 
 House where the grass grew. Tom-all-alone's. The 
 Solitary House where the wind howled. 
 
 All the trial titles are akin to these, and all suggest 
 desolation and ruin, till at last the short but expressive 
 Bleak House was adopted, and Tom-all-alone's, the 
 curious place-name from the neighbourhood of Chatham, 
 was only used incidentally in the tale, as the name of a 
 dilapidated rookery in London. 
 
 Trooper George, Matthew Bagnet, and the " old girl," 
 his wife, are life-like studies, if not actual reproductions 
 of characters Dickens had known ; so are the numerous 
 lawyers, and lawyers' clerks introduced in Bleak House. 
 
 It has occurred to me that the interior view of 
 Chesney Wold in this story, showing the long drawing- 
 room, was probably taken from Tabley Hall, Cheshire. 
 The similarity is most striking. 
 
 In August 1 88 1 I was at Tabley, and in conversation 
 with the late Lord de Tabley I ventured to call his 
 attention to the fact, and to ask him if it was possible 
 that Hablot K. Browne could ever have seen this fine 
 room. He replied, " It is possible enough, as Phiz and 
 Dickens were in this neighbourhood together more than 
 once." The reader will recollect that the owner of 
 Chesney Wold was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and will 
 perhaps agree with me that as Leicester is the old family 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 
 
 189 
 
 name of the De Tableys, here is another very remark- 
 able coincidence ! 
 
 The Se\'en Poor Travellers. In the visitors' 
 book at Watts' Charity, Rochester, under date of iMay 
 iith, 1854, the following names ma}' be seen : — 
 
 yiM^ 
 
 j^/^^-^^^^^^^- 
 
 During this particular visit, Dickens was, no doubt, 
 studying the administration of the Charity at that time, 
 for use in the Christmas number of Household Words. 
 The introduction, describing, as it does, the internal 
 arrangements and surroundings of this probably unique 
 Charity, is in Dickens' best manner ! 
 
 He had been wandering about the neighbouring 
 Cathedral, " and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, 
 with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out 
 of it like a ship's figure-head." ^ 
 
 ' See the engraving of this monument on page Si {Initial letter). 
 
I90 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The description of the building and accommodation 
 for the travellers is, or was at that time, absolutely 
 correct. Of the six little rooms set apart as dormitories 
 
 Watts' Charity. 
 
 for the travellers, the account given by the matron in the 
 tale is also quite accurate. " They sleep in two little 
 outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. I9I 
 
 been, ever since the Charity was founded. It being so 
 very ill-conwenient to me as things is at present, the 
 gentlemen are going to take off a bit of the back-yard, 
 and make a sHp of a room for 'em there, to sit in before 
 they go to bed.' 
 
 "'And then the six poor traveUers," said I, 'will be 
 entirely out of the house ? ' 
 
 " ' Entirely out of the house,' assented the presence, 
 comfortably smoothing her hands. * Which is considered 
 much better for all parties, and much more conwenicnt.' 
 
 " I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, 
 by the emphasis with which the effigy of Master 
 Richard Watts was bursting out of his tomb ; but I 
 began to think, now, that it might be expected to come 
 across the High Street some stormy night, and make a 
 disturbance here." 
 
 An extract from the will of Richard Watts, retaining 
 the old spelling, may be interesting here. The will is 
 dated August 15th, 1579, and directs that to the alms- 
 house already standing beside the Market Cross in the 
 City of Rochester, there be added " six severall rooms 
 with chimneys for the comfort placing and abiding of 
 the poor within the said Citte, and also to be made apt 
 and convenient places therein for VI. good Mattresses or 
 Flockbeds and other good and sufficient furniture to 
 harbor or lodge in Poor Travellers or Wayfare men being 
 no Common Rooges nor Proctors, and they the said 
 
192 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Wayfaring men to harbor and lodge therein no longer 
 than one night unless sickness be the further cause 
 thereof and those poor folks there dwelling shall keep 
 the House sweete make the Beds see to the Furniture 
 keep the same sweete and curtuorsly intreate the said 
 Poor Travellers and to every of the said Poor Travellers 
 at their first coming in to have III Id. and they shall 
 warm them at the fyre of the residence within the said 
 house if nede bee." 
 
 The plain meaning of the testator, Richard Watts, 
 is that six poor men should be courteously received 
 and lodged for one night, and relieved with four- 
 pence in money. The equally plain meaning of 
 Charles Dickens was that the poor were not treated 
 as Watts directs in his will, but were in fact pushed 
 out of the house altogether, and had a slip of a room 
 in the back-yard, where they could sit before going to 
 bed. 
 
 This room is lighted, it may be added, by one ordi- 
 nary street-lamp, ingeniously placed in the yard so that 
 it shines alike into the room, and into the approach to 
 the dormitories ! 
 
 Rogues and tramping vagabonds swarm on the 
 Kentish roads still, though the Proctors, as known to 
 Watts, are extinct and forgotten ; but it has always 
 seemed to me that the good people of Rochester, instead 
 of abolishing this Charity altogether, as was quietly 
 
Rochester Castle. 
 Showing Graveyard in the remains of Castle Moat. 
 
 o 
 
RETROSSECTIVE NOTES. 1 95 
 
 proposed quite recently, ought rather to be proud of it, 
 and after being quite sure they are relieving onl}- the 
 deserving poor (there are plent}^ of them), they should, 
 in the common-sense interpretation of the Founder's 
 Will, give to each " wayfare man " not only a bare four- 
 pence of the present currenc}', but the relative equivalent 
 of fourpence in 1579.^ 
 
 Ample funds exist for doing this, as \"\\atts, for the 
 maintenance of this house, gave " to the Mayor and 
 citizens, all other his lands, tenements, and estates for 
 ever." 
 
 In this Christmas number for 1854, the strong love of 
 Dickens for these old scenes of his bo\^hood must be 
 apparent to all. His visit in the May of this year, when 
 Mark Lemon was with him, must have been a great 
 treat. Here is a brief description of the slumberous old 
 city, written when Dickens was in the prime of life, and 
 in the fullest enjoyment of his extraordinar}' powers : — 
 
 " The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables with 
 old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly 
 garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pave- 
 ment out of a grave red-brick building, as if time carried on 
 business there and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an 
 active stroke of work in Rochester, in the days of the Romans, 
 and the Saxons, and the Xormans ; and down to the times of 
 King John, when the rugged casde — I will not undertake to 
 
 ' Fourpence in the time of Elizabeth would buy a poor man quite a 
 little stock of provisions. What would it buy now ? 
 
196 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 say how many hundreds of years old then — was abandoned 
 to the centuries of weather which had so defaced the dark 
 apertures in its walls that the ruin looks as if the rooks and 
 daws had picked its eyes out." 
 
 The account of the treat to the poor Travellers on 
 this occasion is of course wholly fictitious, although it 
 is accepted as sober truth by many people both in 
 Rochester and elsewhere. 
 
 After the genial author's imaginary company had 
 been feasted with " turkey and a chine," and a jug of 
 punch had been produced, they drank to the memory of 
 good Master Richard Watts. 
 
 " It was the witching hour for story-telling. ' Our 
 whole life. Travellers,' said I, 'is a story more or less 
 intelligible, generally less ; but we shall read it by a 
 clearer light when it is ended. T, for one, am so divided 
 this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know 
 which is which.' " 
 
 The stories being finished, and the wassail too, the 
 party broke up as the Cathedral bell struck Twelve. 
 
 " As I passed along the High Street I heard the waits 
 at a distance, and struck off to find them. They were 
 playing near one of the old gates of the city, at the 
 corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tene- 
 ments, which the clarionet obligingly informed me were 
 inhabited by the minor canons. They had odd little 
 porches over the doors, like sounding-boards over old 
 
J ' , » • J B 
 > > J 3 > J 
 
 Rochester Cathedral and Castle. 
 
 Minor Canon Row, Rochester, 
 (See also Edwin Drood.) 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 199 
 
 pulpits, and I thought I should like to see one of 
 the minor canons come out upon his top step and 
 favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the 
 poor scholars of Rochester, taking for his text the 
 words of his Master relative to the devouring of 
 widows' houses." 
 
 In the morning the party of the night before, after 
 partaking of hot coffee and bread-and-butter, all came 
 out into the street together, and there shook hands. 
 " As for me, I was going to walk by Cobham Woods, as 
 far upon my way to London as I fancied. And now the 
 mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the 
 sun to shine ; and as I went on through the bracing air, 
 seeing the hoar-frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all 
 nature shared in the joy of the great birthday. By 
 Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and the churchyard 
 where the dead had been quietly buried, ' in the sure and 
 certain hope ' which Christmas time inspired.— Thus 
 Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I came to Black- 
 heath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled 
 old trees in Greenwich Park, and was being steam- 
 rattled through the mists, now closing in once more, 
 towards the lights of London." 
 
 It may be well to close this note on the Seven Poor 
 Travellers by giving the full inscription on the tablet 
 to Richard Watts in the south transept of Rochester 
 Cathedral : — 
 
200 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Sacred to the Memory 
 
 of RICHARD WATTS Esq : 
 
 a principal Benefactor to this City 
 
 who departed this hfe Sept. lo. 1579 at 
 
 his Mansion house on Bully hill called SATIS (so named 
 
 by Q. ELIZABETH of glorious memory), and lies 
 
 interr'd near this place as by his Will doth plainly 
 
 appear. By which Will dated Aug. 22. and proved Sep. 
 
 25. 1579. he founded an Almshouse for the relief of poor 
 
 people and for the reception of six poor Travelers 
 
 every night and for imploying the poor of this City. 
 
 The Mayor and Citizens of this City in 
 testimony of their Gratitude and his Merit 
 
 have erected this Monument a.d. 1736. 
 RICHARD WATTS Esq : then Mayor. 
 
 ^^^t^Knp^ 
 
 Signature of Richard Watts. 
 
 On another page an engraving of a fine memorial 
 brass to Charles Dickens is given ; it was very appro- 
 priately placed immediately under Watts' monument. 
 
 Though not strictly in chronological order, it will be 
 convenient to take the rest of the Christmas stories 
 here. 
 
 The Holly Tree, 1855. There is a curious reminis- 
 cence in the opening of this tale, of the journey by 
 
' : ,' ; J 
 
 Priors' Gate, Rochester. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 203 
 
 coach to the " farther borders of Yorkshire," in the 
 days before Nick le by. 
 
 When snowed up at The Holly Ti^ee on a Yorkshire 
 moor, the traveller having speedily exhausted the 
 literature of the inn, amuses himself with recalling his 
 experiences of inns, and a capital series of remembrances 
 of nurse's stories, all connected with inns, follows. 
 
 " My first impressions of an Inn dated from the 
 nursery ; consequently I went back to the nursery as 
 a starting point, and found myself at the knee of a 
 sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a 
 green gown,^ whose speciality was a dismal narrative 
 of a landlord by the roadside, whose visitors unac- 
 countably disappeared for many years, until it was 
 discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to 
 convert them into pies." 
 
 "Then there was the roadside Inn, renowned in my 
 time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, represent- 
 ing in a central compartment of oval form the portrait 
 of Jonathan Bradford, and in four other compartments 
 four incidents -of the tragedy with which the name is 
 associated, — coloured with a hand at once so free and 
 economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's complexion 
 passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostle.r, 
 and, smearing itself off into the next division, became 
 rum in a bottle." 
 
 ' Evidently Mrs. Pipchin. 
 
204 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The Mitre Inn (previously mentioned) was next 
 passed in review, and then " to be continued to-morrow," 
 said I, " when I took my candle to go to bed." 
 
 But the bed took upon itself to continue the train of 
 thought, and here Dickens alludes to the fact, mentioned 
 in his Life and Letters, that he had for years dreamed of 
 a dear friend (his young sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth) 
 " sometimes as still living ; sometimes as returning from 
 the world of shadows to comfort me ; always as being 
 beautiful, placid, and happy, never with any approach to 
 fear or distress." ^ 
 
 And so on, through a succession of inns in Switzer- 
 land, in France, in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, 
 and in Cornwall, where there comes in a remembrance 
 of a glorious excursion in which Dickens and Forster, 
 and " Mac " and " Stanny " were in company, for the 
 
 * This frequently recurring dream or vision of Mary Hogarth (who died 
 in 1837 "at the early age of seventeen "), through the whole of the rest of 
 his life, is one of the most notable incidents in the career of Dickens ; and, 
 if other evidence were wanting, might be instanced as a proof of the deeply 
 affectionate nature of the man. It is remarkable that the words he wrote 
 for her epitaph, "Young, beautiful, and good," are repeated {1838) in 
 Oliver Twist, Chap. XXXIV., where, speaking of the illness of Rose Maylie, 
 he says," The young, the beautiful, and good ;" and again in Chap. XXX IX., 
 also (1840) in The Old Curiosity Shop, at the death of little Nell, he says 
 of her, "so young, so beautiful, so good." Finally, we have the same 
 words in Dombey and ^^«{i847). Chap. L., where Walter Gay, speaking o 
 Florence Dombey, says, "To think that she, so young, so good, and 
 beautiful ! " This is surely not an involuntary reproduction of himself, but 
 a studied, intentional, and very touching tribute to the memory of the dear 
 young friend of his early days. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 205 
 
 humorous account of which sec Forstcr's Li/e of CJiarlcs 
 Dickens^ vol. ii., page 20. 
 
 In Dickens' account of the journey he says, " they 
 made such sketches, those two men (Stanfickl and 
 MacHse), that you would have sworn we had the Spirit 
 of Beauty with us as well as the Spirit of Fun." 
 
 The Wreck of the Golden Mary, 1856. Sixty- 
 seven days out from Liverpool, the good ship Golden 
 Mary^ bound for California, strikes on an iceberg, and 
 the crew and passengers having taken to the boats, the 
 good qualities of the captain and mate at once become 
 manifest. 
 
 The story opens with a capital description of two 
 genial seamen, Captain Ravender and John Steadiman 
 the mate. After a fine account of his ship. Captain 
 Ravender describes his fellow-travellers : — 
 
 *' Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at 
 present, a bright-eyed blooming young wife who was 
 going out to join her husband in California, taking 
 with her their only child, a little girl of three }'ears old, 
 whom he had never seen. — As the chikl had a quantity 
 of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all about her face, 
 and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the 
 name of the Golden Lucy.^ — So we had the Golden 
 Lucy and the Golden JMaryT 
 
 After thirteen days' exposure and privation in an open 
 
 ' See ante^ page 24, 
 
206 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 boat the poor child dies and — " we buried the Golden 
 Lucy in the grave of the Golden MaryT 
 
 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, 1857. 
 The story is told by one Gill Davis, a private in the Royal 
 Marines, and the scene opens on board of the armed 
 sloop, Christopher Columbus, in the South American 
 waters off the Mosquito shore. 
 
 Of himself Gill Davis says : " I was a foundling child 
 picked up somewhere or another, and I always under- 
 stood my Christian name to be Gill. It is true that I 
 was called Gills when employed at Snorridge Bottom, 
 betwixt Chatham and Maidstone, to frighten birds, — 
 but that had nothing to do with the baptism wherein I 
 was made, etc., and wherein a number of things were 
 promised for me by somebody, who let me alone ever 
 afterwards as to performing of them, and who, I con- 
 sider, must have been the beadle. Such name of Gills 
 was entirely owing to my cheeks, or gills, which at that 
 time of my life were of a raspy description. 
 
 " In those climates you don't want to do much. I 
 was doing nothing. I was thinking of the shepherd 
 (my father, I wonder ?) on the hill-sides by Snorridge 
 Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat 
 in all weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie 
 in a corner of his hut by night, and who used to let me 
 go about with him and his sheep by day when I could 
 o-et nothing else to do, and who used to give me so little 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 20/ 
 
 of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away 
 from him — which was what he wanted all along, I 
 expect — to be knocked about the world in preference 
 to Snorridge Bottom.'' 
 
 This is not the only local allusion in the tale ; there 
 is also mentioned a Mr. Commissioner Pordage, an old 
 and esteemed name at Rochester. (See also the notes 
 on Little Dor n't.) 
 
 In the portion of The Haunted House, 1859, 
 written by Dickens, are allusions to his own habit of 
 work, to his belief or otherwise in ghosts in general, to 
 his bloodhound Turk, and to his friend and solicitor, the 
 late Fred Ouvry, Esq., who, as Mr. Uudcry, he describes 
 as playing " whist better than the whole Law List, from 
 the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at the end." 
 
 In the Ghost in ]\L\STER B.'s Room are apparently 
 some playful reminiscences of past days : " Where is my 
 little sister ? " said the ghost, '' and where is the boy I 
 went to school with ? " 
 
 " I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above 
 all things to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he 
 went to school with. I represented to him that probably 
 that boy never did, within human experience, come out 
 well, when discovered. I urged that I m\-self had, in 
 later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school 
 with, and none of them had at all answered." 
 
 Hard Times, 1854. Published originall}' in House- 
 
2o8 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 hohi_ IVords. . The argument of this tale, as explained by 
 Dickens himself, is this : " My satire is against those 
 who see figures and averages, and nothing else — the 
 representation of the wickedest and most enormous vice 
 of this time ; the men who, through long years to come, 
 will do more to damage the really useful truths of political 
 economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole life." 
 
 Coketown in this story is supposed to stand for 
 Manchester, or some other of our Lancashire manufac- 
 turing towns. Of Josiah Bounderby (see also page 79 
 ante) it may be said that though he is undoubtedly to 
 be met with occasionally in " the dark, and true, and 
 tender north," he is also to be heard of sometimes in 
 other parts of the world. 
 
 One of the least successful attempts in this or any 
 of the books of Charles Dickens, is his rendering of the 
 Lancashire dialect ; the utterances put into the mouths of 
 Stephen Blackpool, and others, in Hard Times, are very 
 far from being correct. 
 
 By far the best, most spirited, and life-like part of 
 this story is the description of Mr. Sleary and his circus 
 riders, and it is interesting to note that the inscription 
 on the sign of the Pegasus Arms, where the circus 
 company put up, 
 
 " Good malt makes o;ood beer. 
 Walk in, you'll find it here," etc., etc., 
 
RETROSFECTIVE NOTES. 209 
 
 was taken from an old Inn sign, The Malt Shovel, at the 
 foot of Chatham Hill ! ^ 
 
 Little Dorrit, 1855-6-7. The name Dorrit, with 
 a slight alteration in the spelling, is taken from a 
 Rochester family, and it is an interesting fact that in 
 the graveyard of Rochester Cathedral are still to be seen 
 two tombstones, side by side, on which are engraved the 
 now historic names of Fanny Dorrett and Caleb Pordage 1 1 
 
 There are in this tale other curious revelations, which 
 could not be coincidences merely, but must have occurred 
 to the mind of the writer as recollections of his own boy- 
 hood Such are the prison experiences of the Dorrits. 
 
 Rochester is also incidentally mentioned with other 
 places "on the Dover Road" in Book 2, Chap. X\'III. 
 
 A Tale of Two Cities, 1859, is for the purposes of 
 this book chiefly remarkable for a very graphic account 
 of a journey at night on the Dover Road, in the old 
 coaching days of 1775. 
 
 At the trial of Darnay, it was shown that on the 
 journey to Dover he had " travelled back some dozen 
 miles or more, to a garrison atid dockyard, and there 
 collected information ; a witness was callea to identify 
 him as having been, at the precise time required, in the 
 coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dock\-ard 
 town waiting for another person." The reference is to 
 Chatham. 
 
 ' Recently removed. 
 
 P 
 
2IO CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 There is also a fine description of the neighbourhood 
 of Soho Square, another of the residences of Dickens 
 when a youth of seventeen or eighteen. 
 
 The Uncommercial Traveller. In this series of 
 papers (i860) the writer makes many allusions to 
 memories of his early days, and well-known well- 
 remembered places. To begin with, there is a telling 
 description of the East End of London, familiar to 
 Dickens from his early boyhood. In the article Wapping 
 Workhouse^ he describes his journey through the town, 
 past the India House, with its memories of another 
 Charles (Charles Lamb), pats his little wooden midship- 
 man affectionately " on one leg of his knee-shorts for old 
 acquaintance' sake," and so past Aldgate Pump, and 
 Whitechapel Church, and finds himself " rather inappro- 
 priately for an Uncommercial Traveller — in the Com- 
 mercial Road." 
 
 Travelling Abroad. The whole of these Uncom- 
 mercial papers appeared in All the Year Round, and 
 were written at a period of the author's life when he had 
 come back, as it were, to live in the old neighbourhood ; 
 hence the frequent references to w^ell-remembered 
 localities in Kent. Here is a delightfully fresh descrip- 
 tion of the Dover Road. " So smooth was the old hio;h 
 road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, 
 that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, 
 and the widening river was bearing the ships, white 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 211 
 
 sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the 
 wayside a very queer small boy. 
 
 " ' Holloa ! ' said I, to the very queer small boy, ' where 
 do you live ? ' 
 
 " ' At Chatham,' says he. 
 
 " ' What do you do there ? ' says I. 
 
 " ' I go to school,' says he. 
 
 " I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Pre- 
 sently the very queer small boy says, ' This is Gad's 
 Hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob 
 those travellers, and ran away.' 
 
 " ' You know something about Falstaff, eh ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' All about him,' said the very queer small boy. ' I 
 am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But 
 do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the 
 house there, if you please ! ! 
 
 " ' You admire that house ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' Bless you, sir,' said the ver}^ queer small boy, 
 'when I was not more than half as old as nine, it 
 used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. 
 And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me 
 so fond of it, has often said to me, "If you were to 
 be very persevering and were to work hard, \'ou might 
 some day come to live in it I " Though that's im- 
 possible ! ' said the very queer small boy, drawing a 
 long breath, and now staring at the house out of window 
 with all his might. 
 
212 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 " I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer 
 small boy; for that house happens to be my house, and 
 I have reason to believe that what he said was true." 
 
 The paper is a recollection of foreign travel, and 
 represents the author as '' looking out of the German 
 chariot window in that delicious travellers' trance which 
 knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing 
 but the passing objects and the passing scents and 
 sounds ! " 
 
 The infinite pity and compassion of Charles Dickens 
 is nowhere better shown than in The Great TASMANIA'S 
 Cargo. " I travel constantly, up and down a certain line 
 of railway that has a terminus in London. It is the 
 railway for a large military depot,^ and for other large 
 barracks. To the best of my belief, I have never been 
 on that railway by daylight, without seeing some hand- 
 cuffed deserters in the train." The subject of this paper 
 is, however, an account of the condition of some of the 
 survivors of the campaign in India after the Indian 
 Mutiny, and landed from the troopship Great Tasmania 
 at Liverpool. 
 
 The chapter on Tramps has some very shrewd and 
 discriminating remarks as to the habits of these 
 wanderers. Perhaps nowhere in England are greater 
 numbers and greater varieties of the genus tramp to be 
 encountered, than on the Dover Road. His description 
 
 ' Chatham. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 21 3 
 
 of the tramp's manner of sitting by the roadside with his 
 legs in a dry ditch, or of sleeping in the sun lying on 
 the broad of his back, is only equalled by his account 
 of the crrades and conditions of this far too numerous 
 fraternity. 
 
 " He (the tramp) generally represents himself, in a 
 vague way, as looking out for a job of work ; but he 
 never did work, he never does, and he never will." Then 
 there is the slinking tramp, the well-spoken, glib young 
 man, the exemplary Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, who appear 
 to have spent " the last of their little all on soap," they 
 are so clean. 
 
 " But the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, 
 is the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman, — 
 this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he 
 maunders on between the luxuriant hedges, where (to my 
 thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet- 
 briar are the worse for his going by, and need time to 
 recover from the taint of him in the air." 
 
 Other sorts of tramps — the handicraft tramps who are 
 to be found everywhere are then described. " Surely a 
 pleasant thing if we were in that condition of life (knife 
 grinding) to grind our way through Kent, Sussex, and 
 Surrey. Clock mending, again, except for the slight 
 inconvenience of carrying a clock under one arm, and 
 the monotony of making the bell go, — what a pleasant 
 privilege to give voice to the dumb cottage clock, and 
 
214 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 set it talking to the cottage family again." Dickens then 
 fancies himself as a travelling clock-maker, getting a job 
 to repair the turret stable clock at the Hall (Cobham 
 Hall). " Our task at length accomplished, we should be 
 taken into an enormous servants' hall, and there regaled 
 with beef and bread and powerful ale. Then paid freely 
 we should be at liberty to go, and should be told by a 
 pointing helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted 
 ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should 
 see the town lights right afore us. So should we lie that 
 night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus 
 (at Strood), and rise early next morning to be betimes 
 on tramp again." 
 
 The tramping bricklayers and their ways, the tramping 
 soldier, " his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize," 
 the tramping sailor and others are next taken, and the 
 paper closes with a vivid description of a famous camping 
 ground near Gad's Hill, for which see the chapter on 
 Gad's Hill. 
 
 DULLBOROUGH ToWN, *' my boyhood's home, is of 
 course Rochester, and in this paper are some of the best 
 of the many glimpses given in the writings of Dickens 
 of his own childhood in this place. The half-humorous, 
 half-regretful mood in which this Chapter XH. is written 
 is very noticeable, and it is more than probable that 
 nearly all these incidents (recalled to the mind of Charles 
 Dickens by a leisurely stroll through Chatham and 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 21/ 
 
 Rochester in the period of middle life) are literall}^ his 
 own experiences when a boy. 
 
 On leaving the Chatham station, which is here 
 purposely confounded with the terminus of the S. E. R. 
 at Strood, the first discovery is that " the station had 
 swallowed up the playing-field." This playing-field 
 was immediately in front of Ordnance Terrace, and the 
 writer, among others, can speak to the perfect accuracy 
 of this description, for it was at one time his playing- 
 field, too ! 
 
 " It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn trees, the 
 hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had 
 given place to the stoniest of jolting roads ; while beyond 
 the station an ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its 
 jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous 
 for more destruction. 
 
 " When I had been let out at the platform door, like a 
 prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked 
 in again over the low wall, at the scene of departed 
 glories. Here, in the hay-making time, had I been 
 delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an 
 immense pile (of haycock;, by my countrymen, the 
 victorious British (boy next door and his two cousins), 
 and had been recognised with ecstasy by my affianced 
 one (]\Iiss Green), who had come all the way from 
 England (second house in the terrace) ^ to ransom me 
 ' No. 2, Ordnance Terrace, Chatham, which is close at hand. 
 
2l8 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 and marry me." He then describes the scene of many 
 a cricket-match between the rival schools of Boles's and 
 Coles's (otherwise Baker's and Giles's), and turning away 
 for a ramble through the town, finds that the old coach 
 office of Timpson's is gone. "When I departed from 
 DuUborough in the strawy arms of Timpson's Blue-eyed 
 Maid, Timpson's was a moderate-sized coach-office," he 
 then gives an exact description of what Simpson's coach- 
 office used to be in the memory of the middle-aged 
 inhabitants of Rochester. 
 
 " Of course the town had shrunk fearfully since I was 
 a child there. I found the High Street little better than 
 a lane. There was a public clock in it which I had 
 supposed to be the finest clock in the world : whereas it 
 now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and 
 weak a clock as ever I saw. 
 
 " The Theatre! was in existence, I found ; and I resolved 
 to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard the 
 Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared 
 to me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by 
 backing up against the stage-box in which I was posted, 
 while struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond. 
 
 '' It was within those walls that I had learnt, as from 
 a page of English history, how that wicked king slept in 
 war time on a sofa much too short for him, and how 
 fearfully his conscience troubled his boots." 
 ' The Theatre Royal, Star Hill, Rochester. 
 
Gatehouse and Cathedral Precincts, Rochester. 
 This Drawing was left unfinished at the death of the Artist, Mr. William Hull. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 221 
 
 Then follows an account of the way in which evil 
 days had fallen upon this theatre, how part of it had 
 been let to a dealer in wine and bottled beer, how it 
 was as a theatre To Let, and hopelessly so, and how 
 there had been no performance there, except of a 
 panorama, for a long time. " Xo, there was no com- 
 fort in the Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like 
 my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it might be 
 coming back some day, but there was little promise of 
 it." The Theatre, new-fronted and entirely altered, is 
 now (1885) turned into a Conservative Club ! 
 
 The uncommercial spirits do not appear to have been 
 improved by a visit to the ^Mechanics' Institution, nor 
 the Corn Exchange, nor by wandering through the 
 streets, recognising here and there a once familiar face. 
 One such recognition it would be unpardonable to omit. 
 
 " I had not gone fifty paces along the street when 
 I was suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who 
 got out of a little phaeton at the doctor's door, and went 
 into the doctor's house. Immediately the air was filled 
 with the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of 
 years opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness 
 of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, ' God bless my 
 soul ! Joe Specks.' 
 
 " Through many changes and much work, I had pre- 
 served a tenderness for the memor}' of Joe, forasmuch 
 as we had made the acquaintance of Roderick Random 
 
222 CHILHHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but an 
 ingenuous and engaging hero." 
 
 The Uncominercial Traveller makes himself known to 
 Joe Specks who had married Lucy Green, and when 
 their youngest child came in after dinner, — 
 
 '■ I saw again in that little daughter, -^he little face of 
 the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite touched my foolish 
 heart. We talked immensely. Specks and Mrs. Specks, 
 and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old 
 selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were 
 — dead and gone as the playing field that had become a 
 wilderness of rusty iron, and the property of S. E. R. 
 
 " When I went to catch my train at night I was in a 
 more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been 
 all day ; and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too. 
 Ah ! who was I that I should quarrel with the town for 
 being changed to me, when I myself had come back so 
 changed to it ! All my early readings and early imagi- 
 nations dated from this place, and I took them away so 
 full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I 
 brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser 
 and so much the worse ! " 
 
 In Night Walks are some striking Night Thoughts,^ 
 
 ' It may be objected that surely there is nothing in the writings of 
 Charles Dickens bearing any analogy to those of Dr. Edward Young ; but 
 indeed there is, and here is a line from Martin C/mzzlezuit, Chap. 
 XLVII., that might have been taken direct from the Night Thoughts — 
 " What words can paint tremendous truths like these ! " 
 
R^^fROSPECTIVE NOTES. 223 
 
 suggested by the localities through which he wandered, 
 and short as the paper is, there are in it some of the 
 most characteristic descriptive passages, written in 
 Dickens' best manner. 
 
 In his wanderings he haunts St. Sepulchre's, the Old 
 Bailey, the King's Bench Prison, the Old Kent Road, and 
 so round by Bethlehem Hospital, to Westminster, and 
 Old Palace Yard. Westminster Abbey suggested "a 
 wonderful procession of its dead among the dark 
 arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the 
 century following it than by all the centuries going 
 before." 
 
 The chapter on Chambers opens thus : " Having 
 occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who 
 occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in Grays Inn, 
 I afterwards took a turn in the large square of that 
 stronghold of melancholy, reviewing with congenial sur- 
 roundings my experiences of chambers." 
 
 He then describes various chambers in the different 
 Inns, and first we have a description of a set o{ chambers 
 reminding us of those of Tommy Traddles in Coppej^field, 
 for he tells us of " a young fellow who had sisters, and 
 young country friends, and who gave them a little 
 party — in the course of which they played at Blind- 
 man's Buff." 1 
 
 In one set of chambers a mysterious visitor wslks in 
 See also page 187, for another mention of these chambers. 
 
224 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 at night, and claims all the furniture as his, and, upon a 
 decanter of gin being produced, with sugar and hot 
 water to assist, " the visitor drank the whole before he 
 had been an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the 
 church of St. Mary in the Strand." 
 
 The Nurse's Stories resemble strongly in their 
 daring improbability, and quaint humour, some of the 
 stories told by Mr. W. R. S. Ralston, and notably some 
 of his Russian Folk Tales. 
 
 Whether we are indebted to Mrs. Pipchin for some of 
 these " hair-raising nightmares " cannot now be known. 
 It is certain, however, that some of the uncanniest of 
 •them all had their origin, or were suggested, in the 
 Ordnance Terrace days at Chatham, and it is equally 
 certain that Mary Weller was the young woman who 
 told some of these ' Stories.^ 
 
 " The first diabolical character who intruded himself 
 on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at 
 DuUborough) was a certain Captain Murderer. This 
 wretch must have been an offshoot of the Blue-Beard 
 family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in 
 those times.— The young woman who brought me 
 acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoy- 
 ment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember — 
 as a sort of introductory overture — by clawing the 
 air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow 
 groan. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 22$ 
 
 " So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combi- 
 nation with this infernal captain, that I sometimes used 
 to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old 
 enough to hear the story again just yet. But she never 
 spared me one word of it. — This female bard — may 
 she have been repaid m\' debt of obligation to her in the 
 matter of nightmares and perspirations ! — reappears in 
 my memory as the daughter of a shipwright. Her name 
 was Mercy, though she had none on me." 
 
 There is a strong flavour of shipbuilding in the story 
 of a shipwright whose name was Chips, who worked in 
 the Government Yard ; " his father's name before him 
 was Chips, and his father's name before ////;/ was Chips, 
 and they were all Chipses." 
 
 While Chips was working in the Yard on some 
 repairs to an old Sevent)'-four, the Devil appeared to 
 him, and ultimately Chips sold himself to the Evil One 
 (" the bargain had run in the family for a long time ") 
 for '' an iron pot and a bushel of tenpcnny nails, and half 
 a ton of copper, and a rat that could speak." 
 
 This rat was a thougJit-rcadhig animal, and some- 
 times not only anticipated the utterances of Chips, but 
 came out with the following refrain in reply — 
 
 A Lemon has pips, 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 And Til have Chips. 
 
 Those who knew Charles Dickens personally, will 
 
 Q 
 
226 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 remember well the delight he took in such gruesome 
 tales as these Nurse s Stories. 
 
 In Birthday Celebrations, mentioned in a former 
 chapter, are to be found unmistakable recollections of 
 his own happy childhood. 
 
 " My memory presents a birthday when Olympia and 
 I were taken by an unfeeling relative— some cruel uncle, 
 or the like — to a slow torture called an Orrery. The 
 terrible instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and 
 I had expressed a profane wish in the morning that it 
 was a play ; for which a serious aunt had probed my 
 conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming a 
 bestowed half-crown." 
 
 ^'' The first magic lantern I ever saw was secretly and 
 elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very 
 juvenile birthday ; but it wouldn't act, and its images 
 were dim. My experience of adult birthday magic 
 lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate, but has 
 certainly been similar." 
 
 And so, through a variety of birthdays up to man- 
 hood, the paper ending with a humorous description of 
 an imaginary celebration of Shakespeare's Birthday at 
 Dullborough. 
 
 Chatham Dockyard, i860. In this chapter we are 
 taken to the marshy country on the banks of the estuary 
 of the Thames, near Cooling ; a delightfully quiet place 
 for an idle ramble on a fine summer day, and a part of 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 227 
 
 the country that Dickens first became acquainted with 
 on his taking up his residence at Gad's Hill Place, distant 
 six or seven miles. He was afterwards, to the close of 
 his life, very partial to these low^-lying marshes, and 
 made use of them again in 1861, in Great Expectations. 
 
 This curious corner of the county of Kent has quite 
 recently been made accessible to all, by a new branch 
 line of the South-Eastern Railway, and is well worth a 
 visit. Only by a personal visit on a suitable day can 
 the freshness and accuracy of the descriptive parts of this 
 Chapter, and of those in Great Expectations, be fully 
 realised and appreciated. 
 
 Near an old fort in these marshes the Uncommercial 
 Traveller meets a boy " with an intelligent face burnt to 
 a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of 
 the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived 
 nothing incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and 
 meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I was delicate 
 of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered." 
 
 With this boy " I recently consorted on a breezy 
 day when the river leaped about us, and was full of 
 life. — Peace and abundance were on the country side 
 in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest 
 seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped 
 sea in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed the 
 distance. — While he (the boy) thus discoursed, he 
 several times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of 
 
228 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of 
 ' the Yard.' Pondering his lessons after we had parted, 
 I bethought me that the Yard was one of our large 
 public Dockyards, and that it lay hidden among the 
 crops down in the dip beyond the windmills, as if it 
 m.odestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and 
 sought to trouble no man. Taken with this modesty on 
 the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard's 
 acquaintance." 
 
 Accordingly he takes boat and crosses the Medway, 
 and landing at the stairs, proceeds to examine and 
 describe the gun-wharf, the building of the Achilles, with 
 his twelve hundred clattering and banging workmen, the 
 tributary workshops, where they make rivets, punch 
 holes in the iron plates, and shear off superfluous portions 
 of thick iron ; where they make oars for the ships' boats, 
 and saw timbers for the ships. After this he comes to 
 the sauntering part of his expedition, and consequently 
 to the core of his uncommercial pursuits. 
 
 " Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I 
 meet with tokens of its quiet and retiring character. 
 The white stones of the pavement present no other trace 
 of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one 
 of whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional 
 echoes. But for a whisper in the air suggestive of saw- 
 dust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws of many 
 movements might be miles away. Down below here is 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 229 
 
 the great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in 
 various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process. 
 Above it, on a tram-road supported by pillars, is a 
 Chinese Enchanter's Car, which fishes the logs up, 
 when sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away 
 with them to stack them. When I was a child (the 
 Yard being then familiar to me) I used to think that I 
 should like to play at Chinese Enchanter, and to have 
 that apparatus placed at my disposal by a beneficent 
 country. 
 
 Sauntering among the rope-making, I am spun into 
 a state of blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life 
 seems to be so untwisted by the process as that I can 
 see back to very early days indeed." 
 
 In Titbull's Almshouses occurs again a distinct 
 reference to the venerable College at Cobham : " A 
 charming rustic retreat for old men and women ; in a 
 quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English county, 
 behind a picturesque church and among rich old convent 
 gardens." 
 
 With the Medicine Men of Civilisation, in which 
 are some well-considered strictures on the follies of our 
 modern Funeral customs, and a reminiscence of a funeral 
 which he attended when a very little boy, these Uncom- 
 mercial Notes must terminate. The Chapters of the 
 Uncommercial Traveller^ written in the prime of the 
 author's life, and exhibiting as they do very favourably 
 
230 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 his unrivalled descriptive powers, may yet be said to be 
 tinctured with sadness ; but Charles Dickens has left it 
 on record {Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. VI.) that, "memory, 
 howev^er sad, is the best and purest link between this 
 world and a better ! " 
 
 The story of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, 1861, appeared 
 originally in All the Year Round. It may be observed 
 that upon Charles Dickens purchasing Gad's Hill Place, 
 and going to reside there, his old love for the neighbour- 
 hood seems at once to have revived ; not that it had ever 
 really relaxed at any period of his life, but from that 
 time, the favourite localities of his boyhood again appear 
 prominently in his works. 
 
 In the first chapter little Pip, the hero of the tale, is 
 introduced, and in Cooling Churchyard, shown in the 
 engraving, a convict escaped from the hulks at Chatham 
 suddenly pounces on him, and under threats of having 
 " his heart and his liver," makes him promise to bring 
 him in the morning a file, and some "wittles." 
 
 A fine account follows of the morning mists on the 
 marshes, in the depths of winter ; and the humour turns 
 to pathos in the description which follows, where the 
 poor starving wretch is represented as almost too far 
 gone to eat and drink the good things Pip has stolen 
 for him. 
 
 " He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to 
 sec liim drop down before my face, and die of deadly 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 
 
 231 
 
 cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when 
 I handed him the file, and he laid it down on the grass, 
 it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it if he had 
 not seen my bundle. ' What's in the bottle, boy ? ' said 
 he. ' Brandy,' said I. He was already handing mince- 
 meat down his throat in the most curious manner — more 
 
 Cooling Church by Moonlight. 
 
 like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a 
 violent hurry than a man who was eating it — but he 
 left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the 
 while so violently that it was quite as much as he could 
 do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth 
 without biting it off. ' I think you have got the ague,' 
 
232 CHILDHOOD A^D YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 said I. 'I'm much of your opinion, boy,' said he. ' It's 
 bad about here,' I told him. ' You've been lying out on 
 the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic 
 too.' ' I'll cat my breakfast afore they're the death of 
 me,' said he. ' I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet you.' 
 He was gobbling mince-meat, meat-bone, bread, cheese, 
 and pork-pie all at once ; staring distrustfully while he 
 did so at the mist all around us, and often stopping — 
 even stopping his jaws — to listen." — Chap. III. 
 
 In Chap. VI I. Pip goes to Rochester with Mr. 
 Pumblechook on his way to Miss Havisham's. " I 
 had heard of Miss Havisham up town — everybody, for 
 miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town — 
 as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a 
 large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and 
 who led a life of seclusion." 
 
 In the tale this is called Satis House, but Mr. 
 Forster tells us that Restoration House is the one 
 Dickens had in view. I give here, on another page, 
 a view of Restoration House from the Vines, and also 
 a view of the real Satis House as it at present exists. 
 The latter stands on the site of the celebrated mansion, 
 where in the time of Richard Watts Queen Elizabeth 
 was lodged and entertained. 
 
 Restoration House is a fine specimen of Elizabethan 
 or Jacobean domestic architecture, and is now the 
 property of Stephen T. Aveling, Esq. ; it seems to have 
 
Restoration House. 
 The " Satis House "' of Great Expectations. 
 
 Satis House, Rochester. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE AOTES. 
 
 235 
 
 had great attractions for Dickens, and will be referred to 
 again further on. 
 
 The Guildhall, Rochester. 
 
 In Chap. XIII. Pip is bound apprentice to his good 
 brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, and there is a graphic 
 sketch of the Guildhall with its ".shining black portraits 
 
236 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 on the walls, which my inartistic eye regarded as a 
 composition of hardbake and sticking-plaster." 
 
 The Blue Boar in this tale is meant for the Bull 
 Hotel. There is an inn in the High Street with the 
 sign of the Blue Boar, but the description in every 
 particular points to The Bull, and the other sign is 
 probably only introduced to make the locality less easy 
 of identification. 
 
 The notable recollections of Dickens in this tale are 
 the convicts and the convict-ships, " like wicked Noah's 
 arks," the ancient city with its suburbs and surroundings, 
 and perhaps, in the childhood of Pip, some tender glim- 
 merings of his own early life. 
 
 Of the characters in this book the most easily recog- 
 nisable as studies from life, are the Old Bailey Attorney 
 with his creaking boots, and his " halo of scented soap ; " 
 Mr. Jaggers comes, in point of time, nearly at the end 
 of a long list of lawyers, but he is surely one of the 
 finest descriptive efforts of Charles Dickens. Old Bill 
 Barley, of Mill Pond Bank, too, is a rare example of 
 observation and power of expression in a very few 
 words ; no one in the tale had seen this waterside 
 curiosity (except .his daughter Clara), but he had been 
 heard vibrating in the beam, and " pegging with some 
 dreadful instrument overhead," and he remains as one of 
 the realities of the story ! 
 
 Old Bill Barley and Commodore Trunnion in Peregrine 
 
. Gatehouse of Cathedral Close, Rochester. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 239 
 
 Pickle are so much alike, in speech at least, that we shall 
 probably not err greatly in supposing that Dickens had 
 the Commodore in his mind when he created the gouty 
 old Purser in this tale. 
 
 The following passage possibly records a frequent 
 experience of Charles Dickens ; in the tale it is the 
 experience of " Pip," after he had for a time realised 
 his expectations : — 
 
 " It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, 
 and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly 
 recognised and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople 
 even darted out of their shops, and went a little way down the 
 street before me, that they might turn, as if they had forgotten 
 something, and pass me face to face — on which occasions I 
 don't know whether they or I made the most pretence; they 
 of not doing it, or I of not seeing it." 
 
 The story of Great Expectations lies either in 
 Rochester and neighbourhood, or London, and, like 
 Edwin Drood, is so full of Rochester and London that 
 either book might, equally with his terrible story of the 
 French Revolution, have been called A Tale of Two Cities. 
 
 Our Mutual Friend, 1864, cannot be said to 
 contain many recollections of the author's own child- 
 hood, but there are in it the sketches of waterside places 
 at the East End of London (places which Dickens had 
 known well as a little boy) which are as good as any- 
 thing in all his writings. 
 
240 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The ruined windmill mentioned in the story was a 
 conspicuous object on the banks of the Thames fifty 
 years since, and here in this mill Gaffer Hexam " dwelt 
 deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the riggers, 
 and the mast, oar, and block makers ''■ — the very spot, 
 in fact, where Dickens' godfather, Christopher Huffam, 
 had formerly carried on a lucrative business (see 
 Chap. III.). 
 
 Before proceeding to the last of the books of Dickens, 
 it may be briefly noted here that there are in occasional 
 papers in Household Words and All the Year Round, 
 other distinct recollections of his own early days ; also in 
 some of the Christmas numbers not previously men- 
 tioned, there are many such allusions. They can, how- 
 ever, only be indicated here, and first, in Household 
 Words for May 1850, the Begging-letter Writers 
 horse drops dead at Chatham. This town is also 
 selected for use in TiiE Detective Police, July 1850, 
 and in One Man in a Dockyard, September 185 1, 
 there is besides a description of the " Yard," a fine 
 passage on Rochester Castle, as follows, " What a brief 
 little practical joke I seemed to be, in comparison with 
 its solidity, stature, strength, and length of life." 
 
 Then there is The CHRISTMAS Tree, 1850. '' Being 
 at home again, and alone, the only person in the house 
 awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination 
 which I do not care to resist, to my own Childhood ; " 
 
3 O 9 -> » > 
 
 R 
 
" Jasper's Gatehouse " 
 
 Showing door of "Postern Stair," on the plate of which Mr. Hull 
 has playfully put the word Jasper. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 243 
 
 there are also LYING AWAKE, the beautiful allegorical 
 tale, The Child's Story, written in 1852, with its 
 touching, almost prophetic, allusions to events which 
 were to happen in his own family circle, and DoWN 
 WITH THE Tide. All these shorter pieces are very 
 thoughtfully written, and will repay a very careful 
 reading. 
 
 In Edwin Drood Charles Dickens was doing some 
 of the best work he had ever done, but like his own life, 
 alas ! " it was appointed that the book should shut with a 
 spring for ever and ever." ^ 
 
 The surname Drood is adapted from that of a Mr. 
 Trood, formerly landlord of the Falstaff Inn, Gad's Hill, 
 and the scene of the tale is laid chiefly in Rochester 
 under the thin disguise of Cloisterham. 
 
 In looking through the MS. of this tale in the Forster 
 collection at South Kensington, three things at least are 
 noteworthy. In the first place, as originally written, the 
 first chapter. The Dawn, opens thus: "An ancient 
 English Cathedral Toivii ? How can the ancient Eng- 
 lish Cathedral town be here ? " The word Town was 
 afterwards struck out and Tower substituted in the 
 printed book. 
 
 In the second place it is noticeable that though in 
 this MS. interlineations and corrections abound, yet in 
 Edwin Drood's letter to his uncle John Jasper, the text 
 
 ' A Tale of Two Cities^ Book i, Chap. Ill, 
 
244 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 runs straight on almost without alteration, and indeed 
 the entire folio of this part of Chap. X. is about the 
 clearest example in the whole MS. This is the more 
 remarkable when we remember that Dickens in one of 
 his letters (written some years before) represents himself 
 as getting on famously with his work, " no blotting, as 
 when writing fiction ; but straight on, as when writing 
 ordinary letter " {Life, vol. i., p. 20). So thoroughly to 
 the very last did he throw himself into his characters, 
 and identify himself luith his characters. 
 
 In the third place this MS. is imperfect ; one folio of 
 the opening of the eleventh chapter is missing ! It is 
 that portion describing Staple Inn, and the mysterious 
 inscription P. J. T. ! 
 
 During the writing of Edwin Drood Charles Dickens 
 was frequently in Rochester, and was as frequently seen 
 by Mr. Miles the Sacristan, to be studying the Cathedral 
 and its precincts most attentively. 
 
 In this tale, though, alas ! only a fragment, the 
 solution of the mystery is certainly foreshadowed. Jasper 
 (a honoured local name by-the-byc) murders his nephew, 
 Edwin Drood, and it is with reason supposed that, in 
 the end, the crime would have been found to have been 
 committed in the Cathedral itself! 
 
 In Chap. XXIII., Jasper, in the incoherent ramblings 
 produced by opium, lets fall a hint or two as to his 
 crime and its inevitable remorse : " A hazardous and 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 245 
 
 perilous journey, over abysses where a slip would be 
 destruction. Look down, look down ! You see what lies 
 at the bottom there ? " " He is on his feet, speaking in 
 a whisper, and as if in the dark. — No struggle, no 
 consciousness of peril, no entreaty — and yet I never 
 saw that before." 
 
 The Crypt, Rochester Cathedral. 
 (After a drawing by " Phiz.'") 
 
 There is in this passage some suggestion of a reason 
 for that strange nocturnal visit to the Cathedral, when 
 Jasper, accompanied by Durdles, climbs the heights of 
 the great tower, and looks down from Triforium and 
 clerestory galleries, as Dickens himself had surely done ! 
 
 His last visit to Rochester was on Monday the 
 
246 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 6th June, 1870, when he walked over from Gad's Hill, 
 accompanied by his dogs. On this occasion he was seen 
 by several persons leaning on the fence in front of 
 Restoration House, and apparently examining the old 
 mansion with great care. It was remarked at the time 
 that there would be some notice of this building in the 
 tale then current, and nothing was more likely, for on 
 the following day, Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday, we 
 find he had in the last chapter of the story ever to be 
 written, reintroduced "the Vines," a fine open space 
 immediately in front of Restoration House.^ 
 
 There is a passage in Great Expectations, Chap. 
 XXIX., descriptive of this same house, which seems to 
 have an additional meaning now. " I had stopped to 
 look at the house as I passed, and its seared red-brick 
 walls, blocked windows, and strong green ivy, clasping 
 even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and tendons, 
 as if with sinewy old arms, made up a jich attractive 
 DiysteiyT 
 
 Another easily recognisable architectural feature in 
 this work, " The Nun's House," or Eastgate House, is a 
 La-dies' School no longer, but externally, at least, it 
 presents the same appearance as when Dickens was a 
 boy here ; so does the picturesque block of buildings 
 immediately opposite to it, mentioned in the tale as 
 
 * "The Vines" was formerly a vineyard, and it will be noted that in 
 the tale Dickens calls it the Monk's Vineyard. 
 
X 
 u 
 o 
 
 X 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 249 
 
 Mr. Sapsea's premises ; so does the west front of the 
 Cathedral itself, and indeed the entire surroundines of 
 
 o 
 
 this quiet spot are but little changed in the last fifty or 
 sixty years ! 
 
 The figure of Mr. Sapsea's father " in the act of 
 
 Eastgate House, Rochester. 
 
 selling " (see initial letter, page 64), which in the story is 
 said to face the Nun's House, was really to be seen some 
 thirty to forty years since over the door of a house in 
 St. Margaret's Banks, Rochester. In times long since 
 passed (practical joking being then a venial offence), 
 several generations of young officers in succession 
 
250 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 attempted to remove this " wooden effigy," but he was 
 too firmly fixed, and defied all their efforts. 
 
 In this story again there is evidence of the results of 
 the early readings at Chatham. 
 
 The Princess Puffer (who dealt in opium) asks both 
 Edwin Drood and Mr. Datchery for a specific sum of 
 money, three-and-sixpence, and in each case succeeds in 
 getting it. Mr. Datchery, however, remarks, " Wasn't it 
 a little cool to name your sum ? Isn't it customary to 
 leave the amount open ? Mightn't it have the appear- 
 ance, to the young gentleman — only the appearance — 
 that he was rather dictated to ? " 
 
 In Mrs. \nc\\hd\6!s Lovers' Vows^ Act III., Scene i, Baron 
 Wildersheim is asked by a supposed beggar to give him 
 a dollar, and the Baron replies, " This is the first time I 
 was ever dictated to by a beggar what to give him." 
 
 My illustrations to this, and some other portions of 
 this book, are from careful drawings by the late William 
 Hull, of Manchester and Rydal, and have been univer- 
 sally admired, as being faithful representations of 
 CloistcrJiam and its antiquities. I shall not be likely to 
 forget the delight of miy friend, on taking him a drive 
 from the Bull at Rochester, to Cooling, and Cliffe, and 
 Gad's Hill, nor his having the brougham stopped that he 
 might more closely examine the brilliant effect of some 
 mosses, growing on the reddest of red tiles, on an old 
 building near Cliffe Street. 
 
Rochester Cathedral (West Door). 
 
 ^lM4XM^%:x^g?9JP^L^^WiEiSiBl 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 " Born AT Portsmouth seventh of February I812 died at Gadshill place H 
 BY Rochester ninth of June 1570 Buried in Westminster Abbeyg€^-'30 
 
 ^ TO CONNECT HIS MEMORY WITH THE SCENES IN WHICH HIS EARLIEST AND HIS LATEST '^ 
 >: YEARS WERE PASSED AND WITH THE ASSOCIATIONS OF ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL AND J 
 I ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD WHICH EXTENDED OVER ALL HIS LIFE -(^^Si^Q^SXlVSyaXD • 
 
 J This tablet with the sanction of the Dean and Chapter is placed by'his executors y 
 
 Brass in Wall of South Transept, Rochester Cathedral. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE NOTES. 253 
 
 " I must come here again, and try and fix some of 
 this wonderful colour next summer," he quietly remarked, 
 as we terminated our visit to Gad's Hill; but, it was not 
 to be for him, before " next summer " came round, he 
 was laid at rest in the quiet church}-ard at Grasmere. 
 
 Mr. Edward Hull also has, since his brother's death, 
 made many drawings for this work, and especialh' the 
 views at Cobham, the two Schools of Charles Dickens, 
 the Cedar Trees at Gad's Hill, the Houses at Ordnance 
 Terrace and on the Brook, and a number of interesting 
 views about Chatham and Rochester. 
 
 It is most probable, I think, that had Charles Dickens 
 lived to complete Edzvin Drood, some of the \-iews of 
 Cloisterham gi\-en here would have been engraved as 
 illustrations to the story. 
 
 The tailpiece is from a sketch made on June 9th, 
 1881 ; the show of wreaths, floral crosses, bouquets, and 
 single flowers, laid on the grave in Westminster Abbey, 
 on the anniversary of the death of Dickens, has, I am 
 assured, been more than maintained since then ! 
 
 With one short extract {Edwin Drood, Chap. XVI.) 
 these retrospective notes may appropriately close ; it 
 has a sad, almost prophetic meaning now. Charles 
 Dickens was telling us of a Christmas Eve in Cloister- 
 ham, and he thus beautifully describes what he himself 
 had, no doubt, seen and felt : — 
 
 " A few strange faces in the streets ; a few other 
 
2 54 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 faces, half strange and half fanailiar, once the faces of 
 Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and women 
 who come back from the outer world at long intervals. 
 To these, the striking of the Cathedral clock, and the 
 cawing of the rooks, are like voices of their nursery time. 
 " To such as these, it has happened in their dying hours 
 afar off, that they have imagined their chamber floor to 
 be strewed with the autumnal leaves fallen from the elm 
 trees in the close : so have the rustling sounds and fresh 
 scents of their earliest impressions revived, when the 
 circle of their lives was very nearly traced, and the 
 beo-innine and the end were drawing: close toerether." 
 
 "They " (the flowers) "mark the graves of those who had very tender 
 loving friends." — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. LIV. 
 
 The End. 
 
Strood Hill, Kent. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Admiralty Court . . . loi 
 Agassiz, Professor . . .127 
 Aged, The . . _ . . 133 
 Ainsworth, Wm. Harrison . 167 
 Allen, Mrs. . . 23, 52, 53, 62 
 All the Year Round . 127, 240 
 
 Alphington . . 4. 105, 106 
 Alphington, Mile-end Cottage at 171 
 American visitors to Gad's Hill 121 
 Arches Court . . . loi, 140 
 Astley's . . . . .140 
 Aylesford . . .152 
 
 B. 
 Bailey. Junr. .... 183 
 
 Baker, Mrs 29 
 
 Ballantine, Serjt. . . .18 
 
 Barham, Rev. R. H. . .113 
 
 Barnaby Rudge . . 4> 174 
 
 Barrow, Charles . . .11 
 
 ,, Elizabeth . . .11 
 
 „ Jno. Henry . 52, 104 
 
 ,, Thomas . . .12 
 
 Bath and Bristol . , .165 
 
 Bayham Street . . -67 
 
 Begging-Letter Writer, The . 240 
 
 Beverley, Master . . .90 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Birthday Celebrations 24, 58, 226 
 
 Blacking Bottle period . . 2 
 
 ,, Makers, Rival . . 73 
 
 ,, Manufactory 72, 79, 81 
 
 136, 166 
 
 Blackmore, Mr. 94 to 98, loi, 136 
 
 Blank Verse . . . . i 
 
 Bleak House 59, 60, 74, 91, 92, 187 
 
 Bloomsbury Christening . 
 
 
 109 
 
 Blue-eyed Maid 
 
 65', 
 
 218 
 
 Blue Boar, The (and see 
 
 Bull 
 
 
 Hotel) .... 
 
 . 
 
 2^6 
 
 Blunderstone . 
 
 
 18; 
 
 Boarding House, The 
 
 109, 
 
 140 
 
 Book-backs at Gad's Hill 
 
 122— 
 
 -126 
 
 Bonny Jane 
 
 . 
 
 52 
 
 Boswell .... 
 
 , 
 
 7 
 
 Bounderby, Josiah . 
 
 79. 
 
 208 
 
 Bowden, Mr. Jno. W. 
 
 87,8c 
 
 1, 90 
 
 Boz .... 109 
 
 , no, 
 
 153 
 
 ,, Sketches by 
 
 23, 
 
 140 
 
 Brass, Sampson 
 
 
 174 
 
 Bray, Mr. Richard . 
 
 7c 
 
 », 87 
 
 British Museum Library 
 
 97, 
 
 102, 
 142 
 
 Brook, House on the 42, 55, 
 
 187 
 
 Brooker, Mr. John . 
 
 . 120, 
 
 121 
 
 Brown, Dr. . 
 
 98, 99 
 
256 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Browne, Hablot K. (Phiz) 58, 173, 
 
 184 
 
 Budden. Major . . .121 
 
 ,, Mr. . . . 109, 142 
 
 Bull Hotel, The 144, 147, 161, 236, 
 
 250 
 Burnett, Mrs 18 
 
 C. 
 
 i75> 
 
 Camden Town 67, 165 
 Captain, The Half-Pay , 
 Chalet, The Swiss . .121, 
 Chalk . . . .30, 
 Chambers . . . . 
 
 Chatham . 21, 22, 148, 153, 
 
 206 - 
 
 177 
 
 23 
 
 131 
 
 158 
 
 223 
 
 188, 
 
 211 
 
 Chatham, Fire at . . .40 
 
 ,, Church . . 44, 62 
 
 ,, Railway Station 36, 214 
 
 ,, Dockyard 47, 48, 49, 
 
 225 — 229 
 
 Chesney Wold . . .188 
 
 Child's Dream of a Star . . 47 
 
 Child's History of England 72, 95 
 
 Child's vStory . 
 
 • 59, 
 
 243 
 
 Chimes, The . 
 
 
 178 
 
 Chips 
 
 . 
 
 225 
 
 Christmas Carol, A . 
 
 .174- 
 
 -178 
 
 ,, Dinner . 
 
 . 
 
 141 
 
 ,, Stories 
 
 . 
 
 240 
 
 ,, Tree, The 
 
 . 
 
 240 
 
 Chuzzlewit, Martin 
 
 • 179- 
 
 -183 
 
 ,, Jonas 
 
 
 181 
 
 Cloisterham . 134, 
 
 243' 250, 
 
 253 
 
 Clover Lane . 
 
 . 
 
 56 
 
 Cobham 30, 113, 121, 154— 
 
 165, 
 
 
 178, 199, 
 
 229 
 
 Cobham Hall 
 
 , 
 
 214 
 
 Coketown (Manchester) . 
 
 208 
 
 CoUins, 'Wilkie 
 
 • 41 
 
 117 
 
 College Street, Little 
 
 
 80 
 
 Commissioner, Head 
 
 of Yard '. 
 
 147 
 
 Commissioner's Yacht 
 
 . 
 
 39 
 
 Commodore Coach . 
 
 • 65 
 
 144 
 
 Convicts 
 
 Hulks 
 
 49> 
 
 50, 51, 230, 231 
 
 51 
 
 Cooling . . . 230, 231, 250 
 Couples, Sketches of Young 24, 25 
 Cratchit, Bob . . 3, 175, i77 
 Creakle, Mr. ... 83, 86 
 Crispin and Crispanus . 214 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cruikshank, George . 85, 167 
 
 Cuttle, Ned . . . .186 
 
 D. 
 Dadson, Mr. William . 44, 151 
 Danson, Dr. Henry. 85, 87, 2,?> 
 
 Datchery, Mr 250 
 
 Davis, Gill .... 206 
 David Copperfield 17,23,47, 54, 58, 
 61, 68, 79, 81,83. 84, 89, 96, 
 100, 108, 134, 16S, 185, 187. 
 
 Dawson Mr 92 
 
 Dedlock, Sir Leicester . .188 
 Detective Police . . . 240 
 
 Dick, Mr 186 
 
 Dickens, Charles ... 2 
 ,, recollections of when 
 
 a boy ... 4 
 ,, on ancestry , . lo 
 
 ,, Birth of . . .13 
 ,, Baptism of . -14 
 ,, infancyatPortsea 14, 15, 17 
 ,, love for his sister 
 
 Fanny . . -17 
 ,, Happiest Years of . 22 
 ,, Little sweetheai-t of . 23 
 ,, as a very early reader, 
 
 reciter, and singer 26, 
 
 34, 35, 39 
 ,, Earliest writing of . 36 
 ,, age on leaving Chat- 
 ham . . 4.3, 62 
 ,, taught by his mother . 55 
 ,, his white hat . -58 
 ,, studies best writers of 
 
 fiction . . .61 
 ,, his love for all things 
 
 nautical . . .61 
 ,, leaves Chatham . 64 
 
 ,, hard experiences 66, 71 
 ,, at Blacking manu- 
 factory . . 72, 80 
 ,, living in Lant Street. 80 
 ,, sent to school again 81, 92 
 ,, letter to Mr. Ihomas 88 
 ,, Did he learn Latin? . 88 
 ,, Books on . . 8, 95 
 
 ,, learns shorthand . 97 
 ,, reporting for news- 
 papers . . . 100 
 ,, writing for magazines 108 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ^57 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dickens' early visits to Gad's 
 
 Hill . . .115 
 ,, may-trees at Gad's Hill 118 
 ,, cedars at Gad's Hill . 118 
 ,, His love for open-air 
 
 games . . .129 
 ,, and the antiquaries . 140 
 ,, His love for Cobham 161 
 ,, His last walk . .161 
 ,, takes house at Al- 
 
 phington . .170 
 
 ,, on rich clothes, etc. .181. 
 
 182 
 ,, Memorial Brass to . 200 
 ,, first impression of an 
 
 inn . . . 203 
 
 ,, excursion into Corn- 
 wall . . .204 
 ,, His Lancashire dialect 208 
 ,, His liking for ghost 
 
 stories . . . 226 
 „ His last visit to Ro- 
 chester . . 245, 246 
 „ Alfred Lamert . . 62 
 „ Fanny 12. 17, 18, 33, 35, 
 56, 67, 78, 176 
 ,, John 4, 10, 12. 17, 21, 
 40, 44. 48, 61, 68, 70, 
 78, 102, 105, 144. 170 
 ,, Mrs. John. 23, 26, 27 
 
 ,, Letitia . . '23 
 „ Family 23. 34. 44, 51, 63, 
 
 65, 66 
 Dickeson, Mr. . . . -55 
 Dingley Dell 151, 152, 153. 154. 165 
 Dinner at Poplar Walk . . 108 
 Doctors' Commons . . -139 
 Dombey and Son . . 183, 184 
 
 Dorrett, Mr 70 
 
 Dorrit, Little . . 70. So, 209 
 Down with the tide . . . 243 
 Doyle, Richard M. . . . 178 
 Dry-rot in men . . .70 
 
 DullborQugh Town 64, 134, 214, 224 
 Durdles .... 118,245 
 
 Early coaches .... 140 
 Eastgate House . .162, 246 
 Edwin DroodSo, 106, 118, 131, 243, 
 
 254 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Empty Chair. The . . -131 
 Evening parties at Chatham . 36 
 Excursion, The Steam . . 109 
 
 Facts funnier than fiction . 3 
 
 Fagin. Bob . . -11^ §3 
 
 Falstaft", The 30, 116, 128. 211, 243 
 
 Fildes. Mr. L. F. . . . 131 
 
 Fleet Prison . . . 70. 165 
 
 Forster. Mr. Tno. 2. 7. 36, 41, 54, 
 
 58, 65,"67, 73, 77,. 87, 99. 187 
 
 Forster's Life of Charles 
 
 Dickens 26, 30. 53, 58, 74, 84. 
 
 88. 95. loi, 106, 161, 187 
 
 Fort Pitt fields . . 59, 148 
 
 Four Sisters, The . . -136 
 
 Frindsbury . . . -30 
 
 G. 
 
 Gad's Hill 26, 30, 112, 133, 147, 
 176, 211, 214, 227, 230. 
 243, 246 
 Gamp, Sairey . . . -183 
 Gay, Walter . . .184, 187 
 Ghost in Master B.'s Room . t\ 
 Gibson, Mrs. Mary . 24, 25, 26, 
 
 29, 39 
 
 Gibson, Mr. Thomas 24, 59, 63 
 
 Gibraltar Place . . • 5^ 
 Giles, Mr. William 39. 44, 56, 63, 
 
 143 
 ,, Rev. William, Senr. 44, 56 
 Giles's School . 54, 63, 82, 218 
 
 Gin shops .... 141 
 
 Godfrey, Mrs. 39, 57, 58, 6^. 65 
 
 Golden Lucy . . 23, 205, 206 
 Good Words . . . .98 
 Gower Street . . . -67 
 Granby, Marquis of . -153 
 
 Gravesend . 113, 162, 1S4, 210 
 Gray's Inn . . 94. 96, 223 
 Great Expectations 39, 49, 51, 64, 
 
 80, 230—239, 246 y 
 
 Great Tasmania's Cargo, The . 212 
 Great Winglebury Duel, The . 143 
 Green. Miss . . -217, 222 
 Green, Poll ... 74, 83 
 Grimaldi . . . . 29, 30 
 Guildhall, Rochester . . 235 
 
258 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hard Times . . 79, 
 Harte, Bret 
 Haunted House, The 
 Haunted Man, The . 
 Higham .... 
 Hobbes, Mr. . 
 Hogarth, Miss . 
 Mary 
 Holly Tree, The 
 Hood, Thomas 
 Horatio Sparkins 
 Household Words . 
 Huffam Christopher 14, 67 
 Hull, Mr. Edward 85, 147, 
 Hull, The late William . 
 Hymn, The Evening 
 
 03- 
 
 58, 
 
 207, 208 
 
 • 133 
 . 207 
 
 17, 178 
 
 • 30 
 48, 60 
 
 . 161 
 . 204 
 
 129, 200 
 
 i53> 177 
 . 109 
 
 189, 240 
 
 , 68, 240 
 
 t6i, 253 
 
 • 250 
 . 26 
 
 242 
 
 Inchbald, Mrs. . . 61, 250 
 
 Ingoldsby Penance . . -113 
 
 Inimitable, The . . •1-^4 
 
 Irving, Washington. . . 55 
 
 J. 
 
 Jaggers, Mr. . 
 James, Capt. Henry 
 Jasper, John 
 Jeffery, Lord . 
 Jefiferson Brick 
 Jerrold, Douglas 
 Jingle, Mr. Alfred 
 Johnson, Dr. . 
 Johnson Street 
 Jones, Mr. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kensington, South, MSS. at . 243 
 Kent .... 184, 227 
 Keys, The Tliree . . -87 
 King's Bench Prison 69, 70, 83, 
 
 165, 223 
 Knott, Mr. S. Dyer . . 105 
 
 236 
 
 17 
 
 244 
 
 174 
 183 
 161 
 
 144, 147, 153 
 . 109 
 80, 88 
 82,83 
 
 Lady, The old 
 Lamb, Charles 
 Lamert, Matthew 
 ,, James 
 ,, Mrs. . 
 ,, George 
 
 . 23 
 . 210 
 
 52—62 
 52, 53. 72 
 
 • 53 
 
 • 72 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lant Street . . . .165 
 Larkin, Charles . . '117 
 Lawyers' Clerks . . -95 
 Leather Bottle . . 154—162 
 
 Leech, John . . . .178 
 Letters of Charles Dickens 10 1, 128 
 Library at Chatham . 61, 74 
 
 Lingo . . . . 59, 89 
 Luton, near Chatham . . 98 
 Lying awake .... 243 
 
 M. 
 Maclise, Daniel, R.A. 127, 161, 
 178, 204, 205 
 Macready, Mr. William . .91 
 
 Magpie and Stump . . .162 
 Mailing . . . . 152, 153 
 Manville, Mr. . . . 86, 88 
 Mark Tapley . . . 180, 183 
 Marshalsea Prison . 69, 70, 162 
 Martin Chuzzlewit 26, 179—183, 222 
 Mary-le-Strand . . 11,224 
 Mary, Wreck of the Golden 23, 205 
 Master Humphrey's Clock 173. 174 
 Medicine Men . . . .229 
 Medway, The . 39, 43. 151, 228 
 Micawber, Mr. . . 69, 187 
 
 „ Mrs. ... 68 
 
 Mile-end Cottage, Alphington 105, 
 
 171, 172 
 
 • 17 
 . 196 
 . 142 
 . 77 
 
 103, 
 104, 105 
 
 92, 93, 94, 172 
 33r 57; 204 
 
 • 93 
 . 108 
 
 . 181 
 
 . 108 
 
 . 106, 108 
 
 134, 168, 169 
 
 • 152, 154 
 
 . 224 
 
 Mile-end Terrace, Portsea 
 Minor Canon Row . 
 Minns, Mr., and his Cousin 
 Mirror, The 
 Mirro of Parliament, The 
 
 Mitton, Mr. Thos. 
 Mitre, The 
 Molloy, Mr. . 
 Moore's Melodies 
 Montague Tigg 
 Monthly Magazine 
 Morning Chronicle 
 Mudfog . 
 Muggleton 
 Murderer, Captain 
 
 N. 
 Navy-Pay Office 1 1, 22, 47, 48, 67 
 Nelson, l>ord . . . -34 
 Newnham, Mrs. . . 23, 132 
 
INDEX. 
 
 259 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Newspaper Press-fund dinner . 103 
 New York Tribune . . .98 
 Nicholas Nickleby 3.}. 40. 52, 70, 
 96. 105. 170— 172, 203, 230 
 Nicks Swift, or Xevi^ham . 113 
 Night Walks .... 222 
 Nun's House . . . 246, 249 
 Nurse's Stories . . . 224 
 
 O. 
 
 O'DriscolI, Mr. 
 Old Bill Barley 
 Old Cheeseman 
 Old Chumley . 
 Old Clem 
 Old Lady, The 
 Old Curiosity Shop 
 
 . 127 
 
 • 236 
 
 • 83 
 65, 66 
 
 • 48 
 
 23; 135 
 
 79, 93> 174 
 
 254 (note) 
 
 Oliver Twist . 79, 106, 166 — 168 
 
 One Man in a Dockyard . . 240 
 
 Ordnance Terrace 21 — 30, 55, 91, 
 
 135- 153; 217. 224 
 Othello, Travesty of . -105 
 Our Boys .... 142 
 Our Mutual Friend 68, 80. 95, 239 
 Our Newspaper . . .89 
 Our School . . 82. 86, 91 
 Ouvry. Mr 207 
 
 Parliamentary Sketch 
 Pearce, Miss . 
 Pecksniff . 
 Peggotty, Daniel 
 Peregrine Pickle 
 Perils of certain 
 
 prisoners 
 Phil Squod 
 Pictorial Advertiseme 
 Pickwick 22, 41, 53, 
 
 • 174 
 English 
 
 141 
 
 17 
 
 183 
 
 186 
 236 
 
 206 
 91 
 7Z 
 
 Pinch, Tom 
 Pip . 
 
 Pipchin, Mrs. . 
 Poll Sweedlepipe 
 Pordage, Mr. . 
 Portable property 
 Porter, Mrs. Joseph 
 Portfolio, The . 
 Portsea Church 
 Portsmouth 
 
 16 
 
 nts . 
 
 70, 79, 95 > 96, 
 143—162 
 180, 183 
 
 230—235 
 , 203, 224 
 
 . 183 
 
 207, 209 
 
 • 49 
 . 109 
 
 77, 78 
 
 • 14 
 . 172 
 
 Prigg, Betsy . 
 Providence Chapel 
 Puffer Princess 
 
 Quarll, Philip 
 Queer Client 
 
 R. 
 
 Ralston. Mr. W. R. S. . 
 Remarkable Fire at Gad's 
 Reporters" Gallery . 
 Reporters. Strike of 
 Restoration House 152, 
 
 Robberies at Gad's Hill . 
 
 Robinson Crusoe 
 
 Rochester 30, 134. 143— 
 188— 2CXD, 209 — 222. 
 
 Rochester Castle . 172 
 ,, Cathedral 47, 
 
 5, Theatre Royal 
 
 Royal Academy of Music 
 Rome Lane 
 
 Rye, Mr. W. B. 4. 22, 
 65, 66, 105 
 
 S. 
 
 Sala, Mr. G. A. 
 Sale at Gad's Hill . 
 Salem House . 
 Sapsea, Mr. 
 Salvation Drill Hall 
 Satis House 
 Sawyer, Bob . 
 Schoolboys' Story, The 
 Scrooge, Ebenezer . 
 Scotland Yard . 
 Seven Dials 
 Seven Poor Travellers, 
 
 . 183 
 
 42. 56 
 
 • 250 
 
 . 180 
 . 162 
 
 . 224 
 
 Hill 127 
 
 . 102 
 
 • 103 
 232, 246, 
 
 247 
 
 • 113 
 . 180 
 
 -154, 186. 
 232—254 
 .195. 240 
 . 189, 209 
 
 29. 53- 
 218, 221 
 
 67.78 
 
 • 54 
 39 (note), 
 , 129, 171 
 
 104, 110 
 131 
 
 83 
 249 
 
 44 
 232 
 165 
 
 83 
 -176 
 
 136 
 
 139 
 
 200. 
 
 174- 
 
 Shabby genteel people 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 Shiers, Mr. 
 
 Shome 
 
 Sketches by Boz 
 
 Slammer. Dr. . 
 Sleary, Mr. 
 vSlyme, Chevy . 
 
 The 
 
 189—200 
 
 . 141 
 
 7, 113, 226 
 
 .86 
 
 . . . 165 
 
 71, 91, 96, 108, 
 
 135—143 
 
 • 53, 147 
 
 . 208 
 
 . iSi 
 
26o CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Smallness of the world 
 Smollett . 
 
 Snodgrass, Augustus 
 
 ,, Gabriel . 
 
 Snorridre Bottom . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 91,115 
 
 . 61, 171 
 
 . 146 
 
 . 146 
 
 30, 206, 207 
 
 Solicitors, Names of imaginary 
 
 firms of . . . -94 
 Somerset House . . 141, 142 
 Sowster, the tyrant . . 169, 170 
 Specks, Joe . . .221, 222 
 Sports at Gad's Hill . . 129 
 
 Stanfield, Clarkson, R.A, 178, 205 
 
 Stone, Mr. M 178 
 
 Strood .... 214, 255 
 
 Stroughill, George . 23,25,153 
 
 ,, Lucy 23, 24 (also note) 
 
 Swiveller, Dick . . -173 
 
 Tabley Hall . 
 Tale of Two Cities . 
 Tavistock Square 
 Taylor, Mr. . 
 Tenniel, John . 
 Theatricals at Ordnance 
 
 pital 
 Thomas, Mr. Owen P 
 Timpsons 
 
 Titbull's Almshouse 
 Tobin, Mr. 
 
 Tom-all-alone's . 30, 59, 60, 187 
 Tomkisson, Thomas . . 67 
 
 Traddles, Tommy . . . 223 
 Tramps . . . .212 — 214 
 Travelling Abroad . . .210 
 Tribe, Mr. Aid. . 34, 35, 36 
 
 Trood, Mr 128 
 
 Trotwood, Betsy . . .186 
 True Sun, The . . 103, 104 
 
 Trunnion, Commodore . 174, 236 
 Tuggs's at Ramsgate, The . 142 
 Tupman, Mr. . . 147—158 
 
 . 209 
 
 • 135 
 
 86, 89 
 178 
 
 Hos- 
 
 35, 59 
 
 84 — 89, 92 
 
 . 218 
 
 92, 224 
 
 87 
 
 U. 
 
 Uncommercial Traveller 48, 70, 93, 
 
 115, 210 — 224 
 
 Uriah Heap .... 4 
 
 V. 
 
 Vanity of Vanities . 
 Vaughan, Rev. W. A. 
 Veck, Trotty . 
 Vehicle, The . 
 
 
 10 
 
 65 
 
 133 
 
 77 
 
 Village coquettes 
 Vincent Crummies . 
 
 
 112 
 
 172 
 
 Vines, The 
 
 . 232, 
 
 246 
 
 W. 
 
 
 
 Waghorn, Lieutenant 
 
 , 
 
 169 
 
 Wapping Workhouse 
 Wardle, Mr. . 
 
 • i5i> 
 
 210 
 153 
 
 Warren, Robert 
 
 
 73 
 
 ,, Jonathan . 
 Watts, Richard 189 i 
 
 72, 73. 79 
 91 — 200, 232 
 
 Weller, Mary 24, 4^ 
 
 h 52, 59. 
 
 153. 
 
 224 
 
 180 
 
 166 
 
 -92 
 
 „ Sam 3, 153, 166, 168, 
 
 ,, Tony . .133, 153, 
 
 Wellington House Academy 82- 
 
 Westminster Abbey . 223, 253 
 
 Hall . . .108 
 
 White, Thomas . . .158 
 
 Wicked Noah's Arks . 51, 236 
 
 Wilfer, Mrs 68 
 
 Wills, Mr. W. H. . . 127, 176 
 William the Fourth, King . 34 
 
 Wine Stores . . . -79 
 
 Winkle, Mr. . . 148—157 
 
 Wright, Mr. W. T. . . 22 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yarmouth . . . .185 
 
 York, Ride to . . . .115 
 
 Yorkshire, Journey to . -174 
 
 Yorkshire Schools . . -173 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
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