" 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 Nickleby, Part 2, Chap. XXXIII.

THE above paragraph is suggestive enough; it was written in 1838, when the author was 26 years of age, and will serve for a theme for this and all the following chapters of this book. It is, besides, perhaps one of the earliest examples of the blank 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 own 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, re‐produced 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 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 introduced, 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 and effectually beyond identification.1

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 Cratchit " 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 each of Uriah Heep, Captain Cuttle, and Barnaby Rudge. The latter is farther reported to have been seen recently

1 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.

" That boy, Sir," said the Major, " will live in history. That boy, Sir, is not a common production."

Dombey and Son, Chap. X.

I WAS born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night." Thus David Copper‐ field, and this is literally accurate of Charles Dickens, who was born at Portsea on Friday, the seventh of February, 1812 (Leap Year), at a few minutes before midnight. When less than a month old, he was baptised at St. Mary's, Kingston, the parish church of Portsea. The entry in the register is briefly thus1: —

On the first page of Mr. Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, we find the entry of baptism as given above, 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 undoubtedly the right spelling, and that the spelling 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, Christopher Huffam,2 described in the London Post Office Directory, as " Rigger to His Majesty's Navy, Limehouse Hole."

Of his infancy at Portsea nothing can now be known beyond the few facts given in Forster's Life of Dickens (Vol. I, pp. 2 and 3.) The engraving shows the little fore‐court or front garden, with the low kitchen window of the house whence the movements of Charles,

I 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.

2 The name of Christopher occurs in three of Dickens's characters. — Christopher Nubbles, Christopher Casby, and Christopher a waiter.

attended by his dear little sister Fanny, could be overlooked.

The house 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.

It is said that, in after years, Charles Dickens could remember places and things at Portsmouth that he had 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 see 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 Barrister's Life, by Serjt. Ballantine, Vol. I., p. 138, the writer describes Fanny Dickens as " a young lady of great talents and accom plishments, who unfortunately died when still quite young." Again, in Vol. II., p. 137 (written January 10th, 1838), he says : " Evening party at Levien's. Met Boz — 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.

" My Boyhood's Home." — Dullborough Town.

" Second house in the Terrace." — Ibid.

IT 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 cannot 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 1817 (probably from Midsummer) 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 opposite page, and the house is indicated by figures that will pass alike for 11, or 2, marked on the front.

Here he resided till Lady‐Day, 1821, and in this house were born Harriet Ellen, in the Autumn of 1819, 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 occupying 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 1815 to 18 19 in receipt of .£200 per annum, and in 1820 his salary was augmented to £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, now 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 S 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 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 genial, loveable family," and no doubt " with something more than a ghost of gentility hovering in their company." 1

Ordnance Terrace is known to have furnished the locality, and characters, for some of the early Sketches by Boz. The Old Lady was a Mrs. Newnham 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 family, and was quite unconsciously sitting for his portrait to one (a very little one) who was. afterwards to immortalize him in his earlier writings.

The next‐door neighbours at No. 1, 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 re‐produced as Steerforth in David Copperfield. His sister Lucy, the Golden Lucy of The Wreck of the Golden Mary, from her beautiful golden locks, was the especial favourite and little sweetheart of Charles at this time.

1 Our French watering place.

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."1 Her very suggestive maiden name was Mary Weller ! ! ! She is now the wife of Mr. Thomas Gibson (formerly a shipwright in the Dockyard), to whom she has been married fifty‐nine years!

This aged couple can both of them remember little Lucy,2 the blue‐eyed, golden haired fairy, of whom little Charles (himself at this early age, very fair), was the constant companion.

In Birth‐Day Celebrations we come on a reminiscence of these early days which is unmistakable in this connexion.

1. Our Mutual Friend, Vol. I., p. 311.

2. 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 also said to have had golden hair ! !

" 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 saccharine 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 realties can have the grace and charm that hover round such fairy lovers." ?] The Young Couple, 184.0.

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 down stairs 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. Fanny and Charles often sang together at this time, Fanny accompanying on the Pianoforte. Though a good and eager reader in these days (about 1 8 19) 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 Martin 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 Sept., 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

of having kicked Somebody else, or because still Somebody 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 by so unexpected a question.

Charles was now at from six to seven years of age in the fullest enjoyment of that happy period of life, when infancy is gradually giving place to boyhood, a period which he in later years remembered so tenderly, and described so well, "where everything was happy, where there was no distance and no time."1

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 externally 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, and other great theatrical lights have in their time played many parts in this old house.

Charles was eight years of age and still living in "the Terrace," when he was taken to see Grimaldi, the celebrated clown, whose life he afterwards edited. " I was

I Martin Chusxlcwit, Chap. LIII.

" There was an inn in the Cathedral Town where I went to school, that had pleasanter recollections about it than any of these. ... It had an ecclesiastical sign . the Mitre, . . 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 distraction, but let that pass. It was in this inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister,1 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 Mitre softened me yet." — The Holly Tree, 1858.

THE Mitre Inn and Clarence Hotel is noted in Wright's Guide to Rochesterand Chatham, (1838), as being "the Manor House,and a very old‐established Hotel." An advertisement elsewhere in this guide, states that " it is the first posting‐house in the town."

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 being on visiting terms) that little Charles used occasionally 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 memorable party here, Mr. Tribe well remembers Charles and his sister Fanny mounted on a dining table for a stage,

1 Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. XXXIII.

" 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 on the Hearth.

THE account given by Mr. Forster, of the residence of Mr. John Dickens, at Chatham, 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."

That the biographer of Dickens should have omitted all mention of the house in Ordnance Terrace, where, as has been shown, his friend lived 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 ; it must, however, be admitted that time has made a sad change for the worse in the character of this neighbourhood. 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) sorrowfully 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."

This 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 (Sept. 3, 1 8 19), and Frederick William (Aug. 4, 1820), born at Ordnance Terrace, and another son to be presently mentioned were baptized. A view of this church from a lithograph of the time by Mr. William Dadson, drawing‐master 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 Copperfield) or from the setting sun reflected on the water.

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 "2 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.

1 "I remember how I seemed to float, then down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams. "

David Copperfield, Chap. XIII.

2 The Child's Dream of a Star.

It was here, in the room now occupied by the 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 externally and internally is, at the present day, exactly as it was during Dickens's childhood at Chatham.

In The Uncommercial Traveller, we are told of Chatham 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 display, 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 Dockyard, for the blacksmiths to get up a pageant in honour of their patron saint, on St. Clement's Day, the 23rd of November. The procession was usually headed by a band, and " Old Clem."1 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,

1 "Old Clem" was, of course, merely a familiar term of endearment for St. Clement.

" It (the school) was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system ; with an appeal in everything, 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 Copperfield, Chap. XVI.

IT 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, 1821. 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.

It seems to me that the biographer of Dickens has gone a little 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.

Mr. William Giles, the son of the Rev. Wm. 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 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 doggrel survives which runs thus —

and in this rhyme four of the principal educational establishments of fifty years ago (in these towns) are named.

Mr. Giles had been educated at Oxford, was an accomplished scholar, and a very conscientious, painstaking man. He‐seems to have been much struck (could not fail to have been so) with the bright appearance, and unusual intelligence of his little pupil, and, giving him every encouragement in his power, even to making a companion of him of an evening, he was soon rewarded by 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 Mr. Giles, who was widely known as a cultivated reader and elocutionist.

Mrs. Godfrey, the eldest sister of Mr. Giles, a venerable lady, now in her eighty‐ninth year, 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, consequently, 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 very handsome boy, with long curly hair of a light colour, and that he was of a very amiable, agreeable disposition. He was capital company even then (at nine or ten years 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 recognized 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 grounds at the back. She can remember that " Charles was quite at home at all sorts of parties, junkettings, and birth‐day celebrations, and that he took great delight in Fifth of November festivities round the bon‐fire."

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 wear) 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, — " certainly, the hardest creditor would not have been disposed to avail himself of my poor white hat," &c. 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 Pitt Fields with Mary Weller, and the young shipwright, her sweetheart, " they were not always learning ; they had the merriest games that ever were played. They 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. They were all young, like the handsome boy."1

Then the theatrical entertainments were still kept up, all through the closing months of 182 1, and the spring of 1822. In the autumn of the former year he had distinguished 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 by his juvenile friends at school, and he was as full of fun (and 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, undoubtedly dated from this time, and was well known here.

In the summer and autumn he was frequently 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,

1 The Child's Story, 1852.

" The light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great."

Great Expectations, Chap. XIX.

GOING AWAY, sadly enough, 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 Dullborough Town (1860) is as follows : — " As I left Dullborough, in the days

when there were no railroads 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 Maid1 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 Commodore mentioned by Mr. Forster.

From some reminiscences of Rochester by the Revd. Walter A. Vaughan, his friend Mr. W. B. Rye has kindly sent me the following note : — " The Commodore Coach was driven by old Cholmeley (or Chumley), who was

1 The Blue‐eyed Maid is also mentioned in Little Dorrit, Chap. III.

" 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 facts !" — David Copperfield, Chap. XI.

" He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years of age." — Child's History of England.

SIMULTANEOUSLY with his father's incarceration 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 established by a Mr. 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 precisely 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 apparently these rival firms used each others' pictorial devices with impunity.

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 fifty years since, will recognise these fac‐simile reproductions as old acquaintances. Mr. Forster says, page 50 of Vol. 1, "they were all very 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 any description of his employment ; that " an innocent romantic boy " like Charles 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 excellent 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 deplorably 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' duplicates — those turnpike tickets on the road of poverty j"1 even his favourite books from Chatham had been disposed 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

1 Bleak House, Chap. XI.

had none, but he managed to extract some fun both then Q I and afterwards in his works, from the peculiarities of / Thomas, the old soldier ; of Harry, the good‐natured carman ; 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 substitute for coffee," was in vogue just then (1824), and this he occasionally purchased ; it was another of the curiosities advertised pretty freely in these days, and had an extensive sale for a time, and then came to an end. He used also to purchase The Portfolio, which he had a great fancy for taking home with him. This was a weekly illustrated periodical, which would be 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, &c. 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.

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 fragment 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 May 4th, 1824, and the first hearing was on Thursday, May the 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 about April, 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 Twist, 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 only pictures he possessed when a boy were the illustrated labels " of a man shaving himself in a boot on the blacking bottles." In Little Dorrit, in Great Expectations, 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.

" 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 Copperfield, Chap. XVIII.

IN David Copperfield the boy terminates his sordid uncongenial drudgery by running away, and, knowing what we now do of the facts, the direction of his flight (Kent) appears to be quite sufficiently accounted for. But in the case of Charles Dickens himself, he was removed from the Blacking Warehouse by his father, and sent to school again for about two years.

From data given in the last chapter, he must have been a little over 12 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 neighbourhood, 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 no doubt, in the description of Our School, an intentional mixing‐up of some of his earlier recollections of the school life at Chatham, with 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.

There is, no doubt, a reminiscence of Wellington House Academy, in the Salem House of David Copper‐ field, and Mr. Creakle probably stands for the irate Welshman, Mr. Jones. There would also seem to be some reference to this school in The Schoolboy's Story, where " Old Cheeseman " (the name of a veritable schoolfellow at Chatham) is introduced. Old Cheeseman had to remain at school during the holidays. " But he was a favourite in general. Once a subscription was 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 puppy. Old Cheeseman cried about it — especially soon afterwards, when they all eat one another."

" Of course old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts of cheese — Double Glo'sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North Wiltshireman, and all that ; but he never minded it."

Something of the feeling described in Copperfield must have been experienced by Charles Dickens, when he, fresh from the society of Bob Fagin, Poll Green, and the others, was first sent to Wellington House Academy, and the company of respectable middle‐class boys. " I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have 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 ordinary little schoolboy. My mind ran upon what they would think, if they knew of my familiar acquaintance with the King's Bench Prison."1

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."

To Mr. Thomas, and the two other gentlemen mentioned 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 from a sketch by Mr. Edward Hull, and it is note‐worthy that George Cruickshank, 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. 1., p. 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, Feb. 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.

Mr. Thomas further says the " sketches give an accurate idea of our departed school‐room, 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. Forster, 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 the boarders were the three Keys, and their sisters, mulattos, the latter, of course, under Mrs. Jones's care. They were the children, it was 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. 1, p. 59), that I was led to think the then renowned author was the same I had formerly known so well, and this, strangely enough, 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 ' mentioned 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 Wellington House, believes "it was the year 1827, when Dickens left Mr. Jones's Academy. He and I occupied 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 —

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,"1 left Mr. Jones, and opened a school for himself, known as "the Retreat, South Lambeth," and that Charles Dickens went to this

1 The original, probably, of Mr. Mell in David Copperfield.

" I am not in a condition to report further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's clerk."

Uncommercial Traveller. Titbull's.

" Though necessity has no law, she has her lawyers."

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. LXVI.

SOON after leaving school Charles was for a short time employed as clerk to a Mr.Molloy, a solicitor in New Square, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and young Mitton, "Dear Tom," as he was 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 Mitton, he instructed his old schoolfellow 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 Foster 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. Molloy's employ, but his next appointment to a clerkship in a lawyer's office can fortunately be fixed with 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.

During these eighteen 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. Grewgiou's.

Of firms of solicitors besides those introduced into the tales, such as Snitchey and Craggs, — Dodson and Fogg, — Kenge and Carboys, and others, are some highly characteristic names of firms incidentally mentioned in Pickwick, 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,"1 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, The Lawyers of Dickens and their Clerks, will most certainly be undertaken by someone.

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."2 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

1 Our Mutual Friend, Vol. I, p. 65.

2 Child's History of England, Chap. XII.

" I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery."

David Copperfield, Chap. XLIII.

" Night after night I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify." — Ibid

CLEAR of the valley of the shadow of the Law, Charles Dickens applied himself with his customary energy and intensity of will, to the practice of shorthand writing and reporting as a means of livelihood. He was now seventeen, and his first employment as a reporter was in the Lord Chancellor's 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,1 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 Charles Dickens, Mr. Forster gives 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

1 Monday, May 2nd, 1870 (vide Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 2.)

" 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 extraordinarily fond of when a child."

Letter to the Earl of Carlisle, August 8th, 1860.

" 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 I.

GREAT deal of ingenuity has been wasted by writers on this locality in an endeavour to account for the name Gad's Hill.1 There can be and is, however, no doubt that the

1 There is another Gad's Hill at Gillingham, near Chatham,

" 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 Copperfield, Chap. XXII.

rochester and its Historic, Picturesque surroundings, whether humourously described as " Mudfog," as " Dullborough," as " Our Town," or as " Cloisterham," will, as years roll on, become more and more closely associated with the life and work of Charles Dickens ; and will, for all time to come, be acknowledged to have been " the birthplace of his fancy," his " boyhood's home !"

In the reminiscences of his early life, of which his books are full, we find, accordingly, many 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 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 Boz, 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. [ante.]

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 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 thirteen years ago," we are taken back to the year 1821, 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 reminiscences of time more recently passed, possibly, in the days of the Law.

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 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 knowledge 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 whereabouts, 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 shabby‐genteel 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 Mr. Warren.''

In Doctors' Commons are many glimpses of the London of Dickens's reporting days, and here as else

where in his works, so vivid, so truthful, are his 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 Shadberry," which terminated in " the awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of suit " against Slud‐ berry, "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 excommunicate him for the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him, "

The Sketch finishes with a description of the Prerogative Court, and the different ways in which different people were (and are) in the habit of searching for wills.

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 same year. It was the second chapter of The Boarding House.

Astley's, 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 town from school, under the protection of the guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for."

Very interesting reading now is a Parliamentary 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 Chapter 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 distribution of bottles of Lethe‐water, gin‐palaces would be numbered among the things that were."

In A Christmas Dinner, and The 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 ; " we know the fact by the cut of his coat, the tie of his neckcloth, and the self‐satisfaction of his gait — the very green blinds themselves have a Somerset House air about them."

In The Mistaken Milliner, who would persist in coming out as a public singer, we are told, " Now coming out, either in acting, or singing, or society, or facetious‐ ness, or anything else, is all very well, and remarkably pleasant to the individual principally concerned, if he or she can but manage to come out with a burst, and being out to keep out, and not to go in again ; but it does unfortunately happen that both consummations are extremely difficult to accomplish."

In Shabby‐Genteel People are some very tender touches of description, as to what does and what does not entitle a man to be considered shabby‐genteel.

" We will endeavour to explain our conception of the term which forms the title of 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 right eye — don't pity him. He is not shabby‐genteel."

A glance, however, " at the depressed face and timorous air of conscious poverty," of the real article, "will make your heart ache — always supposing that you are neither a philosopher nor a political economist."

" 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 first attracted our notice, by sitting opposite to us in the reading room of the British Museum ; and what made the man more remarkable was, that he always had before him a couple of shabby‐genteel books."

" We were never engaged in business with more than one shabby‐genteel man ; and he was a drunken engraver, and lived in a damp back parlour in a new row of houses, at Camden Town, half street, half brick‐field, somewhere near the Canal.

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, which is a well known name at Rochester. [See Gad's Hill.]

Of The Tuggs's at Ramsgate, it may be noted that, in Our Boys, as acted, this Sketch is laid under contribution for a joke or two ; here is one of them in exactly the same words. Mr. Tuggs (who dealt in Dorset butter), 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 Mr. Joseph Tuggs. However, two shays, if you like."

The notes on the Sketches may terminate with The Great Winglebury Duel, which abounds with recollections of Rochester, the description of the "long, straggling, quiet High Street, the small building with the big clock, &c," 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 probably had never been equalled in the annals of fiction. It was about the time of the publication of the tenth part of the Pickwick 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 snuff‐box, in token of his admiration of the brilliant talents displayed by his old pupil. On the inside of the lid was his name, with a suitable 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 was fond of playfully 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, other luggage gone by water, — 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 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 here have met the Smithies, the Snipes, and the Tomlinsons of a by ‐gone 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 extensive bald plain on the top of it — Dr. Slammer, surgeon to the ninety‐seventh. The doctor took snuff with everybody, chatted with everybody, 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 following 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." (Chapter III.)

Mr. Pickwick and his friends were there, of course, and experienced the pleasure of waiting two hours in a front place, under pressure of an unruly crowd behind them, and a military guard in front. Here the party make the acquaintance of Mr. Wardle, and are hospitably 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 narrow beach below in rude and heavy masses. * * * Behind it rose the ancient castle, its towers roofless, and its massive walls crumbling away, but telling us proudly of its old might and strength * * * On either side the banks of the Medway, 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 swiftly 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 shewing an extended view of the valley of the Medway.

On consulting the waiter at breakfast, the friends are told, "Dingley — Dell — gentlemen — fifteen miles, gentlemen — cross road — post‐chaise, sir ?" Dingley Dell is of course wholly " in the air," but Muggleton ? — " everybody whose genius has a topographical bent, knows perfectly 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 Malling or Town‐Malling !

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 crossroad from Rochester, that the distance given by the waiter is about right, and that when Wardle and Pickwick were chasing the runaway Jingle, they went by the direct road from Malling to London, without coming back through Rochester, which would have been a much longer way.

One of the cricketers at Dingley Dell was Mr. Struggles, which was the nick‐name 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,1 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 ! !2

" On the opposite side of the road was a large signboard on a high post, representing the head and shoulders 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." [Chap. XXVII.]

I 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 —

Tom Hood, in review of Master Humphrey's Clock.

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 afternoon 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 line 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.)

" They emerged upon an open park, with an ancient 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 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.

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.

Charles Dickens stayed a day and a night at the Leather Bottle with Mr. Forster in September, 1841 (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 have been seen pacing the churchyard to and fro."

Charles Dickens was particularly fond of this delightful 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 little village of Cobham — when Mr. Pickwick retired to the bed‐room which had been prepared for his reception. 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 contemplation ; 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 days after the discovery of the celebrated stone at Cobham, Mr. Pickwick has an adventure at Bury St. Edmunds, at a red‐brick house called Westgate 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 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 probably 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 boyhood, and it is noticeable 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 recollection of the reporting days; the Bush, at Bristol, was Dickens's 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 of the grated window before him, as if he were fondly recalling 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 Pickwick is in Chap. XLV., 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 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 varying forms this ambition was in all his life." [Forster, Vol. 2, p. 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 writing, 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 Cruickshank, 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 sufficient 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 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 magistrate 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 Twist, 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 Copperfield, 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 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, Mr. 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 afterwards became mayor of Mudfog, and lived at Mudfog Hall, on Mudfog Hill.

It is curious to note that among the names of eminent men attending the meetings of the Mudfog Association was a Mr. Waghorn, a well‐known and respected family name at Chatham, of which the late Lieut. 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 cf 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 Nicholas 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. 1, p. 163.

" I took a little house for them this morning (5th March, 1839, from the New‐ London Inn), and if they are not pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond 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 beautiful little room over the parlour, which I am fur

nishing as a drawing‐room, and there is a splendid garden."

The accompanying engraving of this cottage is from a sketch kindly made by Mr. W. B. Rye, expressly for this work, and with it the reader may compare a description of this same cottage, which is to be found in Nicholas Nickleby, Part 2, Chap. XXIII., where it is 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 honey‐suckles 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 Crummles. 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 perceived 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 full of PARTRIDGE, STRAP, Tom Pipes, and Sancho Panza."

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 continuous tales, and introductory chapters, cannot be said to contain many recollections of the early life of the author ; but there is probably 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 quick 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 reflection 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 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.

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 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 Town 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 Marley, who introduces the spirits of Christmas past, of Christmas present, and of Christmas yet to come.

The Spirit of Christmas past takes Scrooge by 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 fancy, 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 boy here ! "

" You recollect the way ?" inquired the Spirit. " Remember it ! " 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, with its bridge, its church, and winding river." " They left the high‐road by a well remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of 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 16th, 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, Bob ; 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 ! !

Farther 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 conducts Scrooge to the house of Bob Cratchit at Camden Town (he had been there before with the second Spirit), " through several streets familiar to his feet," and he sees Bob Cratchit surrounded by 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 Sunday. 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 you 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 performance in the January number of Hood's Magazine for 1 844 thus speaks of the Christmas Carol.

"If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, 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."

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 encroachments " of the great city," but there can be little doubt 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 blacksmith 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 readers' notice some of the most interesting and curious of all the characters of Dickens.

The tale opens in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, and it will be noticed that Mark Tapley (a new development, and in some degree an improvement on Sam Weller) describes himself as " a Kentish man by birth," Tapley being an old and well known family name at Chatham.

In Chapter 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 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 Montague Tigg, and‐ Chevy Slyme, the latter of whom is detained at the Blue Dragon for an unpaid score, " a thing in itself essentially mean ; a low performance on a slate, or possibly chalked upon the back of a door."

Young Martin afterwards encounters Tigg at a pawnbroker's in London, where in a playful 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 1 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 Company.

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 everything 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 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 Chapter 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. 1 Rich clothes are oft by common sharpers worn, And diamond rings felonious hands adorn. — Martial,

"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 connexion 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 unlimited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom of the road, could ever have made him perfect in. 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 (by whomsoever written), contains so many characters whose names may be said to have '. passed into the language !! "

Bailey, jun., and Poll Swecdlepipe, Pecksniff, and Pinch, and Slyme, Sairey Gamp, and her mythical 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 Nov. 2nd 1843). Dickens says "You know, as well as I, that I think Chuzzlewit in a hundred points immeasure‐ ably the best of my stories." and so, up to that time, it undoubtedly was.

Dombey AND Son, I 846‐7‐8. On the authority of Dickens himself (see Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. 2, p. 327), much of the early part of this tale, so far as Paul Dombey is concerned, is in a manner autobiographical ! From internal evidence alone, we might have been almost sure of this ; for there is, in little 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 had 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 my life in M.S. when I die ? There are some things in it that would touch you very much." This letter was written Nov. 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 plates are amongst his finest efforts. " Browne is certainly 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 Dombey 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 or near Yarmouth, and farther on in the story, David is at school at Canterbury ; but it is certain that Dickens never was at Yarmouth till January, 1849 (when he was 37 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 !

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.1 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 autobiographical character of the work less easy of recognition.

In this tale, as in Dombey and Son, one of the greatest favourites of all the characters introduced, is a seafaring

1 The name of this curious character was originally written " Mr. Robert," as may be seen on Folios 8 and 9 of the M.S. at South Kensington.