The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-12-09 00:00:00

MR. FORSTER'S LIFE OF DICKENS.

Mr. John Forster has written a "Life of i'harks
Dickens," and as no one had a more intimate know-
ledge of the man, having lived in the closest
friendship with him for thirty years, no one had
better opportunities for becoming acquainted with the
great humourist. Mr. Forster was on the most inti-
mate terms with the great novelist from the spring of
Din to the day of Dickens's death in June, 170.
They weje men of about the same age, and to no one,
probably, did Dickens confide so much of his inmost
nature as to the literary companion who now gives
this interesting, record of his career.
. .

The leadinglacts in the life of Dickens are already
known, and need not be recapitulated. That he was
the son of a clerk in the Navy Pay Office; that his
father was thriftless and improvident ; that his edu-
cation was grossly neglected and his early life passed
among scenes of great hardship and privation. Mr.
Forster adds some new particulars respecting the
elder Dickens, whose portrait he bids us identify with
his son's Mr. Mirawber.

The impressions, and many of the details, of Charles
Dickens's own early life are to be found in " David
Coppertield," some of the scenes of which were
actually written as chapters of an autobiography.
At nine years of age bis family removed from Chatham
to Loudon, and took up their residence in Layliarn
street, 'amden Town. It was one.,! the crisis in the elder
Dickens's fortunes, and the earliest impressions formed
by the son of this part of his life were of his father's
intricate money involvements. Here it was when
scarcely beyond the period of infancy, he beiian to
learn in that hard school of life the lessons id, which
his genius made so much profit in after years. It was,
indeed, the only school available to him, for, either
from the poverty or the carelessness of his parents, his
education was suffered to lapse, while he fell into a
position of almost menial servitude. Of his father, lie
said afterwards to Mr. Forster :
" I know my father to be as kindhearted and generous a
man as ever lived in the world. Ever}thing that I can re-
member of his conduct to his wife, Sr children, or friends in
sin;lencss or affliction], Is beyond all praise. ley me, as a sick
child, he haa watched night and day, on weariedly and
patiently, many nights and days. Ile never undertook any
business, charge, or trust, that he dint not zealously, con-
scientiously. punctually, honourably discharge. Ills industry
has always been untiring. Ile was prowl of me in his way,
and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But, in
the ease of his temp, and the straitness of his means, he ap-
peared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating
me at all, and to have utterly put from hint the notion that
I had any claim upon hint, in that regard, whatever. Su
I degenerated into cleaning his boots of. morning, and my
own, and making myself useful in the work of the little
house ; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters
(we were now si,t in all); and going on such poor errands as
arose out of our poor way of living."

The fortunes of the family haling fallen to ear
lowest ebb, it was resolved, inconsideration of a certain
Indian connection, and the fact that people in India
always sent home their children to be educated, to start
a school, and a M use was taken in flower-street with
a large braaeplate, which announced "Mrs. Dickens's
Establishment."
" I left," wrote Dickens to Mr. Forster, "at a great many
other doors a groat many circulate, calling attention to the
merits of the establishment. Yet nobody ever came to
school, nor rho I recollect that anybody ever proposed to
come, or that the leant preparation woo made to receive
anybody. hut I know that we go en very badly xt ith the
butcher and baker, and very often we had not too much
for dinner, and that at last my father was arrested."
It we., from his intercourse with his father in the
MarahaLsea that Dickens derived that minute experi-
ence of prison life of which he made such touching and
humorous use in " Piekniek, "Little Dorrit,' and
" David Copperfield." Meanwhile, the- family were
reduced to the greatest straits, and even the little
store of books, which were the only solace of
the little lad, had to be pawned. But even worse
days came, a description of which is given in the
early struggles of David Copperfield.
It need be no secret now, for the fact will do his
memory no harm, that the childhood of Charles Dickens
was passed in great poverty. Every small sum of
money that could be earned by any member of the
family became of vital importance ; so the boy Charles,
at about ten years of age, was placed in a blacking
warehouse, belonging to a distant connection of the
family, named Lannert, which establishment wax opeu est
as a rival to the famous blacking shop of Warren,
in the Strand. I.amert's house was at old Hunger-
ford-stairs, and is exactly described in " David
Copperfield." What many suspected before is now
specifically revealed. The life of the boy David Copper-
field is the life of the boy Charles Dickens The
future novelist entered the warehouse of James Lamert
the most menial capacity, ut a salary of six or
seven shillings a week. His work was to cover the
pots of paste-blacking, first with oil paper and then
with blue paper, to tie them round with string, to
clip the paper close and no at, and to paste on a printed
table. In the discharge of these duties his companions
were boys of humble birth and uncultured manners,
and young Dickens, remembering his happier child-
hood at Chatham, longing for education and for a
start in life, and fearing that, if his present employ-
ment continued, he would sink into the mere dregs of
society, suffered a degree of anguish the memory of
which he could never shake off at the very height of
his prosperity.
At this time the whole family, except Charles and
an elder sister, were domiciled at the Marshalsea, he
boarding with a "reduced old lady," who served him
no the model of Mrs. Pipchin. Dickens's reference to
this portion of his life is truly touching :
"My own exclusive breakfast oLa penny cottage loaf and
a pennyworth of milk I provided forsook:lL I kept another
man loaf and a quarter of a pound of cheese, on a particular
shelf of a partieular clipboard ; to make my supper on when
I come bad: at night. They made a bole In the em xor seven
shillintrs, I know well and I was out at the blacking mare-
house all day, and had to Rapport myself on that money all
the week. I suppose my lodging vas paid for by my fattier.
I certainly did not pay it myself ; nod I certainly had flO
other assistance whatever (the making of my clothes, I
think, excepted) from Monday morninguntil Saturday night.
Nu advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation,
no support from any one that I can call to mind, se help me
God.

"Sundays, Fanny and I passed in the prison. I was at
the academy in Teuterdenatreet, Ilauover-square, at nine
o'clock in the morning, to fetch her; and no walked back
there together, at night. •
" I was so young and childish, and so little qualified—
how could the otherwise I—to undertake the whole charge
of my own exhitence, that, In going to Ilungerford-stairs of a
morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half-
price on trays at theconfectioner's doors in Tottenham-court-
road : and I often spent in that the money I mould have kept
for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a
roll, or a slice of pudding. There were two pudding shops
between which I was divided, according to my finances. One
was in a court close to St. Martin's Church at the back of the
church', which is now removed altogether: The pudding at
that shop was made with currants, and was rather a special
pudding, hut was dear, two penn'orth not being largi r than
a penn'orth of nines ordinary pudding. A good shop for the
miter was in the Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther
Arcade is now. It was a stout, hale pudding, heavy and
flabby, with groat raisins inn it, stuck in whole, at great dis-
tance apart. It came up hot, at about noon every day, and
many and many a day• did I dine off it.
"We had half all hour, I think, for tea. When I bad
money enough, I used to go tuft coffee-alum, and have half •
pint of coffee, and a slice of bread and butter. When Iliad
no monv I took a turn in Covent-garden Market, and stared
at the pine appfes. The coffee-shops to which I flint re-
sorted were, one in Maidendane ; one in a court non-
existent now close to Ilungerford Market, and one in St.
Martin's-lane, of which I oily recollect that it Moist near
the church, awl that in the door there was an oval glass'
plate, with Coffee Room' painted on it, addressed towards
the street. If I ever find myself in a very different kind of
coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on
gin's, and read it backward on the wrong aide ' Muor-eeffoe
(as I of ten used to do then in a dismal reverie', a shock goes
through my blood.
I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and uninten-
tionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of
my life. I know that If a shilling or so were given me by
any one I spent it in a dinner era tea. I knew that I worked,
from morning to night, with common men and boys, a
shabby child. I know that I tried, but Ineffectually, not to
antiitpate my money, and to make it last the week through ;
by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting.house,
wrapped into six little parcels, each parcel containing the

The Life of Charles 'Pickens. By John Forster. Vol.!.
Chapman and flail, London.

lame amount, and labelled with a different day. I know
that I have lounged Mead the stret La, insufficiently and un-
Satisfactorily foil. 1 boa that, but for the mercy of Gal, I
ndght easity have teen for any esoyekhat Ras taken of me, a
little robbej or a Mlle ,agabosei." •,
At last, however, after a tearful remonetranco with
hie father, a back attic was found for him in T.ant-
street, in the Borough, which he thought was a l'ara-
dice ; and from this time he would breakfast in the
Marshalsea, which was to him a home.
But, bye-and-bye Came the start in lire—first RA a
lawyer'c clerk, then as a newspaper reporter, and then
as a successful author. His old poverty became a mine
of riches to him, end the rough umterial of his fame;
and he never lost the habit of coining his life into
enduriit fe.
Our limited space precludes us from giving more
than the foregoing quotations from this deeply in-
teresting biography, and we will conclude by suggest-
ing to our readers, that they would derive very much
pleasures freim a perusal of Mr. Forster's life of this
great novehst.