New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1871-12-28
Youthful Days of Dickens.
HIS First Love-His Early DAYS I'm Jou

AAs SiFst AoSe-Hs Early Days In Jour
nsIfsna.
From the London Telegraphs Review Of Forsters Life Of
Charles Dckens.l
The contributions to Dickens's early history
are all the more valuable. since he has himself
leit no direct record of those days, save in
"Copperhed'' and in those innumerable and
lnimltable sketches of legal life, which prove
that he did good deal more than keep MIR.
blackmore's petty cash. After quitting the
precincts OF the law, struck by the example of
MS father, who had become q Parliamentary
reporter, Dickens devoted himself to the study
OF shorthand but he could not get into the
gallery at once, and two years were spent in
reporting proceedings in the law courts for one
OF the offices in Doctors commons. But the
boy OF IL was now nerved to patience and in
dustry by his first love, for he had found and
steadiastly worshiped Dora, and the worship
"opened out to the idoater, both in fact and
notion, highly unsubstantial, happy, foolish
tlme," Mr.. Forster disbelieved in any but the
Dora of the book, until in 1855 the Dora of
lo29 really re-appeared in Dickens's life ; and
then Dickens wrote to his still skeptlcal friend
=" don't quite apprehend what you mean by
my overrating the strength of the feeling of
nVe-and-twenty years ago. If you mean Of my
own feeling, and will only think what the des-
perate Intensity of my nature is, and that this
began when l was Charleys age; that it ex-
Guided every other idea from my mind, for four
years, at a time of life when four years are
equal to four times four and that / went at it
with determination to overcome all the diff
culties, which fairly lifted me up into that
newspaper life, and foated me away over a
hundred mems heads; then you are wrong,
because nothing can exaggerate that / have
positively stood amazed at myself ever since
And so suffered, and so worked, and SO beat
ana hammered away at the maddest romances
tnat ever got into any boys head and stayed
there, that to see the mere cause of it all, now,
loosens my hold upon myself Without for a
moment sincerely believing that it would have
been better if we had never got separated, |
cannot see the occasion of so much emotion as
l Should see any one else. No one can imagine
In the most distant degree what pain the recol-
lection gave me in 'Copperfeld.' And, lust
as can never open that book as | open any
other book, cannot see the face (even at four
and-iorty) or hear the voice without going
wandering away over the ashes of all that youth
and hope In the widest manner"
Mr.. Forster adds:
p" More and more plainly seen, howe ever, in
the light OF four and forty the romance glided
vislbly away, its work being fairly done and
at the close OF the month following that in
which this letter was written, during which he
had very quietly made a formal call with his
vile at his youthful Dora's house, and contem-
plated with calm equanamity, in the hall, her
stuffed tavorlte Jip, he began the fiction in
which there was Flora to set against it's
predecessor Dora, both derived from the same
original. The fancy had a comic humor in it
he found 1t impossible to resist, but it was
kindly and pleasant to the last and if the later
picture showed him plenty laugh at in this
retrospect OF his youth, there was nothing he
th0nuht arlu Io al;
long as he Was conscious of anything"
At l9 Dickens began his manhood nv enter
ing the gallery on the staff of the True Sun,
with which Mr.. Forster was editorially and
and also In other ways connected and he tells
how he first saw Dickens one day when there
had been general strike of the reporters:
81 well remember noticing at this dread
time, on the staircase of the magnificent man
sion we were lodged in, young man of nv own
age whose keen animation of look would have
arrested attention anywhere, and whose name,
upon inquiry, then for the first time heard.
1t was coupled with the fact which gave it in
terest even then, that young Dickens had
been spokesman for the recalcitrant reporters.
and conducted their case triumphantly"
''There never was such shorthand writer
said of him his friend Mr.. Beard, whom he first
met in the gallery and upon this path in life
his success was sure. For two sessions, after
leaving the True Sun, he worked for the mir.
ror of Parliament and in his twenty, third year
he joined the staff of the Morning Chronicle.
saw the light-the sketch Of MRS. Joseph
Porter over the Way" which he had dropped
stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and
trembling, into a dark letter box in q dark
office up dark court in Fleet street." The
letter-box was that of the Monthly Magazine,
and when some days after he bought that
periodical in the Strand-strangely enough,
from young man afterward the Hall of Chap
man Hall, thus lending new illustration to
his theory of the smallness of the world-he
was seized with no slight agitation on seeing
himself in print:
son which occasion walked down to West
minister Hail. and turned into it for half an
hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with
JOY aud pride that they could not bear the
street, and were not fit to be seen there"