Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1871-12-30
Youthful Days Of Dickens.

Youthful Days OF Dickens.
HIS FIRST LovE-HIs EARLY ESSAYS IN JOUR-
NALIsM.
From the London Telegraph's Review of For
ster's l. fe of Charles Dickensl
The contributions to Dickens early history
are all the more valuable, since he has himself
leftno direct record Of those days, save in Sop
able sketches Of legal life, which proved that he
did good deal more than keep MT. BlackmOre's
petty cash. After quitting the precincts of the
had become SUPPLEMENTARY 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 Doc
tors'.commons. But the boy of II was now
nerved to patience and industry by his first
love, for he had found and steadfastly worshipcd
Q Dora, and the worship opened out to the
idolater, both in fact and fiction, highly I'M
substantial, happy, foolish time" Mr.. Forster
disbelieved in any but the Dora of the book,
until in 1856 the Dora of 1929 really reappeared
in Dickens life and then Dickens wrote to his
still skeptical friend:
al don't quite apprehend what You mean by
my overrating the strength of the feeling Of five
feeling, and will only think what the desperate
intensity of my nature Is, and that this began
when 1 was Charley's age; that il excludedevery
other idea from my mind for four years, at a
time of life when tour years are equal to four
times four; and that went at IL with determi-
nation to overcome all the difficulties, which
iairly lifted me up into that newspaper life, and
foated me away over a hundred mems heads;
then you are wrong, because nothing can exag-
gerate that. 1 have positively stood amazed at
myself ever since. And so suffered, and so
worked, and so beat and hammered away at the
maddest romances that ever got into any boys
head and stayed there, that to see the mere
cause of IL 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 recollection gave me in 'COpperfeld.'
And, just as can never open that book as open
any other book, cannot see the face {even at
four-and-forty) or hear the voice without going
wandering away over the ashes of all that youth
and hope in the widest manner"
MIR. Forster adds:
"More and more plainly seen, however, in the
light of four-and-forty the romance glfed visi-
bly, 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
youthful Dora's house, and contemplated with a
calm equanimity, in the hall, her stuffed favor
lite, Jip, he began the fiction in which there was
Flora to set against its predecess0rs Dora, both
a comic humor in il he found it impossible to
resist but it was kindly and pleasant to the last
and Ii the later picture showed him plenty to
laugh at i'm the retrospect of his youth, there was
nothing he thought of more tenderly than the
earlier, as long as he was conscious of anything"
At 10 Dickens began his manhood by entering
the galIeTy OIL the stan or the True Sun,
with which Mr.. Forster was editorially and also
in other ways connected; and he tells how he
first saw Dickens one day when there had been
a general Strike OF the reporters
81 well rene ber noticing at this dread time,
on the staircas, OF the magnificent mansion We
were lodged in, a young man Of my own age
whose keen animation OF look would have
arrested attention anywhere, and whose name,
upon inquiry, l then for the first time heard. IL
was coupled with the fact, which gave il interest
even then, that young Dickens had been
spokesman for the recalcitrant reporters, and
conducted their case triumphantly."
"There never icds such a shorthand writer I"
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 leay-
ing The True San, he worked for the " Mirror of
Parliament" and in his twenty-third year he
Joined the staff OF The Morning Chronicle. Mean
time, i'm January, 1884, his first writing saw the
light-the sketch of Mrs. Josephine Porter
over the Way" which he had dropped stealthily
one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling,
into dark letter-bOx in dark Office up dark
court in Fleet street." The letter-bOx was that
Of The Monthly Magazine, and when, some daye
after, he bought that periodical in the Strand
strangely enough, from a young man afterward
the Hall of Chapman & Hall, thus lending new
illustration to his theory of the smalless Of the
wOrld-he was seized with no slight agitation on
seeing himself in print:
"On which occasion / walked down to West
minister Hall, and turned into IL for half an
hour, because nv eyes were so dimmed with Joy
and pride that they could not bear the street.
and were not fit to be seen there.'