Year: 1872




the gift of a half 8 crown, very low
bow. He was silent for several min
Iutes; I felt that I had touched 9
painful place in his memory; and to
Mr.. Dixie I never spoke of the sub
ject again. 1t was not, however
then, but some weeks later, that
Dickens made allusion to my having
thus struck unconsciously upon a
time of which he never could lose
the remembrance while he remem
bered anything, and the reconeotions
of which, at intervals, haunted him
and made him miserable, even to
that hour.


DIcKEN's sEcaET AGONY OF SOUL.


Very shortly afterward, 1 learnt in
all their detail the incidents that had
been SO painful to him; and what
then was said to me or written re
specting them revealed the story of
his boyhood. The idea of David
Copperfeld," to take the whole world
into his confidence, had not at this
time occurred to him; but what it
had so startled me to know, his read
ers were afterwards told with only
such change or addition is for the
time might sufficiently disguise him
self under cover of his hero. For
the poor little lad, with good ability
and most sensitive nature, turned at
the age of ten into 'laboring hind, +"
in TIE service of "Mudstone and
Grimby," and conscious already of
what made it seem very strange to
him, that he could so easily have
been thrown away at such an age,
was indeed himself His was the Sc
cret agony of soul at finding himself
companion to Mick Walker and
Mealy Potatoes and mis- tears that
mingled with the water in which he
and they washed out bottles. It
had all been written as fact, before
he thought of any other use for it;
and it was not until several months
later, when the fancy of David Cop
perfeld," /" itself suggested by what he
had SO written of his early troubles,
began to take shape in his mind, that
he abandoned his first intention of
writing his own life. Those ware
house experiences fell then so aptly
into the subject he had chosen that
he could not resist the temptation of
Immediately using them, and the
manuscript recording them, which
was but the first portion of what he
had designed to write, was embod-
led in the substance of the eleventh
and earlier chapters of his novel.
What already had been sent to me,
however, and proof sheets of the
novel interlined at the time, enable
me now to separate the fact from the
fiction; and to supply to the story of
the authors childhood those pas
sages omitted from the book, which,
apart from their illustration of the
growth Of his character, present 70
US a picture of tragical suffering,
and of tender as well as humorous
fancy, unsurpassed in even the won
ders of his published writings.


THE sPECTER OF HIS LIFE.


Writing in his own proper person,
in the fragment to which sllusion
has been made, Dickens said of this
period of his life:


"The deep remembrance of the
sense 1 had of being utterly neglee.
ted and hopeless; of the shame ]
felt in my position; of the misery il
was to my young heart to believe
that, day by day,what had learned,
and thought, and delighted in, and
raised my fancy and my emulation
up by, was passing away from me
never to be brought back any more
cannot be written. My whole ma
ture was so penetrated with the
grief and humiliation of such consid-
erations, that now, famous and ca
ressed and happy. often forget in
my dreams that 1 have q dear wife
and children; even that I am man
and wander desolately back to that
time ofmy life. My mother and
my brother and sisters excepting
Fanny in the Royal Accademy OF
Music) we're still encamped, with g
young servant girl from Chatham
workhouse, in the two parlors in
the empty house in Cover street
North. Itwas a long way to go and
return within the dinner hour, and
usually, 1 either carried my dinner
with me, or went and bought it al
some neighboring shop. In the lat
ter case, it was commonly saveloy
and a penny loaf; some times 8
fourpenny plate Of beef from a cook S
shop; sometimes a plate of bread
and cheese, and a glass of beer, from
a miserable public house over the
way-the Swan, if remember right
or the Swan and something else that
II have forgotten. Once, 1 remember
tucking my own bread (which l had
brought home in the morning under
my arm, wrapped up in a piece Of
paper like book, and going into
the best dining room in Johnson's
alamodebeef house in Charles court
Drury, lane, and magnifcently or
dering a small plate Of alamode beef
TO eat with it. What the waiter
thought of such a strange little ap
partition, coming in all alone, 1 DOM
| know; but l can see him now, star
\ inc at me as l ate my dinner, and
bringing up the other waiter to look
I gave him a halfpenny, and 1 wish.
now. he hadn't taken it. }"


A GLIMMER OF LIGHT.


In these and other passages the
reader will recognize some of the
earlier parts of "Copperfeld." Mr.
John Dickens being unable to make
anv arrangements with his creditors
Mrs. Dickens was obliged to break
up her poor household in Cover
street North, and go into the Mar
shalsea. The autobiography ther
proceeds;


The key of the house was SEM
back to the landlord, who was very
clad to get it; and l (small Cain tina
II twas, except that l had never done
harm to any one) was handed owe
as a lodger to a reduced old lady
long known to our family, in Little
college street Camdentown, who
took children in to board, and had