The Dickens Country

by Frederic George Kitton

THE SIGN OF THE DOG’S HEAD IN THE POT, CHARLOTTE STREET, BLACKFRIARS. ([Page 35].)
“That turning in the Blackfriars Road which has Rowland Hill’s Chapel on one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over a shop door at the other” (Forster).

Brighter days were in store for the Dickens family, and especially for little Charles, whose father could now afford to send him to a good school in the neighbourhood, much to the boy’s delight. Owing to a quarrel (of which he was the subject) between John Dickens and James Lamert, the father declared that his boy should leave the blacking warehouse and go to school instead. Thus terminated, suddenly and unexpectedly, that period of his life which Charles Dickens ever regarded with a feeling of repugnance. “Until old Hungerford Market was pulled down,” he tells us, “until old Hungerford Stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude began.” He never saw it, and could not endure to go near it, and, in order that a certain smell of the cement used for putting on the blacking-corks should not revive unpleasant associations, he would invariably, when approaching Warren’s later establishment in Chandos Street, cross over to the opposite side of the way.

He was about twelve years of age when he and the blacking-pots parted company for ever, and the new and more promising prospect opened before him—a future replete with possibilities, and yielding opportunities of which he knew the value and made the best use. The school to which he was sent as a day-scholar was called the Wellington House Academy, the proprietor being a Welshman named William Jones, whose “classical and commercial” seminary stood at the north-east corner of Granby Street, Hampstead Road. The residential portion still exists, although doomed to early demolition; but the detached schoolroom and large playground disappeared in 1835, on the formation of the London and Birmingham Railway, as it was then called. In a paper entitled “Our School,” contributed to Household Words in 1851, Dickens gives a thinly-veiled account of Jones’s Academy, and those of his pupils who yet survive readily understand the various allusions, and vouch for the general accuracy of the presentment. “It was a school,” he says, “of some celebrity in its neighbourhood—nobody could say why; the master was supposed among us to know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know everything.” There can be no doubt that Wellington House Academy and its proprietor are revived in “David Copperfield” as Salem House and Mr. Creakle.

The most accessible route for young Dickens to follow between his home in Johnson Street and the school was by way of Drummond Street, then a quiet semi-rural thoroughfare, bounded on the north side by the cow pastures belonging to an ancestor of the late Cecil Rhodes (of South African fame), many members of whose family were located here. Dr. Dawson, a schoolfellow of Dickens at Wellington House, well remembered him acting as ringleader of other lads, and, simulating poverty, imploring charity from people in Drummond Street, especially old ladies.

29 (NOW 13) JOHNSON STREET, SOMERS TOWN, ([Page 38].)
The home of Dickens in 1824.

Among other associations of the future novelist with this locality may be mentioned his attendance (in company with Dr. Dawson) at the Sunday morning services in Somers Chapel (now called St. Mary’s Parish Church), in Seymour Street (then partly fields), Somers Town,[21] concerning which act of piety Dr. Dawson regrets to observe that his lively and irreverent young friend “did not attend in the slightest degree to the service, but incited me to laughter by declaring his dinner was ready, and the potatoes would be spoiled, and, in fact, behaved in such a manner that it was lucky for us we were not ejected from the chapel.” He remained at Wellington House Academy about two years (1824-1826), without achieving any particular distinction as a pupil. Thus ended his school training, elementary at the best, and it has been truly observed that a classical education might have “done for” him—that “Boz,” like Burns, might have acquired all necessary erudition in a Board school. “Pray, Mr. Dickens, where was your son educated?” conjured a friend of John Dickens, who significantly and pertinently replied, “Why, indeed, sir—ha! ha!—he may be said to have educated himself!” a response which the novelist used good-humouredly and whimsically to imitate in Forster’s hearing.

On relinquishing his studies at the age of fourteen, Charles Dickens for a brief period was installed as clerk in the service of Mr. Molloy, a solicitor in New Square, Lincoln’s Inn. His father, however, presently transferred him to the offices of Messrs. Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, at No. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn (second floor), the clerks’ office looking out upon the roadway; here he performed similar duties from May, 1827, to November, 1828, at a weekly salary of 13s. 6d., rising to 15s. Although he did not relish the law, and failed to appreciate the particular kind of responsibility devolving upon him as a humble apprentice to that profession, the few months thus employed by him were productive of fruitful results, for they afforded him opportunities of studying the idiosyncrasies of lawyers, their clerks and clients, which can only be obtained by intimate association. In the words of David Copperfield, he said: “I looked at nothing that I know of, but I saw everything,” with the result that he culled from his mental storehouse those vivid pictures of legal life and character as portrayed in “The Pickwick Papers,” “Sketches by Boz,” and later works. The Dickens family at this time had left the unattractive environment of Johnson Street and made their home at the Polygon, Somers Town, a much more respectable and refined quarter, where Harold Skimpole (in “Bleak House”) afterwards settled, and “where there were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars.” The Polygon was so called from the arrangement of the houses in the form of a circle; it stood within Clarendon Square, and, on completion, became the aristocratic part of Somers Town; many successful artists and engravers selecting it as a place of residence.[22] The name of Dickens, however, does not appear in the contemporary rate-book, but we find recorded there the significant fact that No. 17 was then “let to lodgers”—a very unusual entry—and this, added to the fact that the rents were comparatively high, justifies the assumption that the Dickens family were lodgers only at the house bearing that number. At this time John Dickens, with commendable energy and perseverance, had acquired the difficult art of shorthand writing, with a view to obtaining a livelihood as a Parliamentary reporter. He apparently changed his address with some frequency, in 1832-1833 living for a time at Highgate, whither Charles accompanied him, and lodging during brief intervals in the western part of London. Certain letters written by the son to an intimate friend indicate such addresses as North End (? Fulham) and Fitzroy Street.