As a Parliamentary reporter he won great and enviable distinction, it being an undoubted fact that of the eighty or ninety so employed with him in the “gallery” of the House of Commons, he retained the premier position by reason of his marvellous dexterity, accuracy, and capacity for work. It was, of course, in the old House, not the present palatial edifice, that Charles Dickens followed this avocation, where the accommodation provided for the newspaper representatives proved most unsatisfactory, the “gallery” in the House of Lords being no better than a “preposterous pen” (as Dickens described it), in which the reporters were “huddled together like so many sheep,” while the reporters in the Commons carried on their duties in the Strangers’ Gallery until a separate gallery was provided for their use in the temporary House constructed in 1834. The “gentlemen of the press” are now treated with much greater consideration; instead of the dark lobby, or “pen,” there are large writing-rooms, separate apartments for smoking, reading, dining, and dressing, as well as a stationer’s shop, a post-office, and a refreshment-bar.
Dickens’s final appearance at the House of Commons as a reporter was at the close of the session of 1836, when, like David Copperfield, he “noted down the music of the Parliamentary bagpipes for the last time.” For he had already tasted the delights of authorship, having written some original papers for the Evening Chronicle and other periodicals, and henceforth he determined to adopt literature as a profession. His first paper appeared (entitled “A Dinner at Poplar Walk”)[25] anonymously in the Monthly Magazine nearly three years prior to his retirement from the Press Gallery—that is, in December, 1833—and he has himself described how, “with fear and trembling,” he stealthily dropped the manuscript into “a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street,” and how suffused with tears of joy and pride were the eyes of the young author when he beheld his little effusion “in all the glory of print” that “they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen there.” The “dark court” referred to was Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, the location of the office of the old (and long since defunct) Monthly Magazine; the court still exists, but the office was demolished quite recently for the extension of the premises of Mr. Henry Sells, who, happily, has preserved, as a memorial of the novelist, the door to which the veritable “dark letter-box” was attached. The story of Dickens’s early essays has often been related, and needs no repetition here. Suffice it to say that upon the success or failure of that maiden effort a very great deal depended, as he intended to be guided by the dictum of the publisher and of the public, and there is every probability that, had this initial sketch been unfavourably received, the young writer would have directed his attention to the stage, which for him always possessed a magnetic attraction; thus, instead of becoming a famous author, he would have blossomed into a popular actor, thereby missing his true vocation.
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1830.
The earliest authentic portrait known.
From the miniature by Mrs. Janet Barrow. Reproduced by permission of F. Sabin, Esq.
CHAPTER III.
THE LONDON AND SUBURBAN HOMES.
Dickens’s earlier sketches (which bore no signature until August, 1834, when he adopted the pseudonym of “Boz”) were penned when living with his father in Bentinck Street. At first they yielded no honorarium; but as soon as he received a modest fee for them in addition to his salary as a reporter, he exhibited a sense of independence in resolving to take the apartments in Buckingham Street, whence he presently removed to more commodious chambers in Furnival’s Inn, Holborn. He was then twenty-two years of age, and still on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and from Christmas, 1834, he rented a “three-pair back” at No. 13, Furnival’s Inn. One of his earliest (undated) letters bears the address of Furnival’s Inn, in which he informs his future brother-in-law, Henry Austin, that he is about to start on a journey, alone and in a gig, to Essex and Suffolk—evidently on journalistic business for the Morning Chronicle—and expresses a belief that he would be spilt before paying a turnpike, or run over a child before reaching Chelmsford; his journey covered the same ground as that performed by Mr. Pickwick in his drive by coach to Ipswich. Twelve months later he transferred his impedimenta from No. 13 to more cheerful rooms at No. 15, renting a “three-pair floor south.” Several of the later “Sketches by Boz” were doubtless written at No. 13, which stood squeezed into a corner of the square on the right as entered from Holborn, the young author’s modest quarters being almost at the top of a steep and dark staircase.
His rooms at No. 15 were a decided improvement on these, and he probably had them in his mind when referring to Furnival’s Inn in “Martin Chuzzlewit” and to John Westlock’s apartments there, “two stories up”: “There are snug chambers in those Inns where the bachelors live, and, for the dissolute fellows they pretend to be, it is quite surprising how well they get on.... His rooms were the perfection of neatness and convenience.... There is little enough to see in Furnival’s Inn. It is a shady, quiet place, echoing to the footsteps of the stragglers who have business there, and rather monotonous and gloomy on Sunday evenings.” It does not require much stretch of imagination to believe that the description of Traddles’ chambers in Gray’s Inn (vide “David Copperfield,” chap. lix.) was drawn from these very apartments, or to realize the probability that the reference to Traddles and his lovely girl guests is a reminiscence of Dickens’s own.
YORK HOUSE, 15 BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND. ([Page 45].)
Charles Dickens lodged in the house overlooking the river about 1834, and Mrs. Crupps let apartments here to David Copperfield. This house was also occupied by Peter the Great, Henry Fielding, and William Black.
This humble abode ever remained in his memory as a hallowed spot, cherished by the fact that here he received the commission to write “Pickwick” and penned the opening chapters, by which immortal achievement he suddenly leaped into fame; but also by another interesting and very personal recollection, namely, that it was the scene of his early domestic life. For, be it remembered, the publication of the first number of “Pickwick” (April, 1836) synchronized with his marriage, the lady of his choice being Catherine Thomson Hogarth, eldest daughter of George Hogarth, one of his colleagues on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, the ceremony being performed at the Church of St. Luke, Chelsea, of which parish the Rev. Charles Kingsley (father of the author of “Westward Ho!”) then officiated as rector.