CHARLES DICKENS IN 1859
Rischgitz Collection
which the novelist afterwards vividly recalled, and which will be found duly set forth in “David Copperfield.”
CHARLES DICKENS GIVING A READING, 1861
From a photo by Fradelle & Young
It was at this awkward juncture that some relatives of the family, named Lamert, realising that an opportunity should be given to the poor neglected lad of earning a livelihood, found him an occupation in their blacking-manufactory (started in opposition to the famous Warren), and here he earned a few shillings a week by covering and labelling pots of paste blacking! While infinitely preferable to a state of enforced idleness under demoralising conditions, the boy’s experience during what is usually referred to as “the blacking-bottle period” for ever remained a terrible nightmare, and the novelist pointedly referred to that unhappy time when in “David Copperfield” he observed that no one could express “the secret agony” of his soul as he sank into the companionship of those by whom he was then surrounded, and felt his “early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man” crushed in his breast. In respect of a miserable and neglected boyhood, Alphonse Daudet suffered as did Charles Dickens, and, phœnix-like, both emerged triumphantly from the ashes of what to them appeared to be a cruel conflagration of their desires and aspirations.