CHARLES DICKENS DRIVING WITH MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY
Reproduced from The Favourite Magazine, by kind permission of Messrs. Paul Naumann, Ltd.
There is no doubt that the ordeal of poverty, with its unhappy accompaniments, had counteracting advantages in the case of Charles Dickens: his natural abilities were sharpened, as well as his powers of observation, his excellent memory enabling him in after years to record those actualities of life which render his books a perpetual joy and delight. Fortunately, brighter days were in store. The elder Dickens (in whom it is easy to detect glimpses of Mr. Micawber) was in a position to send Charles to a reputable school in the Hampstead Road, known as Wellington House Academy (still standing), where he remained two years, and on leaving it he entered another scholastic establishment near Brunswick Square, there completing his studies, rudimentary at the best.
GAD’S HILL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER, KENT.
The last residence of Charles Dickens
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)
The year 1827 proved a memorable one for the subject of this sketch, for then it was that he, in his fifteenth year, “began life,” first as a clerk in a lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn, and then acting in a similar capacity for a firm of attorneys in Gray’s Inn, where his weekly salary amounted to something under a sovereign. As was his wont, he made mental memoranda of his environment, noting the manners, customs, and peculiarities of lawyers, their clerks and clients, for the result of which one needs only to turn to the pages of the immortal “Pickwick.” His father, who had left the Navy Pay Office, turned his attention to journalism, and at this time had become a newspaper parliamentary reporter. Charles, craving for a similar occupation, in which he believed there might be an opening for greater things, resolutely determined to study shorthand, and became an assiduous attendant at the British Museum. His persevering struggle with the mysteries of stenography was recalled when recording David Copperfield’s experience—a struggle resulting in ultimate victory. Following in his father’s footsteps, he, at the age of nineteen, succeeded in obtaining an appointment as a reporter in the Press Gallery at the House of Commons, where he was presently acknowledged to be the most skilful shorthand writer among the many so engaged there.