The same pawnbroker's shop, too, which was so well known to David, became not less familiar to Charles; and a good deal of notice was here taken of him by the pawnbroker, or by his principal clerk who officiated behind the counter, and who, while making out the duplicate, liked of all things to hear the lad conjugate a Latin verb and translate or decline his musa and dominus. Everything to this accompaniment went gradually; until, at last, even of the furniture of Gower Street number four there was nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen table, and some beds. Then they encamped, as it were, in the two parlors of the emptied house, and lived there night and day.
All which is but the prelude to what remains to be described.
CHAPTER II.
HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD.
1822-1824.
Mr. Dilke's Half-crown—Story of Boyhood told—D. C. and C. D.—Enterprise of the Cousins Lamert—First Employment in Life—Blacking-Warehouse—A Poor Little Drudge—Bob Fagin and Poll Green—"Facilis Descensus"—Crushed Hopes—The Home in Gower Street—Regaling Alamode—Home broken up—At Mrs. Roylance's in Camden-town—Sundays in Prison—Pudding-Shops and Coffee-Shops—What was and might have been—Thomas and Harry—A Lodging in Lant Street—Meals in the Marshalsea—C. D. and the Marchioness—Originals of Garland Family—Adventure with Bob Fagin—Saturday-Night Shows—Appraised officially—Publican and Wife at Cannon Row—Marshalsea Incident in Copperfield—Incident as it occurred—Materials for Pickwick—Sister Fanny's Musical Prize—From Hungerford Stairs to Chandos Street—Father's Quarrel with James Lamert—Quits the Warehouse—Bitter Associations of Servitude—What became of the Blacking-Business.
The incidents to be told now would probably never have been known to me, or indeed any of the occurrences of his childhood and youth, but for the accident of a question which I put to him one day in the March or April of 1847.
I asked if he remembered ever having seen in his boyhood our friend the elder Mr. Dilke, his father's acquaintance and contemporary, who had been a clerk in the same office in Somerset House to which Mr. John Dickens belonged. Yes, he said, he recollected seeing him at a house in Gerrard Street, where his uncle Barrow lodged during an illness, and Mr. Dilke had visited him. Never at any other time. Upon which I told him that some one else had been intended in the mention made to me, for that the reference implied not merely his being met accidentally, but his having had some juvenile employment in a warehouse near the Strand; at which place Mr. Dilke, being with the elder Dickens one day, had noticed him, and received, in return for the gift of a half-crown, a very low bow. He was silent for several minutes; I felt that I had unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory; and to Mr. Dilke I never spoke of the subject again. It was not, however, then, but some weeks later, that Dickens made further allusion to my thus having struck unconsciously upon a time of which he never could lose the remembrance while he remembered anything, and the recollection of which, at intervals, haunted him and made him miserable, even to that hour.