DICKENS'S HOUSE IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, LONDON.
(From an old print.)
Soon after the meeting at Dr. King's school Charlie's schoolfellow visited the family in Devonshire Terrace, just off the New Road. David Copperfield was then the book of the hour, and because it had been suggested that the author had his own boyhood in mind while writing the novel, Dickens was more of a lion than ever to the juvenile mind. Charlie devoured the pages of the book with avidity. Indeed, all the novelist's children were charmingly appreciative of their father's writings—a flattering incentive to Dickens, no doubt.
At the moment of this visit, his own little darlings, as well as some others, were crawling all over him, reminding one of Gulliver in the toils. But he at once turned to the somewhat bashful visitor, and, in renewing the acquaintance, with delightful tact made the schoolboy feel that he was not de trop.
It was at the juvenile birthday parties that Dickens seemed in all his glory. At the supper table, in helping some little miss to "trifle," he would assure her with all possible gravity that it was no trifle at all. When the writer, urged to make a little speech on the occasion of Charlie's birthday, came to a full stop at the words "I am sure," Dickens at once came to his assistance, and enabled him to retire from the platform, however ungracefully, with the remark, among others, "Always be sure, my dear boy, and you'll get along all right."
At the little theatrical entertainments Dickens was the alpha and the omega of the proceedings. He was sometimes author, adapter, condenser, musical director, manager, prompter, and even stage carpenter. He overflowed with energy.
Dickens, doubtless remembering his own acute sensitiveness as a child, could not wittingly wound a child's feelings. He made fun with, not of us. No party ever came off at Dickens's without "Sir Roger de Coverley" being introduced. Dickens shouted with laughter as some novice got badly mixed up in "all hands down the middle." Off he darted after the lost sheep—generally an awkward boy—and turned his blushes to smiles by saying, "What a dancer this boy will make when he's tackled a little more roast beef!" or, "Isn't Tommy a nice young man for a small party?"
There was nothing of the pedagogue about him. No vulgar attempt to pose as the brilliant "Boz." He was simply a big boy, and he came down the ladder of his fame to meet his fellows on their ordinary platform—to be one of them in their own simple way for a time.