Historic Boyhoods Part 23

f.a.gin, however, insisted on keeping him company, and so the two, the shabbily-dressed undersized boy, and the big strapping man came out into the murky London twilight and took their way over the Blackfriars Bridge.

"Been spendin' your money at the pastry shops, Charley, again? That's what was the matter with you, I take it."

The boy shook his head. "No, Bob. I'm tryin' to save. When I get my week's money I put it away in a bureau drawer, wrapped in six little paper packages with a day of the week on each one. Then I know just how much I've got to live on, and Sundays don't count. Sometimes I do get hungry though, so hungry! Then I look in at the windows and play at bein' rich."

They crossed the Bridge, the boy's big eyes seeming to take note of everything, the man, duller-witted, listening to his chatter. Several times the boy tried to say good-night, but f.a.gin would not be shaken off. "I'm goin' to see you to your door, Charley lad," he said each time.

At last they came into a little street near the Southwark Bridge. The boy stopped by the steps of a house. "Here 'tis, Bob. Good-night. It was good of you to take the trouble for me."

"Good-night, Charley."

The boy ran up the steps, and, as he noticed that f.a.gin still stopped, he pulled the door-bell. Then the man went on down the street. When the door opened the boy asked if Mr. f.a.gin lived there, and being told that he did not, said he must have made a mistake in the house. Turning about he saw that his friend had disappeared around a corner. With a little smile of triumph he made off in the other direction.

The door of the Marshalsea Prison stood open like a great black mouth.

The boy, tired with his long tramp, was glad to reach it and to run in.

Climbing several long flights of stairs he entered a room on the top story where he found his family, his father, a tall pompous-looking man dressed all in black, his mother, an amiable but extremely fragile woman, and a small brother and sister seated at a table eating supper.

The room was very spa.r.s.ely furnished; the only bright spot in it was a small fire in a rusty grate, flanked by two bricks to prevent burning too much fuel.

There was a vacant place at the table for Charles, and he sat down upon a stool and ate as ravenously as though he had not tasted food for months. Meanwhile the tall man at the head of the table talked solemnly to his wife at the other end, using strange long words which none of the children could understand.

Supper over Mr. and Mrs. d.i.c.kens (for that was their name) and the two younger children sat before the tiny fire, and Mr. d.i.c.kens talked of how he might raise enough money to pay his debts, leave the prison, and start fresh in some new business. Charles had heard these same plans from his father's lips a thousand times before, and so he took from the cupboard an old book which he had bought at a little second-hand shop a few days before, a small tattered copy of "Don Quixote," and read it by the light of a tallow candle in the corner.

The lines soon blurred before the boy's tired eyes, his head nodded, and he was fast asleep. He was awakened by his father's deep voice. "Time to be leaving, Charles, my son. You have not forgotten that my pecuniary situation prevents my choosing the hour at which I shall close the door of my house. Fortunately it is a predicament which I trust will soon be obviated to our mutual satisfaction."

The small fellow stood up, shook hands solemnly with his father, kissed his mother, and took his way out of the great prison. Open doors on various landings gave him pictures of many queer households; sometimes he would stop as though to consider some unusually puzzling face or figure.

Into the night again he went, and wound through a dismal labyrinth of the dark and narrow streets of old London. Sometimes a rough voice or an evil face would frighten him, and he would take to his heels and run as fast as he could. When he pa.s.sed the house where he had asked for Mr.

f.a.gin he chuckled to himself; he would not have had his friend know for worlds that his family's home was the Marshalsea Prison.

Even that room in the prison, however, was more cheerful than the small back-attic chamber where the boy fell asleep for the second time that night. He slept on a bed made up on the floor, but his slumber was no less deep on that account.

The noise of workmen in a timber yard under his window woke Charles when it seemed much too dark to be morning. It was morning, however, and he was quickly dressed, and making his breakfast from the penny cottage loaf of bread, section of cream cheese and small bottle of milk, which were all he could afford to buy from the man who rented him the room.

Then he took the roll of paper marked with the name of the day from the drawer of his bureau and counted out the pennies into his pocket. They were not many; he had to live on seven shillings a week, and he tucked them away very carefully in a pocket lest he lose them and have to do without his lunch.

He was not yet due at the blacking-factory, but he hurried away from his room and joined the crowd of early morning people already on their way to work. He went down the embankment along the Thames until he came to a place where a bench was set in a corner of a wall. This was his favorite lounging-place; London Bridge was just beyond, the river lay in front of him, and he was far enough away from people to be safe from interruption.

As he sat there watching the Bridge and the Thames a little girl came to join him. She was no bigger than he, perhaps a year or two older, but her face was already shrewd enough for that of a grown-up woman. She was the maid-of-all-work at a house in the neighborhood, and she had fallen into the habit of stopping to talk for a few moments with the boy on her way to work in the morning. She liked to listen to his stories.

This was the boy's hour for inventing his tales; he could spin wonderful tales about London Bridge, the Tower, and the wharves along the river.

Sometimes he made up stories about the people who pa.s.sed in front of them, and they were such astonishing stories that the girl remembered them all day as she worked in the house. He seemed to believe them himself; his eyes would grow far away and dreamy and his words would run on and on until a neighboring clock brought him suddenly back to his own position.

"You do know a heap o' things, don't you?" said the little girl, lost in admiration. "I'd rather have a shillin' though than all the fairy tales in the world."

"I wouldn't," said Charles stoutly. "I'd rather read books than do anythin' else."

"You've got to eat though," objected his companion, "and books won't make you food. 'Tain't common sense." She relented in an instant. "It's fun though, Charley d.i.c.kens. Good-bye 'til to-morrow."

Charles went on down to the old blacking-factory by Hungerford Stairs, a ramshackle building almost hanging over the river, damp and overrun with rats. His place was in a recess of the counting-room on the first floor, and as he covered the bottles with the oil-paper tops and tied them on with string he could look from time to time through a window at the slow coal barges swinging down the river.

There were very few boys about the place; at lunch time he would wander off by himself, and selecting his meal from a careful survey of several pastry-cook's windows invest his money for the day in fancy cakes or a tart. He missed the company of friends of his own age; even f.a.n.n.y, his oldest sister, he saw only on Sundays when she came back to the Marshalsea from the place where she worked, to spend the day with her family. It was only grown-up people that he saw most of the time, and they were too busy with their own affairs to take much interest in the small, shabby boy who looked just like any one of a thousand other children of the streets. Of all the men at the factory it was only the big clumsy fellow named f.a.gin who would stop to chat with the lad.

So it was that Charles was forced to make friends with whomever he could, people of any age or condition, and was driven to spend much of his spare time roaming about the streets, lounging by the river, reading stray books by a candle in the prison or in the little attic where he slept. It was not a boyhood that seemed to promise much.

In spite of this hard life which he led, Charles rarely lost his love of fun or his natural high spirits. When he was about twelve years old his father came into a little money, which enabled him to pay his debts so that he was released from prison. He was also able to send his son to school. Here he quickly blossomed out into a leader among the boys. He was continually inventing new games, and queer languages, which were made by adding extra syllables to ordinary words. Frequently he and several of his school friends would go out into the street and talk to each other in this language of their own, understanding what each other said, but pretending to be foreigners to every one who heard them.

Charles was also continually writing short stories, which he lent to his friends on payment of marbles or slate-pencils or white mice, which the boys were very fond of keeping in their desks. He and a few others built a small theatre and painted gorgeous scenery for it, and then gave regular plays, which he specially wrote for the theatre, to the great entertainment of the other boys and the masters. This comfortable school life was a great contrast to the hard knocks he had to endure when he was at the blacking factory, and he flourished under its influence and began to show something of his real talent for entertaining those about him.

Mr. d.i.c.kens, however, soon concluded that Charles ought to be making a start in some business, and so a few years after he had entered school he was placed as clerk in the office of a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn.

Here he had to run errands through the busy streets of London's business life, copy all legal doc.u.ments, and answer the clients who came to call on the firm.

The other clerks found young d.i.c.kens immensely entertaining. He could mimic every one who called at the office, and in addition he knew the different c.o.c.kney voices of all the rabble of the London streets. He had learnt to know the queer types of people who drifted about the river banks and the poorer sections of the city. He knew every small inflection of their voices and their every trick and gesture, and now he acted them out to the great delight of the other clerks. But he could put his powers of mimicry to greater uses. He went to the theatre, particularly to hear Shakespeare's plays, as often as he could, and then would repeat long pa.s.sages from the plays, giving the exact voice and manner of the leading actors. Many friends predicted that Charles would be a great actor himself some day, and so perhaps he might had not his interest all been drawn another way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES d.i.c.kENS AT EIGHTEEN]

At the time he was so much charmed with the thought of becoming an actor that he wrote to the manager of the theatre at Covent Garden, telling him what he thought of his own gifts for the stage, and asking if he might have an appointment. The manager wrote that they were very busy at that time with a new play, but that he would write him soon when he might have a chance to meet him. A little later Charles was invited to go to the theatre and act a short piece in the presence of Charles Kemble, a very famous actor. When the day arrived, however, he was suffering from a very bad cold which had so swollen his throat that he could hardly speak at all. As a result he could not go to the theatre, and before he had another chance to try his luck he had made up his mind that he would rather be a writer than an actor.

It did not take Charles long to realize that the law was not to his taste. He did not like what he saw of lawyers, and was much more apt to make fun of than to imitate them. Looking about for some more interesting work, he took to studying short-hand in the evenings. He found it very hard to learn, particularly as he had to dig it out of books in the reading-room of the British Museum, but he persevered, and finally became very skilful, so that when he was sent by one of the newspapers to report a debate in the House of Commons he did so extremely well that experts stated "there never was such a short-hand writer before."

The life of a reporter had great charm for the youthful d.i.c.kens. He liked the adventurous side of it, the chance to see strange scenes and mix in interesting events. He had a great many strange adventures of his own, and told later how on one occasion soon after he had become a reporter, he was sent far out of London to take down a political speech, and how coming back he had to write out his short-hand notes holding his paper on the palm of his hand, and by the light of a dull, flickering lantern, while the coach galloped at fifteen miles an hour through wild and hilly country at midnight.

In addition to reporting speeches Charles was sent to write notices of new plays in the theatres and also reviewed new books. He signed these reviews with his nickname "Boz," and it was not long before these articles by Boz attracted the attention of a great many judges of good writing. The chief editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, for which Charles wrote, said of the youth, "He has never been a great reader of books or plays and knows but little of them, but has spent his time in studying life. Keep 'Boz' in reserve for great occasions. He will aye be ready for them."

So it proved, and he might have been a prominent newspaper man just as he might have been a great actor had not the desire to see what he could do with a story seized upon him.

We have d.i.c.kens' own words to tell us how he wrote a little paper in secret with much fear and trembling, and then dropped it stealthily into "a dark little box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street."

A little later his story appeared in the magazine to which he had sent it, and he tells us how, as he looked at his words standing so gravely before him in all the glory of print, he walked down to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour, because his eyes "were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen there." He had been very much excited over this venture of his little story. Now he took the fact of its success to indicate that it was worth his while to practice using his pen as a writer of fiction.

After that Charles d.i.c.kens, although he continued working as reporter, spent his spare hours in writing comic accounts of the various scenes of London life which he knew so well. These were published as fast as they were written, over the pen name of "Boz." He was paid almost nothing for them, but he persevered, prompted by his inborn love of writing and the fun he had in describing curious types of people.

Then one day a young man who had just recently become a publisher called at Charles's lodgings and told him that he was planning to publish a monthly paper in order to sell certain pictures by Robert Seymour, an artist who had just finished some sporting plates for a book called "The Squib Annual." Seymour had drawn most of the pictures for this new venture, and they were almost all of a c.o.c.kney sporting type. Now Charles was asked if he would write something to go with the pictures.

Some one suggested that he should tell the adventures of a Nimrod Club, the members of which should go out into the country on fishing and hunting expeditions which would suit the drawings, but this did not appeal to the young writer, as he knew very little about these country sports, and was much more interested in describing curious people. He asked for a day or two's time to think the matter over, and then finally sent the publishers the first copy of what he chose to call the "Pickwick Papers."

According to a common custom of the time, the author was allowed to write a story as it was needed by the printer, so that the first numbers of the "Pickwick Papers" appeared while Charles was still working on the next ones. This often put him to great inconvenience, as he sometimes found it hard to invent new adventures to fit Seymour's pictures and yet had to have the story written by a certain time.

He wrote to a friend one night, "I have at this moment got Pickwick and his friends on the Rochester coach, and they are going on swimmingly, in company with a very different character from any I have yet described"

(Alfred Jingle), "who I flatter myself will make a decided hit. I want to get them from the ball to the inn before I go to bed; and I think that will take till one or two o'clock at the earliest. The publishers will be here in the morning, so you will readily suppose I have no alternative but to stick to my desk."

The public was slow in appreciating the humor of the "Pickwick Papers,"

and the series dragged until Part IV appeared, and with it the character of Sam Weller. This original and very entertaining figure turned the scales, and almost instantly there was the greatest demand for the "Pickwick Papers." By the time the series was finished the name of "Boz"

was constantly on almost every English tongue. Here again fortune had had much to do with deciding d.i.c.kens' career. Had the series failed, he might have continued merely a reporter, but the humorous figure of Weller tipped the scales in favor of his adopting the profession of novelist.

From that time on one novel after another flowed from d.i.c.kens' pen. For many of their most vivid pictures he was indebted to the hard life of his boyhood, and the strange people he had known in the days when he worked in the blacking factory finally grew into some of his greatest characters. The little maid-of-all-work became the Marchioness in the "Old Curiosity Shop," Bob f.a.gin loaned his name to "Oliver Twist," and in "David Copperfield" we read the story of the small boy who had to fight his way through London alone.

Those days of boyhood had given him a deep insight into human nature, into the humor and pathos of other people's lives, and it was that rare insight that enabled him to become in time one of the greatest of all English writers, Charles d.i.c.kens, the beloved novelist of the Anglo-Saxon people.