t bad
boys, and one of them, who bore the name of Bob Fagin, was very kind
to the poor little better-nurtured outcast, once, in a sudden attack
of illness, applying hot blacking-bottles to his side with much
tenderness. But, of course, they were rough and quite uncultured, and
the sensitive, bookish, imaginative child felt that there was
something uncongenial and degrading in being compelled to associate
with them. Nor, though he had already sufficient strength of character
to learn to do his work well, did he ever regard the work itself as
anything but unsuitable, and almost discreditable. Indeed it may be
doubted whether the iron of that time did not unduly rankle and fester
as it entered into his soul, and whether the scar caused by the wound
was altogether quite honourable. He seems to have felt, in connection
with his early employment in a warehouse, a sense of shame such as
would be more fittingly associated with the commission of an unworthy
act. That he should not have habitually referred to the subject in
after life, may readily be understood. But why he should have kept
unbroken silence about it for long years, even with his wife, even
with so very close a friend as Forster, is less clear. And in the
terms used, when the revelation was finally made to Forster, there has
always, I confess, appeared to me to be a tone of exaggeration. "My
whole nature," he says, "was so penetrated with grief and humiliation,
... that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my
dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man, and
wander desolately back to that time of my life." And again: "From that
hour until this, at which I write, no word of that part of my
childhood, which I have now gladly brought to a close, has passed my
lips to any human being.... I have never, until I now impart it to
this paper, in any burst of confidence with any one, my own wife not
excepted, raised the curtain I then dropped, thank God." Great part,
perhaps the greatest part, of Dickens' success as a writer, came from
the sympathy and power with which he showed how the lower walks of
life no less than the higher are often fringed with beauty. I have
never been able to entirely divest myself of a slight feeling of the
incongruous in reading what he wrote about the warehouse episode in
his career.

At first, when he began his daily toil at the blacking business, some
poor dregs of family life were left to the child.