led to
London, and in 1816 went to Chatham. They still show the room in the
dockyard where the elder Dickens worked, and where his son often came
to visit him. The family lived in Ordnance Place, Chatham, and the boy
was sent to a school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by one William
Giles. As a child he is said to have been a great reader, and very
early began to attempt original writing. In 1821, Charles being then
nine years of age, the family fell into trouble; reforms in the
Admiralty deprived the father of his post, and the greater part of his
income. They had to leave Chatham and removed to London, where a mean
house in a shabby street of Camden Town received them. But not for
long. The unfortunate father was presently arrested for debt and
consigned to the Marshalsea, and Charles, then only ten years of age,
and small for his age, was placed in a blacking factory at Hungerford
Market, where all he could do was to put the labels on the
blacking-bottles, with half a dozen rough and rude boys. The
degradation and misery of this occupation sunk deep into the boy's
soul. He could never dare to speak of this time; it was never
mentioned in his presence. Not only were his days passed in this
wretched work, but the child was left entirely to himself at night,
when he made his way home from Hungerford Market to Camden Town, a
distance of four miles, to his lonely bedroom. On Sundays he visited
his father in the prison. Of course such a neglected way of living
could not continue. They presently found a lodging for him in Lant
Street, close to the Marshalsea, where at least he was near his
parents, and his father shortly afterward recovering his liberty, they
all went back to Camden Town, and the boy was sent to school again. It
was to a private school in the Hampstead Road, where he remained for
three or four years of quiet work. It must have been then, one
suspects, rather than at Chatham, that he became so great a devourer
of books. But he was never a scholar in any sense, and the books that
he read were novels and plays. That the family fortunes were still low
is proved by the fact that, when he was taken from school, no better
place could be found for him than a stool at the desk of a solicitor.
Meantime his father had obtained a post as reporter for the _Morning
Herald_, and Charles, feeling small love for the hopeless drudgery of
a lawyer's office, resolved also to attempt the profession of
journalist. He taught