1 74 mSEN B V PERSE VERANCE. 



Like many other children of good parts or rare genius, he 

 began to write, and was precociously clever at singing comic 

 songs; and at a very early age, also, he was taken to the 

 theatre, which he enjoyed. The last two years of his resi- 

 dence at Chatham were spent at a school in Clover Lane, 

 kept by a young Baptist minister, Mr, William Giles. His 

 father's occupation led him to remove to London in 1821, 

 and of the stage - coach journey thither he thus wrote : — 

 •There was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my 

 sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard 

 all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected to 

 find it.' Shortly after their arrival in London, the Dickens 

 family were involved in money difficulties which made re- 

 trenchment a necessity, when they resided in a poor locality, 

 Bayham Street, Camden Town. His father was even arrested 

 for debt and conveyed to Marshalsea prison, where the 

 family followed. A walk through Covent Garden, the Strand, 

 or Seven Dials, had a great attraction for him; one or two 

 efforts at describing characters whom he met also belong to 

 this period. 



It may or it may not be creditable to the great novelist 

 that there now occurred a passage in his life about which 

 he never cared to speak, except to some most intimate 

 friend ; it never became public until his Hfe was issued. 

 This was the fact of his being sent, when about ten years 

 of age, to make himself as useful as he could, under his 

 cousin, George Lamert, in a blacking warehouse. His de- 

 partment was to cover the pots of paste-blacking with oil- 

 paper, then with blue paper, to tie them round with a string, 

 and then to trim them off neatly; next, when a sufficient 

 quantity had been done, he affixed a printed label to them. 



