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Looked at in this way, Charles Dickens' education, however untoward and unpromising it may often have seemed while in the process, must really be pronounced a prize of value quite inestimable. His father, John Dickens, held a clerkship in the Navy Pay Office, and was employed in the Portsmouth Dockyard when little Charles first came into the world, at Landport, in Portsea, on February 7, 1812.
"All right, sir, good-day," said the man, receiving the ticket and shutting the carriage-door gently, with a bow and a smile and another touch of his cap; and, the next moment, with another sharp unearthly shriek of the steam-whistle similar to that which had heralded its entrance into Havant station, the train, giving a joggle and a jerk as it got under way, was speeding along again, across the rattling bridges that spanned the moats of the fortifications and through the Portsea lines, to the terminus beyond at Landport.
Every discreditable incident of their joint careers as units of that vast fighting force, personalities that would have brought blushes to the cheeks of a Smithfield porter, the whole couched in the obscure jargon of Catwater and Landport taverns, rang backwards and forwards across the water, and withal the utmost good humour and enjoyment wreathing their faces with smiles.
The pending results of the examination became such a secondary consideration that Hill marvelled at his father's excitement. Even had he wished it, there was no comparative anatomy to read in Landport, and he was too poor to buy books, but the stock of poets in the library was extensive, and Hill's attack was magnificently sustained.
Mr Thackeray has lately imparted much delight by delivering lectures on the literary personages of last century; and in this very act has gracefully raised the public estimation of living authorcraft. We may extract the following passages respecting the early career of Mr Dickens: 'Dickens, Charles, the most popular writer of his time, was born in February 1812, at Landport, Portsmouth.
He died at Aldworth House, in Surrey, October 6, 1892. By WALTER BESANT Charles Dickens was born at Landport, now a great town, but then a little suburb of Portsmouth, or Portsea, lying half a mile outside of the town walls. The date of his birth was Friday, February 7, 1812. His father was John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, and at that time attached to the Portsmouth dockyard.
"Nell and I went up to Landport this morning, while you and Bob were `transmogrifying' that boy, as my old father used to say. We paid a visit to the old lady whose eggs were broken yesterday by Master Rover's gambols. You may remember, Captain, I promised her some from my own fowls in place of those she lost. Don't you recollect how anxious the poor creature was about them?"
The beautiful aspect of social life is fortunately not to be found in buildings and ceremonies only, and no Winchester boy used to come back uninfluenced from a visit to Father Dolling in the slums of Landport; though boys' eyes are even quicker to see what is genuine in personal motive than in external pomp.
Life. The first of the great Victorian novelists to make his mark was Charles Dickens. This great portrayer of child life had a sad painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at Landport, a district of the city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John Dickens, the prototype of Mr.
Hoopdriver lounged gracefully on the turf, smoked a Red Herring cigarette, and lazily regarded the fortified towns that spread like a map away there, the inner line of defence like toy fortifications, a mile off perhaps; and beyond that a few little fields and then the beginnings of Landport suburb and the smoky cluster of the multitudinous houses.
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