File:Great men and famous women - a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7 (1894) (14596500399).jpg

Identifier: greatfamous07hornuoft (find matches)
Title: Great men and famous women : a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis), 1870-1942
Subjects: Biography
Publisher: New York : Selmar Hess
Contributing Library: Kelly - University of Toronto

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,or Portsea, lying half a mile outsideof the town walls. The date of hisbirth was Friday, February 7, 1812.His father was John Dickens, a clerkin the navy pay-office, and at thattime attached to the Portsmouthdockyard. The familiarity whichthe novelist shows with sea-portsand sailors is not, however, due tohis birthplace, because his faiher, inthe year 1814, was recalled to Lon-■ don, 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 liv^edin Ordnance Place, Chatham, and theboy was sent to a school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by one WilliamGiles. As a child he is said to have been a great reader, and very early began toattempt original writing. In 1821, Charles being then nine years of age, thefamily 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
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CHARLES DICKENS 187 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 con-signed to the Marshalsea, and Charles, then only ten years of age, and small for hisage, was placed in a blacking-factory at Hungerford Market, where all he could dowas to put the labels on the blacking-bottles, with half a dozen rough and rudeboys. The degradation and misery of this occupation sunk deep into the boyssoul. He could never dare to speak of this time ; it was never mentioned in hispresence. Not only were his days passed in this wretched work, but the childwas left entirely to himself at night, when he made his way home from Hunger-ford 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 wayof living could not continue. They presently found a lodging for him in LantStreet, close to the Marshalsea, where at

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