BOOK TO READ

The Rose and the Ring.  NOTE.—­The Rose and the Ring can be found in any complete edition of Thackeray’s works.

Chapter LXXXIV DICKENS—­SMILES AND TEARS

CHARLES DICKENS was a novelist who lived and wrote at the same time as Thackeray.  He was indeed only six months younger, but he began to make a name much earlier and was known to fame while Thackeray was still a struggling artist.  When they both became famous these two great writers were to some extent rivals, and those who read their books were divided into two camps.  For though both are men of genius, they are men of widely differing genius.

John Dickens, the father, was a clerk with a small salary in the Navy Pay Office, and his son Charles was born in 1812 at Portsea.  When Charles was about four his father was moved to Chatham, and here the little boy Charles lived until he was nine.  He was a very puny little boy, and not able to join in the games of the other boys of his own age.  So he spent most of his time in a small room where there was some books and where no one else besides himself cared to go.  He not only read the books, but lived them, and for weeks together he would make believe to himself that he was his favorite character in whatever book he might be reading.  All his life he loved acting a part and being somebody else, and at one time thought of becoming an actor.

Then when Charles was seven he went to a school taught by a young Baptist minister.  It was not an unhappy life for the “Very queer small boy” as he calls himself.  There were fields in which he could play his pretending games, and there was a beautiful house called Gad’s Hill near, at which he could go to look and dream that if he were very good and very clever he might some day be a fine gentleman and own that house.

When the very queer small boy was nine he and all his family moved to London.  Here they lived in a mean little house in a mean little street.  There were now six children, and the father had grown very poor, so instead of being sent to school Charles used to black the boots and make himself useful about the house.  But he still had his books to read, and could still make believe to himself.  Things grew worse and worse however, and John Dickens, who was kind and careless, got into debt deeper and deeper.  Everything in the house that could be done without was sold, and one by one the precious books went.  At length one day men came and took the father away to prison because he could not pay his debts.