Re: school

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Tue, 4 Feb 1997 11:17:42 -0100 

My dear Catherine, my dear Charlene, my dear Liane,

  There were three schools, altogether, that I attended, all
day schools.  The first was what we used to call a dame school,
in Rome Lane, Chatham.  Dame schools were run by females too
ancient to be of use for any purpose other than terrifying
infants, and imparting to them whatever scraps of learning they
had gleaned during their long lives.  Quite a baby at the time,
I do not remember the name of the dame of Rome Lane.  Memories
of the terror are quite enough for me.
  My second school was also in Chatham.  It was conducted by
Mr William Giles, son of the Baptist minister of the chapel
next door to our family home at St Mary's Place.  Giles was
a splendid fellow.  I believe I can make that judgment
dispassionately, even though I was a favourite of his.  He
had attended a Baptist college in Oxford.  As a Baptist, he
did not of course subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of
the Church of England, and could not therefore take a degree,
but he studied with Oxford students, drank deep of the cup
of learning, and imparted his love of it to me.  We did not
altogether lose touch in later life.
  Wellington House Academy was my third school, off the
Hampstead Road here in London, which I attended for a year
or two after my release from the Egyptian bondage of
Warren's Blacking Warehouse.  The proprietor was Mr William
Jones, a Welshman as you may suppose, of savage temper.  There
were things to enjoy at Wellington House, not least the
companionship of boys of my own station and interests, so
different from my fellow workers at Warren's.  And then there
were the classes taken by Mr Taylor, the writing, mathematics
and English master, whom we supposed to know everything there
is to be known, and who did indeed know a good deal.
  I think you would have found all schools strict in my day.
Corporal punishment was normal, and I was certainly on the
stinging end of the odd well-aimed slap, from time to time.
But I was too conscious of the privilege of education - many
at the time received none, remember - to spurn what I was
receiving, and was thus never the victim of the more formal
and severe kind of beating.
  You also ask me about I subject on which I find it difficult
to speak still.  Perhaps you are unaware that, when his debts
took my father to the Marshalsea Gaol, he took most of the
rest of the family with him.  You may find this odd.  Such
matters are arranged differently now, I understand.  Debtors'
prisons were miserable places enough, but not severe.  Prisoners
were able to rent apartments for the families within the gaol,
more cheaply than they could beyond the walls.  My mother, and
most of my brothers and sisters lived with my father in the
Marshalsea.  At first, when I was in lodgings in Somers Town,
and kept busy by my Egyptian bondage six days a week, I was able
to visit them on Sundays only, but when, soon after, my father
arranged for me to live in Lant Street, a stone's throw from
the gaol, I took breakfast and supper with them daily.

Faithfully your,


Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>
>dear Mr.Dickens
>
>      What school did you go to.Was it a boarding school and what was the
>head-master called,was he kind or strict.Did you enjoy school, or did it
>bore you.Did you ever get the slipper or cane.What was it like when your
>    Dad was imprisoned,did you ever visit him?
>
>
>                Catherine,Charlene and Liane!
>
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author