[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF CHARLES DICKENS,

387 Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport.]

* * * * *

No tramp in "Dickens-Land" can possibly be complete without a visit to
the birthplace of the great novelist, and on another occasion we
therefore devote a day to Portsea, Hants. A fast train from Victoria by
the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway takes us to Portsmouth
Town, the nearest station, which is about half a mile from Commercial
Road, and a tram-car puts us down at the door. We immediately recognize
the house from the picture in Mr. Langton's book, but the first
impression is that the illustration scarcely does justice to it. From
the picture it appears to us to be a very ordinary house in a row, and
to be situated rather low in a crowded and not over respectable
neighbourhood. Nothing of the kind. The house, No. 387, Mile End
Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, where the parents of Charles Dickens
resided before they removed to another part of Portsea, and subsequently
went to live at Chatham, and where the future genius first saw light,
was eighty years ago quite in a rural neighbourhood; and in those days
must have been considered rather a genteel residence for a family of
moderate means in the middle class. Even now, with the pressure which
always attends the development of large towns, and their extension on
the border-land of green country by the frequent conversion of
dwelling-houses into shops, or the intrusion of shops where
dwelling-houses are, this residence has escaped and remains unchanged to
this day.

There is another point of real importance to notice. Mr. Langton,
referring to this house, says:--"The engraving shows the little
fore-court or front garden, with the low kitchen window of the house,
whence the movements of Charles [who is presumably represented in the
engraving by the figure of a boy about two or three years old, with
curly locks, dressed in a smart frock, and having a large ball in his
right hand], attended by his dear little sister Fanny, could be
overlooked."[24] Very pretty indeed, but alas! I am afraid, purely
imaginary, considering, as will hereafter appear, that Charles was a
baby in arms, aged about four months and sixteen days, when his parents
quitted the house in which he was born.

The house is now, and has been for many years, occupied by Miss Sarah
Pearce, the surviving daughter of Mr. John Dickens's landlord, her
s