. . .
I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels . . . .
and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our
house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees: the
perfect realisation of Captain Somebody of the Royal British Navy."

After a time they moved to London, where they lived poorly in what was
then a wretched enough neighbourhood, Bayham St., Camden-town. There he
degenerated into a neglected domestic drudge, apparently quite without
education, a state of things he inwardly resented.

In reading George Colman's _Broad Grins_ he came upon a description of
Covent Garden, and "stole to the market by himself to compare it with the
book." He remembered Covent Garden in writing _Pickwick_. In chap.
xlvii., Job Trotter is sent in the evening to tell Perker that Dodson and
Fogg have taken Mrs Bardell in execution for her costs. Perker goes back
to his dinner guests, and poor Job has to spend the night in a vegetable
basket in Covent Garden.

Dickens the elder was arrested for debt and imprisoned in the Marshalsea,
and the description of borrowing Captain Porter's knife and fork, and his
thinking that he should not like to borrow that gentleman's comb, were
written before he ever thought of David Copperfield. {203} There is, of
course, much that is autobiographical in _David Copperfield_. "For, the
poor little lad, with good ability and a most sensitive nature, turned at
the age of ten into a 'labouring hind' in the service of Murdstone and
Grinby" . . . was indeed himself. Dickens described in an
autobiographical fragment the details of the mechanical work of covering
the pots of paste-blacking. It is interesting to find Dickens making use
in _Oliver Twist_ of the name Fagin, who was one of his fellow pasters.
Another boy was Poll Green, part of whose name appears in that of the
celebrated Mr Sweelepipe in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Another of his
characters is connected with this period, for during his father's
imprisonment the boy lodged with an old lady subsequently immortalised as
Mrs Pipchin. Afterwards he remonstrated with his father with many tears,
and a lodging was found for him in Lant Street in the Borough as being
nearer to the prison, and here it was that Bob Sawyer lodged. The little
maid who waited on his father and mother in the Marshalsea was the model
for the Marchioness in the _Old Curiosity Shop_ (Forster, i., p. 39).
After a time his