is stamp. She scarcely, I fear, possessed
those admirable qualities of mind and heart which one can clearly
recognize as having borne fruit in the greatness and goodness of her
famous son. So far as I can discover, she exercised no influence upon
him at all. Her name hardly appears in his biographies. He never, that
I can recollect, mentions her in his correspondence; only refers to
her on the rarest occasions. And perhaps, on the whole, this is not to
be wondered at, if we accept the constant tradition that she had,
unknown to herself, sat to her son for the portrait of Mrs. Nickleby,
and suggested to him the main traits in the character of that
inconsequent and not very wise old lady. Mrs. Nickleby, I take it, was
not the kind of person calculated to form the mind of a boy of genius.
As well might one expect some very domestic bird to teach an eaglet
how to fly.

The school to which our callow eaglet was sent (in the spring or early
summer of 1824), belonged emphatically to the old school of schools.
It bore the goodly name of _Wellington House Academy_, and was
situated in Mornington Place, near the Hampstead Road. A certain Mr.
Jones held chief rule there; and as more than fifty years have now
elapsed since Dickens' connection with the establishment ceased, I
trust there may be nothing libellous in giving further currency to his
statement, or rather, perhaps, to his recorded impression,[4] that the
head master's one qualification for his office was dexterity in the
use of the cane;--especially as another "old boy" corroborates that
impression, and declares Mr. Jones to have been "a most ignorant
fellow, and a mere tyrant." Dickens, however, escaped with
comparatively little beating, because he was a day-boy, and sound
policy dictated that day-boys, who had facilities for carrying home
their complaints, should be treated with some leniency. So he had to
get his learning without tears, which was not at all considered the
orthodox method in the good old days; and, indeed, I doubt if he
finally took away from Wellington House Academy very much of the book
knowledge that would tell in a modern competitive examination. For
though in his own account of the school it is implied that he resumed
his interrupted studies with Virgil, and was, before he left, head
boy, and the possessor of many prizes, yet this is not corroborated by
the evidence of his surviving fellow pupils; nor can we, of course, in
the face of their direct