Dickens himself did not know how long this ordeal lasted, "whether for a year,
or much more, or less"; surely it must have seemed as if it would last forever
to this sensitive twelve-year-old boy and it so seared his psyche that Dickens
the man never "until I impart it to this paper [a full quarter century later],
in any burst of confidence to anyone, my own wife not excepted, raised the
curtain I then dropped, thank God."
Dickens was able to continue his education after his father received a legacy
from a relative and was released from the Marshalsea. Charles attended
Wellington House Academy from 1824 to 1826 before taking work as a clerk in
Gray's Inn for two years. In order to qualify himself to become a newspaper
parliamentary reporter, Dickens spent eighteen months studying shorthand, a
perfect command of which was "equal in difficulty to the mastery of six
languages," he was cautioned, and studying in the reading room of the British
Museum.
He won a reputation for his quickness and accuracy during his two years
(1828-1830) as a reporter in the court of Doctors' Commons before reporting for
the True Sun and the Mirror Parliament and finally becoming a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle in 1834.
