Following upon this suburban stratum come the egregious houses of the Regency period: pseudo-classic houses these, bay-windowed and approached by steep flights of stone steps surmounted by ridiculously skimpy little porches, with attenuated neo-classic pillars and pediments, done in wood. Some of these are gone--pulled down to make room for shops--and doubtless many more will shortly go the same way. Let us hope one or two will be preserved for all time, for, although by no means beautiful, they are interesting as tending to show the manners of a period now removed from us by nearly a century; the taste in domestic architecture of a time when the First Gentleman in Europe ruled the land.
Here, where we come into Landport, we also come into the less affected region of "streets." In the newer suburbs nothing less than "roads" will serve the turn of the jerry-builder; his ambitious phraseology soars far above what he thinks to be the more plebeian "street"; but perhaps, after all, he is wise in his generation, and is amply justified by the preferences of his clients; and if that is the situation, let us by all means condole with him as a much-maligned man, who does not what he would, but what he must.
Here, too, in these beginnings of the old town, shops jostle villas with "grounds," and they in turn elbow artisans' dwellings, where children swing with improvised swings of clothes-lines on the railings, and manufacture mud-pies in the "gardens"; sticking them afterwards upon the shutters of those ultimate shops of the suburbs which seem to be in a chronic state of bankruptcy, and hold out no hopes of a living for the pioneer butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers who, having served the purpose and gone the way of all pioneers, leave them richer in experience but light of pocket.
It was in these purlieus that Charles Dickens was born, at 387 Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, on February 7, 1812; the son of Mr. John Dickens, Navy pay-clerk, who is supposed to be portrayed in the character of Micawber--no flattering portraiture of a father by his son. Writers who have fallen under the spell of Dickens have tried to do some sort of poetic representation of his birthplace; and, truth to tell, they have failed, because there never was any poetry at all about the place,--and probably never will be any, so long as its scrubby brick front and paltry fore-court last: while as regards Dickens himself, he was a very excellent business man among authors, and as little poetic as can well be imagined.