George Augustus Sala's first encounter with Charles Dickens was at the age of nine in 1837. His mother was working at the St. James's Theatre, King Street as an understudy in The Village Coquettes, an operetta written by Dickens and composed by John Hullah. The young Sala was given free reign in the Green Room and at the conclusion of the first performance he saw his mother talking to "Boz, with his long hair and ultra-fashionable clothes" (Straus 23). Madame Sala and Dickens would become firm friends on the strength of this engagement and Sala's meeting with Dickens spurred him on, along with his brothers and his sister, to privately dramatize Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. At the same time as proving their passion for the theatre, the family would display their love of the visual by "setting to work copying as well as we could George Cruikshank's illustrations to 'Oliver' and Phiz's etchings to 'Pickwick' and 'Nickleby" (Life 1: 89; Straus 41). In fact the early portion of Sala's career was dedicated to the visual and not to the written word. At the age of fifteen in 1843, Sala was given a letter of introduction to Cruikshank. When the young man was told to return after he had mastered etching and drawing on wood, Sala's mother decided it was time to put her friendship with Dickens to good use. While reading Punch Madame Sala had come to the conclusion that "even John Leech's graphic humour was not vastly superior to her son's" (Straus 41). She wrote to Dickens reminding him of the "old St. James's Theatre days" and asked whether he could see her son, who wanted employment as an artist. Dickens duly met Sala and her mother at Euston Station, approved of the young man's graphic productions, and secured an introduction to Mark Lemon, then editor of Punch. Sala was rejected once again and for the next seven years he eked out a living as a scene-painter, illustrator and engraver. One of these productions was a crude depiction of Dickens at his study for a book entitled The Battle of London Life; or Boz and his Secretary (1849) written by the dissolute theatre-goer, Thomas O'Keefe.
