The house is now, and has been for many years, occupied by Miss Sarah Pearce, the surviving daughter of Mr. John Dickens's landlord, her sisters, who formerly lived with her, being all dead. It stands high on the west side of a good broad road, opposite an old-fashioned villa called Angus House, in the midst of well-trimmed grounds, and the situation is very open, pleasant, and cheerful. It is red-brick built, has a railing in front, and is approached by a little entrance-gate opening on to a lawn, whereon there are a few flower-beds; a hedge divides the fore-court from the next house,[25] and a few steps guarded by a handrail lead to the front door. It is a single-fronted, eight-roomed house, having two underground kitchens, two floors above, and a single dormer window high up in the sloping red-tiled roof. As is usual with old-fashioned houses of this type, the shutters to the lower windows are outside. Both the front and back parlours on the ground floor are very cheerful, cosy little rooms (in one of them we are glad to see a portrait of the novelist), and the view from the back parlour looking down into the well-kept garden, which abuts on other gardens, is very pretty, marred only by a large gasometer in the distance, which could hardly have been erected in young Charles Dickens's earliest days. In the garden we notice a lovely specimen of the _Lavatera arborea_, or tree-mallow, covered with hundreds of white and purple blossoms. It is a rarity to see such a handsome, well-grown tree, standing nearly eight feet high, and it is not unlikely, from the luxuriance of its growth, that it existed in Charles Dickens's infancy. From the pleasant surroundings of the place generally, and from the fact that flowers are much grown in the neighbourhood (especially roses), it is more than probable that Dickens's love for flowers was early developed by these associations. The road leads to Cosham, and to the picturesque old ruin of Porchester Castle, a nice walk from the town of Portsmouth, and probably often traversed by Dickens, his sister, and his nurse. Mr. Langton states that "it is said in after years Charles Dickens could remember places and things at Portsmouth that he had not seen since he was an infant of little more than two years old (he left Portsmouth when he was only four or five), and there is no doubt whatever that many of the earliest reminiscences of _David Copperfield_ were also tender childish memories of his own infancy at this place." Mr. William Pearce, solicitor of Portsea, son of the former landlord, and brother of Miss Sarah Pearce, the present occupant, has been kind enough to supply the following interesting information respecting No. 387, Mile End Terrace:-- "The celebrated novelist was born in the front bedroom of the above house, which my sisters many years ago converted into a drawing-room, and it is still used as such.