I Devonshire Terrace. | York Gate Regents Park. March The Twenty Second 1841.
My Dear Sir.
I really cannot tell you how much pleasure I have derived from the receipt of your warm-hearted and welcome note; nor can I thank you for it sufficiently.
Although I know in my heart and conscience that every action of my life and every impulse by which I am guided give the lie to the assertion, I am still greatly pained to learn that you have ever heard me charged with forgetting old friends or associates. Those who know me best, best know how such a charge would wound me, and how very undeserved it is. There is no character I so detest and abhor as a man who presumes on his prosperity. I feel its baseness so strongly that if I supposed my children could at any future time believe me to have been a creature of that kind, I should be wretched.
Happily, although I have made many friends, I have never since my schooltime lost one. The pleasantest and proudest part of my correspondence is that in which I have stored the congratulations of some from whom I had been separated by distance or accident for several years; and believe me that from a little pale schoolmaster who taught me my letters (and who turned up miraculously the other day in a high state of preservation) to those who have more recent and more fleeting claims on my regard, I have never in my life—and especially in my later life—no, not once, treated any single human being with coldness or hauteur. I have a capacity, and a strong inclination, for feeling warmly towards all those whom I have known in less successful times; and any man who reports me unjustly in this respect, either does me wilfully an envious and grudging wrong, or acquiesces too easily in a falsehood, of which he may convince himself at the smallest possible expence of trouble and justice.
Let me thank you again, very faintly and imperfectly, for your honest letter. I shall put it among the grateful records to which I have referred; and I do not despair of increasing their bulk before I die, by communications not very dissimilar, even from those who now mistake me most.
Pray, if you should have reason to think when you read the Clock that I have written anything about this time in extremely good spirits, believe that you have had a large share in awakening them—and believe besides that I am with sincerity
My Dear Sir | Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Probably a friend of CD’s in his reporting days.
I Devonshire Terrace York Gate | Regents Park London April The Twenty First 1841.
My Dear Sir.
There is no man in the World who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note of the Thirteenth of last Month.2 There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything you have written, upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so. If you could know how earnestly I write this, you would be glad to read it—as I hope you will be, faintly guessing at the warmth of the hand I autographically hold out to you, over the broad Atlantic.
I wish I could find in your welcome letter, some hint of an intention to visit England. I can’t. I have held it at arm’s length, and taken a bird’s-eye view of it after reading it a great many times, but there is no greater encouragement in it this way than on a microscopic inspection. I should love to go with you—as I have gone, God knows how often—into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbour Court, and Westminster Abbey.3 I should like to travel with you, outside the last of the coaches, down to Bracebridge Hall. It would make my heart glad to compare notes with you about that shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red-nose who sat in the nine-cornered back parlor at the Masons’ Arms—and about Robert Preston— and the tallow chandler’s widow whose sitting room is second nature to me—and about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk about and dream of in the daytime when a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy. I have a good deal to say too about that dashing Alonzo De Ojeda that you can’t help being fonder of than you ought to be—and much to hear concerning Moorish Legend, and poor unhappy Boabdil. Diedrich Knickerbocker I have worn to death in my pocket—and yet I should shew you his mutilated carcass—with a joy past all expression.
I have been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into full confidence with you, and fall—as it were naturally, and by the very laws of gravity—into your open arms. Questions come thronging to my pen as to the lips of people who meet after long hoping to do so. I don’t know what to say first, or what to leave unsaid, and am constantly disposed to break off and tell you again how glad I am this moment has arrived.
My Dear Washington Irving I cannot thank you enough for your cordial and generous praise, or tell you what deep and lasting gratification it has given me. I hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange a frequent correspondence. I send this to say so. After the first two or three, I shall settle down into a connected style, and become gradually rational.
You know what the feeling is after having written a letter, sealed it, and sent it off. I shall picture you reading this and answering it, before it has lain one night in the Post Office. Ten to one that before the fastest packet could reach New York, I shall be writing again.
Do you suppose the Post office clerks care to receive letters? I have my doubts. They get into a dreadful habit of indifference. A Postman, I imagine, is quite callous. Conceive his delivering one to himself, without being startled by a preliminary double knock—!
Always your faithful friend
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Washington Irving (1783–1859; ANB); hailed by English critics as America’s first major author.
2 About little Nell and OCS; it ‘very strongly revived’ CD’s idea of going to America, see Forster, 196.
3 All described in Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., 1820. The references to many of Irving’s books throughout this paragraph show CD’s familiarity with them.
1 Devonshire Terrace | York Gate Regents Park. Monday Evg. April The Twenty Sixth.
My Dear Sir.
Since I left you to-day, I have been greatly distressed in my mind, concerning our wretched friend the (supposed) tailor. May I ask you to apply the inclosed trifle in any way that you think will do him the most good, and to exercise your own discretion— for none can have so good a one as you in such a case—either to pay his fine and give him the rest, or keep him his five days, and then let him have the whole to start with. In either case, I would like to send him, besides, a suit of cast-off clothes, which (if you give me your permission to forward them to the jail; I don’t like to venture on sending them without it) my man shall bring directly.
I cannot express to you how much moved I have been by witnessing the results of your humanity and goodness. Men who have so much in their power and acquit themselves so well, deserve the gratitude of mankind. Accept the thanks and assurances of esteem of one among them who loves, and truly loves the rest. It is the only qualification I have for offering them to you.
Very faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Lieutenant Augustus Tracey, RN (1798–1878). In the navy 1811–34, then governor of the Westminster House of Correction, Tothill Fields. Became a friend of CD’s, taking a keen interest in urania Cottage (see below, from 1846 onwards), many of whose inmates came from his prison.
Devonshire Terrace | April The Twenty Seventh 1841.
My Dear Hall.
Post just going—compression of sentiments required—Bust received2—likeness amazing —recognizable instantly if encountered on the summit of the Great Pyramid—Scotch anecdote most striking and most distressing3—dreamed of it— babbies well—wife ditto—yours the same, I hope?—Seaport sketches one of those ideas that improves in promise as they are pondered on —Good, I am certain—Ever faithfully, and at present hastily—
BOZ.
1 Basil Hall (1788–1844†), naval officer, author, and travel writer. An admirer of CD’s work, he sent him long descriptions of potential material.
2 Hall had asked CD for a bust to be done of him by the sculptor Samuel Joseph. The whole letter is written in the style of Alfred Jingle, in PP.
3 One of Hall’s suggestions for CD’s pen. The Seaport sketches refer to Hall’s proposed book about Portsmouth.
Devonshire Terrace | Monday May The Third 1841
My Dear Sir.
Many thanks to you for the Magazine, which is a great curiosity. As you may suppose that I haven’t read my second self “right through”, you will not give me any credit for returning them within the specified time.2
Good God how hot these Oriental Magazines look! You’re so used to them, that I dare say you don’t see it, but the pages are parched—burnt up—suggestive of drought and scorching heat. Some Indian birds we have, began to sing directly the parcel was brought in. I began to drink claret out of a tumbler before I had turned over the leaves of the Second Number. And all last night, I dreamed about Vishnu, and Hindoo Temples, and Indian Jugglers sitting upon nothing, and Tigers coming unexpectedly to dinner parties and bounding away into remote Jungles with English Butlers—Elephants too were so common as to be quite ridiculous; and I ate rice by hundred weights.
Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 John Blackburn, sub-editor of the Englishman, Calcutta, and author of The Overland Traveller, or Guide to Persons Proceeding to Europe via the Red Sea, from India, Calcutta, 1838.
2 Blackburn had probably sent him the numbers of the Lighthouse, Madras, containing ‘Pickwick in India’, in seven chapters, by the Editor.
Say what you please of Gordon,1 he must have been at heart a kind man, and a lover of the despised and rejected, after his own fashion. He lived upon a small income, and always within it; was known to relieve the necessities of many people; exposed in his place the corrupt attempt of a minister to buy him out of Parliament; and did great charities in Newgate. He always spoke on the people’s side, and tried against his muddled brains to expose the profligacy of both parties. He never got anything by his madness, and never sought it. The wildest and most raging attacks of the time, allow him these merits: and not to let him have ’em in their full extent, remembering in what a (politically) wicked time he lived, would lie upon my conscience heavily. The libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was on the queen of France; and the French government interested themselves warmly to procure his release—which I think they might have done, but for Lord Grenville.
1 Lord George Gordon (1751–93†), political and religious agitator; the anti-Catholic march he led to Parliament caused the Gordon Riots which feature in BR chs. 35 and 36.
The great event1 is over; and being gone, I am a man again.2 It was the most brilliant affair you can conceive; the completest success possible, from first to last. The room was crammed, and more than seventy applicants for tickets were of necessity refused yesterday. Wilson3 was ill, but plucked up like a lion, and spoke famously. I send you a paper herewith but the report is dismal in the extreme. They say there will be a better one—I don’t know where or when. Should there be, I will send it to you. I think (ahem!) that I spoke rather well.4 It was an excellent room, and both the subjects (Wilson and Scottish Literature, and the Memory of Wilkie)5 were good to go upon. There were nearly two hundred ladies present. The place is so contrived that the cross table is raised enormously: much above the heads of people sitting below: and the effect on first coming in (on me, I mean) was rather tremendous. I was quite self-possessed however, and, notwithstanding the enthoosemoosy, which was very startling, as cool as a cucumber. I wish to God you had been there, as it is impossible for the “distinguished guest” to describe the scene. It beat all natur’.
1 The dinner in CD’s honour held at the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, on 25 June.
2 Macbeth, III. iv. 108.
3 John Wilson (1785–1854†), ‘Christopher North’ of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and foremost critic of his time.
4 For the texts of CD’s speeches, see Speeches, 9–14.
5 David Wilkie (1785–1841†), painter of genre, historical subjects, and portraits.
I was not at all ill pleased to have to come again through that awful Glencoe. If it had been tremendous on the previous day, yesterday it was perfectly horrific. It had rained all night, and was raining then, as it only does in these parts. Through the whole glen, which is ten miles long, torrents were boiling and foaming, and sending up in every direction spray like the smoke of great fires. They were rushing down every hill and mountain side, and tearing like devils across the path, and down into the depths of the rocks. Some of the hills looked as if they were full of silver, and had cracked in a hundred places. Others as if they were frightened, and had broken out into a deadly sweat. In others there was no compromise or division of streams, but one great torrent came roaring down with a deafening noise, and a rushing of water that was quite appalling. Such a spaet, in short (that’s the country word), has not been known for many years, and the sights and sounds were beyond description. The post-boy was not at all at his ease, and the horses were very much frightened (as well they might be) by the perpetual raging and roaring; one of them started as we came down a steep place, and we were within that much (——) of tumbling over a precipice; just then, too, the drag broke, and we were obliged to go on as we best could, without it: getting out every now and then, and hanging on at the back of the carriage to prevent its rolling down too fast, and going Heaven knows where.
Well, in this pleasant state of things we came to King’s-house again, having been four hours doing the sixteen miles. The rumble1 where Tom sat was by this time so full of water, that he was obliged to borrow a gimlet, and bore holes in the bottom to let it run out. The horses that were to take us on, were out upon the hills, somewhere within ten miles round; and three or four bare-legged fellows went out to look for ’em, while we sat by the fire and tried to dry ourselves. At last we got off again (without the drag and with a broken spring, no smith living within ten miles), and went limping on to Inverouran. In the first three miles we were in a ditch and out again, and lost a horse’s shoe. All this time it never once left off raining; and was very windy, very cold, very misty, and most intensely dismal. So we crossed the Black-mount, and came to a place we had passed the day before, where a rapid river runs over a bed of broken rock. Now, this river, sir, had a bridge last winter, but the bridge broke down when the thaw came, and has never since been mended; so travellers cross upon a little platform, made of rough deal planks stretching from rock to rock; and carriages and horses ford the water, at a certain point. As the platform is the reverse of steady (we had proved this the day before), is very slippery, and affords anything but a pleasant footing, having only a trembling little rail on one side, and on the other nothing between it and the foaming stream, Kate decided to remain in the carriage, and trust herself to the wheels rather than to her feet. Fletcher2 and I had got out, and it was going away, when I advised her, as I had done several times before, to come with us; for I saw that the water was very high, the current being greatly swollen by the rain, and that the post-boy had been eyeing it in a very disconcerted manner for the last half hour. This decided her to come out; and Fletcher, she, Tom, and I, began to cross, while the carriage went about a quarter of a mile down the bank, in search of a shallow place. The platform shook so much that we could only come across two at a time, and then it felt as if it were hung on springs. As to the wind and rain! … well, put into one gust all the wind and rain you ever saw and heard, and you’ll have some faint notion of it!
When we got safely to the opposite bank, there came riding up a wild highlander, in a great plaid, whom we recognized as the landlord of the inn, and who without taking the least notice of us, went dashing on,—with the plaid he was wrapped in, streaming in the wind,—screeching in Gaelic to the post-boy on the opposite bank, and making the most frantic gestures you ever saw, in which he was joined by some other wild man on foot, who had come across by a short cut, knee-deep in mire and water. As we began to see what this meant, we (that is, Fletcher and I) scrambled on after them, while the boy, horses, and carriage were plunging in the water, which left only the horses’ heads and the boy’s body visible. By the time we got up to them, the man on horseback and the man on foot were perfectly mad with pantomime; for as to any of their shouts being heard by the boy, the water made such a great noise that they might as well have been dumb. It made me quite sick to think how I should have felt if Kate had been inside. The carriage went round and round like a great stone, the boy was as pale as death, the horses were struggling and plashing and snorting like sea-animals, and we were all roaring to the driver to throw himself off and let them and the coach go to the devil, when suddenly it came all right (having got into shallow water), and, all tumbling and dripping and jogging from side to side, climbed up to the dry land. I assure you we looked rather queer, as we wiped our faces and stared at each other in a little cluster round about it. It seemed that the man on horseback had been looking at us through a telescope as we came to the track, and knowing that the place was very dangerous, and seeing that we meant to bring the carriage, had come on at a great gallop to show the driver the only place where he could cross. By the time he came up, the man had taken the water at a wrong place, and in a word was as nearly drowned (with carriage, horses, luggage, and all) as ever man was. Was this a good adventure?
We all went on to the inn—the wild man galloping on first, to get a fire lighted— and there we dined on eggs and bacon, oat-cake, and whiskey; and changed and dried ourselves. The place was a mere knot of little outhouses, and in one of these there were fifty highlanders all drunk. … Some were drovers, some pipers, and some workmen engaged to build a hunting-lodge for Lord Breadalbane hard by, who had been driven in by stress of weather. One was a paper-hanger. He had come out three days before to paper the inn’s best room, a chamber almost large enough to keep a Newfoundland dog in; and, from the first half hour after his arrival to that moment, had been hopelessly and irreclaimably drunk. They were lying about in all directions: on forms, on the ground, about a loft overhead, round the turf-fire wrapped in plaids, on the tables, and under them. We paid our bill, thanked our host very heartily, gave some money to his children, and after an hour’s rest came on again. At ten o’clock at night, we reached this place, and were overjoyed to find quite an English inn, with good beds (those we have slept on, yet, have always been of straw), and every possible comfort. We breakfasted this morning at half past ten, and at three go on to Inverary to dinner. I believe the very rough part of the journey is over, and I am really glad of it. Kate sends all kind of regards. I shall hope to find a letter from you at Inverary when the post reaches there, to-morrow. I wrote to Oban yesterday, desiring the post-office keeper to send any he might have for us, over to that place. Love to Mac.
1 Back portion of a carriage adapted for servants’ seats or luggage. Tom was CD’s servant.
2 Angus Fletcher (1799–1862), sculptor, studied in London and Italy; his bust of CD was shown at the Royal Academy 1839.
I Devonshire Terrace | York Gate Regents Park. | July The Twenty First 1841.
Dear Madam.
I have been in Scotland for some weeks past, and find so many letters to answer on my return,1 that I am obliged to send a more brief reply to yours than I desire.
Accept my sincere thanks, both for your note, and the Invitation it contains. I fear it is not likely that it will ever be in my power to accept it in deed, but in spirit I do, and so do Mrs. Dickens and my children—you are right; I have four.
Be assured that I am not unmindful of my promise, and that if you should come back to London at any time, I shall, please God, make a point of seeing you.
Your remark—a very natural and proper one—on the blind man in Barnaby, is only another proof to me, among many others which present themselves in various forms every day, of the great disadvantages which attend a detached and desultory form of publication. My intention in the management of this inferior and subordinate character, was to remind the World who have eyes, that they have no right to expect in sightless men a degree of virtue and goodness to which they, in full possession of all their senses, can lay no claim—that it is a very easy thing for those who misuse every gift of Heaven to consider resignation and cheerfulness the duty of those whom it has deprived of some great blessing—that whereas we look upon a blind man who does wrong, as a kind of monster, we ought in Truth and Justice to remember that a man who has eyes and is a vicious wretch, is by his very abuse of the glorious faculty of sight, an immeasurably greater offender than his afflicted fellow. In a word, I wished to show that the hand of God is at least as manifest in making eyes as in unmaking them, and that we do not sufficiently consider the sorrows of those who walk in darkness on this earth, when we set it up as a rule that they ought to be better than ourselves, and that they are required to be by their calamity. Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so. 2
All this you would have seen if you could have had the whole book before your mental vision. As it is, I can only hope to bring my meaning before you by very slow and gradual degrees, and after you have formed a first impression on the subject.
That it is a real pleasure and delight to me to know that I afford you any consolation or amusement, you may believe with your whole heart. And believe also that I am, Dear Madam with an unaffected interest in your happiness
Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Twelve letters which CD wrote on this day survive.
2 The coincidence of Mrs Hurnall’s protest at CD’s treatment of Stagg, and the change in CD’s treatment of him, suggests that CD received her letter in Scotland, between writing chs. 45 and 46.
Devonshire Terrace. | Twenty Third July.
My Dear Townshend.
On Wednesday I will dine with you please God. At what hour?
I am horribly hard at work, after my Scotch honors, and dare not be mesmerized, lest it should damage me at all. Even a day’s head ache would be a serious thing just now.
—But a time will come—as they say in melo dramas—no more—
Except that I am always | Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Revd Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798–1868†), poet and collector. First met CD in 1840. An important and lifelong relationship to CD, but very few letters to him survive.
Devonshire Terrace. | Wednesday Evening | July The Twenty Eighth 1841.
My Dear George.
Can you do for me by Saturday Evening —I know the time is short, but I think the subject will suit you, and I am greatly pressed—a party of rioters (with Hugh and Simon Tappertit conspicuous among them) in old John Willet’s bar—turning the liquor taps to their own advantage—smashing bottles—cutting down the grove of lemons—sitting astride on casks—drinking out of the best punchbowls—eating the great cheese—smoking sacred pipes &c &c—John Willet, fallen backward in his chair, regarding them with a stupid horror, and quite alone among them, with none of the Maypole customers at his back.
It’s in your way, and you’ll do it a hundred times better than I can suggest it to you, I know.1
Faithfully Always
CHARLES DICKENS
1 Cattermole’s illustration, ‘The mob at the Maypole’, appeared in BR ch. 54, published 21 Aug.
Thank God there is a Van Diemen’s-land.1 That’s my comfort. Now, I wonder if I should make a good settler! I wonder, if I went to a new colony with my head, hands, legs, and health, I should force myself to the top of the social milk-pot and live upon the cream! What do you think? Upon my word I believe I should.
1 Annexed by the British government 1803; given colonial status and name changed to Tasmania 1856.
Broadstairs. | Thursday Sixteenth September 1841.
My Dear Sir.
Know for your utter confusion, and to your lasting shame and ignominy, that the initial letter has been purwided—that it was furnished to the artist at the same time as the subject—and that it is a
D1
—which stands for Double—Demnible—Doubtful—Dangerous—Doleful— Disastrous—Dreadful—Deuced—Dark—Divorce—and Drop—all applicable to the Precipice on which you stand. 2
Farewell! If you did but know—and would pause, even at this late period—better an action for breach than—but we buy experience. Excuse my agitation. I scarcely know what I write.—To see a fellow creature—and one who has so long withstood— still if—Will nothing warn you—
In extreme excitement
CD
My hand fails me
P.S. | Pause. | Put it off
P.P.S. | Emigrate
P.P.P.S—| And leave me | the business ——
I mean the Strand | one.
1 Within Browne’s ‘D’—the initial letter of ch. 65—Barnaby and his father await liberation.
2 Chapman was about to get married; he was 37.
I have let all the prisoners out of Newgate, burnt down Lord Mansfield’s, and played the very devil1 Another number will finish the fires, and help us on towards the end. I feel quite smoky when I am at work. I want elbow-room terribly.
1 i.e he had finished chs. 65 and 66, published 2 Oct.
As no steps had been taken towards the funeral,1 I thought it best at once to bestir myself; and not even you could have saved my going to the cemetery. It is a great trial to me to give up Mary’s grave;2 greater than I can possibly express. I thought of moving her to the catacombs, and saying nothing about it; but then I remembered that the poor old lady3 is buried next her at her own desire, and could not find it in my heart, directly she is laid in the earth, to take her grandchild away. The desire to be buried next her is as strong upon me now, as it was five years ago; and I know (for I don’t think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never diminish. I fear I can do nothing. Do you think I can? They would move her on Wednesday, if I resolved to have it done. I cannot bear the thought of being excluded from her dust; and yet I feel that her brothers and sisters, and her mother, have a better right than I to be placed beside her. It is but an idea. I neither think nor hope (God forbid) that our spirits would ever mingle there. I ought to get the better of it, but it is very hard. I never contemplated this—and coming so suddenly, and after being ill, it disturbs me more than it ought. It seems like losing her a second time.
1 Catherine’s brother George had died suddenly on 24 Oct.
2 CD wrote to Catherine’s mother, ‘I had always intended to keep poor Mary’s grave for us and our dear children, and for you,’ 24 Oct., but agreed that George should be buried there instead.
3 Catherine’s grandmother, Mrs George Thomson.
Of my distress I will say no more than that it has borne a terrible, frightful, horrible proportion to the quickness of the gifts you remind me of. But may I not be forgiven for thinking it a wonderful testimony to my being made for my art, that when, in the midst of this trouble and pain, I sit down to my book, some beneficent power shows it all to me, and tempts me to be interested, and I don’t invent it—really do not— but see it, and write it down. … It is only when it all fades away and is gone, that I begin to suspect that its momentary relief has cost me something.
Devonshire Terrace. | Twenty Seventh October 1841.
Dear Miss Coutts.
Let me thank you for your kind recollection of me, yesterday. I was greatly pleased to hear from you once more, I assure you.
I should have called in Stratton Street immediately on my return to town, but I have been exceedingly unwell. It is scarcely three weeks, since I was obliged to submit to a painful surgical operation1 (for which agreeable change I left the seaside) and although I have recovered with a rapidity whereat the Doctors are astounded, I have only just begun to feel my legs at all steady under my diminished weight. I almost thought, at first, that I was about to go through life on Two pillars of jelly, or tremulous Italian cream,—but I am happy to say that I am again conscious of floors and pavements.
They tell me that in two or three days I may go to Windsor, and set up for myself as one who has no need of the Faculty. I shall not be there, I hope, more than a fortnight at the utmost, and on my return I shall be only too well pleased to present myself at Roehampton,2 or, if you should have left there, at your house in town. I defer all particulars about America, until then.
Some friends in Yorkshire have sent me a raven, before whom the Raven (the dead one) sinks into insignificance. He can say anything—and he has a power of swallowing door-keys and reproducing them at pleasure, which fills all beholders with mingled sensations of horror and satisfaction—if I may [say] so; with a kind of awful delight. His infancy and youth have been passed at a country public house, and I am told that the sight of a drunken man calls forth his utmost powers. My groom is unfortunately sober, and I have had no opportunity of testing this effect,—but I have told him to “provide himself” elsewhere, and am looking out for another who can have a dissolute character from his last master.
With best regards to Miss Meredith,3 I am always Dear Miss Coutts
Most Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 For fistula.
2 Where Miss Coutts had a house for a short time.
3 Hannah Meredith (d. 1878), later Brown, Miss Coutts’s former governess and now companion.
I Devonshire Terrace | York Gate Regents Park Second November, 1841.
Sir.
It is no less painful to me to refuse, than it is to you to ask. Let me do so, briefly.
Nearly every day of my life, I receive letters akin to that which you have sent me. My inclination is, God knows, never to send an applicant away, empty-handed. But if I were the richest man in England, I should have to disappoint, almost as often as I helped. Judge then, being what I am, how frequently I am forced to hold my hand.
Fame’s Trumpet should blow a little more of the wealth arising from the circulation of my works, into the Booksellers’ pockets, and less into my own.1 With a hundred claims upon my superfluity, I cannot render more than sympathy to such a case as yours.
If I could, I would.
CHARLES DICKENS
1 i.e. it should be more widely known how much went into his publishers’ (his ‘Booksellers’ ‘) pockets, how little into his own.
I Devonshire Terrace | York Gate Regents Park Fifth November 1841.
My Dear Sir.
Let me thank you, both for your call and your note—and let me add that it affords me real pleasure to communicate with you in any way.
You are quite right in considering it very remarkable and worthy of notice, that Wilkes should have been the active magistrate in the suppression of the Gordon Riots.2 I determined however, after some consideration, not to notice it in Barnaby, for this reason.—It is almost indispensable in a work of fiction that the characters who bring the catastrophes about, and play important parts, should belong to the Machinery of the Tale,—and the introduction towards the end of a story where there is always a great deal to do, of new actors until then unheard of, is a thing to be avoided, if possible, in every case. Now, if I had talked about Wilkes, it would have been necessary for me to glance at his career and previous position (for in that lies the singularity you speak of)—and if I had stopped to do that, I should have stopped the riots which must go on to the end headlong, pell mell, or they lose their effect. I therefore resolved to defer that point, with some others of equal curiosity and interest, until the appearance of another Edition would afford me an opportunity of relating them in Notes, where they would not stem the current of the Tale, or embarrass the action.
I need not tell you who are so well acquainted with “Art” in all its forms, that in the description of such scenes, a broad, bold, hurried effect must be produced, or the reader instead of being forced and driven along by imaginary crowds will find himself dawdling very uncomfortably through the town, and greatly wondering what may be the matter. In this kind of work the object is,—not to tell everything, but to select the striking points and beat them into the page with a sledge-hammer. And herein lies the difficulty. No man in the crowd who was pressed and trodden here and there, saw Wilkes. No looker-on from a window at the struggle in the street, beheld an Individual, or anything but a great mass of magistrates, rioters, and soldiery, all mixed up together. Being always in one or other of these positions, my object has been to convey an idea of multitudes, violence, and fury; and even to lose my own dramatis personae in the throng, or only see them dimly, through the fire and smoke.
Until I received your second note last evening, I did not observe the slip of the pen to which it alluded. Even if I had done so, I should have understood, of course, what you had intended to write.
Believe me | My Dear Sir Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
1 John Landseer (1763/9–1852†), engraver and antiquary. Father of the celebrated painter Edwin Landseer, whom he rebuked for reading OT (‘some of Dickens’s nonsense’) in front of his pupils at the Royal Academy.
2 John Wilkes was city chamberlain and magistrate at the time of the riots, and energetic in suppressing them. He had previously been briefly imprisoned for seditious libel of George III and the government.
Devonshire Terrace. | Twentieth December 1841.
My Dear Smithson.
The Pie was no sooner brought into my room yesterday evening, than I fainted away.
Topping put his shoulder out, in carrying it from the waggon to the hall-door; and John2 is in the hospital with a damaged spine—having rashly attempted to lift it.
There never was such a Pie! We are mad to know what it’s made of, but haven’t the courage to cut it. Indeed we haven’t a knife large enough for the purpose. We think of hiring Fletcher to eat it. We sit and stare at it in a dull astonishment, and grow dizzy in the contemplation of its enormous magnitude.
It prevents my writing at any length, as my faculties are absorbed in crust. I have a shadowy recollection that I owe Mrs. Smithson a large sum of money and that it preys upon my mind. Fred was to have told me the amount, but he forgot it on his way home. I seem to remember, too, that you paid for THE Raven—Good God!—if you could only hear him talk, and see him break the windows!
You will be glad to hear—I can only hint at his perfections—that he disturbs the church service, and that his life is threatened by the Beadle. Maclise says he knows he can read and write. I quite believe it; and I go so far as to place implicit reliance on his powers of cyphering.
Ease my mind, or ask Mrs. Smithson to ease it, on the subject of my liabilities. I am going to send her two books, and will remit (if you or she will put me in a condition to do so) at the same time.
Kate joins me in hearty wishes that you and yours (including “beauteous Bill”) may enjoy very many happy Christmases, and New Years.
Since writing the above, I have looked at the Pie, and—I am very weak3
1 Charles Smithson (?1804–44), solicitor with Thomas Mitton. The raven was a gift from him.
2 John Thompson, CD’s manservant until 1867, when he was dismissed for theft from the AYR office.
3 This last sentence in very quavery writing.