The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Iii Part 1

The Letters of Charles d.i.c.kens.

by Charles d.i.c.kens.

VOL 3.

PREFACE.

We intend this Collection of Letters to be a Supplement to the "Life of Charles d.i.c.kens," by John Forster. That work, perfect and exhaustive as a biography, is only incomplete as regards correspondence; the scheme of the book having made it impossible to include in its s.p.a.ce any letters, or hardly any, besides those addressed to Mr. Forster. As no man ever expressed _himself_ more in his letters than Charles d.i.c.kens, we believe that in publis.h.i.+ng this careful selection from his general correspondence we shall be supplying a want which has been universally felt.

Our request for the loan of letters was so promptly and fully responded to, that we have been provided with more than sufficient material for our work. By arranging the letters in chronological order, we find that they very frequently explain themselves and form a narrative of the events of each year. Our collection dates from 1833, the commencement of Charles d.i.c.kens's literary life, just before the starting of the "Pickwick Papers," and is carried on up to the day before his death, in 1870.

We find some difficulty in being quite accurate in the arrangements of letters up to the end of 1839, for he had a careless habit in those days about dating his letters, very frequently putting only the day of the week on which he wrote, curiously in contrast with the habit of his later life, when his dates were always of the very fullest.

A blank is made in Charles d.i.c.kens's correspondence with his family by the absence of any letter addressed to his daughter Kate (Mrs.

Perugini), to her great regret and to ours. In 1873, her furniture and other possessions were stored in the warehouse of the Pantechnicon at the time of the great fire there. All her property was destroyed, and, among other things, a box of papers which included her letters from her father.

It was our intention as well as our desire to have thanked, individually, every one--both living friends and representatives of dead ones--for their readiness to give us every possible help to make our work complete. But the number of such friends, besides correspondents. .h.i.therto unknown, who have volunteered contributions of letters, make it impossible in our s.p.a.ce to do otherwise than to express, collectively, our earnest and heartfelt thanks.

A separate word of grat.i.tude, however, must be given by us to Mr. Wilkie Collins for the invaluable help which we have received from his great knowledge and experience, in the technical part of our work, and for the deep interest which he has shown from the beginning, in our undertaking.

It is a great pleasure to us to have the name of Henry Fielding d.i.c.kens a.s.sociated with this book. To him, for the very important a.s.sistance he has given in making our Index, we return our loving thanks.

In writing our explanatory notes we have, we hope, left nothing out which in any way requires explanation from us. But we have purposely made them as short as possible; our great desire being to give to the public another book from Charles d.i.c.kens's own hands--as it were, a portrait of himself by himself.

Those letters which need no explanation--and of those we have many--we give without a word from us.

In publis.h.i.+ng the more private letters, we do so with the view of showing him in his homely, domestic life--of showing how in the midst of his own constant and arduous work, no household matter was considered too trivial to claim his care and attention. He would take as much pains about the hanging of a picture, the choosing of furniture, the superintending any little improvement in the house, as he would about the more serious business of his life; thus carrying out to the very letter his favourite motto of "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well."

MAMIE d.i.c.kENS.

GEORGINA HOGARTH.

LONDON: _October_, 1879.

NARRATIVE.

We have been able to procure so few early letters of any general interest that we put these first years together. Charles d.i.c.kens was then living, as a bachelor, in Furnival's Inn, and was engaged as a parliamentary reporter on _The Morning Chronicle_. The "Sketches by Boz"

were written during these years, published first in "The Monthly Magazine" and continued in _The Evening Chronicle_. He was engaged to be married to Catherine Hogarth in 1835--the marriage took place on the 2nd April, 1836; and he continued to live in Furnival's Inn with his wife for more than a year after their marriage. They pa.s.sed the summer months of that year in a lodging at Chalk, near Gravesend, in the neighbourhood a.s.sociated with all his life, from his childhood to his death. The two letters which we publish, addressed to his wife as Miss Hogarth, have no date, but were written in 1835. The first of the two refers to the offer made to him by Chapman and Hall to edit a monthly periodical, the emolument (which he calls "too tempting to resist!") to be fourteen pounds a month. The bargain was concluded, and this was the starting of "The Pickwick Papers." The first number was published in March, 1836.

The second letter to Miss Hogarth was written after he had completed three numbers of "Pickwick," and the character who is to "make a decided hit" is "Jingle."

The first letter of this book is addressed to Henry Austin, a friend from his boyhood, who afterwards married his second sister Let.i.tia. It bears no date, but must have been written in 1833 or 1834, during the early days of his reporting for _The Morning Chronicle_; the journey on which he was "ordered" being for that paper.

[Sidenote: Mr. Henry Austin.]

FURNIVAL'S INN, _Wednesday Night, past 12._

DEAR HENRY,

I have just been ordered on a journey, the length of which is at present uncertain. I may be back on Sunday very probably, and start again on the following day. Should this be the case, you shall hear from me before.

Don't laugh. I am going (alone) in a gig; and, to quote the eloquent inducement which the proprietors of Hampstead _chays_ hold out to Sunday riders--"the gen'l'm'n drives himself." I am going into Ess.e.x and Suffolk. It strikes me I shall be spilt before I pay a turnpike. I have a presentiment I shall run over an only child before I reach Chelmsford, my first stage.

Let the evident haste of this specimen of "The Polite Letter Writer" be its excuse, and

Believe me, dear Henry, most sincerely yours,

[HW: Charles d.i.c.kens]

NOTE.--To avoid the monotony of a constant repet.i.tion, we propose to dispense with the signature at the close of each letter, excepting to the first and last letters of our collection. Charles d.i.c.kens's handwriting altered so much during these years of his life, that we have thought it advisable to give a facsimile of his autograph to this our first letter; and we reproduce in the same way his latest autograph.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

FURNIVAL'S INN, _Wednesday Evening, 1835._

MY DEAREST KATE,

The House is up; but I am very sorry to say that I must stay at home. I have had a visit from the publishers this morning, and the story cannot be any longer delayed; it must be done to-morrow, as there are more important considerations than the mere payment for the story involved too. I must exercise a little self-denial, and set to work.

They (Chapman and Hall) have made me an offer of fourteen pounds a month, to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four woodcuts. I am to make my estimate and calculation, and to give them a decisive answer on Friday morning. The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too tempting to resist.

[Sidenote: The same.]

_Sunday Evening._

I have at this moment got Pickwick and his friends on the Rochester coach, and they are going on swimmingly, in company with a very different character from any I have yet described, who I flatter myself will make a decided hit. I want to get them from the ball to the inn before I go to bed; and I think that will take me until one or two o'clock at the earliest. The publishers will be here in the morning, so you will readily suppose I have no alternative but to stick at my desk.

1837.

NARRATIVE.

From the commencement of "The Pickwick Papers," and of Charles d.i.c.kens's married life, dates the commencement of his literary life and his sudden world-wide fame. And this year saw the beginning of many of those friends.h.i.+ps which he most valued, and of which he had most reason to be proud, and which friends.h.i.+ps were ended only by death.