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CHARLES DICKENS 
 AND MARIA BEADNELL ("DORA") 
 

 
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Copyrighted, 1908, by 
 THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The originals of the letters by Charles 
 Dickens printed in this volume are, with one 
 exception/ in the handwriting of the author. 
 Some of them are herein reproduced in pho- 
 tographic facsimile. The letters in the early 
 series were written to Miss Maria Beadnell, 
 the young lady with whom Dickens had his 
 first love affair, just prior to becoming of age. 
 Those in the later series, beginning in 18^^, 
 were written about twenty-two years after, 
 to the same person, who in the meantime had 
 married Mr. Henry Louis Winter, of Number 
 12 Artillery Place, London. At this period 
 Dickens had reached great prominence in the 
 literary world. 
 
 The members of The Bibliophile Society 
 are indebted to the unceasing generosity of 
 Mr. William K. Bixby for the rare privilege 
 
 > The exception is a letter that was returned to Dickens by Miss 
 Beadnell, after a lovers' quarrel, but which before returning she care- 
 fully copied in her own handwriting. See facsimile at p. 46. 
 
 [ix] 
 
 75372^ 
 
of possessing the first printed edition of these 
 excessively valuable MSS. That a collection 
 of such important autobiographical material 
 should have remained so long in obscurity is 
 a most singular fact. So sacredly were these 
 letters guarded after their discovery and pur- 
 chase from a daughter of Mrs. Winter in 
 England by one who realized their worth, that 
 their owner allowed only a single one of them 
 ever to be copied, and that only for private 
 reference, with all the names omitted. Find- 
 ing that their publication in England would 
 be prohibited, he personally brought them to 
 America, when the entire collection was pur- 
 chased by Mr. Bixby. 
 
 If an authentic autobiography of Dickens 
 were suddenly to spring into existence, it 
 would produce a literary sensation. If such a 
 work were found to contain many important 
 identifications of characters and personal traits 
 of the author which were unknown to his 
 most intimate friends, and new even to the 
 members of his own family, it would imme- 
 diately excite the interest of the entire literary 
 world. The present is, in effect, such a vol- 
 ume. The letters of which it consists — 
 which were written in the strictest confidence 
 
 [X] 
 
and intended for no eyes but those of the one 
 to whom they were addressed — are earnest, 
 sincere, and direct from the heart. They dis- 
 close certain life experiences of the author 
 never before imparted to the world; in his 
 own words, " things that I have locked up in 
 my own breast, and that I never thought to 
 bring out any more." Aside from their per- 
 sonal bearing, they furnish a key to the char- 
 acters and incidents in several of the more 
 important novels, some of which have been 
 the subjects of heated discussion ever since 
 the death of the author. For instance, they 
 positively verify many disputed points in 
 David Copperfield, the greatest and most 
 personal of the novels, and show that the 
 love affairs of its hero were almost identical 
 with those of Dickens himself. They further 
 prove conclusively that in Little Dorrit Dickens 
 narrated much of his own experience. The 
 personal character of that work now becomes 
 second only to David Copperfield; and many 
 scenes which have seemed commonplace, when 
 regarded merely as fruits of the novelist's 
 imagination, become at once enlivened with 
 dramatic interest. 
 
 But for the fortunate discovery of these 
 
 [ xi ] 
 
letters, no one would ever have imagined the 
 extent to which Little Dorrit is in reality a 
 continuation of "The Personal History Ad- 
 ventures, Experience and Observation " of the 
 hero of David Copperfield. In dealing with 
 the anticlimax of his old love affair Dickens 
 masquerades in the role of Arthur Clennam 
 in Little Dorrit, while the girl who had dis- 
 tracted his heart in boyhood (the original of 
 Dora in David Copperfield) was assigned the 
 garrulous part of the flippant Flora Pinching. 
 Plora's father, Mr. Casby (who in real life was 
 George Beadnell, the father of Maria Beadnell, 
 of Number 2 Lombard Street, London, and in 
 David Copperfield was Mr. Spenlow, the father 
 of Dora), comes in for his share of raillery, and 
 is penalized severely for the part he is supposed 
 to have played in separating the young lovers. 
 He is ** the wooden-headed old Christopher," 
 of "elephantine build," — the close-fisted old 
 patriarch with bottle-green coat, of whom his 
 own daughter (Plora) is made to say, that he 
 " is always tiresome and putting his nose every- 
 where where he is not wanted." The verses 
 by Dickens in The Bill of Fare (never before 
 printed) identify the originals of a number of 
 characters in his works which were taken from 
 
 [xii] 
 
real life. In a letter to Mrs. Winter, referring 
 to the love affairs of David Copperfield, he 
 says that his readers little thought what reason 
 he had to "know it was true, and nothing 
 more nor less." In another of the letters he 
 said : " A few years ago (just before Copper- 
 field) I began to write my Life, intending the 
 manuscript to be found among my papers 
 when its subject should be concluded. But as 
 I began to approach within sight of that part 
 of it [referring to his early love], I lost courage 
 and burned the rest." 
 
 It is a significant fact that he refers to this 
 circumstance as having occurred " just before 
 Copperfield." There can be little doubt that 
 on this account he changed his purpose, and 
 either before or after destroying the manu- 
 script, determined to write the story of his 
 life, which, mingled with supposititious inci- 
 dent, was put forth under the pseudonym of 
 David Copperfield. The object of his youthful 
 devotion is therein impersonated as "Dora." 
 He doubtless felt an irresistible impulse to 
 write and unburden his mind of the tragic 
 experiences and disappointments of his youth, 
 and when in the course of outlining these he 
 came up to the Maria Beadnell episode, he was 
 
 [ xiii 1 
 
at a loss to know how to handle it so as to 
 give it the required impressiveness without 
 offending the members of his family, — par- 
 ticularly his wife. He could not treat it lightly, 
 for it was the all-absorbing event of his life. 
 The whole plan of an acknowledged autobi- 
 ography was therefore abandoned. 
 
 Again, he was probably not unmindful of 
 the pecuniary side of the matter, and took 
 into consideration the fact that in storing his 
 manuscript away until *' its subject should be 
 concluded," he would be burying one of his 
 most profitable works. It is extremely doubtful 
 if even after his death the Dickens family 
 would ever have published the MS. of David 
 Copperfield under any autobiographical title; 
 for it is observable that, even to this day, his 
 descendants are unwilling to admit publicly 
 that Dora and Flora were more than lay figures, 
 existing only in the author's imagination. 
 
 These letters would have been an excessively 
 valuable asset to any of Dickens' biographers, 
 and even Forster himself would have found 
 in them many disclosures of significant facts 
 which were entirely strange to him. 
 
 From a reading of the first series of the 
 letters written by Dickens in his boyhood days, 
 
 [xiv] 
 
it may be inferred that the coquettish girl to 
 whom they were addressed resorted to artful 
 and surreptitious tactics in repulsing and dis- 
 couraging his persistent attentions after she 
 became tired of him, although she had pre- 
 viously encouraged him to lavish his " entire 
 devotion " upon her. Whether on account of 
 parental interference, or change of heart, or 
 perhaps both, it seems sure that she was deter- 
 mined to get rid of him, and doubtless wished 
 to do this as gracefully as possible, and without 
 wounding his pride too deeply. It seems quite 
 plausible that with this in mind she may have 
 designedly arranged with her friend Mary Anne 
 Leigh for her to display a lively and unwonted 
 interest in Dickens and his affairs, and then she 
 proceeded to reprove him for faithlessness and 
 fickleness, and hypocritically assumed the air of 
 one deeply injured. In defending himself against 
 this accusation, he said of Miss Leigh : — 
 
 *' You certainly totally and entirely misunder- 
 stand my feeling with regard to her — that 
 you could suppose, as you clearly do (that is 
 to say, if the subject is worth a thought to 
 you), that I have ever really thought of M. A. L. 
 in any other than my old way, you are mis- 
 taken. That she has for some reason, and to 
 
 [XV] 
 
suit her own purposes, of late thrown herself 
 in my way 1 could plainly see, and I know it 
 was noticed by others. For instance, on the 
 night of the play, after we went upstairs, I 
 could not get rid of her. God knows that 
 I have no pleasure in speaking to her, or any 
 girl living, and never had. May I add that 
 you have been the sole exception." 
 
 It is clear, also, that Miss Beadnell accused 
 Dickens of having confided inviolable secrets 
 to Miss Leigh, while she herself seems to have 
 been the offender in this respect. In his own 
 defence he wrote : " I never by word or deed, 
 in the slightest manner, directly or by impli- 
 cation, made in any way a confidante of Mary 
 Anne Leigh. . . . Her duplicity and disgusting 
 falsehood, however, renders it quite unneces- 
 sary to conceal the part she has acted, and I 
 therefore have now no hesitation in saying that 
 she, quite unasked, volunteered the information 
 [to friends] that YOU had made her a confidante 
 of all that had eoer passed between us without 
 reserve. In proof of which assertion she not 
 only detailed facts which I undoubtedly thought 
 she could have heard from none but yourself, 
 but she also communicated many things which 
 certainly never occurred at all." 
 
 [xvi] 
 
In the heat of his boyish anger he wrote a 
 scathing note to Miss Leigh, in which he said : 
 *' I can safely say that I never made a confi- 
 dante of any one. I am perfectly willing to 
 admit that if I had wished to secure a confi- 
 dante in whom candour, secrecy, and kind 
 honorable feeling were indispensable requisites, 
 1 could have looked to none better calculated 
 for this office than yourself; but still the 
 making you the depository of my feelings or 
 secrets is an honor I never presumed to expect, 
 and one which I certainly must beg most posi- 
 tively to decline. ... I would much rather 
 mismanage my own aflFairs than have them 
 ably conducted by the officious interference of 
 any one. I do think that your interposition 
 in this instance, however well intentioned, has 
 been productive of as much mischief as it has 
 been uncalled for." 
 
 In David Copperfield Dickens immortalized 
 the name, if not the character, of this girl who 
 had been such a disturbing element in his 
 love-making difficulties, and one can almost 
 see the self-satisfied smile of " sweet revenge " 
 playing upon his features as he wrote : — 
 
 "We had a servant, of course. She kept 
 house for us. I have a still latent belief that 
 
 [ xvii ] 
 
she must have been Mrs. Crupp's daughter 
 in disguise, we had such an awful time with 
 Mary Anne. . . . She was the cause of our 
 first little quarrel. . . . Mary Anne's cousin 
 [a soldier] deserted into our coal-hole, and 
 was brought out, to our great amazement, by 
 a piquet of his companions in arms, who took 
 him away handcuffed in a procession that 
 covered our front garden with ignominy. This 
 nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went 
 so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was sur- 
 prised, until I found out about the tea-spoons, 
 and also about the little sums she had borrowed 
 in my name of the tradespeople without 
 authority." 
 
 In 18^2 Dickens was a mere youth, and 
 gave no immediate promise of fortune or fame. 
 His literary talents were undeveloped, and Miss 
 Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, was per- 
 haps not attracted by his inauspicious pros- 
 pects, although in the early stages of their 
 courtship days she seems to have been quite 
 fascinated by him, and to have given no 
 thought to such gross and material considera- 
 tions. She afterwards married Mr. Winter, 
 a merchant in good standing, who in later 
 years became a bankrupt, and after renewing 
 
 [ xviii ] 
 
her correspondence with Dickens twenty-three 
 years later, she suflFered the humiliating act of 
 appeah'ng to him to use his influence in ob- 
 taining some employment for her husband. 
 The unpromising youth whose idolatrous love 
 she had spurned, and whose consequent 
 "wretchedness and misery" had been the 
 object of her "pity," afterwards became the 
 popular idol of all England and America, while 
 the propitious fortunes of the man of her 
 choice had meanwhile vanished and become 
 hopelessly dissipated. 
 
 In the most fanciful of all Dickens' imagi- 
 nations he could scarcely have conceived a 
 more dramatic spectacle than this, in which 
 he involuntarily played the leading part. Hap- 
 pily, however, for the world at large — and 
 perhaps for Dickens himself — this early love 
 aflfair ended as it did; for if he had married 
 the object of his first love, the complacency of 
 his mind — for the time being, at least — 
 would have neutralized the ambition which, 
 fired by the sting of defeat and adversity, 
 produced one of the world's greatest literary 
 geniuses. 
 
 In the fortunes of war the issue of a great 
 battle has often turned upon an incident of 
 
 [xix] 
 
apparently trivial consequence; and it has 
 frequently happened that single episodes of 
 seeming unimportance have brought fortune 
 and great renown to those of whom these 
 achievements were least expected. The most 
 painful experiences often prove to be blessings 
 in disguise, and it would be difficult to find 
 a more splendid demonstration of this truth 
 than we have in the life of Charles Dickens. 
 
 In a letter to Mrs. Winter (nee Miss Bead- 
 nell) in iSSS, he wrote : " Whatever of fancy, 
 romance, energy, passion, aspiration and deter- 
 mination belong to me, I never have separated 
 and never shall separate from the hard-hearted 
 little woman — you — whom it is nothing to 
 say I would have died for with the greatest 
 alacrity. ... It is a matter of perfect certainty 
 to me that 1 began to fight my way out of 
 poverty and obscurity with one perpetual idea 
 of you." ' 
 
 There can be no doubt that Dickens was 
 conscious of the fact that the stinging rebuff 
 administered to him was due to his lowly posi- 
 tion in life, and that this animated him with a 
 
 1 He embarked at once in the field of literature, and in less than 
 eight months after the separation the first of his Sketches made their 
 appearance in magazine form. See passage from his letter to Forster, 
 quoted on pages 5 and 6, infra. 
 
 [XX] 
 
zeal which he had never before experienced, 
 and which otherwise he would never have 
 possessed. This came at a singularly oppor- 
 tune time, v/hen his mind was in its formative 
 stages, and the resolutions and impressions of 
 that period remained with him through life. 
 
 In writing to Mrs. Winter in later years he 
 said : *' I forget nothing of those times. They 
 are just as still and plain and ckar as if I had 
 never been in a crowd since, and had never 
 seen or heard my own name out of my own 
 house. . . . You so belong to the days when 
 the qualities that have done me most good 
 since were growing in my boyish heart that I 
 cannot end my answer to you lightly." His 
 first love letters furnish unmistakable evi- 
 dence of his sincerity and steadfastness of pur- 
 pose, — qualities which ruled supreme to the 
 end. There have perhaps been few men who 
 throughout their lives have clung more tena- 
 ciously to the memories and ideals of youth. 
 
 Those who have commonly ascribed a cold- 
 blooded and unresponsive nature to Dickens 
 will be surprised to learn from these letters 
 that there was concealed within him an abun- 
 dance of the tenderest sentiment, and that his 
 mind was highly impressible. There appears, 
 
 [ xxi ] 
 
however, to have been but one thing capable 
 of completely awakening these delicate sensi- 
 bilities, and that was the remembrance of his 
 first love. In his letter of February 1^, 18^^, 
 in which he tenderly recalls the sad memories 
 of his youthful devotion, he said: "When I 
 find myself writing to you again, all to your self, 
 how can I forbear to let as much light in upon 
 them as will show you that they are there 
 still ! " 
 
 In writing of Dora, in part XV of David 
 Copper field (issued in July, 18^0), under 
 the chapter heading, "Our Housekeeping," 
 Dickens said: "I look back on the time I 
 write of; I invoke the innocent figure that 
 I dearly loved, to come out from the mists and 
 shadows of the past and turn its gentle head 
 towards me once again ; and I can still declare 
 that this one little speech was constantly in 
 my memory." Is it to be wondered that the 
 still living Dora should be seized with an 
 impulse to respond to this imploring speech 
 by a man who had already become world- 
 renowned, any more than that the lost dove in 
 the wilderness will respond to the distant call 
 of its mate? Is it surprising, moreover, when 
 she did respond by writing to him, that there 
 
 [ xxii ] 
 
should be "a stirring of the old fancies," as 
 he says? That Dickens was not overstating 
 his former devotion for the original of Dora 
 may be seen from the following passage from 
 David Copperfield : "If I may so express it, 
 I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over 
 head and ears in love with her, but I was 
 saturated through and through. Enough love 
 might have been wrung out of me, metaphor- 
 ically speaking, to drown anybody in; and 
 there would have remained enough within me, 
 and all over me, to pervade my entire exist- 
 ence. . . . The sun shone Dora, and the birds 
 sang Dora. The wind blew Dora, and the 
 wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to 
 a bud." 
 
 The later letters show that in order to es- 
 tablish a sure footing for the much desired 
 cordial relationship, Mrs. Winter felt herself 
 called upon to oif er some plausible explanation 
 for her actions in early years, and whatever 
 her excuses were, assuredly they were accepted 
 at their full face value. Precisely what she 
 wrote to Dickens we shall never know, except 
 by inference from his reply,^ in which he said : 
 
 1 It would appear that Mrs. Winter told Dickens how she had 
 pined for him after their relationship in early years was broken off; 
 
 [ xxiii ] 
 
" If you had ever told me then what you tell 
 me now, I know myself well enough to be 
 thoroughly assured that the simple truth and 
 energy which were in my love would have 
 overcome everything. ... All this again you 
 have changed and set right — at once so cour- 
 ageously, so delicately and so gently, that you 
 open the way to a confidence between us 
 which still once more in perfect innocence and 
 good faith, may be between ourselves alone." 
 Although Dickens was married to Miss 
 Hogarth three years after boldly vowing to 
 Maria Beadnell, — " I have never loved and I 
 never can love any human creature breathing 
 but yourself," it is left to the reader to judge 
 whether or not these seemingly rash vows of 
 undying devotion had any bearing upon the 
 *' incompatibility of temperaments " which, un- 
 happily, resulted in estrangement and sepa- 
 ration from his wife more than twenty years 
 
 for in Little Dorrit he thus tauntingly records her explanation : "One 
 more remark," proceeded Flora with unslackened volubility, " I 
 wish to make, one more explanation I wish to offer, for five days I 
 had a cold in the head from crying which I passed entirely in the 
 back drawing-room — there is the back drawing-room still on the 
 first floor and still at the back of the house to confirm my words." 
 It is noteworthy, however, that this was written after his disenchant- 
 ment, which occurred subsequent to writing the letter from which 
 the extract is taken. 
 
 [ xxiv ] 
 
later. The father of nine children, he wrote 
 Mrs. Winter in 18^^, — "Nobody can ever 
 know with what a sad heart I resigned you, 
 or after what struggles and what a conflict. 
 My entire devotion to you and the wasted 
 tenderness of those hard years which I have 
 ever since half-loved, half-dreaded to recall, 
 made so deep an impression on me that I refer 
 to it a habit of suppression which now belongs 
 to me, which I know is no part of my original 
 nature, but which makes me chary of showing 
 my aflFections, even to my children, except 
 when they are very young." Here is the first 
 self-confessed reason for a dominant charac- 
 teristic in Dickens. His "habit of suppres- 
 sion " is a matter of common knowledge, but 
 perhaps no one ever supposed it to be "no 
 part of his original nature," or that it was 
 acquired through disappointment in love. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that the 
 Mrs. Winter who later came into his life was 
 a contributory factor in his unfortunate domes- 
 tic infelicity. It was in Dickens' nature to 
 live more in his books and idealities than in 
 the bosom of his family, and it is doubtful 
 if there was to be found one woman in a 
 thousand who could have made both him and 
 
 [ XXV ] 
 
herself happy under these conditions. Later 
 developments prove that he was more in earnest 
 than might have been imagined v^hen in 183^ 
 he v^rote Maria Beadnell, — "My feeling on 
 one subject was early roused; it has been 
 strong, and it will be lasting." 
 
 Although of a private nature, the correspond- 
 ence contains nothing which need shock 
 the most sensitive morals. The author does 
 not expose himself to unfavorable comment; 
 for the sentiments expressed are mostly ani- 
 mated reflections of passions and impulses of 
 bygone days, which he has permanently re- 
 corded, and given dramatic color by the eloquent 
 descriptive powers of a brilliant and matured 
 mind. There is nothing in the letters that 
 could militate against his reputation, or mini- 
 mize the reverence in which his memory is 
 held. The letters having been written to one 
 outside of the author's own family, we may be 
 absolved from any charge of exposing inviolable 
 confidences. 
 
 If while reflecting upon fondly cherished 
 memories of the past, Dickens unbosomed 
 himself in an unguarded moment, with no 
 thought that the world would ever be the wiser, 
 this atfords no reason why his admirers of 
 
 [ xxvi ] 
 
to-day should be denied admission to his con- 
 fidence, and to a resultant better understand- 
 ing of his true character. He was to a large 
 extent a public servant, because he was de- 
 pendent upon the patronage of the public for 
 his popularity and support ; therefore the world 
 at large has perhaps a higher claim upon him 
 than Mrs. Winter ever had, and there can be 
 no logical excuse at this time for withholding 
 facts which will be as new and interesting to 
 his readers as they were precious to Mrs. 
 Winter. No matter how studiously we may 
 have pondered over the writings and biogra- 
 phies of Charles Dickens, after reading the 
 contents of this volume we shall surely know 
 him as we never knew him before, and feel a 
 greatly renewed interest in many of his writ- 
 ings, — particularly in David Copperfield and 
 Little Dorrit. 
 
 By no means the least interesting among 
 these letters are the ones written last in the 
 second series, after the author's disenchant- 
 ment. It is to be remembered that the letters 
 which are so overflowing with tender remem- 
 brances and gushing sentiment were all written 
 before the "meeting" took place. One of 
 the strangest features of the whole romance is 
 
 [ xxvii ] 
 
that Dickens appears to have lived for years 
 in a perpetual dream, in which he could never 
 picture the girl he had loved in any real or 
 imaginative situation apart from that in which 
 he had known her in his boyhood. In one of 
 his exuberant moods he wrote to Mrs. Winter, 
 — " You are always the same in my remem- 
 brance. When you say you are ' toothless, fat, 
 old, and ugly' (which I don't believe), I fly 
 away to the house in Lombard Street, which 
 is pulled down, as if it were necessary that the 
 very bricks and mortar should go the way of 
 my airy castles, and see you in a sort of rasp- 
 berry colored dress with a little black trimming 
 at the top — black velvet it seems to be made 
 of — cut into Vandykes — an immense number 
 of Vandykes — with my boyish heart pinned 
 like a captured butterfly on every one of 
 them." But when the awakening finally came, 
 alas, he found that the " vision of his youth " 
 had, as a living reality, fallen far short of his 
 fanciful idealization. The dream of twenty 
 years was over, and the displeasures of the 
 sudden awakening were forthwith recorded 
 in Little Dorrit^ where the Dora of his youth 
 
 1 If the reader has a copy of Little Dorrit at hand, turn to one of 
 its early chapters, entitled " Patriarchal," and read it through. For 
 
 [ xxviii ] 
 
was transformed into the Flora of his mature 
 
 years. 
 
 Note. — The foregoing Preface was written 
 before the manuscripts were placed in the hands 
 of Professor Baker, and the impressions and 
 deductions recorded are such as presented 
 themselves to the writer after a careful study 
 of the correspondence. It was the intention 
 to omit from these prefatory remarks any pas- 
 sages that might prove to be a repetition of 
 comments made by the editor, but upon com- 
 paring this with his work it was found that 
 scarcely any of the comments are paralleled, 
 and that conclusions disagree in but a single 
 instance — that in relation to the Mary Anne 
 Leigh episode. It will be seen that Pro- 
 fessor Baker contends that she herself was 
 in love with Dickens and that the seed of 
 dissension sowed by her resulted from this 
 
 Clennam, substitute Dickens; for Flora Pinching, substitute Mrs. 
 Winter ; and supplant Mr. Casby by Mr. George Beadnell, Maria Bead- 
 nell's father. How undisguisedly Dickens expresses his characteristic 
 melancholy in making Clennam say, as he sat musing before the 
 dying embers in the fireplace, — "And turned his gaze back upon 
 the gloomy vista by which he had come to that stage in his exist- 
 ence: 'So long, so bare, so blank! No childhood, no youth, ex- 
 cept for one remembrance; ' the one remembrance proved, only that 
 day, to be a piece of folly I . . . The one tender recollection of his 
 experience would not bear the test, and melted away." 
 
 [ xxix ] 
 
attachment and her consequent pique over 
 her inability to obtain any responsiveness from 
 him. Although with no thought of putting 
 forth any theory in opposition to that of the 
 distinguished editor, yet the point is admittedly 
 an interesting one, and since intricate puzzles 
 are more or less absorbing, particularly when 
 they concern the bewildering mysteries of a 
 woman's heart, it may be that the reader will 
 enjoy the contrasting views presented. 
 
 Henry H. Harper 
 
 [ XXX ] 
 
> 4 
 
 > » » • • 
 
 I . • • • > 
 
 ' , • . • • • . • 
 
 • 1 > • 1 
 
* ■> « J -^ . 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 AND MARIA BEADNELL ("DORA") 
 
 Letters written by Charles Dickens in his 
 youth are extremely rare. Four only have been 
 printed. His Letters, edited by his sister-in- 
 law, Miss Georgina Hogarth, and his daughter 
 Mary, contain only three dated before 1837, 
 when Dickens was already twenty-five years 
 old. One of these, written in 18^3, is to his 
 future brother-in-law, Henry Austin, and two, 
 of 183^, are to his fiancee, Miss Catherine 
 Hogarth. The editors state that though their 
 "request for the loan of letters was so promptly 
 and fully responded to, that we have been pro- 
 vided with more than sufficient material for 
 our work," yet they " have been able to procure 
 so few early letters of any general interest that 
 we have put these first years together." * Under 
 the dates 1833-36 they print only the three 
 letters already mentioned, — one of these, as 
 given, only a fragment. 
 
 ^ The Letters of Charles Dickens, i vol., 1893, pp. vii, 3. 
 11] 
 
1 • • 
 
 •: • • 
 
 In Hotten's Charles Dickens, the Story of his 
 Life, a letter of the reportorial days of Dickens 
 on the Morning Chronicle (183^-36) is printed 
 with the comment, — " This is, in all likelihood, 
 the only letter of Dickens' reporting days now 
 in existence."^ 
 
 That letters written to Dickens in this early 
 part of his career should be lacking is easily 
 explained. In September, i860, he carefully 
 destroyed all correspondence up to that time 
 received by him. Writing to Mr. Wills, his 
 fellow-editor of Household fVords and All the 
 Year Round, he said : — 
 
 " Yesterday [Sept. 3] I burnt in the field at 
 Gad's Hill the accumulated letters and papers 
 of twenty years. They sent up a smoke like 
 the genie when he got out of the casket on the 
 seashore ; and as it was an exquisite day when 
 I began, and rained very heavily when I fin- 
 ished, I suspect my correspondence of having 
 overcast the face of the heavens." ^ 
 
 Any admirer of Dickens and his work must 
 echo very regretfully the words of Charles 
 
 1 It is reported that some ten years ago a series of letters from 
 Dickens to tlie friend of liis youtii, Henry KoUe, clianged hands in 
 Birmingham, England. The present editor hopes that the publica- 
 tion of the letters in this book may bring this set to Hght, for they 
 should supplement and explain the letters here given. 
 
 a The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1893, p. 501. 
 
 [2] 
 
Dickens the younger in regard to this whole- 
 sale destruction of letters and papers : " Who 
 shall say what records invaluable to the biog- 
 rapher blew into ashes that September morn- 
 ing, in the meadows by the cedars ! " ^ 
 
 In this absence of early letters to or from 
 Dickens, the discovery of some half-dozen 
 written before he had won any literary posi- 
 tion for himself, and antedating any heretofore 
 published, would be interesting enough. But 
 when these letters are seen to be not only 
 thoroughly characteristic and intimately per- 
 sonal, but proof of an early love aifair of great 
 intensity at the time and of lasting signifi- 
 cance for Dickens and his work, the find 
 becomes exciting. When chance, or the as- 
 siduity of a collector, adds to these early letters 
 another set which dramatically reveals an after- 
 math of this youthful romance, occurring some 
 twenty years later, surely the collection has 
 the greatest possible interest for all readers of 
 Dickens. 
 
 John Forster, the closest friend of the novel- 
 ist, and his literary executor, comparing Dickens 
 and David Copperfield in his Life of Charles 
 Dickens, wrote : " He too had his Dora at ap- 
 
 ' Introduction to The Uncommercial Traveller, 1892. 
 
 [3] 
 
parently the same hopeless elevation; striven 
 for as the one only thing to be attained, and 
 even more unattainable, for neither did he suc- 
 ceed nor happily did she die ; but the one idol, 
 like the other, supplying the motive to exertion 
 for the time, and otherwise opening out to the 
 idolater, both in fact and in fiction, a highly 
 unsubstantial, happy, foolish time. I used to 
 laugh and tell him I had no belief in any but 
 the book Dora, until the incident of a sudden 
 reappearance of the real one in his life, nearly 
 six years after Copperfield was written, con- 
 vinced me there had been a more actual foun- 
 dation for those chapters of his book than I was 
 ready to suppose." ^ 
 
 The importance of this early love aflFair the 
 Dickens family has either ignored or, appar- 
 ently, sought to minimize. In the Letters appear 
 one letter and part of another, both written 
 in 18^^, to the object of his youthful love, 
 then married and settled as the wife of Mr. 
 Henry Winter. The only reference to Mrs. 
 Winter in the Narrative preceding the letters 
 of this section of the book is — "A very dear 
 friend and companion of Charles Dickens in 
 his youth." In the Biographical Edition of 
 
 » Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, 1872, vol. i, pp. 92, 93. 
 
 [4] 
 
the works of Dickens, his eldest son, as editor, 
 after urging that Mr. Forster in certain remarks 
 of his should have exercised "some of that 
 discretion which is always supposed to be left 
 to biographers, but which, unfortunately, they 
 do not always think fit to employ," says: 
 " There is some reference in Mr. Forster's Life 
 to a ' Dora,' who came across Charles Dickens' 
 path very early in his career — when he was 
 eighteen, in fact, — but as she married some- 
 body else, and developed afterwards into the 
 ' Flora ' of Little Dorrit, she could have had in 
 reality very little to do with Dora Spenlow, 
 except in so far as the 'child-wife' was the 
 idealized recollection of the dream of a ro- 
 mantic young man."^ Yet Dickens himself 
 wrote to Forster in 18^^, when the latter 
 persisted in refusing to believe that Dora 
 reproduced at all accurately any past expe- 
 rience of his friend : — 
 
 "I don't quite apprehend what you mean 
 by my overrating the strength of the feeling of 
 five-and-twenty years ago. If you mean of 
 my own feeling, and will only think what the 
 desperate intensity of my nature is, and that 
 this began when I was Charley's age ; that it 
 
 1 David Copperfield, Introduction, p. xxi. 
 [5] 
 
excluded every other idea from my mind for 
 four years, at a time of life when four years 
 are equal to four times four ; and that I went 
 at it with a determination to overcome all the 
 difficulties, which fairly lifted me up into that 
 newspaper life, and floated me away over a 
 hundred men's heads; then you are wrong, 
 because nothing can exaggerate that. I have 
 positively stood amazed at myself ever since 1 — 
 And so I suffered, and so worked, and so beat 
 and hammered away at the maddest romances 
 that ever got into any boy's head and stayed 
 there, that to see the mere cause of it all, now, 
 loosens my hold upon myself. Without for a 
 moment sincerely believing that it would have 
 been better if we had never got separated, I 
 cannot see the occasion of much emotion as 
 I should see anyone else. No one can imag- 
 ine in the most distant degree what pain the 
 recollection gave me in Copperfield. And, 
 just as I can never open that book as I open 
 any other book, I cannot see the face (even at 
 four-and-forty), or hear the voice, without 
 going wandering away over the ashes of all 
 that youth and hope in the wildest manner. " 
 And in one of the second set of letters 
 printed in this book Dickens wrote : " I fancy — 
 
 [6] 
 
though you may not have thought in the old 
 time how manfully I loved you, — that you may 
 have seen in one of my books a faithful reflec- 
 tion of the passion I had for you, and may 
 have thought that it was something to have 
 been loved so well, and may have seen in 
 little bits of ' Dora ' touches of your old self 
 sometimes, and a grace here and there that 
 may be revived in your little girls, years hence, 
 for the bewilderment of some other young 
 lover — though he will never be as terribly 
 in earnest as I and David Copperfield were. 
 People used to say to me how pretty all that 
 was, and how fanciful it was, and how ele- 
 vated it was above the little foolish loves of 
 very young men and women. But they little 
 thought what reason I had to know it was 
 true and nothing more nor less. ... As I have 
 said, I fancy you know all about it quite as 
 well as I do, however. I have a strong belief — 
 there is no harm in adding hope to that — 
 that perhaps you have once or twice laid down 
 the book, and thought * How dearly that boy 
 must have loved me, and how vividly the man 
 remembers it I' " 
 
 Surely, after these two statements of Dick- 
 ens, it is idle further to contend that Dora 
 
 [7] 
 
Spenlow is only an "idealized recollection of 
 the dream of a romantic young man." 
 
 How, too, can any except the most con- 
 ventional and the habitually censorious fmd 
 anything to censure in an ardent but honor- 
 able love affair preceding the engagement of 
 Dickens to Miss Hogarth by some two years 
 or more? How many men marry the first 
 woman adored by them ? What possible crit- 
 icism is it on the woman one marries, that one 
 may already have been in love with another? 
 In love, as in other human relations, one's 
 judgment may be tempered to sanity and wis- 
 dom by earlier experience. Romeo had his 
 Rosalind, and to that extent at least most 
 men are Romeos. And many a wifely Juliet 
 knows that for nothing does her spouse more 
 devoutly thank his Fate than that Rosalind 
 threw him over, thus saving him for a wiser 
 and truer companionship. Even if the second 
 choice prove not wholly happy, why must the 
 first, out of respect for the second, be ignored 
 or denied by biographers? As we shall see, 
 the conduct of young Dickens as mirrored in 
 these love letters gave him no ground for later 
 mortification or even regret. 
 
 Except to the most hypercritical mind, read- 
 
 [8] 
 
ing these early letters can bring no sensation 
 except pleasure in their manly ardor, only sym- 
 pathy for the deeply moved and suffering 
 youth, and a better understanding of the 
 mood in which David Copperfield was written, 
 as well as of the man who wrote it. 
 
 The only valid objection against publishing 
 these letters years ago, when some at least of 
 the second set were known to the editors of 
 the Letters, was that it might have pained the 
 woman to whom both sets were written to 
 see them in print — not because there was any 
 wrong in them, but because they are intimately 
 personal. Now that she has been dead over 
 twenty years and it is the day of the grand- 
 children of her contemporaries, surely it is not 
 necessary to hold any of them back longer if 
 they contain important information, either cor- 
 rective or supplementary, for the student of 
 Dickens and his work. Such information the 
 two sets — and they cannot be given sepa- 
 rately — do provide. 
 
 Who was this early love of Dickens? In 
 1830 the manager at Smith, Payne and Smith's, 
 the bankers, of Number 1 Lombard Street, was 
 John Beadnell. He lived close by, at Number 
 2 Lombard Street. Sharing his quarters was 
 
 [9] 
 
his brother, George Beadnell. After starting 
 life as an architect, George Beadnell had been 
 induced by his brother to enter the service of 
 the bank, in which, by I83O, he held a respon- 
 sible position. Later he became its manager. 
 This George Beadnell had three daughters, 
 Margaret, Anne, and Maria. In I830 Maria 
 Beadnell was nineteen. To this family young 
 Dickens was introduced by his friend Henry 
 Kolle, a quilt-printer of Number 14 Addle 
 Street, Aldermanbury. This was about a year 
 and a half after Dickens had once for all given 
 up Law by withdrawing from the office of 
 Ellis and Blackmore of Gray's Inn. 
 
 When Dickens was first introduced to the 
 Beadnells, he was either just at the close of 
 his seventeenth or just entering on his eight- 
 eenth year. His introduction to this family, 
 well-to-do, and fond of entertaining a large 
 circle of friends, also comfortably placed in 
 life, meant a real metamorphosis in the life of 
 the hypersensitive youth. 
 
 In order to appreciate rightly this metamor- 
 phosis we must remember what had been 
 happening to Dickens in the period just pre- 
 ceding this introduction. The years between 
 ten and this time had been full of miserable 
 
 [10] 
 
unhappiness at first, later ameliorated; but 
 still the youth was restless and full of blind 
 discontent, because his life did not satisfy, or 
 promise to satisfy, certain vague longings, am- 
 bitions, dreams, — call them what you will. 
 It is somewhat hard for any American lad to 
 read with perfect sympathy the bitter out- 
 pourings of the mature Dickens as to his ex- 
 periences as a coverer of paste pots in the 
 "Warren's Blacking" establishment. So in- 
 tense was his feeling of the degradation this 
 work meant for him that after it was over he 
 never mentioned the experience to any one till a 
 chance remark of a friend to Forster that he had 
 seen Dickens as a lad working in this place in- 
 duced him, after a hard struggle with himself, 
 to disburden his mind of this nightmare. 
 
 Apparently, he had not feared moral de- 
 terioration, but was outraged by the sense 
 that as an individual he was slipping under 
 in the social current, — was losing, perhaps 
 forever, the position into which he had been 
 born and the possibilities of advancement of 
 which he had dreamed, if not definitely, at 
 least unceasingly. It is necessary to speak of 
 this earlier experience in some detail, for un- 
 less one thoroughly comprehends the morbid 
 
 [H] 
 
sensitiveness of the lad, one misses the full 
 significance of both the early and the late 
 correspondence in the pages to follow. As a 
 youth Dickens was not only morbidly sensi- 
 tive, but he carried always with him a sense 
 that he had been defrauded of much that home 
 life meant to most of his contemporaries. The 
 shifting from place to place, the ebbing for- 
 tunes of his family, the easy-going tempera- 
 ment of his father, had all made his childhood 
 trying enough. Dickens must have felt that 
 he had been to some extent neglected by his 
 parents, — that he had been cheated by Fate 
 of his birthright. Any home of even ordinary 
 stability and comfort into which he could enter 
 freely must, therefore, have seemed to him a 
 real haven. 
 
 Moreover, as has been said, a sense of his 
 own fitness for unusual things, a vague vision 
 of his own latent powers, came early to the 
 precocious boy. This is what moved him to 
 tears of mortified ambition when his sister 
 Fanny, as a pupil of the Royal Academy 
 of Music, received a prize in public. These 
 are his own words describing his feelings at 
 the time : " I could not bear to think of my- 
 self — beyond the reach of all such honorable 
 
 [12] 
 
emulation and success. The tears ran down 
 my face. I felt as if my heart were rent. I 
 prayed, when I went to bed that night, to be 
 lifted out of the humiliation and neglect in 
 which I was. I never had suffered so much 
 before. There was no envy in this."^ 
 
 Certainly this seems very like petty envy, 
 unless one can read the words with a clear 
 comprehension of the unquestionable fact that 
 a child of fourteen may have a dim prescience 
 of his later fame. Read this passage sympa- 
 thetically and it is easy to understand the 
 agony with which the child, dimly sure that 
 the vast world held great triumphs for him 
 somehow, somewhere, at some time, but as 
 yet too young to know how, where, or when, 
 and only sure of ridicule if he spoke out his 
 vague sensations, saw the doors of opportunity 
 slowly, inevitably for his little strength, closing 
 upon him. Grasp this state of mind, and the 
 misery of the " Warren's Blacking " experience 
 at once becomes clear. 
 
 But what had made the child intractably mis- 
 erable had made the youth extremely restless. 
 After some two years as an office lad with 
 lawyers, he recognized the painful slowness 
 
 1 Forster's Life, vol. i. p. 66. 
 [13 1 
 
of any possible rise in the Law, and, ever ready 
 to better himself, took a hint from his father. 
 The latter had either recently learned short- 
 hand reporting or had within a few months 
 brought to mastery some knowledge of it 
 already acquired by him as a clerk to the Navy 
 at Portsmouth and Chatham. In David Cop- 
 perfield Dickens has described the persever- 
 ance by which he conquered the mysteries of 
 Gurney's system of shorthand : — 
 
 " I had heard that many men distinguished 
 in various pursuits had begun life by reporting 
 the debates in Parliament. Traddles having 
 mentioned newspapers to me, as one of his 
 hopes, I had put the two things together, and 
 told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know 
 how I could qualify myself for this pursuit. . . 
 
 " I bought an approved scheme of the noble 
 art and mystery of stenography (which cost 
 me ten and sixpence), and plunged into a sea 
 of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, 
 to the confines of distraction. . . . 
 
 " It might have been quite heart-breaking, but 
 for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my 
 tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the 
 scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of 
 difficulty, and I went on cutting them down, 
 
 [14] 
 
one after another, with such vigor, that in 
 three or four months I was in a condition to 
 make an experiment on one of our crack 
 speakers in the Commons. Shall I ever forget 
 how the crack speaker walked oflF from me be- 
 fore I began, and left my imbecile pencil stag- 
 gering about the paper as if it were in a fit I " 
 
 All this indomitable purpose, however, was 
 eventually so eifective that a friend made in 
 the gallery of the House of Commons declared 
 long afterward : " There never was such a 
 shorthand reporter." Even as a youngster of 
 seventeen or eighteen, Dickens had discovered 
 the rules of life which were to carry him to 
 success : " Whatever I have tried to do in life, 
 I have tried with all my heart to do well. 
 What I have devoted myself to, I have de- 
 voted myself to completely. Never to put one 
 hand to anything on which I could throw 
 my whole self, and never to affect deprecia- 
 tion of my work, whatever it was, I find now 
 to have been my golden rules." 
 
 At first, after leaving Ellis and Blackmore, 
 he worked as a reporter for one of the ofllces 
 in Doctors' Commons, with some opportuni- 
 ties in other law courts. It would seem that 
 when he first met the Beadnell family he was 
 
 [15] 
 
out of this drudgery, but was not as yet started 
 on his career as a parliamentary reporter. It 
 could not, however, have been very long after 
 this meeting that he joined the forces of the 
 True Sun, for this opening came to him in 
 
 1831. 
 
 Nor is the rapidity with which his intimacy 
 with the Beadnells developed at all remarkable. 
 A youth of unusual social capacity and per- 
 sonal charm found in the family a home life 
 that offered him much that he had, in his own 
 home, longed for in vain. The young men 
 frequenting the house numbered among them 
 two warm friends of his, David Lloyd and 
 Henry Kolle. Each of these was in love with 
 a daughter of Mr. Beadnell. Lloyd married the 
 eldest, Margaret, April 20, 18^1, and Kolle 
 married the second sister, Anne, May 21, 1833. 
 What wonder that young Dickens, following 
 suit, should fall in love with the youngest 
 daughter, Maria! Evidently Mrs. Beadnell 
 was kind to him, for he wrote of her: — 
 
 It chances to 've been by the fates brought about, 
 That she was the means of first bringing me out : — 
 All my thanks for that & her kindness since then 
 1 'd vainly endeavor to tell with my pen.^ 
 
 1 See the verses in The Bill of Fare, infra. 
 [16] 
 
What wonder, too, that Maria Beadnell flirted 
 with him, and rather desperately 1 One has 
 only to look at Mrs. Barrows' miniature of 
 Dickens at the age of eighteen to see the truth 
 of a description of him as a fellow-clerk in the 
 lawyers' office remembered him at sixteen, and 
 to understand how great must have been the 
 charm of his face when in the full play of ani- 
 mated conversation. The fellow-clerk wrote: 
 
 " He was rather a short but stout-built boy, 
 and carried himself very upright — his head 
 well up — and the idea he gave me was that 
 he must have been drilled by a military in- 
 structor. His dress in some measure, perhaps, 
 contributed to that impression. He wore a 
 frock-coat (or surtout, as it was then generally 
 called), buttoned up, of dark blue cloth, trousers 
 to match, and (as was the fashion at the time) 
 buttoned with leather straps over the boots; 
 black neckerchief, but no shirt collar showing. 
 His complexion was of healthy pink — almost 
 glowing — rather a round face, fine forehead, 
 beautiful expressive eyes full of animation, a 
 firmly set mouth, a good-sized, rather straight 
 nose, but not at all too large. His hair was a 
 beautiful brown, and worn long, as was then 
 the fashion. His cap was like the undress cap 
 
 [17] 
 
of an officer in the army, of some shining ma- 
 terial with a narrow shining leather strap 
 running round the point of the chin. His ap- 
 pearance was altogether decidedly military. I 
 always thought he must have adopted this 
 from his having lived at Chatham. He looked 
 very clean and well fed and cared for." 
 
 Young Dickens was not only keenly intelli- 
 gent, he was also well read. He more than 
 once declared that he regarded these years of 
 his later teens as perhaps the most useful in 
 his life, and very properly, for when he was not 
 busy with his stenographic work or with mel- 
 lowing social intercourse he was reading assid- 
 uously at the British Museum. He took out 
 his first card on the eighth of February, 1830, 
 the earliest possible moment at which he 
 could have a card of his own. He had reached 
 eighteen, the prescribed age, the day before. 
 
 He had, too, that charm so telling with the 
 inexperienced and sentimental feminine mind 
 which springs from a reputed " knowledge of 
 the world." During the years between ten 
 and nineteen he saw a vast deal of London 
 life in all its ins and outs. He had had un- 
 usual opportunities to know its seamy side 
 from the days of his father's insolvency and 
 
 [18] 
 
his own bitter associations with that social 
 Sindbad, the blacking establishment, through 
 his days in the lawyers' offices, to his work as 
 reporter even for the police courts. Dickens 
 once said of this period to Forster : " I looked at 
 nothing in particular, but nothing escaped me." 
 
 How worldly-wise he must have felt at 
 times when the other dark but frequent mood 
 of self-pity was not uppermost 1 How experi- 
 enced he must have seemed to the Beadnell 
 daughters, and even to his far less experienced 
 friends, Lloyd, the tea merchant, and Kolle, the 
 prosperous young quilt-printer 1 When one 
 remembers that a wild humor, a genius for 
 caricature, were with him inborn, one knows 
 his talk must have seemed to this young circle 
 of friends as brilliant as possible. Nor did he 
 at all lack the assurance necessary for bringing 
 out to the best conversational advantage his 
 memories and ideas. Skill in dealing with his 
 fellows was another inborn power. Forster 
 first met him, on the True Sun, when Dickens 
 had just been the successful leader of a strike 
 among the reporters. 
 
 To an unusual knowledge of the world and 
 a humorous appreciation of what he saw and 
 heard, young Dickens added great mimetic 
 
 [19] 
 
power. Almost as early as we can trace 
 Dickens as a child we find him and his sister 
 on the table singing songs, and acting them 
 out as they sang, for the edification of admir- 
 ing parents and friends. The ability that 
 made his readings later in life famous all over 
 the English-speaking world was early mani- 
 fested. He thought seriously at one time — 
 apparently when he was about twenty — of 
 going on the stage.^ 
 
 1 " I have often thought that I should certainly have been as suc- 
 cessful on the boards as I have been between them. When I was 
 about twenty, and knew three or four successive years of Mathews' 
 /it Homes from sitting in the pit to hear them, I wrote to Bartley, 
 who was stage manager at Covent Garden, and told him how young 
 I was, and exactly what I thought 1 could do ; and that I believed 1 
 had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a natural 
 power of reproducing in my own person what 1 had observed in 
 others. There must have been something in the letter that struck 
 the authorities, for Bartley wrote to me almost immediately to say 
 that they were busy getting up The Hunchback (so they were !) but 
 that they would communicate with me again, in a fortnight. Punc- 
 tual to the time another letter came with an appointment to do 
 anything of Mathews' I pleased before him and Charles Kemble on 
 a certain day at the theatre. My sister Fanny was in the secret and 
 was to go with me to play the songs. I was laid up when the day 
 came with a terrible bad cold and an inflammation of the face; the 
 beginning, by the bye, of that annoyance in one ear to which I am 
 subject at this day. I wrote to say so, and added that I would re- 
 sume my application next season. I made a great splash in the 
 Gallery soon afterwards ; the Chronicle opened to me, 1 had a dis- 
 tinction in the little world of the newspapers which made me like 
 it; began to write, didn't want money, had never thought of the 
 
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Though the Beadnells did not, so far as we 
 know, share in his amateur theatricals, his 
 friend Kolle certainly did. By 1833 — whether 
 before or just after the break with Maria 
 Beadnell is not perfectly clear — Dickens was 
 engaged in writing a travesty of Shakespeare, 
 The O'Tbello, which was given privately by 
 his own family. In the same year he took the 
 leading parts in the group of plays named on 
 the program inserted opposite.^ It is earlier 
 than any other playbill of performances by 
 Dickens, and shows that he led all of his 
 family and his intimates into the work that 
 even when he was busiest later in life he could 
 find time to treat as play. Indeed the bill in- 
 troduces us to a group of friends in Dickens' 
 youth not before known to the public. Ap- 
 
 stage but as a means of getting it ; gradually left off turning my 
 thoughts that way; and never resumed the idea. I never told you 
 this, did I ? See how near I may have been to another sort of 
 life." Life, Forster, vol. ii. p. 205. 
 
 * Of the three pieces in the Bill, Clari, or The Maid of Milan, 
 is a musical drama in two acts, by John Howard Payne. It is 
 founded on the delights of home ; the part of Clari was originally 
 taken by Miss Paton and Miss M.Tree. The latter first brought 
 the song Home Sweet Home into its great repute. 
 
 The Married Bachelor, or Master and Man, is a farce in one act by 
 P. P. O'Callaghan. Elliston was the original representative of Sir 
 Charles, and Harley was the lying valet. 
 
 Was the third item, /tmateurs and Actors, written by Dickens 
 himself ? 
 
 [21] 
 
Though the Beadnells did not, so far as we 
 know, share in his amateur theatricals, his 
 friend Kolle certainly did. By 1833 — whether 
 before or just after the break with Maria 
 Beadnell is not perfectly clear — Dickens was 
 engaged in writing a travesty of Shakespeare, 
 The O'Tbelb, which was given privately by 
 his own family. In the same year he took the 
 leading parts in the group of plays named on 
 the program inserted opposite.* It is earlier 
 than any other playbill of performances by 
 Dickens, and shows that he led all of his 
 family and his intimates into the work that 
 even when he was busiest later in life he could 
 find time to treat as play. Indeed the bill in- 
 troduces us to a group of friends in Dickens' 
 youth not before known to the public. Ap- 
 
 stage but as a means of getting it ; gradually left off turning my 
 thoughts that way ; and never resumed the idea. I never told you 
 this, did I ? See how near I may have been to another sort of 
 life." Life, Forster, vol. ii. p. 205. 
 
 1 Of the three pieces in the Bill, Clari, or The Maid of Milan, 
 is a musical drama in two acts, by John Howard Payne. It is 
 founded on the delights of home ; the part of Clari was originally 
 taken by Miss Paton and Miss M.Tree. The latter first brought 
 the song Home Sweet Home into its great repute. 
 
 The Married Bachelor, or Master and Man, is a farce in one act by 
 P. P. O'Callaghan. Elliston was the original representative of Sir 
 Charles, and Harley was the lying valet. 
 
 Was the third item, /tmateurs and Actors, written by Dickens 
 himself ? 
 
 [21] 
 
parently all of the Dickens family except the 
 mother took part, for here are the father, John 
 Dickens, Miss [Fanny] Dickens, Letitia, who 
 later married the " Mr. H. Austin " of the cast, 
 and the two brothers, Frederick and Augustus. 
 Who John Urquhart and Miss Urquhart were 
 we do not know, nor can we with certainty 
 identify Mr. Boston, Mr. Milton, and Miss 
 Oppenheim ; but E. Barrow was doubtless a 
 cousin. Dickens later went on the Morning 
 Chronicle through an uncle John Barrow, 
 and the miniature previously referred to was 
 painted by another member of the family. 
 Mr. R. Austin was probably a brother or 
 cousin of Henry Austin. 
 
 Mr. Bramwell, who took the part of the 
 Duke Vivaldi, was a son of George Bramwell, 
 one of the partners in the well-known firm of 
 bankers, Dorrien, Magens, Dorrien and Mello. 
 He afterwards entered the law profession, in 
 which he rose rapidly, and became a Judge, 
 and a Peer of the Realm, as Lord Bramwell. 
 
 This early predilection for amateur theat- 
 ricals is particularly interesting because if one 
 overlooks his early and persistent passion for 
 the theatre one misses the chief key to the 
 secret of Dickens as a writer. He always saw 
 
 [22] 
 
Vw 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Engraved for The Bibliophile Society by J. A. 
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 rrow. 
 
 )r 
 
 XODJiW .1 
 
 rn of 
 
 ;o. 
 
 a, in 
 
 e a Judge, 
 
 a Bramwell. 
 
 amateur theat- 
 
 ^ because if one 
 
 -t passion for 
 
 ciiiwi key to the 
 
 He always saw 
 
r^tf? 
 
 1 > J J 
 
 > » » > 
 
, • * « 
 
life, even in his maturer days, a little through 
 the shimmering haze of the old-fashioned gas 
 footlights of the melodrama theatres in which 
 he had passed many absorbed and happy hours. 
 Those theatres, and his acting in some of their 
 plays, gave him his love for striking situation, 
 for strong emotion created chiefly by horror ; 
 his liking for static character, rather than char- 
 acter in evolution ; his love for sharp contrasts, 
 particularly of gloom and mirth ; his fondness 
 for types and for identifying " tag " speeches. 
 It was his informing humor, his genius for 
 characterization of certain figures derived from 
 his unusual knowledge of London life, that 
 transmogrified melodrama and Pierce Egan 
 into his highly individual but masterly pic- 
 tures of his time. 
 
 What wonder that Maria Beadnell found 
 this youth, richly endowed and too much de- 
 lighted with his sensations as a lover to wish 
 at all to conceal his adoration, almost irre- 
 sistibly attractive ! What wonder, on the other 
 hand, that she coquetted with him — for there 
 was another side to the shield I How could 
 any worldly-wise parent regard this youth, 
 with all his attractiveness, as a wholly desirable 
 son-in-law? True, he was handsome, win- 
 
 [23] 
 
some, full of promise, but he had only the 
 assets of a parliamentary reporter, and behind 
 him stood a large family, at best always in 
 straitened circumstances. Undoubtedly there 
 was much of the wilful coquette in Maria 
 Beadnell, for Dickens tells her in one of his 
 second set of letters that he remembers her 
 sister Anne writing to him '* once (in answer to 
 some burst of low-spirited madness of mine), 
 and saying, * My dear Charles, I really cannot 
 understand Maria, or venture to take any re- 
 sponsibility of saying what the state of her 
 affections is.'" As these later letters show, 
 there was much writing to and fro, and a Cor- 
 nish family servant devoted to Maria played 
 nurse to this Romeo and Juliet. There were 
 half-secret interviews, also, in the churches 
 and by-lanes in the neighborhood of the 
 Lombard Street house. 
 
 It is more than probable that some of the 
 vacillation, the unevenness of mood, of which 
 young Dickens wrote bitterly in the first set of 
 letters, arose from the young girl's struggle 
 between impulse and a sense of her duty 
 as strongly presented by kindly but unro- 
 mantic parents. After some impulsive re- 
 sponding to her ardent and fascinating wooer, 
 
 [24] 
 
parental advice regained sway, or some other 
 suitor more favored by her elders pleaded his 
 cause, and the girl, looking Reason in the face, 
 wavered, and became distraite or chilling when 
 next she met young Dickens. Immediately 
 the nerves of this over-sensitive youth were 
 aquiver and his imagination rioted to fever 
 heat, with consequent hours of torturing self- 
 scrutiny and rebellion. 
 
 Apparently there was never any engage- 
 ment, further than a mutually implied un- 
 derstanding between the lovers, but in the 
 autumn of 1831 either Dickens showed an 
 amazing amount of assurance, which he cer- 
 tainly never lacked, or else at the time the 
 elder Beadnells regarded his parading of his 
 admiration for Maria Beadnell with amused 
 tolerance. In no other way can his frankness 
 in speaking of Miss Beadnell in The Bill of 
 Fare be explained. 
 
 The following lines, although mediocre as 
 verse, possess two highly important qualities : 
 they present the first authentic literary effort 
 of Dickens — a feature in itself of the great- 
 est interest — written some years before the 
 Sketches appeared, and they introduce us to 
 a group of his friends not mentioned in his 
 
 125] 
 
Letters, or even in Forster's Life, and give us 
 at the same time a means of understanding 
 the first group of letters. 
 
 Though Goldsmith might appreciate the 
 compliment to his Retaliation shown in the 
 general plan of these verses, it is painful to 
 think how their labored measures would have 
 rasped upon the delicate sensitiveness of his 
 ear. 
 
 Mr. Langton, in his Childhood and Youth 
 of Charles Dickens, says: "There is, I fancy, 
 internal evidence in some of Dickens' very 
 earliest works, of his having studied these 
 burlesques and travesties [of The Portfolio, a 
 publication in vogue for some time after 1823] 
 to some purpose. There is still stronger evi- 
 dence of this study, I am told, in some early 
 attempts that were never printed." 
 
 THE BILL OF FARE 
 
 By Charles Dickens 
 
 As the great rage just now is imitation, 
 'Mong high-born and low, throughout the whole Nation, 
 1 trust 't will excuse the few following lines. 
 Of which I '11 say nothing, save these very poor rhymes, 
 As you might expect, in degenerate days 
 
 [26] 
 
Like these, are entitled to no share of praise 
 
 Because they are novel, — the ground Work, at least, 
 
 Is a copy from Goldsmith's ever famed Feast. 
 
 " And a bad one it is too," — you '11 say, 1 fear ; 
 
 But let me entreat you, don't be too severe. — 
 
 If, in a fair face, 't will elicit a smile. 
 
 If one single moment 't will serve to beguile, — 
 
 I shall think on it with great satisfaction, 
 
 Et cet'ra, — and so forth : — now then to action ! 
 
 Without further preface to waste the time in, 
 
 We '11 set to at once, — (if you please we '11 begin.) 
 
 We '11 say a small party to Dinner are met. 
 
 And the guests are themselves about to be eat ; 
 
 Without saying Grace, — (I own I 'm a Sinner, — ) 
 
 We '11 endeavor to see what we 've for dinner. 
 
 Mr. Beadnell 's a good fine sirloin of beef, 
 
 Though to see him cut up would cause no small grief ; 
 
 And then Mrs. Beadnell, I think I may name, 
 
 As being an excellent Rib of the same. 
 
 The Miss B's ^ are next, who it must be confessed 
 
 Are two nice little Ducks, and very well dressed. 
 
 William Moule 's '^ of a trifle, or trifling dish ; 
 
 Mr. Leigh ' we all know is a very great fish ; 
 
 Mrs. Leigh a Curry, smart, hot, and biting, 
 
 Although a dish that is always inviting. 
 
 For cooking our meat we utensils won't lack ; 
 
 ' 1 Two only, because the eldest, Margaret, of the three had be- 
 come Mrs. David Lloyd in March, 1831. 
 
 2 William Moule, who Hved in Pound Lane, Lower Clapton. 
 
 8 John Porter Leigh, corn-dealer, who hved at Lea Bridge Road, 
 Lower Clapton, in 1828-33. 
 
 [27] 
 
So Miss Leigh shall be called a fine roasting Jack, — 
 
 A thing of great use, when we dine or we sup, 
 
 A patent one too ! — never wants winding up. 
 
 Mr. Moule 's a bottle of excellent Port ; 
 
 Mrs. Moule of Champagne, — good humor 's her forte ; 
 
 The Miss M's of Snipe are a brace, if you please, 
 
 And Joe is a very fine flavored Dutch-Cheese ; 
 
 Mrs. Lloyd and her spouse * are a nice side dish, 
 
 (Some type of their most happy state I much wish 
 
 To produce ; — let me see, I 've found out one soon) 
 
 Of Honey and sweets in the form of a Moon. 
 
 Arthur Beetham,* — this dish has cost me some pains, — 
 
 Is a tongue with a well made garnish of brains ; 
 
 M'Namara, I think, must by the same rule 
 
 Be a dish of excellent gooseberry-fool ; 
 
 And Charles Dickens, who in our Feast plays a part, 
 
 Is a young Summer Cabbage, without any heart ; — 
 
 Not that he 's heartless, but because, as folks say, 
 
 He lost his, twelve months ago from last May. 
 
 Now let us suppose that the dinner is done. 
 
 And the guests have roll'd on the floor one by one ; — 
 
 I don't mean to say they 're at the completion, 
 
 Trying the fam'd city cure for repletion ; 
 
 Nor do I by any means raise up the question 
 
 Whether they owe their deaths to indigestion. 
 
 We '11 say they 're all dead ; it 's a terrible sight. 
 
 But I '11 dry my tears, and their Epitaphs write : 
 
 1 David Lloyd, a tea-merchant of Wood Lane, a friend of Dickens' 
 very early days. Dickens puns on their honeymoon, spent in Paris, 
 in the spring of 1831. 
 
 2 A young surgeon, who lived in the parish of All Hallows, Lon- 
 don Wall. He died in December, 1834. 
 
 [28] 
 
Here lies Mr. Beadnell, beyond contradiction, 
 An excellent man, and a good politician ; 
 His opinions were always sound and sincere, 
 Come here ! ye Reformers, o'er him drop a tear : 
 Come here and with me weep at his sudden end, 
 Ye who 're to ballot and freedom a friend. 
 Come here, all of ye who to him ever listened, 
 Praise one rare quality — he was consistent ; 
 And if any one can say so much for you 
 We '11 try to write on you an epitaph too. 
 He was most hospitable, friendly, and kind ; 
 An enemy, I 'm sure, he 's not left behind ; 
 And if he be fairly, and all in all ta'en, 
 " We never shall look upon his like again." 
 
 Here lies Mrs. Beadnell, whose conduct through life. 
 
 As a mother, a Woman, a friend, a Wife, 
 
 I shall think, while I possess recollection, 
 
 Can be summ'd up in one word — PERFECTION. 
 
 Her faults I 'd tell you beyond any doubt. 
 
 But for this plain reason — I ne'er found them out : 
 
 Her character from my own Knowledge I tell. 
 
 For when living she was, 1 then knew her well : 
 
 It chances to 've been by the Fates brought about, 
 
 That she was the means of first bringing me out ; — 
 
 All my thanks for that and her kindness since then 
 
 1 'd vainly endeavor to tell with my pen : 
 
 1 think what I say, — I feel it, that 's better, 
 
 Or I 'd scorn to write of these lines one letter. 
 
 Excuse me, dear reader, for pause now I must ; 
 Here two charming Sisters lie low in the dust : — 
 
 [29] 
 
But why should I pause ? do they want my poor aid 
 
 To tell of their virtues while with us they stayed ? 
 
 Can a few words from me add a hundredth part 
 
 To the regret felt for them in every heart ? 
 
 No, no ! 't is impossible : still I must try 
 
 To speak of them here, for I can't pass them by. 
 
 And first then for Anne I '11 my banner unfurl — 
 
 A truly delightful and sweet tempered girl ; 
 
 And, what 's very odd, and will add to her fame, 
 
 Is this one plain fact, — she was always the same. 
 
 She was witty, clever, — you liked what she said ; 
 
 Without being Hue, she was very well read. 
 
 Her favorite Author, or else I 'm a fibber. 
 
 And have been deceived, was the famed Colley » Gibber. 
 
 I don't think, dear reader, 't will interest you, 
 
 But still, if you please, keep that quite entre nous. 
 
 I grow tedious, so of her 1 '11 not din more, — 
 
 Oh ! — she sometimes drest her hair d la Cbinois. 
 
 Ladies, if you want this fashion to follow. 
 
 And don't know where you the pattern can borrow, 
 
 Don't look in " the fashions " 'mong bows and wreathings, 
 
 You '11 find it on any antique China Tea things. 
 
 But who have we here ? alas what sight is this ! 
 
 Has her spirit flown back to regions of bliss ? 
 
 Has Maria left this World of trouble and care 
 
 Because for us she was too good and too fair ? 
 
 Has Heaven in its jealousy ta'en her away 
 
 As a blessing too great for us children of clay ? 
 
 All ye fair and beautiful, sadly come here, 
 
 1 Dickens puns on the name of his friend Kolle, later married 
 to Anne Beadnell, — in 1833. 
 
 [30] 
 
And Spring's early flowers strew over her bier ; 
 
 Fit emblems are they of life's short fleeting day, 
 
 Fit tributes are they to her memory to pay ; 
 
 For though blooming now, they will soon be decayed, 
 
 They blossom one moment, then wither and fade. 
 
 I linger here now, and I hardly know why, 
 
 1 've no wish, no hope now, but this one, — to die. 
 
 My bright hopes and fond wishes were all centred here — 
 
 Their brightness has vanished, they're now dark and 
 
 drear. 
 The impression that Memory engraves in my heart 
 Is all I have left, and with that I ne'er part. 
 I might tell you much, and I say 't with a sigh, 
 Of the grace of her form, and the glance of her eye ; 
 I might tell of happy days now pass'd away. 
 Which I fondly hoped then would never decay. 
 But 't were useless — I should only those times deplore, 
 I know that again I can see them no more.^ 
 But what 's this small form that she folds to her breast, 
 As if it had only laid down there to rest ? 
 Poor thing is it living ? — Ah no, it 's dead quite ; 
 It is a small dog, liver-colored and white.^ 
 Dear me, now I see — 't is the little dog that 
 Would eat mutton chops if you cut off the fat. \ 
 
 So very happy was its situation, 
 An object it was of such admiration, 
 That I 'd resign all my natural graces. 
 E'en now if I could with '* Daphne " change places. 
 
 1 Little did Dickens dream at the time of writing this how accur- 
 ately he was foretelling his future. 
 * Dora's pet dog, Jip. 
 
 [311 
 
William Moule next, alas, with the dead lieth here, 
 
 And his loss we shall ne'er recover I fear ; 
 
 No more shall the young men, among whom am I, 
 
 Regard with great envy his elegant tie ; 
 
 No more shall the girls with anxiety wait 
 
 At a party, and mourn that he came in late ; 
 
 Though it was not his fault, it must be confess'd 
 
 We knew very well that he lived " in the West " * 
 
 And men of great fashion now never go out, 
 
 Till long after twelve when engaged to a rout. 
 
 No more shall he waltz an hour with one lady, 
 
 To the delight of his tut'ress Miss A. B. 
 
 Who no more shall turn to me, and whispering low. 
 
 Say " Does n't he waltz well ? I taught him, you know." 
 
 No more shall he curse all the City Folks' Balls, 
 
 And vow that he never will honor their halls ; 
 
 No more from " the London " will he be turned back 
 
 Because of his wearing a Kerchief of Black ; 
 
 No more when we sit round the blithe supper table 
 
 Shall he hush to silence the prattling Babel, 
 
 By, — When a lady a speech made upon her, — 
 
 Rising to return us her thanks for the honor. 
 
 No more, — But 1 think 1 '11 use that phrase no more, 
 
 I feel that I can't this loss enough deplore. 
 
 Momus and Bacchus, both be merry no more, 
 Your friend Mr. Leigh now lies dead on the floor. 
 Weep both of ye ; each hide your sorrowful head, 
 For he isn't dead drunk, but he 's really dead. 
 We shall never again see his good humored face, 
 
 1 The purlieus of Tottenham Court Road. [In original.] 
 
 [32] 
 
We shall never again much admire the grace 
 
 With which he would drink off his bottle of Wine, 
 
 Or with which he 'd ask you next Sunday to dine. 
 
 We shall never again laugh aloud at his fun, 
 
 We shall never in turn amuse him with a pun. 
 
 In his Will i hope as a Legacy that 
 
 He 's left me that elegant, pretty, dress hat. 
 
 The Shape, make, and color of which were so rare, 
 
 And which on all extra occasions he 'd Wear. 
 
 I really do his loss most deeply regret, 
 
 As the kindest best temper'd man I e'er met. 
 
 I 'm as hale and as hearty as any one here. 
 
 So I '11 help to carry him to his new bier. 
 
 Mrs. Leigh's life, alas, has come to an end ; — 
 
 But I can't speak of her I fear to offend ; 
 
 I don't think the truth need her feelings much gall. 
 
 But if I can't tell it I won't write at all. 
 
 If 't were not for the lesson that I 've been taught 
 
 I'd have painted her as in justice I ought ; 
 
 I 'd have said she was friendly, good hearted, and kind, 
 
 Her wit I 'd have praised and intelligent mind ; 
 
 'Bout scandal or spreading reports without heed. 
 
 Of course I 'd say nothing, how could I indeed ? 
 
 Because if I did I should certainly lie, 
 
 And my remarks here doubtless would not apply ; 
 
 So as I fear either to praise or to blame, 
 
 I will not her faults or her virtues here name. 
 
 And Mary Anne Leigh's death 1 much regret too, 
 Though the greatest tormentor that I e'er knew ; 
 Whenever she met you, at morn, noon, or night, 
 
 [33] 
 
To tease and torment you was her chief delight ; 
 To each glance or smile she 'd a meaning apply, 
 On every flirtation she kept a sharp eye. 
 Though — tender feelings I trust I 'm not hurting, — 
 She ne'er herself much objected to flirting.^ 
 She to each little secret always held the candle. 
 And 1 think she liked a small bit of scandal. 
 I think, too, that she used to dress her hair well, 
 Although Arthur said, — but that tale I won't tell. 
 In short though she was so terribly teasing. 
 So pretty she looked, her ways were so pleasing. 
 That when she had finished I used to remain 
 Half fearing, half hoping to be teased again. 
 
 Here lies — Mr. Moule, at whose plentiful board 
 We often have sat, and where, with one accord. 
 Mirth, pleasure, good humor and capital Wine, 
 Seem'd always to meet when one went there to dine. 
 To his friends he was always good humored and kind, 
 And a much better host 't would be hard to find. 
 If he for an instant his good humor missed 
 I 've heard it would be at a rubber of Whist ; 
 At least 1 've sometimes heard his Partners say so ; 
 Though of course I myself this fact cannot know. 
 His hospitality deserved great credit ; 
 Indeed I much wish all men did inherit 
 That merit from him ; I 'm sure it is needed 
 That some should prize it as highly as he did. 
 I think his opinions were not always quite 
 So kind or so just as they should be of right. 
 
 1 A singular fact. [This note is in original.] 
 
 [34] 
 
However, that question I '11 not travel through, 
 'T would not I think become me so to do. 
 Some others in this point like him we may see, 
 So I will say requiescat in pace. 
 
 Mrs. Moule, alas, lieth here with the dead, 
 Her good temper vanished, her light spirits fled ; 
 I 'd say much of her, but all knew her too well 
 To leave anything new for me here to tell ; 
 So I '11 only say, — in thus speaking of her 
 I 'm sure all she e'er knew will concur — 
 If kindness and temper as virtues are held 
 She never by any one yet was excelled. 
 
 Louisa Moule 's next, — I can't better call her 
 
 Than the same pattern, — N. B. a size smaller. 
 
 Here lies Fanny Moule, of whom 't may be said, 
 
 That romance or sentiment quite turned her head. 
 
 Her chief pleasure was, I cannot tell why 
 
 To sit by herself in a corner and sigh. 
 
 You might talk for an hour to her, thinking she heard. 
 
 And find out at last she had not heard a word ; 
 
 She 'd start, turn her head, — the case was a hard one, - 
 
 And say with a sigh, *' Dear ! I beg your pardon." 
 
 Whether this arose from love, doubt, hesitation. 
 
 Or whether indeed, 't was all affectation, 
 
 I will not by my own decision abide, 
 
 I '11 leave it to others the point to decide. 
 
 Thus much though, I will say, — 1 think it is droll. 
 
 That one who so pleasing might be on the whole 
 
 Should take so much trouble, it must be a toil, 
 
 All her charms and graces entirely to spoil. 
 
 [35] 
 
Here lies honest Joe, and 1 'm sure when I say 
 
 That he 'd a good heart, there's no one will say nay. 
 
 The themes, of all others on which he would doat 
 
 Were splendid gold lace and a flaming red coat ; 
 
 His mind always ran on battles and slaughters. 
 
 Guards, Bands, Kettledrums and splendid Head Quarters. 
 
 I 've heard that the best bait to catch a young girl 
 
 Is a red coat and a moustachio's curl ; 
 
 Bait your hook but with this, and Joe would soon bite ; 
 
 Hint at it, he 'd talk on from morning to night. 
 
 In portraits of Soldiers he spent all his hoard ; 
 
 You talked of a penknife — he thought of a sword. 
 
 Inspecting accounts he ne'er could get through ; 
 
 His mind would revert to some former review. 
 
 He ne'er made a bill out smaller or larger 
 
 But he thought he was then mounting his charger. 
 
 He ne'er to the counting house trudged in a heat 
 
 But he thought oi forced marches and a retreat ; 
 
 And ne'er from the play to his home went again 
 
 But trembling he thought of the roll call at Ten. 
 
 But fallen at last is this " gay young deceiver," 
 
 A prey to Death and a bad Scarlet fever. 
 
 Here lies Mrs. Lloyd, I am sorry to say 
 That she too from us is so soon snatched away ; 
 That her fate is most hard it can't be denied, 
 When we think how recently she was a bride. 
 That she became one is no source of surprise, 
 For if all that 's charming in critical eyes 
 Is likely to finish a dull single life 
 I 'm sure that she ought t've been long since a wife. 
 Though we lament one so pleasing, so witty, 
 
 [36] 
 
And though her death we may think a great pitty, 
 
 I really myself do quite envy her fate, 
 
 And I wish when with Death 1 've my tete a tSte, 
 
 He 'd do me the favor to take me away 
 
 When my prospects here were bright, blooming and gay, 
 
 When I 'm quite happy, ere with sorrows jaded, 
 
 I wish for my grave when my hopes are faded, — 
 
 When I might be certain of leaving behind 
 
 Those who would ne'er cease to bear me in mind. 
 
 She 's gone and who shall now those sweet ballads sing 
 
 Which still in my ears so delightfully ring ? 
 
 " We met," ** Friends depart," — I those sweet sounds 
 
 retain. 
 And I feel I shall never forget them again. 
 
 And down here Mr. Lloyd's remains lie beside 
 Those of his so recently blooming young bride. 
 I 'm sorry he 's dead, for I knew him to be 
 Good humored, most honest, kind hearted and free. 
 That he was consistent, I ne'er had a doubt. 
 Although scandal said, and 't was whispered about. 
 That when he last summer from Paris came home 
 (I think 't was his marriage induced him to roam) 
 He his principles changed, — so runs the story, 
 Threw off the Whigs, and became a staunch Tory. 
 Be that as it may, I think it 's but fair, 
 To say that I know that he enjoyed the fresh air. 
 
 And is Arthur Beetham for the first time hush'd > 
 And has he returned to his original dust ? 
 Has he gone the way of all flesh with the rest, 
 
 [37] 
 
And in spite of the great care he took of his Chest,^ 
 At our snug coteries will he never make one ? 
 Will he never again gladden us with his fun ? 
 Poor fellow ! 1 fear, now he 's laid in the earth, 
 That of our amusement we '11 all find a dearth ; 
 And yet he 'd his faults, — to speak without joking, 
 He had a knack of being very provoking ; 
 So much so that several times t' other day 
 I devoutly, heartily, wished him away ; 
 But after I 'd done so, my Conscience me smote — 
 And here perhaps a couple of lines I may quote — 
 Missing his mirth and agreeable vein, 
 1 directly wished him back again. 
 
 And does M'Namara with the dead recline ? 
 
 Poor Francis, his waistcoats were wond'rously fine ; 
 
 He certainly was an elegant fellow. 
 
 His coats were well made, his gloves a bright yellow ; 
 
 Florists shall hold up his Pall by the corners, 
 
 Morgan'' and Watkins' shall be his chief mourners. 
 
 Last, here 's Charles Dickens who 's now gone for ever ; 
 It 's clear that he thought himself very clever ; 
 To all his friends' faults — it almost makes me weep. 
 He was wide awake — to his own fast asleep. 
 Though blame he deserves for such wilful blindness, 
 He had one merit — he ne'er forgot kindness. 
 
 1 The reason assig^ied by Mr. A. B. for constantly wearing his 
 coat buttoned up to his chin was his extreme anxiety to preserve 
 his chest from cold. [This note is in original.] 
 
 2 A celebrated glove-maker. [This note is in original.] 
 8 A celebrated Tailor. [This note is in original.] 
 
 [38] 
 
Perhaps I don't do right to call that a merit 
 
 Which each human creature 's bound to inherit ; 
 
 But when old Death claimed the debt that he owed him, 
 
 He felt most grateful for all that was showed him. 
 
 His faults, — and they were not in number few. 
 
 As all his acquaintance extremely well knew, 
 
 Emanated, — to speak of him in good part — 
 
 I think rather more from the head than the heart. 
 
 His death was n't sudden, he had long been ill, — 
 
 Slowly he languished and got worse, until 
 
 No mortal means could the poor young fellow save, 
 
 And a sweet pair of eyes sent him home to his grave. 
 
 There is much of the character of Dickens 
 in these lines, in the veiled impudence toward 
 Mrs. Leigh, in his flattery of Mrs. Beadnell, 
 in the swift turn to serious sentimentality in 
 the last few lines, in the reprimand given Fanny 
 Moule. They were evidently written in the 
 autumn of 1831 ; for Dickens, in speaking of 
 David Lloyd, mentions his visit to Paris " last 
 summer " and " his marriage " as the occasion. 
 The Lloyds — they were married in April, 
 1831 — passed their honeymoon in Paris. 
 
 As to Maria Beadnell, he wrote much more 
 effectively of the " grace of her form and the 
 glance of her eye " when he gave her to pos- 
 terity as Dora. Between the autumn of I831 
 and the letters of 1833, Miss Beadnell was sent 
 
 [39] 
 
to Paris for " finishing oflf," as the common- 
 place old phrase went. Or was the real reason 
 the aroused fears of the elder Beadnells that 
 this fascinating but penniless young Dickens 
 might actually win for good and all the heart 
 of their daughter? Whatever the cause of 
 her absence, during it Dickens nursed his love 
 till it became infatuation. To him, full of 
 unqualified devotion, the girl on her return 
 seemed changeable and distant, yet ready to 
 keep him dangling as an offset to other lovers. 
 Whatever may have been the cause, — her 
 instability of mood, her unsureness as to her 
 exact feelings, or a sense of duty to her par- 
 ents, — she wrung the young fellow's heart. 
 It was Maria Beadnell who taught Dickens to 
 understand the bewildered wretchedness of 
 Pip in his love aifair, in Great Expectations. 
 Pip said of Estella : — 
 
 " She made use of me to tease other admir- 
 ers, and she turned the very familiarity be- 
 tween herself and me to the account of putting 
 a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I 
 had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, 
 poor relation — if I had been a younger brother 
 of her appointed husband — I could not have 
 seemed to myself further from my hopes 
 
 [40] 
 
when I was nearest to her. The privilege of 
 calling her by her name and hearing her call 
 me by mine, became under the circumstances 
 an aggravation of my trials ; and while I think 
 it likely that it almost maddened her other 
 lovers, I knew too certainly that it almost 
 maddened me. She had admirers without 
 end. . . . There were picnics, fete days, plays, 
 operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures, 
 through which I pursued her — and they were 
 all miseries to me. I never had one hour's 
 happiness in her society, and yet my mind, all 
 round the four-and-twenty hours, was harping 
 on the happiness of having her with me unto 
 death." 
 
 Compare with the foregoing this passage 
 from the first of the letters to follow: — 
 
 "Thank God I can claim for myself and 
 feel that I deserve the merit of having ever 
 throughout our intercourse acted fairly, in- 
 telligibly and honorably. Under kindness and 
 encouragement one day and a total change of 
 conduct the next I have ever been the same. I 
 have ever acted without reserve. I have never 
 held out encouragement which I knew I never 
 meant; I have never indirectly sanctioned 
 hopes which I well knew I did not intend to 
 
 [41] 
 
fulfil ; I have never made a mock confidante 
 to whom to entrust a garbled story for my 
 own purposes, and I think I never should 
 (though God knows I am not likely to have 
 the opportunity) encourage one dangler as a 
 useful shield for — an excellent set off against 
 — others more fortunate and doubtless more 
 deserving." 
 
 At the date of these verses Dickens had not, 
 apparently, come to distrust ** Mary Anne " 
 Leigh, or, as he calls her later in his letters — 
 the change probably originated with her — 
 Marianne Leigh. The tone of — 
 
 So pretty she looked, her ways were so pleasing, 
 That when she had finished I used to remain 
 Half fearing, half hoping to be teased again — 
 
 is very diflferent from the biting sarcasm of 
 his letter to her in 18^3. 
 
 The very qualities in her that Dickens had 
 censured in the following lines ultimately 
 brought about the catastrophe in this love 
 affair : — 
 
 Whenever she met you, at morn, noon, or night. 
 To tease and torment you was her chief delight ; 
 To each glance or smile she 'd a meaning apply, 
 On every flirtation she kept a sharp eye. 
 
 [42] 
 
Though — tender feelings I trust I 'm not hurting, — 
 She ne'er herself much objected to flirting. 
 She to each little secret always held the candle, 
 And I think she liked a small bit of scandal. 
 
 Mary Anne Leigh stopped at nothing to 
 embroil the lovers. Possessed of personal at- 
 tractions and a lively wit, she had inherited in 
 marked degree the bad qualities of her mother 
 and was a born mischief-maker. It looks as if, 
 being herself in love with Dickens, she made 
 use of all around her, even his sister Fanny, 
 to bring misunderstandings between the lovers. 
 She told Maria Beadnell that all the stages of 
 the love affair had been confided to her. Evi- 
 dently she wished to imply that this was a 
 mark of the deeper confidence and possibly 
 affection which Dickens felt for her. Certainly 
 the letters show that she brought matters to 
 such a pass that Miss Beadnell had to choose 
 between the word of her friend and that of her 
 lover. When she showed that she would not 
 entirely throw over Miss Leigh, young Dickens, 
 outraged by her vacillation, by the consequent 
 bickerings, and, above all, by her failure com- 
 pletely to accept his straightforward statement 
 of his real relations with Miss Leigh, broke off 
 the already strained relationship. 
 
 [43] 
 
All of Miss Beadnell's letters to Dickens 
 have disappeared — perhaps they perished in 
 the epistolary holocaust of i860, already men- 
 tioned. Of his letters to her only the follow- 
 ing five survive. In exasperation at what has 
 passed he writes a touchingly boyish set of 
 letters, in which his misery of mind breaks 
 through the sentences which try to be dig- 
 nified and restrained. But not even his misery 
 sweeps him out of the self-pity and self-con- 
 sciousness that were throughout his life char- 
 acteristic. One feels, in reading these letters, 
 that however well the manly air was main- 
 tained by the somewhat stilted phrases, it 
 concealed bitter heart-burnings and tempests 
 of outraged Dride as well as deeply wounded 
 affection. 
 
 The somewhat loose phrasing, the punctu- 
 ation, often most conspicuous for its absence 
 in the originals, probably result more from the 
 great excitement of the youth as he wrote 
 than from his inexperience as an author. Yet 
 both are in sharp contrast with the skilled 
 phrase and the adequate punctuation of the 
 second set of letters. 
 
 Unfortunately, the first set of letters is not 
 dated ; consequently it is nearly impossible to 
 
 [44] 
 
be sure what is their correct order, for their 
 contents permit them to be arranged in more 
 than one way. 
 
 Miss Hogarth in the Letters said of the early 
 correspondence: "He had a careless habit in 
 those days about dating his letters, very fre- 
 quently 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." 
 
 18 Bentinck Street,! 
 March tSth 
 
 Dear Miss Beadnell, — Your own feelings will en- 
 able you to imagine far better than any attempt of mine 
 to describe the painful struggle it has cost me to make 
 up my mind to adopt the course which 1 now take — a 
 course than which nothing can be so directly opposed to 
 my wishes and feelings, but the necessity of which be- 
 comes daily more apparent to me. Our meetings of late 
 have been little more than so many displays of heartless 
 indifference on the one hand, while on the other they 
 have never failed to prove a fertile source of wretchedness 
 and misery ; and seeing, as 1 cannot fail to do, that I have 
 engaged in a pursuit which has long since been worse than 
 
 1 The paper of this letter is watermarked, " G. H. Green, 1831." 
 But the text of this and the succeeding letters show that this was 
 written in March, 1833. This letter is a copy in Maria Beadnell's 
 handwriting, the original having been returned by her to Dickens, 
 as stated in his letter at page 52, infra. 
 
 [45] 
 
hopeless and a further perseverance in which can only 
 expose me to deserved ridicule, 1 have made up my 
 mind to return the little present I received from you 
 sometime since (which 1 have always prized, as 1 still do, 
 far beyond anything I ever possessed) and the other 
 enclosed mementos of our past correspondence which 
 I am sure it must be gratifying to you to receive, as after 
 our recent relative situations they are certainly better 
 adapted for your custody than mine. 
 
 Need I say that I have not the most remote idea of 
 hurting your feelings by the few lines which I think it 
 necessary to write with the accompanying little parcel ? 
 I must be the last person in the world who could entertain 
 such an intention, but I feel that this is neither a matter 
 nor a time for cold, deliberate, calculating trifling. My 
 feelings upon any subject, more especially upon this, must 
 be to you a matter of very little moment ; still / have feel- 
 ings in common with other people, — perhaps as far as 
 they relate to you they have been as strong and as good 
 as ever warmed the human heart, — and I do feel that it 
 is mean and contemptible of me to keep by me one gift of 
 yours or to preserve one single line or word of remem- 
 brance or affection from you, I therefore return them, 
 and I can only wish that I could as easily forget that 1 
 ever received them. 
 
 I have but one more word to say and I say it in my 
 own vindication. The result of our past acquaintance is 
 indeed a melancholy one to me. 1 have felt too long 
 ever to lose the feeling of utter desolation and wretched- 
 ness which has succeeded our former correspondence. 
 Thank God I can claim for myself znd feel that 1 deserve 
 
 [46] 
 
1 
 
 -^'. ^ Vi ^ 
 
 
 

 -1 V , 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 :K 1 
 
 V; 
 
the merit of having ever throughout our intercourse acted 
 fairly, intelligibly and honorably. Under kindness and 
 encouragement one day and a total change of conduct 
 the next I have ever been the same. 1 have ever acted 
 without reserve. 1 have never held out encouragement 
 which I knew I never meant; I have never indirectly 
 sanctioned hopes which I well knew I did not intend to 
 fulfil. 1 have never made a mock confidante to whom 
 to entrust a garbled story for my own purposes, and I 
 think I never should (though God knows I am not likely 
 to have the opportunity) encourage one dangler as a use- 
 ful shield for — an excellent set off against — others more 
 fortunate and doubtless more deserving. I have done 
 nothing that I could say would be very likely to hurt 
 you. If (I can hardly believe it possible) I have said 
 any thing which can have that effect I can only ask you 
 to place yourself for a moment in my situation, and you 
 will find a much better excuse than I can possibly devise. 
 A wish for your happiness altho' it comes from me may 
 not be the worse for being sincere and heartfelt. Accept 
 it as it is meant, and believe that nothing will ever afford 
 me more real delight than to hear that you, the object 
 of my first and my last love are happy. If you are as 
 happy as I hope you may be, you will indeed possess 
 every blessing that this world can afford. 
 
 CD. 
 
 Miss Maria Beadnell 
 
 The following letter is undated, and its paper 
 has no watermark. Yet it would appear from 
 its contents that it just preceded those which 
 
 [471 
 
the merit of having ever throughout our intercourse acted 
 fairly, intelligibly and honorably. Under kindness and 
 encouragement one day and a total change of conduct 
 the next I have ever been the same. 1 have ever acted 
 without reserve. 1 have never held out encouragement 
 which I knew I never meant; I have never indirectly 
 sanctioned hopes which I well knew I did not intend to 
 fulfil. I have never made a mock confidante to whom 
 to entrust a garbled story for my own purposes, and I 
 think I never should (though God knows I am not likely 
 to have the opportunity) encourage one dangler as a use- 
 ful shield for — an excellent set off against — others more 
 fortunate and doubtless more deserving. I have done 
 nothing that I could say would be very likely to hurt 
 you. If (I can hardly believe it possible) I have said 
 any thing which can have that effect I can only ask you 
 to place yourself for a moment in my situation, and you 
 will find a much better excuse than I can possibly devise. 
 A wish for your happiness altho' it comes from me may 
 not be the worse for being sincere and heartfelt. Accept 
 it as it is meant, and believe that nothing will ever afford 
 me more real delight than to hear that you, the object 
 of my first and my last love are happy. If you are as 
 happy as I hope you may be, you will indeed possess 
 every blessing that this world can afford. 
 
 CD. 
 
 Miss Maria Beadnell 
 
 The following letter is undated, and its paper 
 has no watermark. Yet it would appear from 
 its contents that it just preceded those which 
 
 [47] 
 
are printed after it. Indeed, it looks as if the 
 remaining five letters were all written during 
 the week preceding that of May 21, 183^, 
 when Anne Beadnell was married to Henry 
 Kolle. It is of Kolle's honeymoon that young 
 Dickens is thinking when in the last letter of 
 this series he says, " Knowing that the oppor- 
 tunity of addressing you through Kolle will 
 shortly be lost." 
 
 There had now been a breach lasting per- 
 haps two months: — 
 
 I do feel, Miss Beadnell, after my former note to you 
 that common delicacy and a proper feeling of consider- 
 ation alike require that I should without a moment's 
 delay inform you (as 1 did verbally yesterday) that I never, 
 by word or deed, in the slightest manner, directly or by 
 implication, made in any way a confidante of Mary 
 Anne Leigh, and never was I more surprised, never did 
 I endure more heartfelt annoyance and vexation than to 
 hear yesterday by chance that days even weeks ago she 
 had made this observation — not having the slightest 
 idea that she had done so of course it was out of my 
 power to contradict it before. Situated as we have been 
 once I have — laying out of consideration every idea of 
 common honour not to say common honesty — too often 
 thought of our earlier correspondence, and too often 
 looked back to happy hopes the loss of which have 
 made me the miserable reckless wretch I am, to breathe 
 the slightest hint to any creature living of one single 
 
 [48] 
 
circumstance that ever passed between us — much less 
 to her. 
 
 In replying to your last note I denied Mary Anne 
 Leigh's interference, and I did so hoping to spare you the 
 pain of any recrimination with her. Her duplicity and 
 disgusting falsehood, however, renders it quite unneces- 
 sary to conceal the part she has acted, and I therefore 
 have nov/ no hesitation in saying that she, quite unasked, 
 volunteered the information that YOU had made her a 
 confidante of all that had ever passed between us with- 
 out reserve. In proof of which assertion she not only de- 
 tailed facts which I undoubtedly thought she could have 
 heard from none but yourself, but she also communicated 
 many things which certainly never occurred at all, equally 
 calculated to excite something even more than ordinary 
 angry feelings. 
 
 On hearing this yesterday (and no consideration on 
 earth shall induce me ever to forget or forgive Fanny's * 
 not telling me of it before) my first impulse was to go to 
 Clapton : my next to prevent misrepresentation, to write 
 immediately. I thought on reflection however that the 
 most considerate and proper course would be to state to 
 you exactly what I wish to do. I ask your consent pre- 
 viously for this reason — because it is possible that you 
 may think that my writing a violent note would have the 
 effect of exciting ill nature which had better be avoided. I 
 candidly own that I am most anxious to write. I care as 
 little for her malice as I do for her, but as you are a party 
 who would perhaps be mixed up with her story I think 
 it is proper to ask you whether you object to my send- 
 
 1 His sister. 
 [49] 
 
ing the note which I have already written. I need hardly 
 say that if it be sent at all it should be at once, and I 
 therefore hope to receive your decision tomorrow, as- 
 suring you that I will abide by it whatever it be. 
 
 I will not detain you or intrude upon your attention 
 by any more observations. I fear 1 could say little 
 calculated to interest or please you. I have no hopes to 
 express, no wishes to communicate. I am past the one 
 and must not think of the other. Though surprised at 
 such inconceivable duplicity I can express no pleasure at 
 the discovery, for I have been so long used to inward 
 wretchedness and real, real misery, that it matters little, 
 very little to me what others may think of or what 
 becomes of me — I have to apologize for troubling you 
 at all but I hope you will believe that a sense of respect 
 for and deference to your feelings has elicited this note 
 to which I have once again to beg your immediate 
 answer. 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 18 Bentinck Street, 
 Tuesday Afternoon. 
 
 18 Bentinck Street, 
 Thursday 4 o'clock. 
 
 I cannot forbear replying to your note this moment 
 received, Miss Beadnell, because you really seem to have 
 made two mistakes. In the first place you do not exactly 
 understand the nature of my feelings with regard to your 
 alleged communications to M[ary] A[nne] L[eigh], and 
 in the next you certainly totally and entirely misunder- 
 stand my feeling with regard to her — that you could 
 suppose, as you clearly do (that is to say if the subject 
 
 [50] 
 
is worth a thought to you), that I have ever really 
 thought of M A L in any other than my old way you 
 are mistaken. That she has for some reason and to suit 
 her own purposes, of late thrown herself in my way, I 
 could plainly see, and I know it was noticed by others. 
 For instance on the night of the play,^ after we went up 
 stairs -I could not get rid of her. God knows that I have 
 no pleasure in speaking to her or any girl living, and 
 never had. May I say thdA you have ever been the sole 
 exception ? " Kind words and winning looks " have 
 done much, much with me — but not from her — unkind 
 words and cold looks, however, have done much, much 
 more. That I have been the subject of both from 
 you as your will altered and your pleasure changed, / 
 know well — and so I think must you. I have often said 
 before, and I say again, 1 have borne more from you 
 than I do believe any creature breathing ever bore from 
 a woman before. The slightest hint, however, even now 
 of change or transfer of feeling I cannot bear and do not 
 deserve. 
 
 Again, I never supposed nor did this girl give me to 
 understand that you ever breathed a syllable against me. 
 It is quite a mistake on your part, but knowing (and 
 there cannot be a stronger proof of my disliking her) 
 what she was ; knowing her admirable qualifications for 
 a confidante and recollecting what had passed between 
 ourselves, I was more than hurt, more than annoyed at 
 the bare idea of your confiding the tale to her of all 
 people living. I reflected upon it. I coupled her com- 
 munication with what I saw (with a jaundiced eye per- 
 
 1 Perhaps his burlesque The O'Thello. 
 [51] 
 
haps) of your own conduct ; on the very last occasion 
 of seeing you before writing that note^ 1 heard even 
 among your own friends (and there was no Mary Ann 
 present), I heard even among them remarks on your own 
 conduct and pity — pity, Good God ! — for my situa- 
 tion, and I did think (you will pardon my saying it for I 
 am describing my then feelings and not my present) that 
 the same light butterfly feeling which prompted the one 
 action could influence the other. Wretched, aye almost 
 brokenhearted, I wrote to you — (I have the note for 
 you returned it,'' and even now I do think it was written 
 " more in sorrow than in anger," and to my mind — I 
 had almost said to your better judgment — it must appear 
 to breathe anything but an unkind or bitter feeling), — 
 you replied to the note. I wrote another and that at 
 least was expressive of the same sentiments as I ever 
 had felt and ever should feel towards you to my dying 
 day. That note you sent me back by hand wrapped in 
 a small loose piece of paper without even the formality 
 of an envelope and that note I wrote after receiving 
 yours. It is poor sport to trifle on a subject like this : 
 I knew what your feelings must have been and by them 
 I regulated my conduct. 
 
 To return to the question of what is best to be done. 
 I go to KoUe's at 10 o'clock tomorrow Evening and I 
 will inclose to you and give to him then a copy of the 
 note which if I send any I will send to Marianne Leigh. 
 I do not ask your advice ; all I ask is whether you see any 
 
 1 The one of March 18 in which he broke off all relations with 
 Maria Beadnell. 
 
 2 This explains why the first letter is in Maria Beadnell' s hand, 
 not that of Dickens. 
 
 [52] 
 
reason to object. You will perhaps inclose it after read- 
 ing it, and say whether you object to its going or not. 
 
 With regard to Fanny if she owed a duty to you she 
 owed a greater one to me — and for this reason because 
 she knew what Marianne Leigh had said oi you; she 
 heard from you what she had said of me and yet she had 
 not the fairness the candour the feeling to let me know 
 it — and if 1 were to live a hundred years I never would 
 forgive it. 
 
 As to sending my last note back, pray do not consult 
 my feelings hut your own. Look at the note itself. Do 
 you think it is unkind, cold, hasty, or conciliatory and 
 deliberate? 1 shall — indeed I need — express no wish 
 upon the subject. You will act as you think best. It is 
 too late for me to attempt to influence your decision. I 
 have said doubtless both in this and my former note 
 much more than perhaps I ought or should have said had 
 I attempted disguise or concealment to you and I have 
 no doubt more than is agreeable to yourself. Towards 
 you 1 never had and never can have an angry feeling. 
 If you had ever felt for me one hundredth part of my 
 feeling for you there would have been little cause of 
 regret, little coldness little unkindness between us. My 
 feeling on one subject was early roused; it has been 
 strong, and it will be lasting. I am in no mood to 
 quarrel with any one for not entertaining similar senti- 
 ments, and least of all, Miss Beadnell, with you. You 
 will think of what I have said and act accordingly — 
 Destitute as I am of hope or comfort, 1 have borne 
 much and I dare say can bear more. 
 
 Yours, Charles Dickens 
 
 [53] 
 
The following letter, dated only "Friday," 
 was evidently written the day after the pre- 
 ceding. Recall the words : " I go to Kolle's at 
 10 o'clock tomorrow Evening and I will in- 
 close to you and give to him then a copy of 
 the note which if I send any I will send to 
 Marianne Leigh." — 
 
 Agreeably to my promise I beg to Inclose you a Copy 
 of the note I propose to send to Marianne Leigh, which 
 you will perhaps be so good as to return me (as I have 
 no other copy from which to write the original) as soon as 
 possible. I had intended to have made it more severe but 
 perhaps upon the whole the inclosed will be sufficient — 
 Until receiving any answer you may make to my last note 
 I will not trouble you with any further observation. Of 
 course you will at least on this point (I mean Marianne 
 Leigh's note) say what you think without reserve and 
 any course you may propose or any alteration you may 
 suggest shall on my word and honor be instantly adopted. 
 Should anything you may say (in returning her note) to 
 me make me anxious to return any answer, may I have 
 your permission to forward it to you ? 
 
 I find I have proceeded to the end of my note without 
 
 even inserting your name. May I ask you to excuse the 
 
 omission and to believe that I would gladly have addressed 
 
 you in a very, very different way } 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 Miss Maria Beadnell 
 
 18BENTINCK Street, 
 Friday. 
 
 [54] 
 
The next letter, to Miss Leigh, is from a 
 copy in Maria Beadnell's handwriting, for the 
 original was returned by her to Dickens, in 
 accordance with his request. The copy was 
 apparently written on the fly-leaf of the origi- 
 nal, for on the outside is " Miss Beadnell " in 
 the handwriting of Dickens. — 
 
 Dear Miss Leigh, — I am very happy to avail myself 
 of the opportunity of inclosing your Album (which I 
 regret to say want of a moment's time has quite pre- 
 vented me writing in). To say a very few words relative 
 to an observation made by you the other day to one of 
 the Miss Beadnells I believe ; and which has only I regret 
 to say just reached my ears quite accidentally. I should 
 not have noticed it at all were it merely an idle gossiping 
 remark, for one is necessarily compelled to hear so many 
 of them and they are usually so trifling and so ridiculous 
 that it w 'd be mere waste of time to notice them in any 
 way. The remark to which I allude however is one 
 which if it had the slightest foundation in truth — w'd 
 so strongly tend to implicate me as a dishonorable bab- 
 bler, with little heart and less head, that in justice to 
 myself I cannot refrain from adverting to it — You will 
 at once perceive I allude to your giving them to under- 
 stand (if not directly by implication) that I had made you 
 my confidante, with respect to anything which [may] 
 
 have [?] ^ passed between Maria B and myself. Now, 
 
 [?]^ passing over any remark which may have been art- 
 
 1 The brackets mark torn places in the MS. 
 [55] 
 
fully elicited from me in any unguarded moment, I can 
 safely say that 1 never made a confidante of any one. I 
 am perfectly willing to admit that if I had wished to 
 secure a confidante in whom candour, secrecy and kind 
 honorable feeling were indispensable requisites I could 
 have looked to no one better calculated for this office 
 than yourself; but still the making you the depositary 
 of my feelings or secrets, is an honor I never presumed 
 to expect, and one which I certainly must beg most 
 positively to decline — A proof of self denial in which 
 so far as I learn from other avowed confidantes of 
 yours, I am by no means singular. 
 
 I have not hesitated to speak plainly because I feel 
 most strongly on this subject. The allegation — if it 
 were not grossly untrue — I again say tending so materi- 
 ally to inculpate me, and the assertion itself having been 
 made (so far as I can learn at least, for it has reached me 
 in a very circuitous manner) certainly not in the most 
 unaffected or delicate way. 
 
 I hope you will understand that in troubling you, I 
 am not actuated by any absurd idea of self consequence. 
 I am perfectly aware of my own unimportance, and it is 
 solely because I am so ; because I w'd much rather mis- 
 manage my own affairs, than have them ably conducted 
 by the officious interference of any one, because I do 
 think that your interposition in this instance, however well- 
 intentioned, has been productive of as much mischief as 
 it has been uncalled for ; and because I am really and 
 sincerely desirous of sparing you the meanness and 
 humiliation of acting in the petty character of an un- 
 authorized go-between that I have been induced to write 
 
 [56] 
 
this note — for the length of which I beg you will accept 
 my apology. 
 
 I am, Dear Miss Leigh, 
 
 Yours &c., Charles Dickens * 
 
 To be corresponding again with Maria Bead- 
 nell, no matter liow unsatisfactorily, was too 
 much for the self-control of the youth, so he 
 flings aside all pride and pleads in the follow- 
 ing letter for reinstatement : — 
 
 18 Bentinck Street, 
 Sunday Morning. 
 
 Dear Miss Beadnell. — I am anxious to take the 
 earliest opportunity of writing to you again, knowing 
 that the opportunity of addressing you through Kolle — 
 now my only means of communicating with you — will 
 shortly be lost, and having your own permission to write 
 to you — I am most desirous of forwarding a note which 
 had I received such permission earlier, I can assure you 
 you would have received 'ere this. Before proceeding to 
 say a word upon the subject of my present note let me 
 beg you to believe that your request to see Marianne 
 Leigh's answer is rendered quite unnecessary by my 
 previous determination to shew it you, which 1 shall do 
 immediately on receiving it — that is to say, if 1 receive 
 any at all. If 1 know anything of her art or disposition 
 however you are mistaken in supposing that her remarks 
 will be directed against yourself. / shall be the mark at 
 which all the anger and spleen will be directed — and I 
 
 1 The last three letters are watermarked " 1832." 
 
 [57] 
 
shall take it very quietly for whatever she may say I 
 shall positively decline to enter into any further con- 
 troversy with her. I shall have no objection to break 
 a lance, paper or otherwise, with any champion to whom 
 she may please to entrust her cause but I will have no 
 futher correspondence or communication with her per- 
 sonally or in writing. I have copied the note and done 
 up the parcel which will go off by the first Clapton 
 Coach to-morrow morning. 
 
 And now to the object of my present note. I have 
 considered and reconsidered the matter, and I have come 
 to the unqualified determination that I will allow no feel- 
 ing of pride, no haughty dislike to making a conciliation 
 to prevent my expressing it without reserve. I will ad- 
 vert to nothing that has passed ; I will not again seek 
 to excuse any part I have acted or to justify it by any 
 course you have ever pursued ; I will revert to nothing 
 that has ever passed between us, — I will only openly 
 and at once say that there is nothing 1 have more at 
 heart, nothing I more sincerely and earnestly desire, than 
 to be reconciled to you. — It would be useless for me to 
 repeat here what I have so often said before ; it would 
 be equally useless to look forward and state my hopes 
 for the future — all that any one can do to raise himself 
 by his own exertions and unceasing assiduity I have done, 
 and will do. I have no guide by which to ascertain your 
 present feelings and I have, God knows, no means of in- 
 fluencing them in my favor. I never have loved and I 
 never can love any human creature breathing but your- 
 self. We have had many differences, and we have lately 
 been entirely separated. Absence, however, has not 
 
 [58] 
 
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altered my feelings in the slightest degree, and the Love 
 I now tender you is as pure and as lasting as at any period 
 of our former correspondence. 1 have now done all 1 
 can to remove our most unfortunate and to me most 
 unhappy misunderstanding. The matter now of course 
 rests solely with you, and you will decide as your own 
 feelings and wishes direct you. 1 could say much for 
 myself and I could entreat a favourable consideration on 
 my own behalf but I purposely abstain from doing so 
 because it would be only a repetition of an oft told tale 
 and because I am sure that nothing I could say would 
 have the effect of influencing your decision in any degree 
 whatever. Need 1 say that to me it is a matter of vital 
 import and the most intense anxiety ? — I fear that the 
 numerous claims which must necessarily be made on your 
 time and attention next week will prevent your answering 
 this note within anything like the time which my impa- 
 tience would name. Let me entreat you to consider your 
 determination well whatever it be and let me implore you 
 to communicate it to me as early as possible. — As I am 
 anxious to convey this note into the City in time to get 
 it delivered today I will at once conclude by begging you 
 to believe me, 
 
 Yours sincerely, Charles Dickens * 
 
 It certainly is difficult to understand Maria 
 Beadnell's treatment of this ardent youth. She 
 was interested enough to keep careful copies 
 of such letters of his as for one reason or 
 
 1 Paper watermarked " 1831." 
 [59] 
 
another she returned ; yet in response to this 
 last unreservedly loving appeal she answered 
 him " coldly and reproachfully," ^ and thus they 
 parted, not to meet again for more than twenty 
 years. 
 
 If the editor is right in thinking that the 
 reference to the " numerous claims which must 
 necessarily be made on your time and attention 
 next week" concerns the wedding of Anne 
 Beadnell in May, 1833, then the relations with 
 Maria were not broken off earlier than the 
 middle of May, 1833. " If youth but knew 1 " 
 "I never have loved and never can love any 
 human creature breathing but yourself," the 
 youth cried in May, 1833, yet in 183^, at most 
 not over two years later, he became engaged to 
 Miss Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George 
 Hogarth, his colleague on the Morning Chroni- 
 cle, and author of The History of Opera. On 
 the second of April, I836, he was married. 
 
 Indeed, nothing could better demonstrate the 
 fundamental sanity and normality of Dickens' 
 apparently somewhat overwrought nature than 
 his reaction from this intense love affair. Of 
 
 • In the later series of letters, Dickens wrote Mrs. Winter on Feb- 
 ruary 22, 18SS, — " You answered me coldly and reproachfully, and 
 so I went my way." 
 
 [60] 
 
course he suflfered, but ambition re-enforced by 
 the impulsive energy of youth swiftly pulled 
 him out of any depths of despair. Wounded 
 pride bade him cut himself free from the group 
 in which the painful experience had come to 
 him. This he seems, wisely, to have done. 
 The following letter to the father of Maria 
 Beadnell shows clearly that however much the 
 young man may have lingered in memory over 
 his lost love, he cut himself loose from her 
 circle of friends and saw no more of them till 
 his success as a writer had established him in 
 a totally ditferent part of society. While the 
 letter is friendly enough, it shows that there 
 could have been no intimate intercourse. 
 
 This letter was in reply to an invitation of 
 Mr. George Beadnell to visit him at his country 
 place, Myford, Welshpool. — 
 
 office of household words, 
 
 16 Wellington Street, North-Strand, 
 Tuesday, fourth May, 1852.1 
 
 My dear Sir, — Receiving your note as I was coming 
 out at my door this morning, I brought it with me down 
 here to answer. Your handwriting is like a breath of 
 my hobbledehoyhood and is delightful to encounter. 
 
 I am sorry to say that I cannot enjoy the pleasure you 
 
 1 This was only three years before the opening of the correspond- 
 ence with Mrs. Winter. 
 
 [61] 
 
propose to me. I should like it very much, but I can 
 never take any private enjoyment on these occasions. 
 For what Sir James Graham calls " the reasons of," 1 
 sketch the following short list of my avocations. 
 
 1 am on the stage all day, rehearsing with everybody, 
 from breakfast until dinner. I preside at all the meals of 
 the amateur company, and carve all the large joints. We 
 carry into the country a perfect army of carpenters, gas- 
 men, tailors, barbers, property-men, dressers and ser- 
 vants; all of whom have become accustomed to do 
 everything with the utmost precision and accuracy under 
 the Managerial eye, but none of whom would do any- 
 thing right, if that luminary were withdrawn from any 
 of them for five minutes at a stretch. So 1 am perpetu- 
 ally hovering among and fluttering these smaller birds ; 
 at the last minute when the Hall has been filled for weeks, 
 all sorts of impossible people want all sorts of impossible 
 places, and have to be given the most urbane explana- 
 tions. I then settle down for an hour or so before the 
 rising of the Curtain, to dress, enter upon two parts, 
 something longer (I should say) than the whole play of 
 Hamlet — am dressed fourteen times in the course of the 
 night — and go to bed a little tired. 
 
 Add to this, that we start for Birmingham on Tuesday 
 morning to do all this over again, and act in the Town 
 Hall two nights running — and 1 leave you to guess what 
 hope of Wales is in me ! 
 
 I should like to shake hands with you nevertheless — 
 I hope 1 may find time for that ! — And if you should 
 ask for me at the Music Hall on Monday between 11 and 
 2, you are sure to find me in full — career of botheration. 
 
 [62] 
 
Pray give my love to Margaret,^ and ask her to give 
 
 the same to Maria if she should see her. (I am exactly 
 
 nineteen when I write their names.) Also remember me 
 
 kindly to Mr. David Lloyd, and believe me ever, with 
 
 ten thousand old recollections, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 George Beadnell Esq. 
 
 What helped Dickens to disentangle himself 
 was his persistent, vigorous interest in life, — his 
 insatiable curiosity as to all human experience. 
 He had, too, as the theatrical program already 
 printed proves, other friends to turn to, and 
 new friends were in the making. The theatre 
 itself unfailingly interested him: he could 
 never resist a chance at amateur theatricals. 
 He was rising as a reporter, and, most impor- 
 tant of all, he began in December, 1833, to 
 print in the Old Monthly Magazine the first of 
 his Sketches by Bo{. Nine more were printed in 
 this magazine before March, 183^. The pseu- 
 donym " Boz " was first used with the article of 
 August, 1834. So prompt was his success, that 
 early in 183 6 he brought together for publica- 
 tion his Sketches by Bo{, and on the last day 
 of March, 183 6, issued the first number of his 
 
 1 Mrs. Lloyd, Maria's eldest sister. 
 [63] 
 
Pickwick Papers. A year is a long time at 
 twenty-one, and, as Mr. Chesterton has clearly 
 said, the suffering of youth is especially painful 
 because it has no vision of the alleviation which 
 time surely brings for any pain : it sees only 
 the past and the miserable present, — never the 
 future. Undoubtedly Dickens suffered for a 
 time; undoubtedly he looked back on these 
 years later with the deep pity which any ret- 
 rospect into his youth seemed always to arouse 
 in him. It is clear, too, from his early writing, 
 that the people whom he had met in the circle 
 of the Beadnell family made a deep impression 
 on him, and that his own sensations in this in- 
 tercourse left him a large residuum of material 
 for his novels. 
 
 What also must have helped Dickens greatly 
 at this time was his artist instinct for expres- 
 sion. He took hints from the Beadnell group 
 for figures in his SketcbeSy or he frankly put 
 his memories on paper, of course heighten- 
 ing the effect a little in most cases because he 
 looked at what he had seen, if not at what he 
 had felt, through the medium of his fantastic 
 humor. For the artist of any sort, conditions, 
 people, emotions expressed in his proper med- 
 ium become at once of the past rather than 
 
 [64] 
 
the harassing present. The selective presen- 
 tation which any art necessitates brings a 
 sense of proportion. 
 
 The second of the Sketches by Bo{ published 
 in January, 18M, has the title, Mrs. Joseph 
 Porter over the Way. As any Dickens lover 
 will recall, the mischief-making of Mrs. Porter 
 causes the complete and ignominious failure 
 of an amateur performance of Othello. Now 
 Dickens had in 1833 arranged an amateur 
 performance of a burlesque of his on Othello, 
 and the verses of his already printed indicate 
 that Mrs. John Porter Leigh — who, by the 
 way, lived not at Clapham as does Mrs. 
 Porter, but at Clapton — was the same sort 
 of person. — 
 
 Mrs. Leigh a Curry, smart, hot and biting, 
 Although a dish that is always inviting — 
 
 'Bout scandal or spreading reports without heed. 
 
 Of course I 'd say nothing, how could I indeed ? 
 
 Because if I did I should certainly lie, 
 
 And my remarks here doubtless would not apply ; 
 
 So as I fear either to praise or to blame, 
 
 I will not her faults or her virtues here name. 
 
 Certainly the resemblance between the names 
 of place and person strengthens the suspicion 
 
 [65] 
 
roused by the similarity of conditions, that 
 Mrs. Leigh sat for the portrait of Mrs. Porter. 
 
 It looks, too, as if in his sketch, 7be New 
 Year, Dickens was thinking of the Beadnell 
 circle. It is reasonably sure that William Moule 
 suggested the ubiquitous Mr. Tupple. 
 
 It is easy to believe that one sees in the early 
 writings of Dickens other memories and por- 
 traits from the Beadnell circle, but such identi- 
 fications are at best dangerous, for Dickens 
 was skilled in all the novelist's accustomed 
 mixing of characteristics observed in two dif- 
 ferent people and of obvious and imagined 
 qualities. Moreover, his field of observation 
 steadily widened, so that there may well be 
 more than one possible original for many of 
 his figures, even in the early writings. 
 
 The memory of those early days in Lombard 
 Street lingered long after the time of which 
 I am writing, for there is recollection of Joseph 
 Moule in the Military Young Gent of Sketches 
 of Young Gents, and Fanny Moule foreshadows 
 a well-known figure of David Copperfield. 
 
 That Joe Moule, referred to in The Bill of 
 Fare, sat for the portrait is evident from the 
 following : — 
 
 " The whole heart and soul of the military 
 
 [66] 
 
young gentleman are concentrated in hisfavorite 
 topic. There is nothing that he is so learned 
 upon as uniforms; he will tell you without 
 faltering for an instant, what the habiliments 
 of any one regiment are turned up with, what 
 regiment wear stripes down the outside and 
 inside of the leg, and how many buttons the 
 Tenth had on their coats, he knows to a frac- 
 tion how many yards and odd inches of gold 
 lace it takes to make an ensign in the Guards, 
 is deeply read in the comparative merits of 
 different bands, and the apparelling of trumpet- 
 ers and is very luminous indeed in descanting 
 upon * crack regiments ' and the ' crack ' gentle- 
 men who compose them, of whose mightiness 
 and grandeur he is never tired of telling." * 
 
 Again the lines in The Bill of Fare relating 
 to Fanny Moule'^ show where Dickens first 
 watched the sentimental melancholy which he 
 later satirized in the Miss Julia Mills of David 
 Copperfield, and the Miss Mills of Our English 
 Watering Place. 
 
 In David Copperfield, Miss Mills is described 
 as "that amiable, though quite used-up re- 
 cluse; that little patriarch of something less 
 than twenty, who had done with the world 
 
 1 See page 36, ante. * See page 35 1 ante. 
 
 [67] 
 
and mustn't on any account have the slum- 
 bering echoes in the caverns of Memory awak- 
 ened . . . having been unhappy in a misplaced 
 affection, and being understood to have retired 
 from the world on her awful stock of experi- 
 ence, but still to take a calm interest in the 
 unblighted hopes and loves of youth." 
 
 Even out of the very real suffering that was 
 the youth's for a time, the longing that caused 
 him to throw aside all wounded pride, to come 
 from behind his reserves and beg for a renewal 
 of the old relations, — out of all this developed 
 the enriched art that searching emotion always 
 leaves with the artist who has gone through 
 vital experiences. Even as he ran — with an 
 unusually intense nature — the gamut of youth- 
 ful passion, from puzzled scrutiny of the way- 
 wardness of Maria Beadnell, through wounded 
 pride, despised love, to passionate devotion 
 that recked nothing so long as it might serve 
 the charmer, the human heart in all its moods 
 of interest, attachment, love, and passion was 
 revealing itself to him. The emotions and ob- 
 servations of this early period made possible 
 the characters of David Copperfield, Pip, Brad- 
 ley Headstone, and even Toots. 
 
 They are quite as much the creations of his 
 
 [68] 
 
imagination reacting on these personal experi- 
 ences as they are the results of close observa- 
 tion. Indeed, Dickens always wrote from 
 within out, tempering his realism with a re- 
 markably original and personal imagination. 
 It is easy to see in the words of Hexam and 
 Pip the reflection of the successive moods by 
 which he passed to the state in which he could 
 look back on the whole painful experience as 
 kindly as he does in one of his letters of \SSS. 
 What drew young Dickens back to Maria 
 Beadnell, what made him ask for a renewal 
 of their relations, was the mood he paints in 
 Headstone's appeal to Lizzie: — 
 
 " I have never been quit of you since I first 
 saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for 
 me! That was a wretched, miserable day! 
 ... I have in my way won a station which 
 is considered worth winning. . . . You draw 
 me to you. If I were shut up in a strong 
 prison, you would draw me out. I should 
 break through the wall to come to you. If I 
 were lying on a sick bed, you would draw me 
 up to stagger to you and fall there. . . . 
 
 " No man knows, till the time comes, what 
 depths are within him. To some men it never 
 comes; let them rest and be thankful! To 
 
 [69] 
 
me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; 
 and the bottom of this raging sea," striking 
 himself upon the breast, " has been heaved up 
 ever since. . . . You know what I am going 
 to say. I love you. What other men may 
 mean when they use that expression, I cannot 
 tell ; what / mean is, that I am under the in- 
 fluence of some tremendous attraction which 
 I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters 
 me. You could draw me to fire, you could 
 draw me to water, you could draw me to the 
 gallows, you could draw me to any death, you 
 could draw me to anything I have most avoided, 
 you could draw me to any exposure and dis- 
 grace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, 
 so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean 
 by your being the ruin of me. But, if you 
 would return a favourable answer to my offer 
 of myself in marriage, you could draw me to 
 any good — every good — with equal force. 
 My circumstances are quite easy, and you 
 would want for nothing. My reputation stands 
 quite high, and would be a shield for yours. 
 If you saw me at my work, able to do it well 
 and respected in it, you might even come to 
 take a sort of pride in me ; — 1 would try hard 
 that you should. ... I don't know that I 
 
 [70] 
 
could say more if I tried. ... I only add that, 
 if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am 
 in thorough earnest, dreadful earnest." 
 
 As time passed, the mood became the quieter 
 one shown by Pip when Estella says that he 
 will shortly be able to put her out of his 
 thoughts : — 
 
 " Out of my thoughts 1 You are part of my 
 existence, part of myself. You have been in 
 every line I have ever read, since I first came 
 here, the rough common boy whose poor heart 
 you wounded even then. You have been in 
 every prospect I have ever seen since — on the 
 river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, 
 in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in 
 the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the 
 streets. You have been the embodiment of 
 every graceful fancy that my mind has ever 
 become acquainted with. The stones of which 
 the strongest London buildings are made, are 
 not more real, or more impossible to be dis- 
 placed by your hands, than your presence and 
 influence have been to me, there and every- 
 where, and will be. Estella, to the last hour 
 of my life, you cannot choose but remain part 
 of my character, part of the little good in me, 
 part of the evil. But, in this separation, I asso- 
 
 [71] 
 
ciate you only with the good, and 1 will faith- 
 fully hold you to that always, for you must 
 have done me far more good than harm, let me 
 feel now what sharp distress I may. Oh, 
 God bless you, God forgive youl ... All 
 done, all gone I So much was done and gone, 
 that when I went out at the gate, the light of 
 day seemed of a darker colour than when 1 
 went in."* 
 
 Comparing the last passage here with the 
 letter of February 22, 18^^, in the second set 
 of letters to be given shortly, one sees fresh 
 proof of the interplay of experience, imagina- 
 tion, and memory in the characterization of 
 Dickens. 
 Also in the letter of February 1^, 18^^: — 
 " Whatever of fancy, romance, energy, pas- 
 sion, aspiration, and determination belong to 
 me, I have never separated and never shall 
 separate from the hard-hearted little woman — 
 you — whom it is nothing to say I would have 
 died for, with the greatest alacrity! I never 
 can think and I never seem to observe, that 
 other young people are in such desperate 
 earnest or set so much so long upon one 
 absorbing hope. It is a matter of perfect cer- 
 
 1 Great Expectations, Biog. Ed. p. 312. 
 [72] 
 
tainty to me that I began to fight my way out 
 of poverty and obscurity, with one perpetual 
 idea of you. This is so fixed in my knowl- 
 edge that to the hour when I opened your 
 letter last Friday night, I have never heard 
 anybody addressed by your name or spoken of 
 by your name, without a start. The sound of 
 it has always filled me with a kind of pity and 
 respect for the deep truth that I had, in my 
 silly hobbledehoyhood, to bestow upon one 
 creature who represented the whole world to 
 me. I have never been so good a man since, 
 as I was when you made me wretchedly 
 happy. I shall never be half so good a fellow 
 again." 
 
 Yet, of course Dickens recovered from the 
 blow, and as youth blessedly does, recovered 
 rapidly. Nevertheless, as the last quotation 
 proves, he looked back upon it as the most 
 significant experience of his life. 
 
 The Dickens who came out of this, as it 
 seemed to him, tragic and blighting affair, was 
 not at all the lad who had gone into it — a 
 curious combination of social callowness and 
 far too sophisticated knowledge of seamier 
 London, a creature of instincts rather than 
 of well-understood emotions. He had known 
 
 [73] 
 
and intimately shared a comfortable family life 
 which initiated him into the social humanities. 
 He had discovered the real man in himself. A 
 passion intense, yet thoroughly idealistic, had 
 metamorphosed vague instincts of greatness 
 into a determination to win for her he loved 
 all he had dimly dreamed, and this determina- 
 tion, when he broke off in his outraged pride 
 the impossibly galling relations, changed to a 
 grim, half-indignant purpose to prove himself 
 the man he felt himself to be, — a person by 
 no means to be played with and scorned, but 
 to be taken as seriously, — well, as he liked to 
 take himself. 
 
 Nor is it surprising that, as years passed, he 
 somewhat idealized the whole affair. Lucky 
 the youth who finds his manhood in an in- 
 tense emotional experience which stimulates 
 him to his best accomplishment, which ma- 
 tures him in knowledge of himself and of the 
 human heart, without debasement for himself 
 or others ; which opens to him for his own all 
 the region of romances for a time his individ- 
 ual possession, before experience can talk to 
 him of propinquity, the superman or any 
 motives lower than the seemingly irresistible 
 attraction that makes him ready to believe all 
 
 [74] 
 
that is good of one person and ready to do all 
 that is brave for her. Young love like that no 
 man forgets wholly, whether or not it result 
 in winning the woman loved. So sentimental 
 a man as Dickens could not possibly forget it. 
 He must cherish it, linger over it, and, as the 
 great idealizer of the supposedly common- 
 place, must idealize it too. Moreover, as the 
 years passed, he must have seen as any sane 
 person would, that youth is not so wise as it 
 thinks itself. He must have felt that all the 
 details of this love affair had not been as 
 perfectly conducted by him as he had once 
 thought, and that possibly a somewhat differ- 
 ent behavior on his part might have brought 
 a more satisfactory ending. At any rate, such 
 judicial inquiry as to one's past conduct is the 
 beginning of tolerance for the person previ- 
 ously held to be entirely in the wrong. 
 
 Finally, though Dickens was at first happy 
 enough in his marriage, it was not many years 
 before he was feeling a sense of " one happi- 
 ness I have missed in my life, and one friend 
 and companion I have never made," as he 
 phrased it in a letter to Forster. Naturally, 
 his thoughts turned to the " might-have-been," 
 which presented itself none the less attractively 
 
 [75] 
 
because seen through the coloring lens of imag- 
 ination as contrasted with the white light of his 
 harassing marital experience. Consequently, 
 when writing David Copperfield, that book 
 which is in large part but the playing of a 
 richly fertile imagination about biographical 
 incident and experience, he told in David's 
 love for Dora his own passion of twenty years 
 before for Maria Beadnell. It will be remem- 
 bered that the novel grew out of a futile at- 
 tempt of Dickens to write his autobiography. 
 When he came to the period in his early man- 
 hood to which his infatuation for Maria Bead- 
 nell belonged, he " lost courage and burned the 
 rest." The semi-autobiographic nature of the 
 book was largely responsible for his intense 
 pleasure in writing it. He said to Mrs. Watson, 
 September 24, 18^0: — 
 
 " There are some things in the next Copper- 
 field that I think better than any that have 
 gone before. After I have been believing such 
 things with all my heart and soul two results 
 always ensue ; first, I can't write plainly to the 
 eye ; secondly, I can't write sensibly to the 
 mind." 
 
 To Forster he wrote thus, on October 21 : ** I 
 am within three pages of the shore ; and am 
 
 [76] 
 
strangely divided, as usual in such cases, be- 
 tween sorrow and joy. Oh, my dear Forster, if 
 I were to say half of what Copperfield makes 
 me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, 
 I should be turned inside out I I seem to be 
 sending some part of myself into the Shadowy 
 World." 
 
 The intense reality of the book for Dickens 
 is revealed in his original preface : — 
 
 " I do not fmd it easy to get sufficiently far 
 away from this Book, in the first sensations of 
 having finished it, to refer to it with the com- 
 posure which this formal heading would seem 
 to require. My interest in it, is so recent and 
 strong ; and my mind is so divided between 
 pleasure and regret — pleasure in the achieve- 
 ment of a long design, regret in the separa- 
 tion from many companions — that I am in 
 danger of wearying the reader whom I love, 
 with personal confidences and private emo- 
 tions. . . . 
 
 " It would concern the reader little, perhaps, 
 to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down 
 at the close of a two years' imaginative task ; 
 or how an Author feels as if he were dismiss- 
 ing some portion of himself into the shadowy 
 world, when a crowd of the creatures of his 
 
 [77] 
 
brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I 
 have nothing else to tell ; unless, indeed, 1 were 
 to confess (which might be of less moment 
 still) that no one can ever believe this Narra- 
 tive, in the reading, more than I have believed 
 it in the writing." **0f all my books, I like 
 this the best. It will be easily believed that 
 I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, 
 and that no one can ever love that family as 
 dearly as I love them. But, like many fond 
 parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite 
 child. And his name is David Copperfield." 
 
 That David and Dora marry and that Dora 
 dies militate in no way against the declaration 
 of Forster, and Dickens' own repeated asser- 
 tions, that Dora sprang from an original in his 
 own experience. The changes are but those 
 of the trained story-teller properly regardful 
 both of the eternal unwillingness of the pub- 
 lic to part any sooner than is absolutely nec- 
 essary with the characters it has come to feel 
 interested in, and his own purposes in tracing 
 the development of his hero, David. How un- 
 willingly he yielded to the imperative demands 
 of his underlying purpose in the story is shown 
 by the following: Forster says, "His principal 
 hesitation occurred in connection with the 
 
 [78] 
 
child-wife Dora, who had become a great fa- 
 vorite as he went on." On the seventh of May 
 Dickens wrote: "Still undecided about Dora, 
 but must decide today " ; yet on the twentieth 
 of the following August he could add : ** I 
 have been very hard at work these three days, 
 and have still Dora to kill. But with good 
 luck I may do it tomorrow." 
 
 An experience which gave Dickens several 
 figures in his early sketches, and suggested 
 others, like Miss Mills ; which opened to him 
 a complete understanding of the passionate 
 moods of Headstone, Pip, and David, and gave 
 him a large part of his material for David 
 Copperfield itself ; which, in brief, as man and 
 as writer, matured and developed him greatly, 
 is worthy to be recorded. The personality of 
 Dickens as it shows itself in these early let- 
 ters and verses is, moreover, such as greatly 
 to increase the interest of this record. 
 
 There are, however, even in the novels of 
 Dickens himself, few more dramatic coinci- 
 dences than this love story offers. It sounds 
 like one of the author's own imaginings ; that 
 twenty-two years after his parting with Miss 
 Beadnell a letter should one day open afresh, 
 for both Dickens and Miss Beadnell his long 
 
 [79] 
 
hidden romance. She had married, February 
 2S, 184^, Henry Louis Winter, a business 
 man in comfortable circumstances at the time of 
 this renewing of the correspondence. Dickens, 
 married then for some nineteen years and the 
 father of a family of nine, had already won a 
 high position in the literary world. The letter 
 in question chanced, dramatically enough, to 
 reach him just when his mind was full of the 
 memories that any re-reading by him of David 
 Copperfield must arouse. On Jan. 29, 18^^, he 
 wrote to his friend, Arthur Ryland: "I have 
 been poring over 'Copperfield' (which is my 
 favourite) with the idea of getting a reading 
 out of it, to be called by some such name as 
 'Young Housekeeping and Little Emily.' " The 
 words of the answer of Dickens to Mrs. Win- 
 ter's first letter may best describe the renewal 
 of the correspondence. — 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 Saturday, Tenth February, 1855- 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — I constantly receive hun- 
 dreds of letters in great varieties of writing, all perfectly 
 strange to me, and (as you may suppose) have no 
 particular interest in the faces of such general epistles. 
 As I was reading by my fire last night, a handful of 
 notes was laid down on my table. I looked them over, 
 
 [80] 
 
DORA SPENLOW and DAVID COPPERFIELD 
 
 (MARIA BEADNELLL and CHARLES DICKENS) 
 
 Etching by W. H. W. Bicknell, after painting 
 by J. A. ^Af^ILLIAMS, specially for The Bibliophile 
 Society. The central figure is from Mr. Bicknell' s 
 own sketch of ** Dora." 
 
mil 
 
 Qwiard^iaqqoo uivau one wojwas8 ahou 
 
 ianaxoiG dajMAHO fane jjjaviaAaa AiHAr/i) 
 
 anitnisq/iaJlB .JJaviHDia .W .H .\/V yd gnirioja 
 •jfrrfqoiidia sriT lot yllBioaqa ,8MAlJaiW .A .J^ yd 
 
 rpivp h!in 
 
 As 
 
 vli Oil 
 

 '"«'.k, 
 
 ■■k«.» , 
 
 Jaw, Hi, :. s 
 
 » » » > 
 
 > 3 > > J > 9 
 
Jo -^^itot hC*>.- cCp- 
 
 •X t-t.-**V.^i.-vo^ t^CCKtJt.it^ 
 
 A. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■;iC crdif/ /i*rvvdv' 
 
 DAVID COPPERFIELD. 
 
and, recognizing the writing of no private friend, let 
 them lie there, and went back to my book. But I found 
 my mind curiously disturbed, and wandering away 
 through so many years to such early times of my life, 
 that I was quite perplexed to account for it. There was 
 nothing in what I had been reading, or immediately 
 thinking about, to awaken such a train of thought, and 
 at last it came into my head that it must have been sug- 
 gested by something in the look of one of those letters. 
 So I turned them over again, — and suddenly the re- 
 membrance of your hand came upon me with an influ- 
 ence that I cannot express to you. Three or four and 
 twenty years vanished like a dream, and I opened it with 
 the touch of my young friend David Copperfield when 
 he was in love. — 
 
 There was something so busy and so pleasant in your 
 letter — so true and cheerful and frank and affectionate 
 — that I read on with perfect delight until I came to 
 your mention of your two little girls. In the unsettled 
 state of my thoughts, the existence of these dear children 
 appeared such a prodigious phenomenon, that I was in- 
 clined to suspect myself of being out of my mind, until it 
 occurred to me that perhaps I had nine children of my 
 own ! Then the three or four and twenty years began 
 to rearrange themselves in a long procession between me 
 and the changeless Past, and 1 could not help considering 
 what strange stuff all our little stories are made of. 
 
 Believe me, you cannot more tenderly remember our 
 old days and our old friends than 1 do. 1 hardly ever 
 go into the City but I walk up an odd little court at the 
 back of the Mansion House and come out by the comer 
 
 181] 
 
of Lombard Street.^ Hundreds of times as 1 have passed 
 the church there — on my way to and from the Sea, the 
 Continent, and where not — I invariably associate it with 
 somebody (God knows who) having told me that poor 
 Anne ' was buried there. If you would like to examine 
 me in the name of a good-looking Cornish servant you 
 used to have (1 suppose she has twenty-nine great grand- 
 children now, and walks with a stick), you will find my 
 knowledge on the point correct, though it was a mon- 
 strous name too. I forget nothing of those times. They 
 are just as still and plain and clear as if I had never been 
 in a crowd since, and had never seen or heard my own 
 name out of my own house. What should I be worth, 
 or what would labour and success be worth, if it were 
 otherwise ! 
 
 Your letter is more touching to me from its good 
 and gentle association with the state of Spring in which 
 I was either much more wise or much more foolish than 
 I am now — I never know which to think it — than I 
 could tell you if I tried for a week. I will not try at all. 
 I heartily respond to it, and shall be charmed to have a 
 long talk with you, and most cordially glad to see you 
 after all this length of time. 
 
 I am going to Paris to-morrow morning, but I pur- 
 pose being back within a fortnight. When 1 return, Mrs. 
 Dickens will come to you, to arrange a day for our see- 
 ing you and Mr. Winter (to whom I beg to be remem- 
 bered) quietly to dinner. We will have no intruder or 
 foreign creature on any pretence whatever, in order that 
 
 ^ One of their old trysting places. 
 
 * Her sister; she married the early friend of Dickens, Henry 
 KuUe. 
 
 [82] 
 
we may set in without any restraint for a tremendous 
 gossip. 
 
 Mary Ann Leigh ^ we saw at Broadstairs about fifty 
 years ago. Mrs. Dickens and her sister, who read all 
 the marriages in all the papers, shrieked to me when 
 the announcement of hers appeared, what did I think 
 of that? I calmly replied that I thought it was 
 time. I should have been more excited if I had 
 known of the old gentleman with several thousand a 
 year, uncountable grown-up children, and no English 
 grammar. 
 
 My mother has a strong objection to being considered 
 in the least old, and usually appears here on Christmas 
 Day in a juvenile cap,^ which takes an immense time in 
 the putting on. The Fates seem to have made up their 
 minds that I shall never see your Father when he comes 
 this way. David Lloyd is altogether an impostor — not 
 having in the least changed (that I could make out when I 
 saw him at the London Tavern) since what I suppose to 
 have been the year 1 770, when I found you three ' on 
 Cornhill, with your poor mother, going to St. Mary Axe 
 to order mysterious dresses — which afterwards turned 
 out to be wedding garments. That was in the remote 
 period when you all wore green cloaks, cut (in my re- 
 membrance) very round, and which I am resolved to be- 
 
 1 Married, Nov. 14, 1854, to Mr. William Back. 
 
 2 This confirms the popular supposition that Mrs. Dickens was 
 the original of Mrs, Nickleby; her juvenile airs and fondness 
 for her caps are specially noted in the novel. 
 
 * Apparently Margaret, Anne and Maria Beadnell, going to ar- 
 range for dresses for the wedding of Margaret with David Lloyd. 
 It took place April 20, l83i. 
 
 [83] 
 
lieve were made of Merino. I escorted you with native 
 gallantry to the Dress Maker's door, and your mother, 
 seized with an apprehension — groundless upon my 
 honor — that I might come in, said emphatically: "And 
 now Mr. Dickin " — which she always used to call me 
 — " we '11 wish^'OM good morning." 
 
 When I was writing the word Paris ^ just now, I re- 
 membered that my existence was once entirely uprooted 
 and my whole Being blighted by the Angel of my soul 
 being sent there to finish her education ! If I can dis- 
 charge any little commission for you, or bring home 
 anything for the darlings, whom I cannot yet believe to 
 be anything but a delusion of yours, pray employ me. 
 I shall be at the H6tel Meurice — locked up when within, 
 as my only defence against my country and the United 
 States — but a most punctual and reliable functionary if 
 you will give me any employment. 
 
 My Dear Mrs. Winter, I have been much moved by 
 your letter ; and the pleasure it has given me has some 
 little sorrowful ingredient in it. In the strife and struggle 
 of this great world where most of us lose each other so 
 strangely, it is impossible to be spoken to out of the old 
 times without a softened emotion. You so belong to the 
 days when the qualities that have done me most good 
 since, were growing in my boyish heart that I cannot 
 end my answer to you lightly. The associations my 
 memory has with you make your letter more — I want 
 a word — invest it with a more immediate address to 
 me than such a letter could have from anybody else. 
 Mr. Winter will not mind that. We are all sailing away 
 
 1 " Dora " was sent to Paris to finish her education. 
 [84] 
 
to the sea, and have a pleasure in thinking of the river 
 we are upon, when it was very narrow and little. 
 Faithfully your friend, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 This is, of course, only the cordial letter of a 
 man who, when a figure from the past emerges 
 unexpectedly, — a figure that once had done 
 much to develop in him the qualities which 
 had done him "most good since," — was 
 pleased and even deeply touched at the inter- 
 est shown after the lapse of years. This voice 
 from the past aroused within him a train of 
 long cherished memories ; and when one con- 
 siders the intensity of his feelings on this mat- 
 ter, and the vividness of his recollections, it is 
 easy to imagine that the re-opening of the cor- 
 respondence was productive of many thrilling 
 sensations. 
 
 The next letter from Mrs. Winter was evi- 
 dently more intimate in tone. How could it 
 fail to be? A very famous man, once her lover, 
 had not only told her in friendliest fashion how 
 much she had once meant to him, but — far 
 subtler compliment — had shown a remarkable 
 memory for small details of their former asso- 
 ciation. Her second letter brings a reply which 
 must have gratified her keenly; a reply, in 
 
 [85] 
 
its detailed statement of the influence of this 
 long past love affair on his life and on David 
 Copperfield in particular, which makes the 
 letter of the utmost importance to the student 
 of Dickens. — 
 
 H6tel Meurice, Paris, 
 Thursday, Fifteenth February, 185S. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter,— (I had half a mind, when 
 1 dipped my pen in the ink, to address you by your old 
 natural Christian name.) 
 
 The snow lies so deep on the Northern Railway, and 
 the Posts have been so interrupted in consequence, that 
 your charming note arrived here only this morning. I 
 reply by return of post — with a general idea that Sarah ^ 
 will come to Finsbury Place with a basket and a face of 
 good-humoured compassion, and carry the letter away, 
 and leave me as desolate as she used to do. 
 
 I got the heartache again when I read your commis- 
 sion, written in the hand which I find now to be not in 
 the least changed, and yet it is a great pleasure to be 
 entrusted with it, and to have that share in your gentler 
 remembrances which 1 cannot find it still my privilege to 
 have without a stirring of the old fancies. I need not 
 tell you that it shall be executed to the letter — with as 
 much interest as I once matched a little pair of gloves for 
 you which I recollect were blue ones. (I wonder whether 
 people generally wore blue gloves when I was nineteen, 
 or whether it was only you !) I am very, very sorry 
 
 1 Evidently the Cornish servant, spoken of in the last letter. 
 Mrs. Winter lived in Finsbury Square. 
 
 [86] 
 
you mistrusted me in not writing before your little girl 
 was bom ; but I hope now you know me better you will 
 teach her, one day, to tell her children, in times to come 
 when they may have some interest in wondering about 
 it, that I loved her mother with the most extraordinary 
 earnestness when I was a boy. 
 
 I have always believed since, and always shall to the 
 last, that there never was such a faithful and devoted 
 poor fellow as I was. Whatever of fancy, romance, 
 energy, passion, aspiration and determination belong to 
 me, 1 never have separated and never shall separate from 
 the hard-hearted little woman — you — whom it is noth- 
 ing to say I would have died for, with the greatest 
 alacrity ! I never can think, and 1 never seem to observe, 
 that other young people are in such desperate earnest or 
 set so much, so long, upon one absorbing hope. It is a 
 matter of perfect certainty to me that 1 began to fight 
 my way out of poverty and obscurity, with one per- 
 petual idea of you. This is so fixed in my knowledge 
 that to the hour when I opened your letter last Friday 
 night, I have never heard anybody addressed by your 
 name, or spoken of by your name, without a start. The 
 sound of it has always filled me with a kind of pity and 
 respect for the deep truth that 1 had, in my silly hobble - 
 dehoyhood, to bestow upon one creature who repre- 
 sented the whole world to me. I have never been so 
 good a man since, as 1 was when you made me wretchedly 
 happy. 1 shall never be half so good a fellow any more. 
 
 This is all so strange now both to think of, and to say, 
 after every change that has come about ; but 1 think, 
 when you ask me to write to you, you are not unpre- 
 
 [S7] 
 
pared for what it is so natural to me to recall, and will 
 not be displeased to read it. 1 fancy, — though you 
 may not have thought in the old time how manfully I 
 loved you — that you may have seen in one of my books 
 a faithful reflection of the passion 1 had for you, and 
 may have thought that it was something to have been 
 loved so well, and may have seen in little bits of " Dora " 
 touches of your old self sometimes, and a grace here and 
 there that may be revived in your little girls, years hence, 
 for the bewilderment of some other young lover — 
 though he will never be as terribly in earnest as I and 
 David Copperfleld were. People used to say to me how 
 pretty all that was, and how fanciful it was, and how 
 elevated it was above the little foolish loves of very 
 young men and women. But they little thought what 
 reason I had to know it was true and nothing more nor 
 less. 
 
 These are things that I have locked up in my own 
 breast, and that 1 never thought to bring out any more. 
 But when 1 find myself writing to you again " all to 
 yourself," how can 1 forbear to let as much light in upon 
 them as will shew you that they are there still ! If the 
 most innocent, the most ardent, and the most disinter- 
 ested days of my life had you for their Sun — as indeed 
 they had — and if 1 know that the Dream I lived in did 
 me good, refined my heart, and made me patient and 
 persevering, and if the Dream were all of you — as God 
 knows it was — how can 1 receive a confidence from you, 
 and return it, and make a feint of blotting all this out ! 
 
 As I have said, 1 fancy that you know all about it 
 quite as well as I do, however. I have a strong belief 
 
 [88] 
 
— there is no harm in adding hope to that — that per- 
 haps you have once or twice laid down that book, and 
 thought, " How dearly that boy must have loved me, 
 and how vividly this man remembers it ! " 
 
 I shall be here until Tuesday or Wednesday. If the 
 snow allows this letter to come to you in the meantime, 
 perhaps it would allow one to come to me, " all to my- 
 self," if you were to try it. A number of recollections 
 came into my head when I began, and 1 meant to have 
 gone through a string of them and to have asked you if 
 they lived in your mind too. But they all belong to the 
 one I have indulged in — half pleasantly, half painfully 
 
 — and are all swallowed up in that, so let them go. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 Charles Dickens 
 [P. S.] I wonder what has become of a bundle of let- 
 ters I sent you back once (according to order) tied with 
 a blue ribbon, of the color of the gloves ! 
 
 This second letter, full of sentiment and 
 tender recollections of the past, must have 
 read for Mrs. Winter very much like a love 
 letter. She has spoken of having a letter " all 
 to myself," and he writes frankly, movedly, as 
 he recalls the past, closing with a request for 
 an answer ** all to myself." Surely this seems 
 like dangerous ground and drifting rapidly 
 away from the region of calm, common-sense 
 middle-age. Yet it is easy to see how all this 
 
 [89] 
 
could have been written without any intention 
 of bringing as warm a reply as it doubtless 
 called forth. 
 
 Full of memories of his youth from a recent 
 re-reading of David Copperfield, Dickens is 
 suddenly confronted by a figure out of this 
 very past. The figure speaks to him in words 
 of unmistakable interest and kindliness. What 
 wonder, with the pleasant reverses Time has 
 brought in their relative positions clearly be- 
 fore him, that he should fall to mulling over 
 even the smallest details of that early associa- 
 tion ! What wonder, when his persistent atti- 
 tude of keenest pity toward his youth and his 
 skill as a narrator are remembered, that the 
 letter which flows from his pen as he thinks 
 should seem to the recipient almost a new 
 declaration of abiding affection 1 As the man 
 of family and wide literary reputation, hedged 
 in by all the social barriers, he writes to a 
 woman supposedly well settled in life, and 
 happy. His pen runs away with him, and, 
 presto, he has written something very like a 
 love letter, when it was meant only for as defi- 
 nite as possible a picture of the emotions of 
 the past. To Mrs. Winter those words about a 
 letter " all to myself " were fairly and squarely 
 
 [90] 
 
an invitation to answer him as frankly. It 
 is not surprising that her reply told for the 
 first time her view of her conduct at the date 
 of the painful breaking off between them. 
 
 The words of the next letter of Dickens, — 
 " How it all happened as it did, we shall never 
 know on this side of Time ; but if you had 
 ever told me then what you tell me now, I 
 know myself well enough to be thoroughly 
 assured that the simple truth and energy which 
 were in my love would have overcome every- 
 thing," bear out the editor's earlier surmise 
 that Maria Beadnell's parents had regarded 
 Dickens as by no means a desirable suitor on 
 account of his poverty, family troubles, and 
 impulsiveness. There is support for this the- 
 ory, too, in the words, " I have never blamed 
 you at all, but I have believed until now that 
 you never had the stake in that serious game 
 which 1 had." 
 
 Had the last letter of Mrs. Winter given him 
 permission to use her Christian name, as in 
 his preceding letter he had thought of doing ? 
 The exuberance of emotion and the intimacy 
 of this letter — the last before his disenchant- 
 ment — are perhaps unparalleled in anything 
 that ever fell from his pen: — 
 
 [91] 
 
Tavistock House, 
 Thursday, Twenty-second February, 1855. 
 
 My dear Maria, — The old writing is so plain to me^ 
 that 1 have read your letter with great ease (though it is 
 just a little crossed) , and have not lost a word of it. 1 
 was obliged to leave Paris on Tuesday morning before the 
 Post came in ; but I took such precautions to prevent 
 the possibility of any mischance, that the letter came 
 close behind me. I arrived at home last night, and it 
 followed me this morning. No one but myself has the 
 slightest knowledge of my correspondence, I may add, in 
 this place. I could be nowhere addressed with stricter 
 privacy or in more absolute confidence than at my own 
 house. 
 
 Ah ! Though it is so late to read in the old hand what 
 I never read before, I have read it with great emotion, 
 and with the old tenderness softened to a more sorrowful 
 remembrance than I could easily tell you. How it all 
 happened as it did, we shall never know on this side of 
 Time ; but if you had ever told me then what you tell 
 me now, I know myself well enough to be thoroughly 
 assured that the simple truth and energy which were in 
 my love would have overcome everything. I remember 
 well that long after I came of age — 1 say long ; well ! It 
 seemed long then ^ — I wrote to you for the last time of 
 all, with a dawn upon me of some sensible idea that 
 we were changing into man and woman, saying would 
 you forget our little differences and separations and let 
 us begin again ? You answered me very coldly and 
 reproachfully, — and so I went my way. 
 
 1 As the letter given on pp. 57-59 shows, it was three months after 
 he became of age. 
 
 [92] 
 

 
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But nobody can ever know with what a sad heart I 
 resigned you, or after what struggles and what a conflict. 
 My entire devotion to you, and the wasted tenderness of 
 those hard years which I have ever since half loved, half 
 dreaded to recall, made so deep an impression on me 
 that I refer to it a habit of suppression which now be- 
 longs to me, which I know is no part of my original 
 nature, but which makes me chary of showing my affec- 
 tions, even to my children, except when they are very 
 young. A few years ago (just before Copperfield) 1 began 
 to write my life, intending the manuscript to be found 
 among my papers when its subject should be concluded. 
 But as I began to approach within sight of that part of 
 it, I lost courage and burned the rest. I have never 
 blamed you at alV but I have believed until now that 
 you never had the stake in that serious game which I 
 had. 
 
 All this mist passes away upon your earnest words ; 
 and when I find myself to have been in your mind at 
 that thoughtful crisis in your life which you so unaf- 
 fectedly and feelingly describe, I am quite subdued and 
 strangely enlightened. When poor Fanny '^ died (I think 
 she always knew that I never could bear to hear of you 
 as of any common person) we were out of town, and I 
 never heard of your having been in Devonshire Terrace 
 
 1 Compare this with the following passage in Little Dorrit, — the 
 dialogue between Arthur Clennam and Flora Pinching : " I can't, 
 Arthur," returned Flora, " be denounced as heartless . . . without 
 setting myself right," etc. " My dear Mrs. Finching, you were 
 not to blame, and I have never blamed you. We were both too 
 young, too dependent and helpless to do anything but accept our 
 separation." 
 
 ^ His sister, who died in 1848. 
 
 [93] 
 
— least of all in my room ! I never heard of you in asso- 
 ciation with that time until I read your letter to-day. I 
 could not, however, — really could not — at any time 
 within these nineteen years, have been so unmindful of 
 my old truth, and have so set my old passion aside, as to 
 talk to you like a person in any ordinary relation towards 
 me. And this I think is the main reason on my side why 
 the few opportunities that there have been of our seeing 
 one another again have died out. 
 
 All this again you have changed and set right — at 
 once so courageously, so delicately and gently, that you 
 open the way to a confidence between us which still once 
 more, in perfect innocence and good faith, may be be- 
 tween ourselves alone. All that you propose, I accept 
 with my whole heart. Whom can you ever trust if it be 
 not your old lover ! Lady Olliflfe asked me in Paris the 
 other day (we are, in our way, confidential you must 
 know) whether it was really true that I used to love 
 Maria Beadnell so very, very, very much ? I told her 
 that there was no woman in the world, and there were 
 very few men, who could ever imagine how much. 
 
 You are always the same in my remembrance. When 
 you say you are " toothless, fat, old, and ugly " (which I 
 don't believe), I fly away to the house in Lombard 
 Street, which is pulled down, as if it were necessary that 
 the very bricks and mortar should go the way of my airy 
 castles, and see you in a sort of raspberry colored dress 
 with a little black trimming at the top — black velvet it 
 seems to be made of — cut into Vandykes — an immense 
 number of Vandykes — with my boyish heart pinned like 
 a captured butterfly on every one of them. I have never 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
MARIA BEADNELL WINTER 
 
 (The original of Dora in David Copperfield, 
 and of Flora in LITTLE Dorrit). 
 
 Born, 1811 ; died, September 30, 1886. 
 
 Engraved by J. A. J. \A^lLCOX, from a daguerre- 
 otype taken, perhaps, between 1855 and i860. 
 
:r heard f^^ '^''"' >•■ 
 i^ your i 
 illy could not — it any time 
 s, have been so unmindful of 
 so set my old passion aside, as to 
 1 in any ordinary Is 
 
 s the main reason on wiiy 
 
 at there have been ot uu* ^.eeing 
 /vv died out. 
 
 uu have rhnnrred and set rig^ht — at 
 on '. ?o H y and gently, that you 
 
 op :e between us which still once 
 
 tr and good faith, may be be- 
 
 tW' \e. A you propose, I accept 
 
 w ^aTm^,,^I Ji^lrJ,UA4^yAf^#«rust if it be 
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 o58i bnR ??8i rtaf5wtr?d ,5»aeri^ftr^ ^rtdjtef-^ytBse 
 
 aw much. 
 
 n 
 
 .which I 
 
 a Lombard 
 
 c necessary that 
 
 way of my airy 
 
 ..ly colored dress 
 
 op — black velvet it 
 
 set ; J Vandykes — an immense 
 
 ni: ;h my boyish h 
 
 a capturt. -y one of t^ t 
 
0. A 
 
seen a girl play the harp, from that day to this, but my 
 attention has been instantly arrested, and that drawing 
 room has stood before me so plainly that 1 could write 
 a most accurate description of it. I remember that there 
 used to be a tendency in your eyebrows to join together ; 
 and sometimes in the most unlikely places — in Scotland, 
 America, Italy — on the stateliest occasions and the most 
 unceremonious — • when 1 have been talking to a strange 
 face and have observed even such a slight association as 
 this in it, I have suddenly been carried away at the rate 
 of a thousand miles a second, and have thought " Maria 
 Beadnell 1 " ^ When we were falling off from each other, 
 I came from the House of Commons many a night at 
 two or three o'clock in the morning, only to wander past 
 the place you were asleep in. And I have gone over that 
 ground within these twelve months,^ hoping it was not 
 ungrateful to consider whether any reputation the world 
 can bestow is repayment to a man for the loss of such a 
 vision of his youth as mine. You ask me to treasure 
 what you tell me, in my heart of hearts. O see what 
 I have cherished there, through all this time and all these 
 changes ! 
 
 In the course of Saturday I will write to you at Artil- 
 lery Place, sending the little brooches and telling you 
 when Catherine will come — not forgetting the little niece, 
 
 1 Dickens uses this tendency of his in Little Dorrit, where Cien- 
 nam says : " Little more than a week ago, at Marseilles, the face of 
 the pretty girl from whom he had parted with regret had had an 
 unusual interest for him, and a tender hold upon him, because of 
 some resemblance, real or imagined, to this first face that had soared 
 out of his gloomy life into the bright glories of fancy." 
 
 2 When writing Hard Times. 
 
 [95] 
 
though I don't expect her to remind me of Somebody or 
 Anybody. And now to what I have reserved for the 
 last. 
 
 1 am a dangerous man to be seen with, for so many 
 people know me. At St. Paul's, the Dean and the whole 
 chapter know me. In Paternoster Row of all places,^ 
 the very tiles and chimney pots know me. At first, I a 
 little hesitated whether or no to advise you to forego 
 that interview or suggest another — principally because 
 what would be very natural and probable a fortnight 
 hence,^ seems scarcely so probable now. Still I should 
 very much like to see you before we meet when others 
 are by — I feel it, as it were, so necessary to our being at 
 ease — and unless I hear from you to the contrary, you 
 may expect to encounter a stranger whom you may sus- 
 pect to be the right person if he wears a moustache. 
 You would not like better to call here on Sunday, asking 
 first for Catherine and then for me ? It is almost a posi- 
 tive certainty that there will be no one here but I, between 
 3 and 4. I make this suggestion, knowing what odd 
 coincidences take place in streets when they are not 
 wanted to happen ; though I know them to be so unlikely, 
 that I should not think of such a thing if any one but 
 you were concerned. If you think you would not like 
 to come here, make no change. I will come there. 
 
 I cannot trust myself to begin afresh, or I should have 
 my remembrances of our separation, and think yours 
 hard to me. I remember poor Anne writing to me once 
 (in answer to some burst of low-spirited madness of 
 
 1 Because of his connection as reporter with Doctors' Commons. 
 » After Mrs. Dickens had called and the Winters had dined with 
 Dickens and his wife. 
 
 [96] 
 
rl^if^' 
 
 
 • •• • 
 
 
mine), and saying " My dear Charles, I really cannot 
 understand Maria, or venture to take the responsibility of 
 saying what the state of her affections is" — and she 
 added, I recollect, God bless her, a long quotation about 
 Patience and Time. Well, well ! It was not to be until 
 Patience and Time should bring us round together thus. 
 Remember, I accept all with my whole soul, and recip- 
 rocate all. 
 
 Ever your affectionate friend, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 Some of Maria Beadnell's old coquetry was 
 in that missing letter, plainly, for though she 
 writes of herself as "toothless, fat, old, and 
 ugly," she asks for an interview, unattractive 
 and disillusionizing as she would be if her 
 words were true. But her portrait shows that 
 she was not what she describes, only at the 
 worst — except to the eye that looked at her 
 through the kindly lens of memory — undis- 
 tinguishable from thousands of other women 
 of the day. 
 
 The step of Dickens from wisdom in ask- 
 ing for a letter all to himself had led to far 
 greater unwisdom on the part of Mrs. Winter. 
 In her new request Dickens should have felt his 
 warning, for it was foolishly romantic. He 
 did recognize that for them to meet by them- 
 selves after the Winters had been entertained 
 
 [97] 
 
at his house, and new relations established, 
 would seem more natural and fortuitous, but 
 sentiment owned him too. The old friend- 
 ship glows into rather surprisingly strong 
 flame in those final words, " Remember, I ac- 
 cept all with my whole soul, and reciprocate 
 all." On the other hand, there must have 
 been for Dickens a keen satisfaction, even de- 
 light, in the situation. Here was Maria Bead- 
 nell, who, in playing fast and loose with him, 
 had given him the bitterest experience of his 
 life, now, after twenty years, explaining away 
 her past conduct, and pressing her friendship 
 and even her affection upon him. 
 
 Whether rightly or wrongly, Dickens was 
 increasingly unhappy in his married life, and 
 now suddenly a dream, for years regarded as 
 only what might have been, seemed to give 
 promise of changing into the most cordial, the 
 most comprehending of friendships. Satisfied 
 vanity, curiosity, sentiment, even a persistent 
 craving for a companionship he did not find 
 in his home, urged him to the interview. But 
 like Bluebeard's wife, he met with a shock of 
 the severest kind. Certainly he did not find 
 that, as one of our English dramatists has de- 
 clared, the future is but the past entered 
 
 [98] 
 
through another door. His disillusionment 
 was dramatic and complete. 
 
 After the intensity of the preceding letter, 
 that which immediately follows, friendly as it 
 is, sounds chilling. Probably, as it is dated 
 but two days after the other, its tone is due 
 only to the fact that, as it accompanied gifts, 
 it might well fall under other eyes than those 
 of Mrs. Winter. — 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 Saturday, Twenty-fourth February, 185S. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — l have had fearful sus- 
 picions on my way home from Paris, that those little bits 
 of velvet which are worn round the neck ought to fasten 
 with a sort of clasp ; but the disinterested merchant with 
 whom I executed your commission, assured me that the 
 little ornaments I enclose were the right things, and would 
 adjust such bits of velvet, ** of a manner very ravishing." 
 He was so rapturous in the expression 1 translate, — so 
 excessively voluble on the subject, and so injured in his 
 honor by my harboring the least doubt, that I meekly 
 submitted to him. 
 
 So here they are, right or wrong. The smaller one 
 with the blue stones, I designed for your little girl ; the 
 other for yourself. You must let me give them to you. 
 They are of no worth, except as a remembrance. 
 
 I should have brought your baby a toy, but that the 
 only packable toys I saw were all hideous saucer-eyed 
 creatures bursting out of boxes — and dreadful old men 
 and women with inflamed noses. 
 
 [99] 
 
Catherine proposes to come to you on Tuesday at be- 
 tween half past two and three, when a day must be 
 arranged for you and Mr. Winter's dining with us. And 
 while I think of it, pray let me expressly stipulate for 
 your bringing Margaret's^ daughter with you. What 
 you say of her makes me wish to see her very much, 
 and 1 should venture to send my love to her by name, if I 
 could make out whether you call her ; Pebby — or Pebbly 
 — or Mebby — or Webbly. Being quite unable to settle 
 this point to my satisfaction (though you write with such 
 astonishing plainness), I send my love to her as your 
 niece and her mother's child. 
 
 Believe me ever, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 Compare the foregoing letter with the pas- 
 sage in Little Dorrit developed from this 
 incident : — 
 
 Arrived at Paris, and resting there three days, Mr. 
 Dorrit strolled much about the streets alone, looking 
 in at the shop-windows, and particularly the jewellers' 
 windows. Ultimately, he went into the most famous 
 jeweller's, and said he wanted to buy a little gift for 
 a lady. 
 
 It was a charming little woman to whom he said it — 
 a sprightly little woman, dressed in perfect taste, who 
 came out of a green velvet bower to attend upon him, 
 from posting up some dainty little books of account 
 which one could hardly suppose to be ruled for the entry 
 
 1 Mrs. David Lloyd's daughter. 
 [ 100] 
 
of any articles more commercial than kisses, at a dainty 
 little shining desk, which looked in itself like a sweetmeat. 
 
 For example, then, said the little woman, what species 
 of gift did monsieur desire ? A love gift ? 
 
 Mr. Dorrit smiled, and said. Eh, well! Perhaps. 
 What did he know? It was always possible; the sex 
 being so charming. Would she show him some ? 
 
 Most willingly, said the little woman. Flattered and 
 enchanted to show him many. But pardon ! To begin 
 with, he would have the great goodness to observe that 
 there were love gifts, and there were nuptial gifts. For 
 example, these ravishing ear-rings, and this necklace so 
 superb to correspond, were what one called a love gift. 
 These brooches and these rings, of a beauty so gracious 
 and celestial, were what one called, with the permission 
 of monsieur, nuptial gifts. 
 
 Perhaps it would be a good arrangement, Mr. Dorrit 
 hinted, smiling, to purchase both, and to present the love 
 gift first, and to finish with the nuptial offering ? 
 
 Ah Heaven ! said the little woman, laying the tips of 
 the fingers of her two little hands against each other, that 
 would be generous indeed, that would be a special gal- 
 lantry! And without doubt the lady so crushed with 
 gifts would find them irresistible. 
 
 Mr. Dorrit was not sure of that. But, for example, the 
 sprightly little woman was very sure of it, she said. So 
 Mr. Dorrit bought a gift of each sort, and paid hand- 
 somely for it. 
 
 Did Dickens and Mrs. Winter meet as he 
 suggested, or did she see the wisdom of his 
 
 [101 ] 
 
suggestion, in his letter of February 22, and 
 wait till the two couples dined together ? In 
 any case, there was keen and sudden disillu- 
 sionment on his part, for the next letter of the 
 series, written about a fortnight after the last 
 one printed, shows not the eager affectionate- 
 ness of the letter from Paris ; not even a man 
 ready for an interview with his correspondent, 
 but rather one who was more than willing to 
 avoid a meeting. Could contrast in tone be 
 sharper than between the letters of February 
 twenty-second and March tenth ? — 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 Saturday Morning, Tenth March, 185S. 
 
 My dear Maria, — Your letter was delivered here 
 yesterday evening at half past seven. Being out, I did 
 not receive it until I returned home at midnight. This 
 answer is necessarily very short, for I have a fear that it 
 may not reach you otherwise. 
 
 I think we are pretty sure to be at home before three 
 tomorrow. I cannot positively speak for myself, as I 
 am one of a committee on some public literary business, 
 which may have to make an official representation some 
 time tomorrow. I have undertaken to say what is nec- 
 essary to be said, whenever the interview comes off ; and 
 it is not impossible (the matter pressing), that Sunday 
 may be profaned for the purpose. I do not think it is 
 very likely, however. 
 
 Your cold is a very well-disposed one, to improve in 
 
 [102] 
 
such weather, and it has my warmest commendation for 
 being so good. I am so busy that I have not had time 
 to consider whether I took it by sympathy on Wednes- 
 day evening — but I think I heard somebody sneezing 
 at my desk half the day yesterday, who sounded Uke 
 the incomparable author. 
 
 You make me smile when you picture to yourself how 
 weak I might be, and what poor thoughts I might have, 
 and in what unworthy lights it might be my spoiled na- 
 ture to shew myself. With faults enough to answer for, I 
 believe I have never been that kind of person for a day. 
 
 Little Ella shall hear from me on Monday. 
 
 In the ghostly unrest of going to begin a new book,^ 
 my time is like one of the Spirits in Macbeth, and " will 
 not be commanded " — even by me. 
 
 You may be perfectly sure that in writing to me, you 
 write to no one else. 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, C. D. 
 
 The fourth paragraph of the foregoing letter 
 probably reveals in part the cause of the 
 change. The tables were completely turned. 
 Twenty years before, the youth had been 
 played with, heartlessly, as it then seemed to 
 him ; for nothing he could do or say made the 
 girl, Maria Beadnell, less obdurate in her wilful 
 unresponsiveness. Now Dickens, ready to 
 found on the old relations an intimately sym- 
 pathetic friendship, was repelled by a coquetry 
 
 1 This was Little Dorrit ; the first number appeared in December 
 of the same year. 
 
 [103] 
 
that tried persistently to give a sentimental 
 significance to the commonplaces of every-day 
 intercourse. 
 
 What a vengeance time had brought 1 Dora 
 had become Flora in Little Dorrit. There can 
 be no doubt whatever of that; although in 
 the introduction to the Biographical Edition of 
 the latter, Charles Dickens the younger wrote : 
 
 " Flora is supposed to have been taken for 
 the lady who sat for Dora in David Copperfield, 
 as she appeared after the lapse of years and with- 
 out the halo of romance ; but I confess I have 
 always found considerable difficulty in believ- 
 ing thatr Yet in the introduction to David 
 Copperfleld in the same edition he remarked : 
 " There is some reference in Mr. Forster's 
 Life to a * Dora ' who came across Charles 
 Dickens' path very early in his career — when 
 he was eighteen, in fact — but as she married 
 somebody else, and developed into the * Flora ' 
 of Little Dorrit, she could have had in reality 
 very little to do with Dora Spenlow." There 
 seems to be some contradiction here. There 
 can, however, be no doubt that in the relations 
 of Flora and Clennam Dickens drew on his 
 later knowledge of Mrs. Winter, just as his 
 association with Maria Beadnell had given 
 
 [ 104] 
 
him much material for David Copper/1 eld. In 
 the first place, as the succeeding letters will 
 show, Mrs. Winter followed him up much as 
 Flora follows Clennam. In the second place, 
 he said to both Forster and the Duke of Dev- 
 onshire that Flora was a fact, not merely an 
 imagination. To the first he wrote on April 
 seventh, 18^6: "There are some things in 
 Flora in number seven that seem to me to be 
 extraordinarily droll, with something serious at 
 the bottom of them after all. Ah, well ! was 
 there not something very serious in it once?" 
 
 To the second he said in a letter dated July 
 fifth of the same year : " I am so glad you like 
 Flora. It came into my head one day that we 
 have all had our Floras, and that it was a half- 
 serious, half-ridiculous truth which had never 
 been told. It is a wonderful gratification to 
 me to find that everybody knows her. In- 
 deed, some people seem to think I have done 
 them a personal injury and that their indi- 
 vidual Floras (God knows where they are, or 
 who !) are each and all Little Dorrits." 
 
 In the light of this last letter and those to 
 follow, the following from Little Dorrit reads 
 as merely a humorously intensified account 
 of the first meeting of Dickens and Mrs. Win- 
 
 [105] 
 
ten It will be seen that Dickens assigned 
 himself a dual part ; for in the Paris jewellery 
 store we found him playing Mr. Dorrit, and 
 here he assumes the role of Clennam. About 
 the only attempt he has made to disguise the 
 identity of Mrs. Winter and himself in this 
 remarkable narrative is that he gives her the 
 character of Flora Pinching, a tall widow, and 
 he, as Arthur Clennam, pretends to be an 
 unmarried man : — 
 
 " My daughter Flora," said Mr. Casby, " as you may 
 have heard probably, Mr. Clennam, was married and 
 established in life, several years ago. She had the mis- 
 fortune to lose her husband when she had been married 
 a few months. She resides with me again. She will 
 be glad to see you, if you will permit me to let her know 
 that you are here." 
 
 " By all means," returned Clennam. " I should have 
 preferred the request, if your kindness had not anticipated 
 me." 
 
 Upon this, Mr. Casby rose up in his list shoes, and 
 with a slow, heavy step (he was of an elephantine build), 
 made for the door. He had a long wide-skirted bottle- 
 green coat on, and a bottle-green pair of trowsers, and a 
 bottle-green waistcoat. The Patriarchs were not dressed 
 in bottle-green broadcloth, and yet his clothes looked 
 patriarchal. . . . 
 
 Clennam's eyes no sooner fell upon the object of his 
 old passion, than it shivered and broke to pieces. 
 
 [ 106] 
 
Most men will be found sufficiently true to themselves 
 to be true to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant 
 mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not 
 bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast 
 is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his 
 youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped 
 upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and 
 imagination. That wealth had been, in his desert home, 
 like Robinson Crusoe's money ; exchangeable with no 
 one, lying idle in the dark to rust, until he poured it out 
 for her. Ever since that memorable time, though he 
 had, until the night of his arrival, as completely dis- 
 missed her from any association with his Present or 
 Future as if she had been dead (which she might 
 easily have been for anything he knew), he had kept 
 the old fancy of the Past unchanged, in its old sacred 
 place. . . . 
 
 Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, 
 and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, 
 whom he had left a lily, had become a peony ; but that 
 was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in 
 all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That 
 was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless 
 long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. 
 That was a fatal blow. 
 
 This is Flora ! 
 
 " I am sure," giggled Flora, tossing her head with a 
 caricature of her girlish manner, such as a mummer 
 might have presented at her own funeral, if she had 
 lived and died in classical antiquity, " I am ashamed to 
 see Mr. Clennam, I am a mere fright, I know he'll find 
 
 [107] 
 
me fearfully changed, I am actually an old woman, it 's 
 shocking to be so found out, it 's really shocking ! " 
 
 He assured her that she was just what he had expected, 
 and that time had not stood still with himself. 
 
 " Oh ! But with a gentleman it 's so different and 
 really you look so amazingly well that you have no 
 right to say anything of the kind, while, as to me you 
 know — oh ! " cried Flora with a little scream, " I am 
 dreadful ! . . . 
 
 " But if we talk of not having changed," said Flora, 
 who, whatever she said, never once came to a full stop, 
 " look at Papa, is not Papa precisely what he was when 
 you went away, is n't it cruel and unnatural of Papa to 
 be such a reproach to his own child, if we go on in this 
 way much longer people who don't know us will begin 
 to suppose that I am Papa's Mama ! " 
 
 That must be a long time hence, Arthur considered. 
 
 " Oh Mr. Clennam you insincerest of creatures," said 
 Flora, " I perceive already you have not lost your old 
 way of paying compliments, your old way when you 
 used to pretend to be so sentimentally struck you know 
 — at least I don't mean that, 1 — oh I don't know what 
 I mean ! " Here Flora tittered confusedly, and gave him 
 one of her old glances. . . . 
 
 " You must n't think of going yet," said Flora — 
 Arthur had looked at his hat, being in a ludicrous dis- 
 may, and not knowing what to do ; " you could never 
 be so unkind as to think of going, Arthur — I mean Mr. 
 Arthur — or I suppose Mr. Clennam would be far more 
 proper — but I am sure I don't know what 1 'm saying — 
 without a word about the dear old days gone forever, 
 
 [108] 
 
however when I come to think of it I dare say it would 
 be much better not to speak of them and it 's highly 
 probable that you have some much more agreeable en- 
 gagement and pray let Me be the last person in the world 
 to interfere with it though there was a time, but I am 
 running into nonsense again." 
 
 Was it possible, that Flora could have been such a 
 chatterer, in the days she referred to ? Could there have 
 been anything like her present disjointed volubility, in 
 the fascinations that had captivated him ? 
 
 " Indeed I have little doubt," said Flora, running on 
 with astonishing speed, and pointing her conversation 
 with nothing but commas, and very few of them, " that 
 you are married to some Chinese lady, being in China so 
 long and being in business and naturally desirous to settle 
 and extend your connection nothing was more likely than 
 that you should propose to a Chinese lady and nothing 
 was more natural I am sure than that the Chinese lady 
 should accept you and think herself very well oflf too. 1 
 only hope she 's not a Pagodian dissenter." 
 
 " I am not," returned Arthur, smiling in spite of him- 
 self, *' married to any lady. Flora." 
 
 " Oh good gracious me 1 hope you never kept your- 
 self a bachelor so long on my account ! " tittered Flora ; 
 " but of course you never did why should you, pray 
 don't answer, I don't know where 1 'm running to, oh do 
 tell me something about the Chinese ladies whether their 
 eyes are really so long and narrow always putting me in 
 mind of mother-of-pearl fish at cards and do they really 
 wear tails down their back and plaited too or is it only 
 the men, and when they pull their hair so very tight off 
 
 [ 109] 
 
their foreheads don't they hurt themselves, and why do 
 they stick little bells all over their bridges and temples 
 and hats and things or don't they really do it ! " Flora 
 gave him another of her old glances. Instantly she went 
 on again, as if he had spoken in reply for some time. 
 
 *' Then it 's all true and they really do ! good gracious 
 Arthur ! — pray excuse me — old habit — Mr. Clennam 
 far more proper — what a country to live in for so long 
 a time, and with so many lanterns and umbrellas too 
 how very dark and wet the climate ought to be and no 
 doubt actually is, and the sums of money that must be 
 made by those two trades where everybody carries them 
 and hangs them everywhere, the little shoes too and the 
 feet screwed back in infancy is quite surprising, what a 
 traveller you are ! " . . . 
 
 Flora had at last talked herself out of breath for one 
 moment. One moment ; for she recovered breath in the 
 act of raising a minute comer of her pocket-handkerchief 
 to her eye, as a tribute to the ghost of the departed Mr. 
 F., and began again. 
 
 " No one could dispute, Arthur — Mr. Clennam — that 
 it's quite right you should be formally friendly to me 
 under the altered circumstances and indeed you could n't 
 be anything else, at least I suppose not you ought to 
 know, but I can't help recalling that there was a time 
 when things were very different." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Finching," Arthur began, struck by 
 the good tone again. 
 
 " Oh not that nasty ugly name, say Flora ! " 
 
 "Flora. I assure you, Flora, I am happy in seeing 
 you once more, and in finding that, like me, you have 
 
 [ 110] 
 
not forgotten the old foolish dreams, when we saw all 
 before us in the light of our youth and hope." 
 
 " You don't seem so," pouted Flora, "you take it very 
 coolly, but however I know you are disappointed in me, 
 I suppose the Chinese ladies — Mandarinesses if you call 
 them so — are the cause or perhaps I am the cause my- 
 self, it 's just as likely." 
 
 " No, no," Clennam entreated, " don't say that." 
 
 " Oh I must you know," said Flora, in a positive tone, 
 " what nonsense not to, I know 1 am not what you ex- 
 pected, I know that very well." 
 
 In the midst of her rapidity, she had found that out 
 with the quick perception of a cleverer woman. The in- 
 consistent and profoundly unreasonable way in which she 
 instantly went on, nevertheless, to interweave their long- 
 abandoned boy and girl relations with their present inter- 
 view, made Clennam feel as if he were lightheaded. 
 
 The following letter in the series phrases 
 better than anything else by Dickens the great 
 restlessness that always came upon him when 
 a new book was forming in his mind, and that 
 was intensified between 18^4 and 18^8 by the 
 increasing harassment he felt in his relations 
 with Mrs. Dickens. — 
 
 Tuesday, third April, 1855. 
 
 My dear Maria, — Going down to Ashford this day 
 
 week, already with a bad cold, 1 increased it so much by 
 
 getting into the intense heat consequent upon a reading 
 
 of three hours and then coming up in the night (which I 
 
 [111] 
 
was obliged to do, having business in town next morn- 
 ing) , that I was very unwell all the week, and on Friday 
 night was so completely knocked up that I came home at 
 9 o'clock to bed. A necessity is upon me now — as at 
 most times — of wandering about in my own wild way, 
 to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or yes- 
 terday, than a man can dispense with food, or a horse 
 can help himself from being driven. I hold my inventive 
 capacity on the stern condition that it must master my 
 whole life, often have complete possession of me, make 
 its own demands upon me, and sometimes for months 
 together put everything else away from me. If I had not 
 known long ago that my place could never be held, unless 
 I were at any moment ready to devote myself to it en- 
 tirely, I should have dropped out of it very soon. All 
 this I can hardly expect you to understand — or the rest- 
 lessness and waywardness of an author's mind. You 
 have never seen it before you, or lived with it, or had 
 occasion to think or care about it, and you cannot have 
 the necessary consideration for it. "It is only half an 
 hour" — "it is only an afternoon" — "it is only an 
 evening " — people say to me over and over again — but 
 they don't know that it is impossible to command one's 
 self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five 
 minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engage- 
 ment will sometimes worry a whole day. These are the 
 penalties paid for writing books. Whoever is devoted to 
 an Art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to 
 it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you 
 suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can't help it ; 
 I must go my way, whether or no. 
 
 [112] 
 
I thought you would understand that, in sending the 
 card for the box, I sent an assurance that there was noth- 
 ing amiss. I am pleased to find that you were all so 
 much interested with the play. My ladies say that the 
 first part is too painful and wants relief. I have been 
 going to see it a dozen times, but have never seen it yet, 
 and never may. Madame Ce'leste is injured thereby 
 (you see how unreasonable people are!) and says in the 
 Green Room, with a very tight cheek, *' M. Dickens est 
 artiste ! Mais il n'a jamais vu Janet Pride ! " 
 
 It is like a breath of fresh spring air to know that that 
 unfortunate baby of yours is out of her one close room 
 and has about half a pint of very doubtful air per day. 1 
 could only have become her godfather on the condition 
 that she had 500 gallons of open air at any rate, every 
 day of her life. And you would soon see a rose or two 
 in the face of my other little friend, Ella, if you opened 
 all your doors and windows throughout the whole of 
 all fine weather, from morning to night. 
 
 I am going off, I don't know where or how far, to pon- 
 der about I don't know what. Sometimes I am half in 
 
 1 Reading these words of kindly interest in the child of Maria 
 Beadnell, one sees from what experience grew such a passage as the 
 following : — 
 
 " No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with 
 a blameless though an unchanged mind when she was a wife and a 
 mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him — an 
 instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities 
 are touched in such a case, no echoes tell ; but it is so, and it was 
 so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucy held out 
 her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew." Tale 
 of Two Cities. 
 
 [113 1 
 
the mood to set oflF for France, sometimes I think 1 will 
 go and walk about on the sea shore for three of four 
 months, sometimes I look towards the Pyrenees, some- 
 times Switzerland. I made a compact with a great Span- 
 ish authority last week, and vowed I would go to Spain. 
 Two days afterwards Layard and 1 agreed to go to Con- 
 stantinople when Parliament rises. To-morrow I shall 
 probably discuss with somebody else, the idea of going 
 to Greenland or the North Pole. The end of all this, 
 most likely, will be that I shall shut myself up in some 
 out of the way place I have never yet thought of, and 
 go desperately to work there. 
 
 Once upon a time I didn't do such things, you 
 say. No, but I have done them through a good many 
 years now, and they have become myself and my 
 life. 
 
 Ever affectionately, C D. 
 
 This letter shows even more clearly than its 
 predecessor the completely changed attitude 
 of Dickens toward Mrs. Winter. This is the 
 writing of a man in whom all ardency of feel- 
 ing for the person addressed is forever dead, 
 but who yet wishes to remain on terms of 
 pleasant and even of intimate acquaintance- 
 ship, provided the intimacy is not exacting. 
 After the letter of March tenth it is not sur- 
 prising that Mrs. Winter evidently said she 
 feared Dickens did not really care to see her. 
 Maria Beadnell must have changed greatly in 
 
 [114] 
 
the years since 1830, — that, as Mrs. Winter, 
 she was not chilled into indifference and silence 
 by such sentences as these of the letter: "I am 
 grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to 
 see you, but I can't help it ; I must go my way, 
 whether or no. . . . Once upon a time I didn't 
 do such things, you say. No, but I have 
 done them through a good many years now, 
 and they have become myself and my life." 
 From '* Remember, 1 accept all with my whole 
 soul, and reciprocate all," to something not far 
 from rudeness must signify great disillusion- 
 ment, dramatic in its suddenness and com- 
 pleteness. Could time have brought a more 
 complete, and a more theatrical, turning of the 
 tables ? 
 
 The next letter further strengthens the evi- 
 dence as to the great change in Dickens toward 
 his old love. Is there a touch of ironic humor 
 in that "but one," — inserted as an after- 
 thought in the first line? Certainly there 
 would seem to be a hint in the last lines that 
 other thoughts than of him should be absorb- 
 ing the mother's mind. — "I shall be very 
 happy to receive your little token of remem- 
 brance, when you have less care on your mind, 
 and have set your baby up — as I hope and 
 
 [115] 
 
trust you soon will — twenty times stronger 
 than before." 
 
 Kindly tolerance of an exacting friend who 
 has been given some ground for her assiduities 
 by an unwise impetuosity on his part very 
 early in their renewal of their friendship has 
 replaced all the stronger feeling. Clearly 
 enough, Dickens had no longer any hearty 
 interest in the correspondence, but was un- 
 willing to break it off lest he should sorely 
 wound the woman he had once deeply loved 
 and whom he had welcomed to his friendship 
 again with unwise enthusiasm. — 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 
 Eleventh June, I855. 
 
 My dear Maria, — I answered your last letter, but 
 one,^ almost as soon as I received it, to let you know that 
 I should be out of town that Sunday, and for several 
 Sundays in succession. This note of mine must have 
 gone astray somehow or somewhere, for I posted it my- 
 self. It has happened on a former occasion — but only 
 on one — that a letter of mine failed to reach its destina- 
 tion. How this comes to be missing, I cannot compre- 
 hend. 
 
 Your account of your poor little child is distressing 
 indeed, and makes me heartily sorry for your fatigues 
 and anxieties. 1 have never had any faith in the homoeo- 
 pathic system and therefore have never tried it. 1 am 
 1 In MS., the words " but one " are added above the line. 
 
 [ 116] 
 
inclined to think that it is principally successful with 
 people who have nothing the matter with them, and that 
 active diseases where there is a vigorous action for evil 
 going on, require more decided remedies. Still, it is in- 
 dubitably successful m some violent cases even. 
 
 I shall be very happy to receive your little token of 
 remembrance, when you have less care on your mind, 
 and have set your baby up — as 1 hope and trust you soon 
 will — twenty times stronger than before. Take care of 
 your baby's mother, and God bless her. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, C. D. 
 
 The next letter of the set is conspicuous for 
 its beauty of feeling and of phrase. It is per- 
 haps noteworthy that even this very sym- 
 pathetic letter opens with "My dear Mrs. 
 Winter," the form Dickens henceforth used 
 always in the correspondence, except in the 
 last letter of all. It is but another evidence of 
 the steady if kindly diminishing by Dickens 
 of the intimacy cordially sought by both at 
 first. — 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 Wednesday, thirteenth June, t85S. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — I am truly grieved to hear 
 of your affliction in the loss of your darling baby. But 
 if you be not, even already, so reconciled to the parting 
 from that innocent child for a little while, as to bear it 
 gently and with a softened sorrow, 1 know that that not 
 unhappy state of mind must soon arise. The death of 
 
 [117] 
 
infants is a release from so much chance and change — 
 from so many casualties and distresses — and is a thing 
 so beautiful in its serenity and peace — that it should not 
 be a bitterness, even in a mother's heart. The simplest 
 and most affecting passage in all the noble history of 
 our Great Master, is his consideration for little children. 
 And in reference to yours, as many millions of bereaved 
 mothers poor and rich will do in reference to theirs until 
 the end of time, you may take the comfort of the gra- 
 cious words "And he took a child, and set it in the 
 midst of them." 
 
 In a book by one of the greatest English writers,^ 
 called A Journey from this World to the Next, a parent 
 comes to the distant country beyond the grave, and finds 
 the little girl he had lost so long ago, engaged in building 
 a bower to receive him in, when his aged steps should 
 bring him there at last. He is filled with joy to see her 
 
 — so young — so bright — so full of promise — and is 
 enraptured to think that she never was old, wan, tearful, 
 withered. This is always one of the sources of conso- 
 lation in the deaths of children. With no effort of the 
 fancy, with nothing to undo, you will always be able to 
 think of the pretty creature you have lost, as a child in 
 Heaven. 
 
 A poor little baby of mine lies in Highgate Cemetery 
 
 — and I laid her, just as you think of laying yours, in 
 the catacombs there, until I made a resting-place for all 
 of us in the free air. 
 
 It is better that I should not come to see you. I feel 
 quite sure of that, and will think of you instead. 
 
 1 Defoe. 
 [118] 
 
God bless and comfort you! Mrs Dickens and her 
 sister send their kindest condolences to yourself and Mr 
 Winter. I add mine with all my heart. 
 
 Affectionately your friend 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 Here there is a break of three years in the 
 correspondence. Meantime Little Dorrit had 
 been written (185^-^7), and in Flora Pinching 
 Dickens had half sadly mocked at his own 
 sentimentality in thinking for a moment that 
 the charmer of his youth must inevitably be as 
 charming for him at middle age. The original 
 of Dora and Flora must have read her second 
 presentation with very different feelings. It is 
 most likely, however, that with the blessed 
 power we have not to see ourselves as others 
 see us and to be able to explain our worst va- 
 garies to ourselves with entire satisfactoriness, 
 Mrs. Winter never dreamed that Flora owed 
 anything to her. Certainly, during all this 
 period she was on terms of intimacy with the 
 Dickens family, for in July, 18^7, the faithful 
 sister-in-law of Dickens, Georgina Hogarth, 
 wrote to her freely of intimate family matters. 
 Walter Dickens, the fourth child, whom his 
 father had called "Young Skull" because of 
 his high cheek-bones, went out to India in 
 
 [119] 
 
July, 18^7, as a cadet in the "Company's ser- 
 vice." He died in the hospital at Calcutta in 
 1863.— 
 
 Gad's Hill, July 21 st, 1857. 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — I cannot tell you how much 
 we all feel your kind recollection of and sympathy with 
 us in our parting with dear Walter. It has been a sad 
 trial, but thank God ! it is over, and you will be glad to 
 hear that the dear boy bore it a very great deal better 
 than we could have hoped. We, that is to say, his 
 mother and sisters and 1 parted with him at Tavistock 
 House on Sunday morning. Charles and Charley went 
 with him to Southampton. He broke down very near at 
 the moment of bidding us goodbye, but his father (who 
 with Charley returned here last night, after seeing him 
 off) says he soon recovered, and was never so much cut 
 up again. He was immensely delighted and astonished 
 with the magnificence and comfort of the fitting up of 
 the vessel — all his previous experience of steam boats 
 having been the very uncomfortable Boulogne packets. 
 They made acquaintance with the Captain whom they 
 liked extremely, and most lucky of all, he found an old 
 school-fellow on board, who is going the whole journey 
 to Calcutta. This, Charles said, seemed to set him up 
 entirely, and when they left him finally, he looked a great 
 deal less sad than they did. This is all very cheering, is 
 it not ? and reconciles us very much to the separation. 
 Please God that he may keep his health and do well ! I 
 assure you your suggestions were most valuable. Charles 
 desires me, with his love to you, to say how much he was 
 obliged to you for them. Flannel he was well provided 
 
 [120 1 
 
with, and his father spoke to him strongly over the im- 
 perative necessity of his wearing it — but the medicines 
 he had not got, and we lost no time on Saturday in going 
 to Savory & Moore's and providing him with a little case 
 containing plenty of quinine, Jeremy's opium and essence 
 of ginger which the man recommended to be added. So 
 you see your letter was of essential service to our young 
 traveller, as, strange to say, the necessity of giving him 
 these things had not occurred to his father who generally 
 thinks of everything. 
 
 I am very sorry you have hurt your hand. It is such 
 a miserable thing to be disabled in that way, especially 
 with the right hand. 
 
 Our plays ^ have been a tremendous success, and I am 
 happy to say the Fund is going on increasing in a most 
 satisfactory manner. We have one more performance of 
 " The Frozen Deep " Saturday. I am very glad you 
 were pleased the night you were there. It was all per- 
 fectly right about the money. 
 
 The Queen and her party * made a most excellent audi- 
 ence — so far from being cold, as we expected, they cried 
 and laughed and applauded and made as much demon- 
 stration as so small a party (they were not more than 
 fifty) could do. She sent, through Colonel Phipps, an 
 expression of her immense delight at the whole affair. 
 But she did not come for the Jerrold Fund. That was 
 
 1 For the Douglas Jerrold Fund. " An amateur company, in- 
 cluding many of Mr. Jerrold' s colleagues on ' Punch ' gave subscrip- 
 tion performances of ' The Frozen Deep ' [Jerrold's play] at the Gal- 
 lery of Illustration, Regent St," ''Letters'' p. 4l6. 
 
 " In July a performance of " The Frozen Deep " was given at her 
 request before the Queen and the Prince Consort. 
 
 [121] 
 
distinctly understood beforehand. Wlien the application 
 was made to her to attend the performance for the Fund 
 on the nth July, she sent Col. Phipps to Charles to ex- 
 plain how sorry she was that she could not break through 
 an unwritten rule not to patronize anything of the kind 
 for the benefit of Individuals, as she might be called 
 upon to do so every day, which one can easily understand. 
 But, at the same time, she begged Col. Phipps to say 
 how much she had always wished to see the play of 
 which she had heard a great deal, and to ask Charles if 
 be would bring it to Buckingham Palace, choose what 
 room he liked there, and do it as he pleased. To which 
 Charles replied that he was very anxious to oblige the 
 Queen, but as neither he nor any of his fellow actors nor 
 his family went to Court he would rather not go there, 
 and especially would rather not take his ladies there, in 
 the quality of actors and actresses, but that, if the Queen 
 would come to a private representation at the Gallery, to 
 which she should invite her own party, he would be very 
 happy to get it up for her alone. The Queen sent back 
 a most amiable message, to say that she quite felt the 
 propriety of Charles' objection to go to the Palace, accept- 
 ing his proposal and fixing the evening for coming to the 
 Gallery. This is the exact real story which has given 
 rise to the absurd paragraph in the newspapers. 
 
 I am so very sorry to hear your dear little girl missed 
 her prize. It must have been a great disappointment to 
 her. It is a great disadvantage to a clever little girl to 
 be put into a class with much older ones — and it often 
 happens. 
 
 We have all our school boys at home now, enjoying 
 
 [122] 
 
their holidays immensely. Dear Walter's last week was 
 very happy, for they were all together, and they had 
 young friends down, and had cricket matches in the field, 
 and of course everybody did their utmost to make much 
 of him and keep up his spirits and he enjoyed himself 
 extremely. The play, too, at the last, was a good thing 
 for us all, for it was an excitement and distraction and 
 kept us from dwelling on the one subject. 
 
 I hope your sister's invalids are all better. 
 
 Goodbye, dearest Mrs. Winter, with love from all, 
 
 believe me 
 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 Georgina Hogarth 
 
 Apparently Mrs. Winter, just like Flora, 
 clung to the idea of an intimate friendship 
 even when, as we have seen, she was repeatedly 
 checked by courteous but somewhat formal 
 letters. At any rate, some communication of 
 hers brought forth the following kindly but 
 brief and firm refusal to have busy time cut into 
 by a useless interview. The Anne referred to, 
 the author of the verses printed at the end of 
 this volume, was probably Anne Beadnell Kolle, 
 who had died in May, 183 6. — 
 
 Gad's Hill Place, 
 
 HiGHAM BY Rochester, Kent, 
 
 Monday, Sixteenth August, 1858. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — I have read poor dear 
 
 Anne's prayer with great sorrow, and with many 
 
 [123 1 
 
emotions of sadly affectionate remembrance. It was 
 written, no doubt, under a presentiment of Death ; but 
 it must always be remembered that such a presentiment 
 often exists when it fails to be fulfilled ; and it is very 
 commonly engendered in the state of mind belonging 
 to the condition in which she composed the prayer. 
 
 It would give me great pleasure to see you at Liver- 
 pool, if 1 had the least confidence in my own freedom 
 for a moment under the circumstances which will take 
 me there. But I have so much business to transact at 
 times, and have to keep myself so quiet at other times, 
 and have so many people to give directions to, and make 
 arrangements with (four travel with me) , that 1 see no 
 one while I am on this Tour, and have to be always 
 grimly self-denying and heroic. So I shall hope to see 
 you in London, at some time when I am in a less vir- 
 tuous, and less hurried and worried condition. 
 
 With my love to Ella, and kindest regard to W Winter, 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 About three months later a great blow came 
 to Mrs. Winter in the financial failure of her 
 husband. She apparently asked Dickens to 
 aid him to a fresh start in life. Like all the 
 later letters of the series, however, this, though 
 kind in tone, is firm in its refusal to be drawn 
 into any entangling alliances or responsibilities. 
 A few years later Mr. Winter entered the min- 
 istry, becoming a curate at Little Eversham, 
 
 1 124 ] 
 
Cambridge, in 1866. He was afterwards 
 Vicar of Alnmouth, Northumberland, where 
 he died, March 22, 1871.— 
 
 Brighton, 
 Saturday, Thirteenth November, I858. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Winter, — I have been so constantly 
 and rapidly changing from place to place during the past 
 week, that I am only just now in receipt of the intelli- 
 gence of your misfortune. With the utmost sincerity 
 and earnestness of which my heart is capable, I condole 
 with you upon it, and assure you of my true sympathy 
 and friendship. It has distressed me greatly. Not be- 
 cause I am so worldly or so unjust as to couple the least 
 reproach or blame with a reverse that I do not doubt to 
 have been unavoidable, and that 1 know to be always 
 easily possible of occurrence to the best and most fortu- 
 nate of men, but because I know you feel it heavily. 
 
 I wish to Heaven it were in my power to help M' 
 Winter to any new opening in life. But you can hardly 
 imagine how powerless 1 am in any such case. My own 
 work in life being of that kind that 1 must always do it 
 with my own unassisted hand and head, 1 have such rare 
 opportunities of placing any one, that for years and years 
 I have been seeking in vain to help in this way a friend 
 of the old days when the old house stood unchanged in 
 Lombard Street. To this hour, 1 have not succeeded, 
 though 1 have strenuously tried my hardest, both abroad 
 and at home. Commercial opportunities, above all, are 
 so far removed from me, that I dare not encourage a 
 hope of my power to serve M' Winter with my good 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
word, ever coming within a year's journey of my will 
 and wish to do it. 
 
 But I really think that your father, who could do much 
 in such a case without drawing at all heavily upon his 
 purse,^ might be induced to do, what — I may say to you, 
 Maria — it is no great stretch of sentiment to call his 
 duty. Has not Margaret '^ great influence with him.? 
 Have not you some ? And don't you think that if you 
 were to set yourself steadily to exert whatever influence 
 you can bring to bear upon him, you would do the best 
 within your reach for your husband, your child, and 
 yourself.' Is it not all important that you should try 
 your utmost with him, at this time ? 
 
 Forgive my recommending this, if you have so antici- 
 pated the recommendation as to have done all that pos- 
 sibly can be done to move him. But what you tell me 
 about George seems so strange, so hard, and so" ill bal- 
 anced, that I cannot avoid the subject. 
 
 I write in the greatest haste, being overwhelmed by 
 business here. On Monday I hope to be at Gad's Hill, 
 and to remain either there or at Tavistock House for 
 months to come. I enclose a few lines to M' Winter,' 
 and am ever, 
 
 Your faithful friend, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 * Mr. Beadnell left a property of some £40,000. 
 ^ Mrs. David Lloyd, the eldest sister. 
 
 » Brighton, 
 Saturday, Thirteenth November, 1858. 
 
 My dear Mr. Winter,— In the hope that a friendly word of 
 remembrance in season may not be unacceptable to you, I write to 
 assure you of my sympathy with you in your trouble. Pray do not 
 
 [126] 
 
Again there is a gap in the correspondence 
 till the 17th of November, 1862. Twelve days 
 before, George Beadnell had died at the age 
 of eighty-nine. How different the treatment 
 of the past in this last letter as compared with 
 his sentimental reflections in the first three of 
 this second series ! Here the mood is grave, 
 moved, but unsentimental, and noticeably de- 
 tached, instead of being almost passionately 
 personal. The erstwhile beautiful " visions of 
 his youth" are now reflected upon his memory 
 in the form of hideous ghosts. — 
 
 Paris, Rue du Faubourg S"^ Honors , 27 
 
 Monday, Seventeenth November, 1862. 
 
 My dear Maria, — I had read in Galignani that your 
 poor father was dead, before I received your touching ac- 
 count of his last moments. Of course I could not be 
 
 let it cast you down too much; what has happened to you, has 
 happened to many thousands of good and honorable men, and will 
 happen again in a like manner, to the end of all things. If you should 
 feel the bitterness of losing belief in any nature you had previously 
 trusted in, consider that the truth is always better than falsehood, 
 even though the truth involves the detection of such slcin-deep friend- 
 ships as that which can cool towards a man in temporary misfortune. 
 It is better lost than kept, as all things worthless are. 
 
 Be strong of heart for yourself, and look forward to a better time. 
 You will not think, I know, that I obtrude myself upon you in asking 
 to be borne in mind among the friends who feel truly towards you. 
 
 Faithfully yours always, 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 [127] 
 
surprised, knowing his great age, by the wearing out of 
 his vitality ; but — almost equally of course — it was a 
 shock too, for all the old Past comes out of its grave 
 when I think of him, and the Ghosts of a good many 
 years stand about his memory. 
 
 He died among his children, and could have died with 
 no better words and no better hopes. God be thanked for 
 it, and may such mercy and comfort be in store for us ! 
 
 Always yours affectionately 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 Pray give my kind regard to Margaret and your 
 brother. 
 
 What a perfect contrast, when we place the 
 two sets of letters side by sidel The very 
 anti-climax of the last of the second set is 
 significant. Can the importance of the two 
 sets for an understanding of the experiences 
 which underlay parts of David Copperfield 
 and Little Dorrit be gainsaid ? Maria Beadnell, 
 the young girl, and Mrs. Winter, the mature 
 woman, gave Dickens his Dora and Flora. As 
 he says again and again, Maria Beadnell's in- 
 fluence was at one time the strongest in his 
 life, and remained effective in his character for 
 many years. Her group of friends, of whom 
 we first hear in these MSS., gave him sugges- 
 tions or the originals for some of the notable 
 figures in his earlier works. 
 
 [128] 
 
The letters readjust and correct some previ- 
 ous misapprehensions as to the relations of his 
 work to his life, and justify Forster, as con- 
 trasted with Charles Dickens the younger, who 
 persistently attempted in the introductions to 
 the Macmillan edition to minimize the autobio- 
 graphical and the personal in his father's novels. 
 
 Above all, these letters reveal the man in his 
 youth, and later the youth in the man, — im- 
 petuous always, but as the years passed, too 
 trained of eye, too skilled in humanity, not to 
 see at once, when he and Mrs. Winter faced 
 each other, the real proportions of a situation 
 into which he had dashed at the call of his 
 naturally sentimental imagination. And when 
 finally he saw the real proportions, he did not 
 wholly draw back, leaving only bitterness and 
 pain to the woman whose unwise but easily 
 comprehensible coquetry with an old atfection 
 was painful to him, but so managed the deli- 
 cate situation as to remain her friend and to 
 give her in his family a position of affectionate 
 regard with those he loved and honored most. 
 
 Surely Dickens loses nothing from these 
 letters, particularly the second set. Both sets 
 are as human as the man always was, and in 
 the end they are chivalrous and, as a whole, 
 
 [129] 
 
tactful. Reading them, one cannot respect 
 Dickens less; rather one knows him better, 
 seeing the kindliness and the deep regard he 
 had for friendship, even when past, and how 
 patient he was willing to be for its sake. 
 
 There remain in the collection of letters 
 placed in the hands of the editor two which 
 for the reason just mentioned, namely, that 
 their final effect is to right some misunder- 
 standing of Dickens, it seems advisable to print. 
 One is from his sister-in-law. Miss Georgina 
 Hogarth to Mrs. Winter; the other is from 
 Charles Dickens the younger to his mother. 
 Both concern that very painful episode, the 
 separation of Dickens and his wife in the 
 latter part of May, 18^8. At the time there 
 was, of course, much petty gossip, some of it 
 hostile to Dickens, some of it most unkind 
 and unjust to Mrs. Dickens. 
 
 There has been in the many years since 
 some censure of Dickens, ranging from in- 
 nuendoes, particularly exasperating because of 
 their vagueness, to severe blame for his alleged 
 selfishness as the cause of the separation. As 
 might be expected, the responsibility must be 
 laid to some extent on the shoulders of both 
 husband and wife. Clearly, in the light of 
 
 [130] 
 
these two letters it cannot be accounted for as 
 simply, if alluringly, as that brilliant lover of 
 the paradoxical, Mr. Chesterton, would have 
 us believe. He has said : " Dickens had a bad 
 quality not intrinsically very terrible, which 
 he allowed to wreck his life. He also had 
 a small weakness that could sometimes be 
 stronger than all his strengths. His selfishness 
 was not, it need hardly be said, the selfishness 
 of Gradgrind ; he was particularly compassion- 
 ate and liberal. Nor was it in the least the 
 selfishness of Skimpole. He was entirely self- 
 dependent, industrious, and dignified. His self- 
 ishness was wholly a selfishness of the nerves. 
 Whatever his whim or the temperature of 
 the instant told him to do, must be done. 
 He was the type of man who would break a 
 window if it would not open and give him air. 
 And this weakness of his had, by the time of 
 which we speak, led to a breach between him- 
 self and his wife which he was too exasper- 
 ated and excited to heal in time. If London 
 bored him, he must go to the Continent at 
 once; if the Continent bored him, he must 
 back to London at once. If the day was too 
 noisy, the whole household must be quiet ; if 
 night was too quiet, the whole household must 
 
 [131] 
 
wake up. Above all, he had this supreme 
 character of the domestic despot — that his 
 good temper was, if possible, more despotic 
 than his bad temper. When he was miserable 
 (as he often was, poor fellow !), they only had 
 to listen to his railings. When he was happy, 
 they had to listen to his novels. All this, 
 which was mainly mere excitability, did not 
 seem to amount to much; it did not in the 
 least mean that he had ceased to be a clean- 
 living and kind-hearted and quite honest man. 
 But there was this evil about it — that he did 
 not resist his little weakness at all; he pam- 
 pered it as Skimpole pampered his. A mere 
 silly trick of temperament did everything that 
 the blackest misconduct could have done. A 
 random sensibility, started about the shuffling 
 of papers or the shutting of a window, 
 ended by tearing two clean. Christian people 
 from each other, like a blast of bigamy or 
 adultery."^ 
 
 The trouble with this clever passage is its 
 avoidance of the fact that one of the chief 
 sources of fallacy in the logic of human conduct 
 lies in multiplicity of causes. Of course, the 
 irritability, the hypersensitiveness of Dickens 
 
 ^ Charles Dickens, G. H. Chesterton, pp. 209--210. 
 [132] 
 
played its part in preparing for the catastrophe, 
 but it was not the only cause. 
 
 But first to recall the separation : " Thence- 
 forward [after the end of May, 18^8] he and 
 his wife lived apart. The eldest son went with 
 his mother, Dickens at once giving effect to 
 her expressed wish in this respect, and the 
 other children remained with himself, their 
 intercourse with Mrs. Dickens being left en- 
 tirely to themselves. [We shall see that this 
 last statement requires a slight modification.] 
 It was thus far an arrangement of a strictly 
 private nature, and no decent person could 
 have had excuse for regarding it in any other 
 light, if public attention had not been unex- 
 pectedly invited to it by a printed statement 
 in Household PVords. Dickens was stung 
 into this by some miserable gossip at which 
 in ordinary circumstances no man would have 
 been more determinedly silent; but he had 
 now publicly to show himself, at stated times, 
 as a public entertainer, and this, with his 
 name even so aspersed, he found to be impos- 
 sible. All he would concede to my strenuous 
 resistance against such a publication was an 
 offer to suppress it, if, upon reference to the 
 opinion of a certain distinguished man (still 
 
 [ 133 1 
 
livings), that opinion should prove to be in 
 agreement with mine. Unhappily it fell in 
 with his own, and the publication went on."^ 
 To understand the mood which could make 
 possible such an address as the following by 
 an individual to the great public concerning 
 his most intimate personal affairs, one must 
 recall that for years Dickens had every right 
 which constant adulation from the people of 
 Great Britain and America could give to feel 
 that whatever touched his life was of the 
 keenest interest to them. The pronuncia- 
 mento makes sad reading at this distant day, 
 but here it is, as it appeared in Household 
 M^ords, June 12, 18^8: — 
 
 Three -and -twenty years have passed since I entered on 
 my present relations with the Public. They began when 
 I was so young, that 1 find them to have existed for 
 nearly a quarter of a century. 
 
 Through all that time I have tried to be as faithful to 
 the Public, as they have been to me. It was my duty 
 never to trifle with them, or deceive them, or presume 
 upon their favor, or do any thing with it but work hard 
 to justify it. I have always endeavoured to discharge 
 that duty. 
 
 My conspicuous position has often made me the sub- 
 ject of fabulous stories and unaccountable statements. 
 
 1 Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. 
 
 [134] 
 
Occasionally, such things have chafed me, or even 
 wounded me ; but, I have always accepted them as the 
 shadows inseparable from the light of my notoriety and 
 success. I have never obtruded any such personal uneasi- 
 ness of mine, upon the generous aggregate of my audience. 
 
 For the first time in my life, and I believe for the last, 
 I now deviate from the principle 1 have so long observed, 
 by presenting myself in my own Journal in my own 
 private character, and entreating all my brethren (as 
 they deem that they have reason to think well of me, 
 and to know that I am a man who has ever been unaf- 
 fectedly true to our common calling) , to lend their aid 
 to the dissemination of my present words. 
 
 Some domestic trouble of mine, of long standing, on 
 which I will make no further remark than that it claims 
 to be respected, as being of a sacredly private nature, has 
 lately been brought to an arrangement, which involves no 
 anger or ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, prog- 
 ress, and surrounding circumstances of which have been, 
 throughout, within the knowledge of my children. It is 
 amicably composed, and its details have now but to be 
 forgotten by those concerned in it. 
 
 By some means, arising out of wickedness, or out of 
 folly, or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all 
 three, this trouble has been made the occasion of mis- 
 representations, most grossly false, most monstrous, and 
 most cruel — involving, not only me, but innocent persons 
 dear to my heart, and innocent persons of whom I have 
 no knowledge, if, indeed, they have any existence — and 
 so widely spread, that I doubt if one reader in a thousand 
 will peruse these lines, by whom some touch of the 
 
 [135] 
 
breath of these slanders will not have passed, like an 
 unwholesome air. 
 
 Those who know me and my nature, need no assur- 
 ance under my hand that such calumnies are as irrecon- 
 cilable with me, as they are, in their frantic incoherence, 
 with one another. But, there is a great multitude who 
 know me through my writings, and who do not know 
 me otherwise ; and 1 cannot bear that one of them should 
 be left in doubt, or hazard of doubt, through my poorly 
 shrinking from taking the unusual means to which I now 
 resort, of circulating the Truth. 
 
 I most solemnly declare, then — and this I do, both in 
 my own name and in my wife's name — that all the 
 lately whispered rumours touching the trouble at which 
 I have glanced, are abominably false. And that who- 
 soever repeats one of them after this denial, will lie 
 as wilfully and as foully as it is possible for any false 
 witness to lie, before Heaven and earth. 
 
 For some time previous to the parting it 
 had been apparent to his friends that a special 
 spirit of unrest had entered into his life. It 
 showed itself in the boisterous mirth of his 
 home circle, the reckless gaiety of his trips 
 with Stansfield, Collins, and his other friends to 
 Paris ; the wanderings to and fro on his read- 
 ing engagements and of private theatricals in 
 various parts of the country. The naturally 
 restless energy of his character had received 
 an intense if morbid stimulus from the rest- 
 
 [136] 
 
lessness of his mind. He phrased his restless- 
 ness in a letter, of July 22, 18^7, to Miss 
 Mary Boyle: " This is one of what I call my 
 wandering days before I fall to work. I seem 
 to be always looking at such times for some- 
 thing I have not found in life, but may possi- 
 bly come to a few thousand years hence, in 
 some other part of some other system. God 
 knows 1 " It appeared, too, as has already 
 been pointed out in a number of his letters 
 from 18^6 to 1858 to Forster. For instance, 
 — " Why is it, that as with poor David, a sense 
 comes always crushing on me now, when I 
 fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have 
 missed in life, and one friend and companion 
 I have never made. . . . The old days — the 
 old daysl Shall I ever, I wonder, get the 
 frame of mind back as it used to be then ? 
 ... I fmd that the skeleton in my domestic 
 closet is becoming a pretty big one."^ 
 
 The following extract from an unpublished 
 letter of Dickens to Mr. W. H. Wills, the 
 manager of Household IVords, dated Paris, 
 April 27, 18^8, well shows the intensely irri- 
 tated condition of Dickens which preceded 
 the separation: — 
 
 1 Life, Forster, vol. iii. pp. 184-185. 
 
 [137] 
 
"My arrangements are these — the tent is 
 striking here, and I can't work in the midst 
 of the unsettled domesticity. The Hogarth 
 family don't leave Tavistock House till next 
 Saturday, and I cannot in the meantime bear 
 the contemplation of their imbecility any 
 more (I think my constitution is already un- 
 dermined). The sight of Hogarth at break- 
 fast ! I am therefore going to leave here by 
 the mail next Tuesday morning for Dover, 
 where I shall stay at the Ship (working I hope 
 in the mornings), tic." 
 
 Clearly enough, the saddest of all causes, 
 because the most irreconcilable, incompati- 
 bility of temperament lay back of all this. 
 Steadily it sapped away all the foundations 
 of an affection originally very strong. In the 
 light of the letters to follow, it is evident that 
 Dickens' own statement of the case was more 
 correct than it has been held to be, — is, indeed, 
 entirely just. He thus wrote to Forster : — 
 
 "Poor Catherine and I are not made for 
 each other, and there is no help for it. It is 
 not only that she makes me uneasy and un- 
 happy, but that I make her so too — and much 
 more so. She is exactly what you know, in 
 the way of being amiable and complying ; but 
 
 [138] 
 
we are strangely ill-assorted for the bond there 
 is between us. God knows she would have 
 been a thousand times happier if she had 
 married another kind of man, and that her 
 avoidance of this destiny would have been at 
 least equally good for us both. I am often 
 cut to the heart by thinking what a pity it is, 
 for her own sake, that I ever fell in her way; 
 and if I were sick or disabled tomorrow, I 
 know how sorry she would be, and how 
 deeply grieved myself, to think how we had 
 lost each other. But exactly the same incom- 
 patibility would arise, the moment I was well 
 again ; and nothing on earth could make her 
 understand me, or suit us to each other. Her 
 temperament will not go with mine. It mat- 
 tered not so much when we had only our- 
 selves to consider, but reasons have been 
 growing since which make it all but hope- 
 less that we should even try to struggle on. 
 What is now befalling me I have seen steadily 
 coming, ever since the days you remember 
 when Mary was born ; and I know too well 
 that you cannot, and no one can, help me." 
 Again he wrote to Forster : " You are not so 
 tolerant as perhaps you might be of the way- 
 ward and unsettled feeling which is part (I 
 
 [139] 
 
suppose) of the tenure on which one holds 
 an imaginative life ; and which 1 have, as you 
 ought to know well, often only kept down by 
 riding over it like a dragoon — but let that go 
 by. ... I claim no immunity from blame. 
 There is plenty of fault on my side, I dare 
 say, in the way of a thousand uncertainties, 
 caprices, and difficulties of disposition; but 
 only one thing will alter all that, and that is, 
 the end which alters everything." * 
 
 This letter of Miss Hogarth, written with- 
 out the remotest thought of publication, and 
 an extremely intimate letter of the younger 
 Charles Dickens to his mother, sufficiently 
 prove the truth of this analysis by Dickens of 
 the unhappy situation. The originals of both 
 letters are in Mr. Bixby's possession. Miss 
 Hogarth wrote thus, just at the end of the 
 very trying month which had ended with the 
 separation : — 
 
 Tavistock House, May 31st, 1858. 
 
 My dearest Maria, — There will be no mistake 
 about your tickets this time.'' Charles has charged M' 
 Arthur Smith with full particulars and he will forward 
 them to you, in due course. 
 
 1 Life, Forster, vol. iii. pp. 186-188. 
 
 2 For one of the famous " Readings." Mr. Arthur Smith was 
 the manager for these lectures. 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
I am now going to tell you something which will, I am 
 sure, surprise you, and, at the first, shock and distress 
 you. It is that Charles and his wife have agreed to live 
 apart, in future. Believe me when 1 assure you that 1 am 
 perfectly convimed that this plan will be for the happiness 
 of all. I worked hard to prevent it, as long as I saw any 
 possibility, but latterly 1 have come to the conviction that 
 there was no other way out of the domestic Misery of 
 this house. For my sister and Charles have lived un- 
 happily for years — they were totally unsuited to each 
 other in almost every respect — and as the children grew 
 up this unsuitability developed itself more strongly, and 
 disagreements and Miseries which used to be easily kept 
 out of sight have forced themselves into notice. 
 
 Unhappily, also, by some constitutional misfortune and 
 incapacity, my sister always, from their infancy, threw 
 her children upon other people, consequently as they 
 grew up, there was not the usual strong tie between them 
 and her — in short for many years, although we have put 
 a good face upon it, we have been very miserable at home. 
 My sister has often expressed a desire to go and live 
 away, but Charles never agreed to it on the girls' account ; 
 but latterly he thought it must be to their advantage as 
 well as to his own and Catherine's, to consent to this and 
 remodel their unhappy home. So, by mutual consent 
 and for the reasons I have told you, and no other, they 
 have come to this arrangement. She is to have a house 
 of her own in London, and her eldest son (at his father's 
 request and not taking any part or showing any prefer- 
 ence in doing it) is to live with and take care of her. 
 The other children remain with their father — his eldest 
 
 [ 141] 
 
daughter naturally taking her mother's place, as mis- 
 tress of the house. She and Katy and I will divide the 
 work amongst us, but all the dignity will be Mary's, and 
 she will do the honours modestly, gracefully and prettily, 
 1 know. 
 
 Of course, Charles is too public a man to take such 
 a step as this without exciting a more than usual nine 
 days' wonder — and we have heard of the most wonder- 
 ful rumours and wicked slanders which have been flying 
 about the town as to the cause of this separation. To a 
 few of our real friends Charles wishes the truth to be 
 stated, and they cannot show their friendship better than 
 by quietly silencing with the real solemn truth any foolish 
 or wicked person who may repeat such lies and slanders. 
 
 Charles sends you his best love and to dear Ella his 
 birthday congratulations. You can understand how 
 much he has been harassed and occupied with all this 
 business and his readings besides, and that he has very 
 little time to write letters just now. 
 
 Give my particular love to Ella on Wednesday and 
 wish her many happy returns of the day, and with our 
 united kind regards to M' Winter, believe me, 
 
 My dearest Maria, 
 Affectionately yours always, 
 
 Georgina Hogarth 
 
 How filled with dramatic contrasts were the 
 relations of Maria Beadnell and Dickens 1 Not 
 only did the youth who had felt himself 
 scorned and mortified come, twenty years 
 later, to hold just the attitude of tolerant, 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
kindly indifference which in Maria Beadnell 
 had maddened him at times, but she at forty 
 odd, when ready to revive the old sentimental 
 relationship, found herself taken into the family 
 confidence concerning a separation from the 
 woman who had in Dickens' youth replaced 
 her. 
 
 That the sympathy of the children was with 
 Dickens is shown by the arrangements made 
 and by this letter written by the eldest son, 
 some six weeks after the preceding : — 
 
 BiSHOPSGATE Street Within,^ 
 13 July, 1858. 
 
 My dear Mother, — Although I much regret being 
 the medium of the communication I have to make to 
 you, still, as 1 know it is part of the duty I have set be- 
 fore myself 1 accept it without hesitation. It is this : — 
 
 On arriving this morning from Henley I found await- 
 ing me a letter from my father referring to your letter to 
 Frank. He says : " I myself took out of our Deed of 
 Separation the usual formal clause inserted by her own 
 solicitors, that she should have access to the children ex- 
 cept at Tavistock House. That exception seemed to me 
 to convey an unnecessary slight upon her, and 1 said that 
 she should see them there or anywhere." You see there- 
 fore that you have a distinct right to see the children 
 when, where, or how you please, but he places these re- 
 
 1 This letter is printed from the original, which is in Mr. Bixby's 
 collection. 
 
 [143 1 
 
strictions on their visits, which I am particularly desirous 
 to impress upon you {from myself, and not from him), 
 he has the most perfect right and power to do : 
 
 " I positively forbid the children ever to utter one word 
 to their grandmother or to Helen Hogarth. If they are ever 
 brought into the presence of either of these two, 1 charge 
 them immediately to leave your mother's house and 
 come back to me." — And further in reference to Mr. 
 Lemon, " I positively forbid the children ever to see him 
 or to speak to him, and for the same reason I absolutely 
 prohibit them ever being taken to Mr. Evans' house." ^ 
 
 You will see that as far as you are concerned he has no 
 desire, and, in fact no power, if he had the wish, to keep 
 them from you ; but he has, as their father, an absolute 
 right to prevent their going into any society which may 
 be distasteful to him, as long as they remain under age. 
 I think it necessary to point this out to you strongly, in 
 order that there may be no unnecessary and useless talk 
 on this matter. And here, I trust, the subject will rest 
 between us. 
 
 I shall sleep at Queen's Road to-night as I have a 
 good deal to pack up there. I will be home to dinner 
 tomorrow at six and will then permanently take up my 
 quarters with you. Till then I remain, ever, your most 
 affectionate son, Charley 
 
 Surely one cannot censure the details of the 
 settlement itself. Rather, it is the lack of pro- 
 
 » The coupling of Mr. Lemon's name with that of Mr. Evans 
 would suggest that the cause of offence of this old friend was 
 similar, — an inability to agree with all the measures of Dickens 
 at this time, especially his pronunciamento to the public. 
 
 [ 144] 
 
portion, the willingness to rush into print, 
 which one regrets. All that Dickens saw 
 wrongly at the moment were his cherished re- 
 lations with the public which had lionized him 
 so long. Bewildered by the insistent fear that 
 they would do him what he felt to be grave 
 injustice, he lost all sense of real values. He 
 even wanted Tuncb, of all papers, to print the 
 pronunciamento which he had given in House- 
 bold PVords. When his old publishers and 
 friends, Bradbury and Evans, refused very 
 properly, he broke with them for good, writing 
 thus to Mr. Evans, in the white heat of his 
 anger : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have had stern occasion to impress 
 upon my children that their father's name is their best 
 possession, and that it would indeed be trifled with and 
 wasted by him if either through himself or through them 
 he held any terms with those who had been false to it in 
 the very greatest need and under the very greatest wrong 
 it has ever known. You know very well why (with 
 hard distress of mind and bitter disappointment) I have 
 been forced to include you in this class. I have no 
 more to say. 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 It would, however, be most unjust to leave 
 as the result of this examination of the letters 
 
 [145] 
 
the idea that Dickens was probably as little to 
 blame for the complicated marital relations as 
 he was in the tinal settlement. Had the lot of 
 Mrs. Dickens been easy? Dickens himself 
 admitted : " There is plenty of fault on my 
 side, I dare say." Evidently he did not recall 
 the exact incidents, but was willing to grant 
 this much. There lay the trouble : much that 
 must have been most trying in him was done 
 or said without the slightest thought of its 
 eifect on those around him. Mrs. Dickens mar- 
 ried a rising young author when he was but 
 twenty-four. " A very young man fighting 
 his way, and excessively poor, with no memo- 
 ries for years that were not monotonous and 
 mean, and with his strongest and most per- 
 sonal memories quite ignominious and unen- 
 durable, was suddenly thrown into the society 
 of a whole family of girls [the Hogarth sisters]. 
 I think it does not overstate his weakness and 
 I think it partly constitutes his excuse, to say 
 that he fell in love with all of them. As 
 sometimes happens in the undeveloped youth, 
 an abstract femininity simply intoxicated him. 
 And again, I think we shall not be mistakenly 
 accused of harshness if we put the point in 
 this way; that by a kind of accident he got 
 
 [ 146] 
 
hold of the wrong sister."* That statement 
 of Mr. Chesterton needs modification, because 
 he did not know of the love affair with Maria 
 Beadnell ; but the idea is fundamentally right. 
 Just because of a rebuff in his recent experi- 
 ence, Dickens basked in the affection shown 
 him by the Hogarth sisters, expanding grate- 
 fully in its warmth. He made his choice only 
 to fmd, as has many another man who chose 
 when young, that he had missed in a family 
 the one who might have been the perfect 
 helpmate of whom he dreamed. 
 
 But would this other have been the perfect 
 helpmate? Very likely not; for Dickens, in his 
 highly wrought sensitiveness, must at times 
 have been, as Mrs. Carlyle said of her soul- 
 wearying husband, " gey ill to live wi'." 
 Moreover, it is one thing to be the wife, quite 
 another the sympathizing friend, close, but 
 neither so close as the wife, nor yet exempted 
 from the many little courtesies which many a 
 man expects his wife to do without. Imme- 
 diately after the marriage and till her premature 
 death in 1837, Mary Hogarth was constantly 
 with the young wife. Of course Mrs. Dickens 
 loved her sister, but would any affectionate 
 
 1 Charles Dickens, G. H. Chesterton, pp. 66-67. 
 [147] 
 
woman wholly enjoy hearing her husband 
 talk freely of a love for her deceased sister so 
 profound that he wished to be buried in the 
 same grave with her? Surely such talk before 
 the mother of his increasing family, and in 
 the presence of others than those belonging 
 to the immediate family circle, was scarcely 
 tactful. And in 1842 Georgina Hogarth, com- 
 petent, wise, controlled, alert for every need of 
 Dickens, came into the household. As the 
 years passed, Mrs. Dickens saw nearly all the 
 duties and affections dearest to a woman as 
 wife pass to Miss Hogarth. Admit that her 
 own inertia or inability made all this neces- 
 sary, — what we are responsible for cuts none 
 the less deep. Nor is it a balm to the wounded 
 spirit to know that we have no real ground 
 for complaint. Dickens needed a wife who 
 could at all times command his admiration; 
 whose superiority to himself in household 
 matters as well as matters of the spirit he 
 could not but admit. Neither of these did 
 Mrs. Dickens provide ; hence the tragedy. 
 
 These last two letters make clear the truth 
 of the analysis by Dickens of the situation 
 published long ago by Forster. They should 
 set at rest all hints and stories going to show 
 
 [148] 
 
that this was more than a domestic tragedy 
 resulting from incompatibility of temper. For 
 this purpose, and this alone, the two letters 
 are printed here. 
 
 Surely all the letters in this volume, but more 
 particularly the last two, show that in all the 
 puzzle of life, even to a great novelist when he 
 must live it rather than write of it, Dickens 
 did his best to be the man he could be in his 
 best moods. Whatever his petulance at times, 
 whatever his sensitiveness to public opinion, 
 so great that even in his will he could insist 
 that the amount he had allowed Mrs. Dickens 
 for her support since the separation should be 
 known, yet at all the crises of his experiences, 
 as these letters show more than once, he re- 
 vealed the finer and sounder humanity that 
 was in him. From each crisis he comes forth, 
 on the whole, as fundamentally right in feeling 
 and as steadily striving toward his ideals. 
 
 George P. Baker. 
 
 [149] 
 
FAREWELL BEQUESTS 
 [Anne's Prayer, referred to on page 123.] 
 
 Ere the last fleeting ties of life are broken 
 While those I love around me weeping stand. 
 Let me dispense to each some parting token 
 Of one fast hastening to the spirit-land. 
 Language & gifts but feebly can impart 
 The deep affection of my ardent heart, 
 Yet, dearest friends, these last memorials take, 
 And prize them for my sake. 
 
 Father — thy high & stainless reputation 
 By the pure diamond well may imaged be, 
 Accept this ring — see how its radiation 
 Casts round its neighbourhood a brilliancy. 
 Within thy home I thus have honoured dwelt. 
 And when the world has praised me, I have felt 
 That in its homage I should not partake, 
 Save for my father's sake. 
 
 Mother — this locket thou wilt fondly cherish. 
 Not for its outward shrine of gold & pearls. 
 It guards a part of me that need not perish, — 
 One of my lavish store of auburn curls. 
 Methinks I could not to thy share assign 
 Aught that appeared so fully, truly mine — 
 This relic of thy grateful daughter take 
 And wear it for her sake. 
 [150] 
 
Sister, — receive this lute, its sprightly numbers 
 Once gaily sounded by our joyous hearth, 
 But when thou see'st me laid in death's cold slumbers, 
 Touch it no more to songs of festal mirth. 
 Sing of the meetings of fond friends above. 
 Sing of God's wondrous grace & pardoning love ; 
 These holy strains at peaceful evening wake, 
 For thy poor sister's sake. 
 
 Brother — my little brother — thou hast tended 
 Often with me my greenhouse plants & flow'rs ; 
 Take their sole charge — they safely are defended 
 By fostering walls from sudden blights & showers. 
 Thus is thy childhood in its tender bloom. 
 Trained with fond care, & kept from storm and gloom ; 
 Dear child, improvement daily strive to make 
 For thy kind parent's sake. 
 
 I seek in vain one absent, erring brother, 
 Alas ! he wanders on a foreign sod. 
 Yet when thou next shalt see him, give him, mother, 
 This sacred volume — 't is the word of God. 
 Tell him his sister asked in constant prayer, 
 That he in its blest promises might share. 
 Bid him from sin's delusive trance awake, 
 For his soul's precious sake. 
 
 Lov'd ones — why gaze upon these gifts with sadness ? 
 My worldly wants & wishes are at rest. 
 Dost thou not know 1 go in trusting gladness 
 To take possession of a vast bequest .? 
 
 [151] 
 
That heritage was by my Saviour given, 
 When he descended from his throne in heaven, 
 Sorrow & suffering on himself to take, 
 For man's poor sinful sake. 
 
 Not mine alone those treasures of salvation ; 
 The precious boon extends, dear friends, to thee, 
 Then mourn not for our transient separation ; 
 But when I leave thee, think & speak of me 
 As of a freed one mounting to the skies, 
 Called from a world of snares & vanities, 
 Her place amid the blessed Saints to take, 
 For her Redeemer's sake. 
 
 [152] 
 
* 
 
MR. AND MRS. :CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Photographic reproduction of original (unpub- 
 lished) sketches made by Pierre Morand, an Ameri- 
 can, who sailed on the Britania with Mr. and Mrs. 
 Dickens upon the occasion of their visit to America 
 in January, 1842. The originals are in the collection 
 of Mr. \A/. K. Bixby. 
 
-dijqnu) lenigho lo noao;;5o. j ., airiqfiT^r.^r.rf^ 
 -iiamA ns .bnsioM snat*? yd absm aario:- r! 
 
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CHARl-ES DICKENS 
 
 Facsimile reproduction of an original (unpub- 
 lished sketch by Pierre Morand, — in the collection of 
 Mr. W. K. Bixby. 
 
 " This bust profile sketch was taken and nearly 
 half finished on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 
 1842, while the original was standing at a window 
 looking into the street. It being on a larger scale 
 than the others, the likeness is greatly more perfect, 
 and when I showed it to Mr. Dickens next morning, 
 he was exceedingly pleased with it, though he pro- 
 nounced it somewhat flattering. I do not remember 
 any likeness of him published before the perfection 
 of photography that expresses his character as faith- 
 fully as this."- Pierre Morand. 
 
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 lo noiio^lloo sdl ni — .bneioM anai*? yd rioJsda bariail 
 
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The following invitation in rhyme, written 
 by Charles Dickens, is addressed to Mark 
 Lemon, the editor of Punch. It is signed by 
 Charles Dickens as "T. Sparkler" (his signa- 
 ture as such is said to be unique), and by his 
 wife and the two daughters, Mary and Katie. 
 Mrs. Dickens' sister. Miss Georgina Hogarth, 
 who is still living, was a member of the house- 
 hold at the time, and signed the invitation. 
 About the time of separating from his wife, 
 Dickens had a falling out with Mark Lemon 
 and positively forbade the children "ever to 
 see him or to speak to him," as will be seen 
 by the letter printed on page 144. ^ 
 
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PRINTED BY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
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 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
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