By Dickens, but he certainly was a bit of a diva!
HANDWRITTEN letters by one of Britain’s most famous authors, Charles Dickens, will go on public display in London – and online – for the first time this week, giving a fresh insight into the Victorian writer’s life and mind.
Eleven letters were acquired by the Charles Dickens Museum in London from a private seller in the US – a country Dickens visited twice on popular public reading tours.
One letter – dated February 10, 1866, and written to an IH Newman – reveals Dickens, a celebrity in his own time, having a mild diva moment as he complains about the potential loss of Sunday postal service in his southern English town, and threatens to move elsewhere.
“I beg to say that I most decidedly and strongly object to the infliction of any such inconvenience upon myself,” he writes. “There are many people in this village of Higham, probably, who do not receive or dispatch in a year, as many letters as I usually receive and dispatch in a day,” he said of his home in Kent, southern England.
“I am on the best terms with my neighbours, poor and rich, and I believe they would be sorry to lose me,” he continues. “But I should be so hampered by the proposed restriction that I think it would force me to sell my property here, and leave this part of the country.”
In another, penned on vacation in Lausanne, Switzerland, on August 5, 1846, Dickens writes to his friend and lawyer Thomas Mitton, describing the town as “prodigious if ugly”.
He includes details of his stay, notably a mountain hike and washing his face with snow, and he comments on the local cuisine and how his children are passing the time.
“I have no doubt you have been looking once or twice for a letter from me since I have left home. I have written to very few people indeed,” he says.
“It is not at all a cheap place – dearer than Genoa, and as dear, I should say, as Paris. The most astonishing circumstance to me, is that bread, of all things in the world, is dearer at this moment, than in London! Meat is pretty cheap, and very good . ... The native wine is something between vinegar and pickled cucumbers, and makes you wink and cry when you taste it,” he adds.
Another letter is a dinner invitation with a dramatic Dickensian final flourish: “Say ‘no’ and I never forgive
you. Say ‘yes’ and join us here at ten minutes past six next Thursday, and I shall always remain faithfully yours CHARLES DICKENS.”
Peter Orford, a lecturer in English literature at the University of Buckingham and a biographer of Dickens, told The Washington Post this week that he was “excited” by the new trove of letters, which would be a “major resource” for academics and enthusiasts alike.
Orford described Dickens – the author of classics such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and Bleak House – as someone who “tried to be a man of the people”, championing social causes. However, like many modern celebrities, he was also “quite precious about his privacy” and sought to strike a balance, Orford said.
“He could be a bit of a diva and hold the attention when it suited him,” he said, as there was “always interest in him as a person”, but at other times he found the public attention “intrusive”.
Dickens, like many Victorians, was a “prolific letter writer” and a man of his time, when an individual could receive mail deliveries a dozen times a day. So far, 12 volumes of Dickens’s
letters have been published, some short “like text messages” confirming plans, said Orford, and other lengthier missives to friends and family.
Dickens destroyed many letters before his death, holding a bonfire in 1860 to stop them from falling into public hands. Those that still exist were collected from recipients. In his will, Dickens also specified that he did not wish to be remembered by statues or memorials but rather for his works, Orford added.
Despite his “Bah! Humbug!” attitude, Dickens still has millions of fans around the globe. His portrait has appeared on bank notes and stamps, his books have been adapted on screen, and countless schoolchildren still study his novels and perform A Christmas Carol each year.
“There’s still a great deal of popular interest in Dickens,” said Catherine Waters, emeritus professor of Victorian literature at the University of Kent. Waters is also the latest president of the Dickens Fellowship, a worldwide association of people who share an interest in Dickens’s life and works. The group was founded in 1902 and has active chapters in the US, Italy, Australia and Japan.
Dickens could have been writing up to 20 letters a day over a period of more than 40 years, Waters told The Post.
“The range of topics that his letters cover is immense,” she said, with letters to family, publishers and charities illustrating a broad array of topics and social acquaintances. Given the variety and vividness of his letter writing, I’m sure being able to read some of these new letters will be very exciting for people,” she said.
Other letters in the collection give an insight into his reading habits and busy social diary. The exhibit of his handwritten letters will go on display starting Wednesday at the museum and online for international enthusiasts. ”