The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DESMOND G. FITZGERALD,1 15 MARCH 1858 

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 530.

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, May 2020.

Tavistock House W.C.

Monday Fifteenth March 1858 

Dear Sir

            I have read your papers.

            I shall be happy to accept the verses entitled "Poetry and Philosophy"2 if you will make the last stanza but one, plainer to my comprehension. I cannot make out that crown of bay which Science gives as incense to its God.3

            The lone Heart's Recollections, are not suited to Household Words.

            The Ghost Story is an extremely old one. It is usually told of a gentleman who went down into one of the Vaults in Westminster abbey on a similar expedition.4 It is very well told in your little paper, but its antiquity is a fatal objection.

                                                Faithfully Yours

                                                CHARLES DICKENS

Desmond G FitzGerald Esquire.

• 1. Desmond G. Fitzgerald, analytical chemist; contributed "Natural Science. – Its Adaptation to the Youthful Mind" to The School and the Teacher, 1 June 1858 (describing his own teaching of chemistry at a Middlesex school); his lecture, Education, published as a pamphlet (London: Wyand, Son & Co., 1858).
• 2. In six stanzas, describing his teaching experience and his philosophy of teaching; the poem advocates reconciliation between poetry and philosophy; published in Household Words 17 (17 Apr 1858): 420 (his only contribution to the journal).
• 3. The fifth stanza reads: "And genius that would scorn the lowly way | Which leads to truth, although by millions trod, | Might humble violets twine with haughty bay, | And learn from children how to soar to God."
• 4. Most likely referring to the story, repeated in various accounts including Joseph Taylor’s Apparitions; Or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed (Macdonald and Son, 1814), of a gentleman who undertakes a dare to venture into the royal vault at Westminster Abbey after midnight. He must stick a pen-knife into the ground to prove to his friends that he has completed the task; as he does so, the terrified man believes a ghost has taken hold of his clothes. The pen-knife, found sticking out of the man’s coat, is revealed to have been stabbed through the clothing from the inside, the gentleman effectively pinning himself to the ground.