The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 8 DECEMBER 1855

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

Paris, 49 Avenue des Champs Elysées Saturday Eighth December 1855

My Dear Sir

I beg to acknowledge the safe receipt of your two bills amounting together to £60 sterling,3 and to return you the printed form of Agreement duly signed.4

Always my Dear Sir | Very faithfully Yours

CHARLES DlCKENS

The Chevalier Bernhard Tauchnitz

• 1. Baron Bernhard Christian Tauchnitz (1816-95), publisher, of Leipzig. Born at Schleinitz; nephew of the publisher Karl Tauchnitz. Founded his own firm in Leipzig in 1837. The firm began its “Collection of British Authors” Sep 41 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 43. He and CD became friendly, and CD sent Charley to Leipzig to learn German (see below). According to John Forster, Tauchnitz always paid liberally. He wrote to Forster after CD’s death: “All Mr Dickens’s works have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of March, 1870 [see To Tauchnitz, 31 March 1870]. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my asking him his terms for Edwin Drood, he replied, ‘Your terms shall be mine.’” (John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 807n).
• 2. Böhnke published his transcription of this letter, together with brief annotation, in "The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters", Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), p. 323.
• 3. CD’s bank account with Coutts & Co. shows a deposit of £8.19s.3d on 29 December 1855, as "Bill on Heine & Co. less stamp" (the exchange bank Heine, Semon & Co., London, made a 9d stamping charge), and another of £50.19s.10d on 12 January 1856, shown as "Bill on James House less stamp" (the bank made a 2d stamping charge).  If the stamps cost 9d and 2d respectively, then the gross values of the bills were £9 and £51, thus totalling £60.
• 4. Probably CD's payment for Little Dorrit, and possibly including the German translation fee mentioned in To Tauchnitz, 5 Nov 1855.