The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MARGUERITE POWER,1 19 JUNE 1866 

Text from facsimile in University Archives online catalogue, November 2017. 

Address: Miss Power | 26 Edmund Terrace | Notting Hill | London W. 

GAD’S HILL PLACE

HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Tuesday Nineteenth June 1866 

My Dear Marguerite

I am extremely pleased with the Vine,2 as a charming and elegant little poem – in which I assuredly see no trace of the difficulty you speak of.3 To the best of my belief it comes in innumerable cases – and (happily) goes. 

Rest satisfied that I will gently explain exactly what you write on the other point, in the two quarters to which I have natural and easy access.4 I should have sent you this note sooner, but for having been away on a rest-trip after hard work. 

Affectionately Yours 

CD. 

• 1. Marguerite Agnes Power (?1815-67; Dictionary of National Biography), novelist; contributor of prose and poetry to Household Words and All the Year Round. CD met her through her aunt, the Countess of Blessington (1789-1849). In 1857 CD, Thackeray, and John Forster raised a subscription of £200 for her; see To Thackeray, 4 Dec 1857, Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 486.
• 2. Thus in MS. Power was the author of the poem 'The Vines', All the Year Round 15 (7 July 1866): 609-10.
• 3. Possibly Power’s failing health; she suffered a spinal injury after a fall from a horse, and died after a long battle with cancer. See To Mrs Henderson, 4 July 1867, Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 390.
• 4. Untraced.