The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To MARY NICHOLS,1 15 AUGUST 1864
MS Huntington Library.
GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Monday Fifteenth August 1864
Dear Mrs. Nichols
I am happy to retain Backwoods Life in Canada,2 for insertion in A.Y.R. The enclosed I regret to say I cannot make available.3 If the case of your young charge4 were mine, I would try either the neighbourhood of Dijon, or the neighbourhood of Marseilles.5 I think I would give the preference to the latter, because of the beautiful sea. The precaution of not living in a situation exposed to the North wind, would be very necessary to observe in that country.And I would not live in Marseilles by any means, but somewhere in its vicinity. Mr. Wills will send you a cheque for Ben’s Beaver, The Unholy Land paper (which I have called “On the Mississippi”), and Backwoods,6 all in one. I have begged him to do so, this very morning.
Looking back to your letter, I note your enquiry whether I think anything could be done in the way of French life, for A.Y.R. Without feeling able positively to answer No, I reply, I think not. I have at various odd times done a good deal of French life myself, and we have an old contributor to Household Words always resident in France,7 who lays hold of french8 subjects. Pray offer my kind regard to your good husband,9 with all good wishes for him and for you.
Faithfully Yours alys
CHARLES DICKENS
- 1. Mrs Mary Sargeant Neal Gove Nichols (1810-84; Dictionary of American Biography), miscellaneous writer, reformer and water-cure practitioner; advocated mesmerism, temperance and dress reform. Published Experience in Water-Cure, New York, 1849, and several novels. With her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols (see Pilgrim Letters, 21 Apr 64, fn), established Nichols' Journal of Health (Cincinnati) 1853, advocating free love, spiritualism and health reform. They published jointly Marriage: Its History, Character, and Results, 1854. Settled in England on outbreak of American Civil War and conducted jointly a water-cure establishment in Great Malvern 1867-75; 1875-86 ed. jointly the London Herald of Health.
- 2. See To Mrs Nichols, 9 August 1864.
- 3. Untraced.
- 4. Presumably Mrs Nichols’s daughter, Mary Wilhelmina, who died later this year.
- 5. The advice is odd: CD never visited Dijon, though he set Edith’s confrontation with Carker there (Dombey, ch.54); at least, if Marseilles was “a dirty and disagreeable place”, the prospect of “the beautiful Mediterranean...is most delightful” (Pictures from Italy, “Avignon to Genoa”). The “North wind” (below) is the Mistral, cold, dry, and violent, which sweeps down from the Alps.
- 6. “Backwoods Life in Canada” (All the Year Round, 1 Oct; XII, 190); presumably the article referred to as “good and true” in To Mrs Nichols, 9 August 1864.
- 7. Almost certainly Edmund Saul Dixon (1809-93); see Anne Lohrli, Household Words, Toronto, 1973, pp. 256-61.
- 8. CD wrote “french” with a small initial letter.
- 9. Dr Thomas Low Nichols (1815-1901; Dictionary of American Biography), pioneer dietician, water-cure practitioner and social and sanitary reformer; second husband of Mary Nichols (married 1848).