The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To MARY NICHOLS1, 26 MAY 1863
MS Huntington Library.
GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Tuesday Twenty Sixth May 1863.
Dear Madam
It is often very difficult for me to keep pace with my correspondents. I hope you will attribute the tardiness of my reply to your last letter, to this unavoidable circumstance, and not to any lack of interest in it.
I regret that neither of the accompanying papers is quite suitable to the requirements of All The Year Round. It would not be easy to explain within the compass of a hurried note what those requirements are; nor could I hope to suggest them to you, successfully, if the Journal itself cannot do so.
Also you have anticipated any advice I could offer you, by finding for yourself the most likely channels through which to render your literary work remunerative.2
Thus nothing is left for me to say except to assure you— which I do most sincerely—that it would give me real pleasure to be able to accept any contribution from yourself or your husband;3 and to couple with this assurance the faithful promise that I will myself attentively read any paper you may send me, marked “Private” on the cover.
For the novels you mention, I fear there is little chance. A name [ ]4 needs to be made by periodical writing of another kind, before a publisher will—except in rare instances—enter on such a venture.
In that respect there is no opening in All The Year Round. But for general contributions there is always an opening there, and it is at least as much a pleasure to me as it is my interest, to find new contributors who hit the mark.
Personally, I beg you to believe that I am truly sensible of your high opinion, and that I esteem it as a great and high privilege to have awakened so much interest in your breast. It would be a real gratification to me if I could prove this to you by helping you towards the attainment of the honorable object in which you have my full sympathy.
Dear Madam | Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
Mrs. Nichols.
- 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. The “channels” not certainly identified: in England, Nichols published a novel, Uncle Angus (1864) and A Woman’s Work in Water Cure and Sanitary Education (1858), besides contributing to All the Year Round: see To Mrs Nichols, 25 July 63, below.
- 3. Dr Thomas Low Nichols (1815-1901; Dictionary of American Biography), pioneer dietician, water-cure practitioner, and social and sanitary reformer; see To Mrs Nichols, 9 May 63.
- 4. CD made a false start to a word.