The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

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Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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1851-1860

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family

spiritualism

publishing

India

editing

To ALFRED DICKENS,1 2 NOVEMBER 1859

MS R & R Auctions, September 2006.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

Wednesday Second November 1859

My Dear Alfred

The War Office Ghost matter2 was not very intelligible, even to myself, when I saw it in the Papers.3 All that I know of it, is this. Howitt4 (who is a kind of Arch Rapper among the Rappers) wrote me a gossiping private note respecting some papers in these pages, called “A Physician’s Ghosts”:5 wherein the Ghosts treated of, are accounted for, and supposed not to be real apparitions. To this accounting and supposing, Howitt (as said Arch Rapper of Rappers) objected, and asked me “What I thought of the Ghost of the Officer killed in the Crimea,6 who had obliged the War Office, to alter an erroneous date entered in their books as the date of his Death?”—I replied that what I thought of it, was, that I should require very strong evidence indeed, in proof of the story.7 That’s all.

Ever Affecy

I ought to mention that Howitt afterwards published his letter in a certain periodical curlpaper called The Spiritual Telegraph8—and described my answer.

1. Alfred Lamert Dickens (1822-60), CD’s second surviving brother: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 44n, & Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 214n.
2. R. D. Owen tells the story of “The War Office Ghost” in Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, 1860, pp. 299-303; see also William Howitt, History of the Supernatural, 1863, II, 225. “G. –W” (identified as “Wheatcroft” by Howitt) was killed in the siege of Lucknow on 14 Nov 57. Both his wife and a spirit seer had separate visions of his death that day. The official telegram from Lucknow, repeated by the War Office Certificate, gave the date of death as 15 Nov. A brother officer wrote to confirm 14 Nov, and the War Office, in Jan 58, corrected the date. (Capt German Wheatcroft, 6th [Inniskilling] Dragoons, transferred to the 6th Regiment of Dragoon Guards [Carabiniers]: Hart’s Army Lists, 1857-9; death notice, The Times, 12 Feb 58.)
3. For example, The Times, 21 Oct, reprinted from the British Spiritual Telegraph (see below) Howitt’s letter to CD.
4. William Howitt (1792-1879; Dictionary of National Biography), miscellaneous writer. Friendly with CD and an early contributor to Household Words, Howitt became an ardent Spiritualist. Friction developed with CD over the truth of ghosts, manifestations, and mediums (see To Howitt, 6 Sep, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 116). Later, CD sardonically compared Howitt and his “rappings” (the supposed communication of spirits in reply to questions put to them) to a rhinoceros knocking his horn against a wall (To Unknown Correspondent, [?Jan-3 Sep 60], Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 301). In 1863, CD wrote a derisive account of Howitt’s History of the Supernatural (“Rather a Strong Dose”, All the Year Round, 21 Mar 63, IX, 84) and followed it with an attack on the medium Daniel Douglas Home (“The Martyr Medium”, All the Year Round, 4 Apr 63, IX, 133); see also To Owen, 31 July 60, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 278 & nn.
5. Three articles in All the Year Round, 6, 13 and 27 Aug 59, I, 346, 382 & 427. The author posits a “moral electricity” which stems from “the influence of one human being on another, and of God upon us all” (I, 347). From this, he considers various “supernatural” phenomena and treats them scientifically. CD was deeply sceptical of spiritualists, ghostly manifestations, and table-rapping. The trivial nature of such “revelations” particularly annoyed him (To Howitt, 6 Sep 59, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 117)
6. CD’s error: Howitt referred to Lucknow.
7. For CD’s later expedition with Collins, Wills and Hollingshead on Howitt’s information, to a “haunted” house in Cheshunt, see To Howitt, 15 Nov, 17 & 21 Dec (Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 161, 178-9, 180-1 & nn) and also “Modern Sadducism” by Howitt in the Spiritual Magazine, Jan 60 (I, 11-17), which mocks CD’s quest, calls in doubt his good faith, and characterizes Hollingshead as “one of Mr. Dickens’s lacqueys”. A later article, “Punch’s Cartoon of the Spirit Hand”, Spiritual Magazine, June 60 (I, 241-8) claimed CD Jr and two sons of Frederick Evans (of Bradbury & Evans) had attended a seance (11 May 60) and been won over: Charley denied his “conversion”. He said, CD noted, “what he had seen and heard was very absurd, and gave...a highly ludicrous detail of the proceedings!” (“Modern Magic”, All the Year Round, 28 July 60, III, 374n: see To Mrs Linton, 16 Sep 60, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 310, n.6).
8. In the British Spiritual Telegraph, 15 Oct, IV, 145-8, Howitt drew attention to “A Physician’s Ghosts” and reproduced his letter to CD, challenging the idea that ghosts were only a projection of the seer’s mind and offering various examples, including that of “Captain Wheatcroft, which the other day, compelled the Waroffice to correct the date of his death before Lucknow in the official return” (p. 146). The cheapness of the Telegraph’s production accounts for CD’s dismissal of it as fit only as waste paper for putting hair in curls.