The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ANDREW STEVENSON,1 [MAY-AUGUST 1839]

MS Charles Dickens Museum.
Date: CD stayed in Petersham, Surrey, from 30 April to 31 August 1839; Mrs Stevenson renewed her acquaintance with Sydney Smith around 11 May 1839.

Elm Cottage Petersham
Tuesday Morning.

My Dear Sir.

Many thanks for your kind note.

    I am greatly obliged to Mrs Stevenson,2 but I fear I cannot avail myself of her Invitation to dine with Sydney Smith3 tomorrow,4 and have to go to another party afterwards, for my sins, and to come back here after that, for my work.5 If I can however I certainly shall, and if I cannot I shall take a very early opportunity of leaving my card in Portland Place.6

    I am always My Dear Sir

        Very truly Yours

    CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Andrew Stevenson (1784-1857; American National Biography), Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, 1827–35; US Minister to Great Britain, 1836-41. Received Freedom of the City of London in 1838. In Aug 1838 he was involved in a heated public exchange with Daniel O’Connell in the British newspapers. Stevenson had taken umbrage at a “false” report that the Irish M.P. had called him a “slave breeder” and a “man who traffics in blood, and who is a disgrace to human nature”; O’Connell denied using those precise terms, but the press largely disagreed; see “The American Minister and Mr. O’Connell”, The Times, 15 Aug 1838, p. 6..
• 2. Sarah (“Sallie”) Stevenson (1789-1848; née Coles), second wife of Andrew Stevenson; a cousin of the former First Lady of the United States, Dolley Todd Madison. For her acquaintance with Sydney Smith see next note.
• 3. The Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) Canon of St Paul's; a cleric of very liberal views, famous as a wit and good talker. A favoured member of the Holland House circle, and one of the few whom Lady Holland failed to intimidate. Founded, with Jeffrey and Brougham, the Edinburgh Review in 1802; edited the first number, and remained a major contributor. Brilliant pamphleteer for Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform. CD particularly admired his popular Lectures on Moral Philosophy, given originally to the Royal Institution 1804-6. Smith at first decried CD, on scant evidence (Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, [8 vols., London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853-6], vol. 7, p. 174); but in Sep 1837 he wrote to a friend that, although “deterred by the Vulgarity” of the name “Boz”, he found his Sketches “written with great power ... the Soul of Hogarth has migrated into the Body of Mr Dickens” (Sotheby's catalogue, 10 Feb 1964); and in Sep 1838 he wrote to Sir George Philips: “Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr. Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me” (Letters of Sydney Smith, ed. Nowell C. Smith [2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953], vol. 2, p. 671). Mrs Stevenson’s friendship with Smith developed after an aristocratic dinner she attended, described in a letter of 20 May 1838 as being “’graced by some of the most remarkable men now living”, including Edward Bulwer Lytton, Thomas Moore, and Samuel Rogers; she glowingly mentioned “Sidney Smith, celebrated for his wit & conversational powers” (Edward Boykin, Victoria, Albert, and Mrs. Stevenson [New York: Rinehart & Co., 1957]). The Stevensons renewed their acquaintance with Smith in May 1839; she describes him in a letter of 11 May as “the first wit in the world”, and records his presence at her recent party, “a dinner at which we had many distinguished for their talents” (Boykin, pp. 206, 205).
• 4. CD received a letter from Smith on 11 June 1839, containing an invitation to dine with the Miss Berrys of Richmond, on either “Friday, the 29th, or Monday, July 1st” (Pilgrim Letters 1, pp. 686–7); Friday was in fact 28 June. That dinner is not, however, the one to which CD was invited by Mrs Stevenson.
• 5. Whilst in Petersham CD worked on the fourth, fifth, and sixth Numbers of Nicholas Nickleby.
• 6. The Stevensons resided at 23 Portland Place.