The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To ELIZABETH GASKELL,1 18 MARCH 1852
MS Free Library of Philadelphia.
OFFICE OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Thursday Eighteenth March 1852
My Dear Mrs. Gaskell
You need not be in the least afraid of sending too often!! You may be very sure that a contribution from you is more welcome and delightful to me than I dare express to the most suspicious of women.2 You shall have a Proof of this MS, if you will be so kind as to correct it.3 I thought I had, myself, gone carefully over the last;4 – but upon my word it made me cry so, that I might as well have left it alone for any mechanical eyesight that5 remained to me.
With my compliments to Mr. Gaskell6 | Ever Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
A golden baby7 has just arrived at Tavistock House – a perfect Californian little Duncan8 –
his silver skin, laced
(internally)
with his golden blood.9
We think of calling him, appropriately remembering the enchanted home of his infancy,10 Tom Tiddler.11
- 1. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (1810-65; Dictionary of National Biography), novelist and biographer. Her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), led CD to invite her to write for Household Words: “Lizzie Leigh” was the opening contribution in No.1. See Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 539n.
- 2. CD was eager to have contributions from his “Dear Scheherazade” (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 545): Gaskell valued Household Words’ ethos and CD’s prompt payment. The relationship was uneasy, though: Gaskell accused CD of stealing one of her ghost stories (Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 545-6 & nn); CD altered without authorisation a reference to Pickwick in “Our Society at Cranford”, Household Words, 13 Dec 51, IV, 265 (see Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 548-9); and both had problems over the writing and serialisation of North and South (see Pilgrim Letters 7).
- 3. “Visiting at Cranford”, Household Words, 3 Apr 52, V, 55.
- 4. “A Love Affair at Cranford”, Household Words, 3 Jan 52, IV, 349.
- 5. “it” deleted after “that”.
- 6. The Rev. William Gaskell (1805-84; Dictionary of National Biography), Unitarian minister at Cross Street Chapel, Manchester.
- 7. Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (1852-1902), born 13 Mar.
- 8. CD continues his laboured joke with Mrs Gaskell about the supposed opulence of his establishment: see To Mrs Gaskell, 25 Nov and 21 Dec 51 (Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 545- 6 & 558). Gold had been discovered in California, 1848, and the great Gold Rush began in 1849.
- 9. Macbeth, II. iii. 109.
- 10. i.e. the “opulence” of Tavistock House.
- 11. Tom Tiddler’s ground, in the children’s game, is where we go, “Picking up gold and silver”.