The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To FLORENCE ROSS CHURCH,1 3 AUGUST 1869
Text from facsimile of fragment (1 p. of 2-page letter) in Arroyo Seco Books online catalogue, Oct 2020.
GAD’S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Tuesday Third August 1869
My Dear Mrs Church
It is an unlikely coincidence that the two stories have the same name.
In answer to your enquiry, I hasten to let you know that “Veronica” by the Author of Aunt Margaret’s Secret,2 is a three Vol. Novel.3 You do not ask me whether I would alter the title of my book, if I were in your place; but I volunteer the opinion that if I was in your place and my book were not actually “worked” (that is printed off) to any extent, I would do so.4 It is really not important however. And be sure you do not let your publisher charge you for such change, if you make it. Have that distinctly understood.
My reply to your kind enquiry concerning the dedication,5 is,
- 1. Florence Ross Church, née Marryat (1833-99; Dictionary of National Biography), novelist; youngest child of CD’s friend Capt. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848). Married Thomas Ross Church 1854; divorced 1878. Married Francis Lean 1879; separated 1881. Among over 75 published novels were Love’s Conflict (1865), Véronique (1869), Her Father's Name (1876), There is No Death (1891) The Spirit World (1894), The Dead Man's Message (1894) and The Blood of the Vampire (1897).
- 2. CD had misremembered the title of Frances Trollope’s novel The Tale of Aunt Margaret’s Trouble, serialised in All the Year Round from 14 July to 18 Aug 1866.
- 3. Frances Trollope’s Veronica was serialised in All the Year Round from 7 Aug 1869 to 30 Apr 1870. When it was published in three vols it carried the title Veronica: A Novel by the Author of “Aunt Margaret’s Trouble,” “Mabel’s Progress,” &c. &c. (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1870).
- 4. Ross Church changed the title from Veronica to Véronique. A Romance (3 vols, London: Richard Bentley, 1869).
- 5. The dedication of Véronique to CD (dated May 1869, from Brussels) reads as follows: “To Charles Dickens, Esq. My Dear Sir, I thank you sincerely for permitting me to write your name upon the dedication page of ‘Véronique.’ My offering is but a common flower—perhaps a weed—but, at any rate, plucked freshly from the fields of my imagination; and neither forced in a hot-house, nor sprung from a dunghill, as some of the criticisms upon modern novels would lead one to believe. ‘Véronique’ will not live longer than a gathered blossom, but whilst she does I lay her at your feet, with greater pride in the remembrance that you are one of my dead father’s nearest friends, and that you are the greatest living novelist of the age.”