The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JULIA COLLINSON STRETTON,1 11 JULY 1865

Text from facsimile in Dominic Winter Auctions online catalogue, March 2018.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND
Tuesday Eleventh July 1865

My Dear Madam

    I have safely received in due course, the Patty MS which you addressed to me at Gad’s Hill on the 6th. In reference to the length of those papers,2 I have no suggestion to offer. That question is best governed by the manner in which they arise before your fancy.

    You are at perfect liberty to arrange with Messrs. Hurst and Blackett3 for the republication of Patty in a volume, after she shall have been completed here.4

        I am alwys

            my Dear Madam

                Faithfully Yours

            CHARLES DICKENS

Mrs Stretton

• 1. Julia Cecilia Stretton (née Collinson, 1812-1878), novelist; daughter of the Rev John Collinson of Gateshead. Married Walter Wilkins (1809-40), MP for Radnorshire; the couple changed their family name to de Winton. Married Richard William Stretton in 1858. Published a children’s book, Yr Ynys Unyg: or, The Lonely Island. A Narrative for Young People (1852), then 11 three-decker novels, all with Hurst and Blackett, including Margaret and Her Bridesmaids (1856), The Valley of a Hundred Fires (1860), and The Ladies of Lovel-Leigh (1862).
• 2. Stretton published three stories in All the Year Round vol 13 in 1865: “Patty's Vocation” (4 Feb 1865: 38-48), “Patty's Tea-Parties” (17 June 1865: 497-504), and “Patty Resumes her Vocation” (1 July 1865: 546-52). The Pilgrim editors wrongly attribute these pieces to Sara Smith (“Mrs Stretton”); see Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 62 n2.
• 3. Founded in 1852 by Daniel William Stow Hurst and Henry Blackett; shortly after the establishment of their firm they took over the business of the long-established publisher Henry Colburn,13 Great Marlborough Street (where Hurst had previously worked).
• 4. CD sent Stretton’s manuscript to W.H. Wills on 12 July, with these comments: "I have been looking over the enclosed, and I am afraid it won’t do. It is wandering and confused about the Marchioness and Pet; and Mrs. Stubbs's confinement is over done. I sat down to it, intending to get it closer together, and to alter Mrs. Molesworthy's dialect. But I found it beyond the contemplated touches. I think Mrs. Stretton had better try to remake it. She is going to collect these papers bye and bye in a Volume, and I am sure this paper would do her volume no good as it stands. I don't object to your sending her this note, if it will save you trouble". By 15 July he had a response from Wills, and replied: "I quite agree with you about Patty. There is a great deal too much candle for the game. It is spun out, and confused, and greatly too much broken up into short paragraphs. Mrs. Stretton will strengthen her little book immensely, by being closer. Patty can have the appearance of rambling, if she wishes it for the character, only through skill. She must not actually do it, to the reader's confusion and weariness" (Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 70, 72). The “Patty” stories were never collected for publication in volume form; however “Patty's Vocation” was reprinted in Harper's Weekly 9 (11 March 1865): 154-5.