The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To LORD JOHN RUSSELL,1 27 JULY 1857

Text from facsimile in Lacy Scott & Knight online catalogue, Sep 2017.

Gad’s Hill Place
Monday Twenty Seventh July, 1857

My Dear Lord John Russell

    Your kind and welcome letter, which delighted me, arrived at a very appropriate moment. I too had first been reading the Edinburgh Review,2 and giving my mind to that solemn oracle. I have written a paper about it in Household Words, which seems to me to place it in rather an unenviable position. It happens to have given me a very awkward chance indeed, and I believe I have not thrown it away. The paper will be published on Wednesday.3

    I have not entered in it, on an examination of this new code of laws for writers of fiction;4 but5 a certain enormous audience shall hear more of that at another time.6 My “license” will probably be found to be a very disagreeable one before we have done, in respect of flattering the Circumlocution doves. Your playful words on the subject are so full of wisdom, and so comprehensively present the strength of the case, that I shall take the liberty with them (you not objecting), of making them my own.

    Will you tell Lady John7 with my kind regard, that Hans Christian Andersen8 is gone home. He was here for some six weeks, and I turned his face to Folkestone a week ago. His existence was of the most bewildered kind. He spoke French like Peter the Wild Boy,9 and English like the Deaf and Dumb School. He could not pronounce the name of his own book, the Improvisatore,10 in Italian; and his translatress11 offers to make oath that he can’t speak Danish. My eldest boy12 who was brought to bear upon him in German, protested with a face of agony that “he might call it German, but it was no such thing”;13 and when we were in town for a night, he came home in a cab, with his watch and money, penknife, pencilcase, a few newspapers, a Bradshaw,14 a snuff box, and various other articles of miscellaneous property in his boots — the driver having brought him by a near way, which he supposed to be a prelude to robbery and murder.

    I hoped to have had the pleasure (it would be a very great one to me) of seeing Lady John, or yourself, or both, before now. But the readings and outings for this Jerrold remembrance Fund have worked me so hard,15 that I have not had more than two days together in which to rest and recruit here, since we began. I have promised to read at Manchester on Friday in this week,16 and to repeat the Frozen Deep in London17 on the 8th of August;18 but I hope our end to be nearly attained, and that I begin to see Land.

    I cannot thank you enough for your letter, or tell you with what sincere and heartfelt pleasure I received it. I believe I should be a political Infidel without a ray of face, if it were not for you. Such a mark of your remembrance and interest, consequently, is inexpressibly valuable to me.

    My Dear Lord John Russell

        Yours very faithfully, and obliged

        CHARLES DICKENS

The | Lord John Russell.

• 1. Lord John Russell (1792-1878; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), leading Whig politician, principal architect of the Great Reform Act in 1832, and one of the main promoters of parliamentary reform; Prime Minister 1846-52, 1865-6. CD had known him at least since 1846, and dedicated A Tale of Two Cities to him.
• 2. [James Fitzjames Stephen], “The License of Modern Novelists”, Edinburgh Review 106 (July 1857): 124–56. In this article Stephen (1829–94), one of the most vigorous critics of CD’s later fiction, fiercely attacked CD and Charles Reade for their irresponsibility in satirising — or, in Reade’s case (particularly in It Is Never Too Late to Mend), straightforwardly denouncing — Britain’s administrative, social and legal institutions. He particularly objected to CD’s Circumlocution Office satire in Little Dorrit (Bk. 1, Ch. 10), a critique influenced no doubt by the fact that his father, Sir James Stephen, had been a distinguished high-ranking civil servant. Stephen had already attacked CD’s presentation of public institutions twice before (“Mr. Dickens as a Politician”, Saturday Review [3 Jan 1857]: 8–9; “Little Dorrit”, Saturday Review 3 [4 July 1857]: 15–16), and believed that the author’s novels did immense harm, especially among the young, by tending “to beget hasty generalisations and false conclusions” because “they address themselves almost entirely to the imagination upon subjects which properly belong to the intellect”; he added that, according to CD, “the result of the British constitution, of our boasted freedom, of parliamentary representation, and of all we possess, is to give us the worst government on the face of the earth — the clatter of a mill grinding no com, the stroke of an engine drawing no water” (pp. 125, 128).
• 3. “Curious Misprint in the Edinburgh Review”, Household Words 16 (1 Aug 1857): 97–100. Stephen had invoked Rowland Hill (who campaigned for reform of the postal system) as an example of governmental encouragement of talent and enterprise (“The License of Modern Novelists”, p. 134). CD deems this a “misprint”, since Hill suffered years of delay, prevarication, and dispute on points of fact: “Before that Committee, the Circumlocution Office and Mr. Rowland Hill were perpetually in conflict on questions of fact; and it invariably turned out that Mr. Rowland Hill was always right in his facts, and that the Circumlocution Office was always wrong. Even on so plain a point as the average number of letters at that very time passing through the Post Office, Mr. Rowland Hill was right, and the Circumlocution Office was wrong” (p. 98).
• 4. CD is referring to publications attracting a charge of seditious libel, codified by the Sedition Act (1798), which made it unlawful to act with intent to bring the Crown, government, Parliament or the administration of justice into hatred or contempt; to incite disaffection against these authorities; or to promote reform otherwise than by lawful means or feelings of hostility between different classes in society. This was a common law offense, punishable by imprisonment or fines, and used to suppress dissent and criticism of the monarchy and the state.
• 5. “very” deleted after “but”.
• 6. Despite Stephen’s accusations, CD continued to criticise and satirise government in his journalism and fiction.
• 7. Frances Anna Maria Russell (1815–98, née Elliot; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Russell’s second wife, married on 20 July 1841.
• 8. Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75), Danish author, best remembered for his fairy tales, including “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Nightingale”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Red Shoes”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Match Girl”, and “Thumbelina”. He first met CD at Gore House (the home of Marguerite Power) on 16 July 1847 (see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 128). CD invited him to Gad’s Hill (Pilgrim Letters 8, pp. 307, 323); the Danish author stayed from 11 June to 15 July; for details of the visit see Elias Bredsdorff, Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of His Life and Work 1805–75 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), pp. 210–16. He considered CD a perfect host, even though he clearly outstayed his welcome. Gladys Storey reports CD’s daughter Katey’s recalling that her father put up a card over the mirror in Andersen's room which read "Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks — which seemed to the family AGES!" (Dickens and Daughter [London: Frederick Muller, 1939], p. 22)
• 9. A feral child, discovered in a German forest in 1725. He was brought by George I to England, where he was educated and cared for by Dr John Arbuthnot, who named him “Peter”. CD made a similar remark to William Jerdan on 21 July: “In French or Italian, he was Peter the Wild Boy” (Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 383).
• 10. The semi-autobiographical novel inspired by Andersen's travels in Italy; first published in 1835.
• 11. Mary Howitt (1799–1888; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), who had translated Andersen’s Wonderful Stories for Children (London: Chapman and Hall, 1846), the first collection of the Danish author’s works made available to English readers. She and her husband William were both correspondents of CD.
• 12. Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (Charley; 1837–96), whom CD had sent to Leipzig in 1853–4 to learn German; see Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 244–5.
• 13. CD had written to Andersen on 12 May, about the languages in which they might communicate: “You write English so extraordinarily well, that I am quite surprised by what you tell me of your speaking it. I feel sure, however, that you will become a perfect Englishman among my family, in a very few days. We all speak French, and some Italian. My eldest boy speaks German too. So I am not in the least afraid of our failing to be talkative” (Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 323)
• 14. A series of train timetables, which included maps, illustrations and descriptions of the main features and historic buildings of towns and cities served by the railways. They were named after George Bradshaw (1800–53), who produced his first timetable in 1839. In his piece entitled “A Plated Article” W.H. Wills depicted the writer as having “nothing to read but Bradshaw, and ‘that way madness lies’ ” (Household Words 5 [24 Apr 1852}: 118).
• 15. To support the fund in memory of his friend Douglas Jerrold, who had died on 8 June 1857, CD established a committee, whose members included John Forster, Edward Bulwer Lytton, William Charles Macready and Clarkson Stanfield; they organised events for the “Jerrold Fund”, including a concert at St Martin’s Hall; two gala evenings of performances of some of Jerrold’s best plays at the Haymarket and the Adelphi theatres; lectures by William Makepeace Thackeray and William Howard Russell; and a reading of A Christmas Carol in St Martin’s Hall on 24 July.
• 16. CD read the Carol again in support of the Jerrold Fund, in Manchester on 31 July. See also his pledge on that occasion to mount a performance of The Frozen Deep in the city (Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K.J. Fielding [Oxford: Clarendon, 1960], pp. 237–8).
• 17. “in London” written above the caret.
• 18. CD and his theatrical company mounted a subscription performance of the play by CD and Wilkie Collins, at the Gallery of Illustration in Lower Regent Street.