The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MRS BRADBURN,1 25 NOVEMBER 1850

MS Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.

Office of Household Words2
Twenty Fifth November 1850.

Madam.

    Although it is not usual to sanction the republication of any article that has appeared in this Journal, at all events until after3 an interval of some months; I am happy to assure you that you are at full liberty to republish the Guernsey Tradition4 whenever it may suit your convenience.5

          I am Madam

              Faithfully Yours

              CHARLES DICKENS

Mrs. Bradburn.

• 1. Possibly Eliza Weaver Bradburn (1792-1878), daughter of the Rev. Samuel Bradburn. Editor of her father’s Sermons (1817), and writer of booklets for children, including The Story of Paradise Lost, for Children (1830), and The Endless Story, in Rhyme (1843). Although CD addresses her as “Mrs”, Lohrli points out that the office book of Household Words sometimes confuses “Mrs” and “Miss” (Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850–1859 Conducted by Charles Dickens [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973], p. 211).
• 2. Top of printed letterhead has been cut away.
• 3. “a” and the start of a second word deleted before “an”.
• 4. “A Guernsey Tradition”, Household Words 2 (19 Oct 1850): 84–5. The poem concerns an altercation between a Bailiff and a local peasant named Massey. The Bailiff engineers for Massey to be falsely accused of stealing a silver cup, so that the official might appropriate the peasant’s cottage. The truth is eventually revealed: Massey is set free, and the Bailiff is condemned to death. Bradburn’s Endless Story is dated from La Haule, Jersey; thus she may have been familiar with Channel Island stories and legends (Lohrli, p. 212).
• 5. It is not known whether the poem was ever republished.