The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Advanced Search

Theme

Correspondent

How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Lydia Craig, Jeremy Parrott, and Scott Caddy (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Lydia Craig, Jeremy Parrott, and Scott Caddy (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

Find us on social media:

Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

publishing

Household Words

To WILLIAM ALLINGHAM,1 19 AUGUST 1852

Replaces mention in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 742.
MS Charles Dickens Museum.

Dover, Nineteenth August 1852

My Dear Sir

I was in town yesterday (though I did not receive your note until night, when I was at the Railway station to return here), and Mr. Wills2 only reported to me among other business matters, the matter which you so imperfectly understand.

I apprehend the case to be very plain, and by no means calculated, rightly understood, to give you any offence.3 The paper in question, coming from you, was regarded by Mr. Wills as being from a regular contributor and was sent straight to the printer’s, after a little delay, arising from our having at that moment rather a press of papers of that particular class, the proof was read, with a view to its insertion in the No.; when it was found that the subject, and necessarily the principal facts, were already in a list of descriptions by Miss Martineau,4 which we prospectively arranged with her, some months ago. (I mention her name in order that my explanation to you may be a detailed one). Upon this, there was nothing for it but to5 mention the circumstance to you, and ask you to accept the MS back. But the MS being dirtied and cut and thumbed by the Printer, Mr. Wills proposed to have it copied, that it might appear before you with a clean face.

Household Words is as wide open to you as it can possibly be. I had meant particularly to shew you this, in the disposition of your two last papers.6

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

William Allingham Esquire Junr.

1. William Allingham (1824-89; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), poet and man of letters. A Customs officer in the west of Ireland, his family home, since 1846; mainly self-educated. As a youth he sent poems to Leigh Hunt, thereby starting in 1843 the first of numerous literary correspondences; they met when Allingham visited London in June 1847. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Arthur Hugh Clough, Coventry Patmore, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were sent poems in manuscript and encouraged publication: Patmore, in a letter to him of 17 Apr 1850, called him “the best lyric poet living” (Basil Champneys, Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore [2 vols., London: George Bell and Sons, 1900], vol. 2, p. 173). In the summer of 1850 Allingham elicited Thomas Carlyle's advice on historical studies; later that year he contributed to Hunt's ill-starred Journal, which collapsed early in 1851. He contributed 20 pieces to Household Words between 1850 and 1854.
2. William Henry Wills (1810–80; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), one of CD’s most trusted friends, and sub-editor of Household Words and All the Year Round.
3. CD wrote to Wills the same day to confirm his explanation to Allingham: “No. 1 is from Allingham. I have answered it, and (I suppose) explained satisfactorily” (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 742).
4. Probably Harriet Martineau’s “Household Scenery” (Household Words 5 [14 August 1852]: 513–19). The article concerned wall coverings of all sorts, from tapestries to gutta percha (to prevent damp), but focused especially on wallpaper designs.
5. Word deleted after “to”.
6. “Irish Ballad Singers and Irish Street Ballads”, Household Words 4 (10 Jan 1852): 361–8, and “Round the Midsummer Fire”, Household Words 5 (17 July 1852): 426–8.