The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ELLEN PAINE,1 30 DECEMBER 1865 

Text from facsimile on eBay, October 2016. 

GAD’S HILL PLACE

HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT. 

Saturday Thirtieth December, 1865 

Mr. Charles Dickens presents his compliments to Mrs. Paine, and in returning the enclosed paper at her request, begs to express his regret that the controversy to which it refers is not one that he can hopefully or usefully enter into.2 

Mrs. Paine’s letter leaving no address whatever, Mr. Dickens sends this note to one of the banks mentioned in the List.3 

• 1. Ellen Matilda Steward Paine (1809-1882), of Rickmansworth. Author of The Two James's and the Two Stephensons; or, The Earliest History of Passenger Transit on Railways (1861). Daughter of William James (1771-1837), railway developer. For a full account of CD’s correspondence with her see Leon Litvack, 'Dickens and the Stephenson Party: New Letters to E.M.S. Paine', Dickensian 114.2 (2018): 149-58. See also To Ellen Paine, 1 Jan 1866 and [5 Jan 1866].
• 2. Possibly a contribution to All the Year Round on railways, in the wake of the anonymously published pamphlet by the industrialist Sir Charles Tennant, Railways: In a Letter to the Right Honourable the President of the Board of Trade: A Plan for the Systematic Reform of the Railways of the United Kingdom by Legislative Enactment, 1865, in which CD’s friend Thomas Milner Gibson was severely criticised. See CD’s comments on the state of the railways in To Bulwer Lytton, 6 July 1865, Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 68.
• 3. Unidentified. On the reverse is a note in another hand: 'Charles Dickens Esqr | Gad Hill Place [sic]| about Review of | work | 2 James’ 2 Stephn.' – that is, Paine’s The Two James's and the Two Stephensons; or, The Earliest History of Passenger Transit on Railways (1861). Given that the volume had been published four years previously, it seems unlikely that a review is the subject of this letter.