The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To WILLIAM JOHN BELLEW ARCHER,1 [?May 1837–8]
Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 1, pp. 485–6.
Text from facsimile in International Autograph Auctions online catalogue, Nov 2024.
Date: handwriting confirms 1837–8, the period of CD’s editing Bentley’s Miscellany; CD’s use of the phrase “the beloved dead” suggests that the letter was written after the death of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, on 7 May 1837.
48 Doughty Street.
Wednesday Morning
Sir.
I have read your paper with great attention (you will excuse my keeping it so long) and have been much pleased and greatly struck by it.
I venture to return it to you with a few suggestions which perhaps you will not object to comply with. If so, I shall be happy to receive it again at your convenience.
I would condense — greatly condense — the opening scene with the priest, so that the reader might come to the story. I would materially shorten the commencement of the story itself, and I would describe a little more forcibly the Hero's boldness when he sees the shade and rushes after it, and his fear when he finds it gone — it is a very natural idea, and would bear a few lines more.
I reserve my final suggestion for a fresh paragraph, because it is a sweeping one. I beg you to understand that I leave it entirely to yourself, and if you prefer the paper in its present shape, do not make the alteration as an indispensable condition of its appearance in the magazine. But to my mind you would make the tale a much better one if you wholly omitted the visit of the Priest2 and yourself to the castle, and finished3 it at the “I believe”, 4 adding a few words to the effect that our spirits commonly hold intercourse with those of the beloved dead in waking thoughts and dreams in which we see them (knowing them to be no longer of this world) without fear or pain, and that if there be any case in which strong and blameless sympathy could be supposed to bring the dead and living together, it would be such a case as you describe.5
I have thrown out these crude remarks very hastily, and trust you will not consider them hypercritical or impertinent.
I am Sir
Your very obet Servant
CHARLES DICKENS
W.B. Archer Esquire
- 1. William John Bellew Archer (1806-1872) English clergyman. Perpetual Curate of Churchill, Somerset 1840–69, British Chaplain at Worms 1851–9, and Vicar of Churchill 1870–2. Author of the Gothic novel Black William's Grave: A Romance of North Wales (1849) under the pseudonym "Minimus Mote, Gentleman".
- 2. “to” deleted after “Priest”.
- 3. “at” deleted after “finished”.
- 4. Doubly underlined.
- 5. No paper answering CD’s description is found in Bentley’s Miscellany; but he clearly recalling the death of Mary Hogarth.