xt7qv97zm477 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qv97zm477/data/mets.xml Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. 1908  books b92-169-30117061 English Priv. printed for William K. Bixby, : Saint Louis, Mo. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Winter, Maria Sarah Beadnell, 1811 or 12-1886. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Correspondence. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Relations with women Maria Beadnell Winter. Novelists, English 19th century Biography.Baker, George Pierce, 1866-1935. Winter, Maria Sarah Beadnell, 1811 or 12-1886. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Romance of Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell Winter. Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell (Dora)  : private correspondence between Charles Dickens and Mrs. Henry Winter (nebe Maria Beadnell) ... / edited by Professor George Pierce Baker. text Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell (Dora)  : private correspondence between Charles Dickens and Mrs. Henry Winter (nebe Maria Beadnell) ... / edited by Professor George Pierce Baker. 1908 2002 true xt7qv97zm477 section xt7qv97zm477 











CHARLES



AND MARIA



DICKENS



BEADNELL (" DORA")

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             CHARLES DICKENS
    Etching by W. H. WA'. BICKNELL, from an
original painting, signed " E. P. 1870," found in the
collection of J. L. Tcole, the celebrated actor. This
painting is now in the collection of Mr. W. K. Bixby.

 




































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      CHARLES DICKENS

                   AND

MARIA BEADNELL ("DORA")



        Pribate Correponpente

BETWEEN CHARLES DICKENS AND MRS. HENRY WINTER
   (NtE MARIA BEADNELL), THE ORIGINAL OF DORA
      SPENLOW IN "DAVID COPPERFIELD"
         AND FLORA FINCHING IN
             "LITTLE DORRIT"



               EDITED BY
  PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER
           OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY









           PRIVATELY PRINTED
  FOR WILLIAM K. BIXBY, SAINT LOUIS, Mo.
                MDCDVIII

 



















                COPYRIGHT, 1908
           BY THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY
                All rights reserved


  THE entire contents of this work are protected
by copyright in America, England, Canada, and
the British Colonies; including also Belgium,
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland,
Tunis, Hayti, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway,
Japan, Denmark, and Sweden. Any infringe-
ment will be vigorously prosecuted.



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

 







PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION



  AFTER the Dickens-Dora papers came into
my possession I agreed to allow The Biblio-
phile Society all the rights to print same that I
possessed, with the understanding that, after
the edition had been printed by them for the
members, I should, omitting their titlepage,
print two hundred and fifty copies as a second
edition for my own use, for presentation to
friends who are not members of The Bibliophile
Society, and that the copyrights should be
assigned to me.
  In the introduction and the preface to the
first edition are contained all the facts regarding
this correspondence and the parties connected
with it that I feel at liberty to print. I trust
that the letters may prove as interesting to
other admirers of Charles Dickens as they have
been to those who have read the original letters.
                                     W. K. B.

 This page in the original text is blank.

 










PREFACE



   THE originals of the letters by Charles
Dickens printed in this volume are, with one
exception,' in the handwriting of the author.
Some of them are herein reproduced in pho-
tographic facsimile. The letters in the early
series were written to Miss Maria Beadnell,
the young lady with whom Dickens had his
first love affair, just prior to becoming of age.
Those in the later series, beginning in 1855,
were written about twenty-two years after,
to the same person, who in the meantime had
married Mr. Henry Louis Winter, of Number
12 Artillery Place, London.       At this period
Dickens had reached great prominence in the
literary world.
  The members of The Bibliophile Society
are indebted to the unceasing generosity of
Mr. William K. Bixby for the rare privilege
  I The exception is a letter that was returned to Dickens by Miss
Beadnell, after a lovers' quarrel, but which before returning she care-
fully copied in her own handwriting. See facsimile at p. 46.
                     [ ix I

 





of possessing the first printed edition of these
excessively valuable MSS. That a collection
cf such important autobiographical material
should have remained so long in obscurity is
a most singular fact. So sacredly were these
ltters guarded after their discovery and pur-
chase from a daughter of Mrs. Winter in
England by one who realized their worth, that
their owner allowed only a single one of them
ever to be copied, and that only for private
reference, with all the names omitted. Find-
ing that their publication in England would
be prohibited, he personally brought them to
America, when the entire collection was pur-
chased by Mr. Bixby.
  If an authentic autobiography of Dickens
vere suddenly to spring into existence, it
would produce a literary sensation. If such a
work were found to contain many important
identifications of characters and personal traits
of the author which were unknown to his
most intimate friends, and new even to the
members of his own family, it would imme-
Jiately excite the interest of the entire literary
world. The present is, in effect, such a vol-
ime.   The letters of which it consists -
which were written in the strictest confidence
                    [ X ]

 





and intended for no eyes but those of the one
to whom they were addressed-- are earnest,
sincere, and direct from the heart. They dis-
close certain life experiences of the author
never before imparted to the world; in his
own words, "things that I have locked up in
my own breast, and that I never thought to
bring out any more." Aside from their per-
sonal bearing, they furnish a key to the char-
acters and incidents in several of the more
important novels, some of which have been
the subjects of heated discussion ever since
the death of the author. For instance, they
positively verify many disputed points in
David Copperfield, the greatest and most
personal of the novels, and show that the
love affairs of its hero were almost identical
with those of Dickens himself. They further
prove conclusively that in Little Dorrit Dickens
narrated much of his own experience. The
personal character of that work now becomes
second only to David Copperjield; and many
scenes which have seemed commonplace, when
regarded merely as fruits of the novelist's
imagination, become at once enlivened with
dramatic interest.
  But for the fortunate discovery of these
                    [xi]  

 





letters, no one would ever have imagined the
extent to which Little Dorrit is in reality a
continuation of "The Personal History Ad-
ventures, Experience and Observation" of the
hero of David Copperfield. In dealing with
the anticlimax of his old love affair Dickens
masquerades in the r6le of Arthur Clennam
in Little Dorrit, while the girl who had dis-
tracted his heart in boyhood (the original of
Dora in David Copperfield) was assigned the
garrulous part of the flippant Flora Finching.
Flora's father, Mr. Casby (who in real life was
George Beadnell, the father of Maria Beadnell,
of Number 2 Lombard Street, London, and in
David Copperfield was Mr. Spenlow, the father
of Dora), comes in for his share of raillery, and
is penalized severely for the part he is supposed
to have played in separating the young lovers.
He is "the wooden-headed old Christopher,"
o: "elephantine build," -the close-fisted old
patriarch with bottle-green coat, of whom his
own daughter (Flora) is made to say, that he
" is always tiresome and putting his nose every-
where where he is not wanted."  The verses
by Dickens in The Bill of Fare (never before
printed) identify the originals of a number of
characters in his works which were taken from
                    [ xii j

 




real life. In a letter to Mrs. Winter, referring
to the love affairs of David Copperfield, he
says that his readers little thought what reason
he had to "know it was true, and nothing
more nor less." In another of the letters he
said: "A few years ago (just before Copper-
field) I began to write my Life, intending the
manuscript to be found among my papers
when its subject should be concluded. But as
I began to approach within sight of that part
of it [referring to his early love], I lost courage
and burned the rest."
  It is a significant fact that he refers to this
circumstance as having occurred " just before
Copperfield." There can be little doubt that
on this account he changed his purpose, and
either before or after destroying the manu-
script, determined to write the story of his
life, which, mingled with supposititious inci-
dent, was put forth under the pseudonym of
David Copperfield. The object of his youthful
devotion is therein impersonated as "Dora."
He doubtless felt an irresistible impulse to
write and unburden his mind of the tragic
experiences and disappointments of his youth,
and when in the course of outlining these he
came up to the Maria Beadnell episode, he was
                    [ xiii I

 





at a loss to know how to handle it so as to
give it the required impressiveness without
offending the members of his family, - par-
ticularly his wife. He could not treat it lightly,
for it was the all-absorbing event of his life.
The whole plan of an acknowledged autobi-
ography was therefore abandoned.
  Again, he was probably not unmindful of
the pecuniary side of the matter, and took
into consideration the fact that in storing his
manuscript away until " its subject should be
concluded," he would be burying one of his
most profitable works. It is extremely doubtful
if even after his death the Dickens family
would ever have published the MS. of David
Copperfield under any autobiographical title;
for it is observable that, even to this day, his
descendants are unwilling to admit publicly
that Dora and Flora were more than lay figures,
existing only in the author's imagination.
  These letters would have been an excessively
valuable asset to any of Dickens' biographers,
and even Forster himself would have found
in them many disclosures of significant facts
which were entirely strange to him.
  From a reading of the first series of the
letters written by Dickens in his boyhood days,
                    [ xiv ]

 




it may be inferred that the coquettish girl to
whom they were addressed resorted to artful
and surreptitious tactics in repulsing and dis-
couraging his persistent attentions after she
became tired of him, although she had pre-
viously encouraged him to lavish his "entire
devotion" upon her. Whether on account of
parental interference, or change of heart, or
perhaps both, it seems sure that she was deter-
mined to get rid of him, and doubtless wished
to do this as gracefully as possible, and without
wounding his pride too deeply. It seems quite
plausible that with this in mind she may have
designedly arranged with her friend Mary Anne
Leigh for her to display a lively and unwonted
interest in Dickens and his affairs, and then she
proceeded to reprove him for faithlessness and
fickleness, and hypocritically assumed the air of
one deeplyinjured. In defending himself against
this accusation, he said of Miss Leigh: -
  " You certainly totally and entirely misunder-
stand my feeling with regard to her - that
you could suppose, as you clearly do (that is
to say, if the subject is worth a thought to
you), that I have ever really thought of M. A. L.
in any other than my old way, you are mis-
taken. That she has for some reason, and to
                    [ xv I

 





suit her own purposes, of late thrown herself
in my way I could plainly see, and I know it
was noticed by others. For instance, on the
night of the play, after we went upstairs, I
could not get rid of her. God knows that
I have no pleasure in speaking to her, or any
girl living, and never had. May I add that
you have been the sole exception."
  It is clear, also, that Miss Beadnell accused
Dickens of having confided inviolable secrets
to Miss Leigh, while she herself seems to have
been the offender in this respect. In his own
defence he wrote: " I never by word or deed,
in the slightest manner, directly or by impli-
cation, made in any way a confidante of Mary
Anne Leigh. . .  Her duplicity and disgusting
falsehood, however, renders it quite unneces-
sary to conceal the part she has acted, and I
therefore have now no hesitation in saying that
she, quite unasked, volunteered the information
[to friends] that You had made her a confidante
of all that bad ever passed between us without
reserve. In proof of which assertion she not
only detailed facts which I undoubtedly thought
she could have heard from none but yourself,
but she also communicated many things which
certainly never occurred at all."
                    [ xvi ]

 





  In the heat of his boyish anger he wrote a
scathing note to Miss Leigh, in which he said:
"I can safely say that I never made a confi-
dante of any one. I am perfectly willing to
admit that if I had wished to secure a confi-
dante in whom candour, secrecy, and kind
honorable feeling were indispensable requisites,
I could have looked to none better calculated
for this office than yourself; but still the
making you the depository of my feelings or
secrets is an honor I never presumed to expect,
and one which I certainly must beg most posi-
tively to decline. . . . I would much rather
mismanage my own affairs than have them
ably conducted by the officious interference of
any one. I do think that your interposition
in this instance, however well intentioned, has
been productive of as much mischief as it has
been uncalled for."
  In David Copperfield Dickens immortalized
the name, if not the character, of this girl who
had been such a disturbing element in his
love-making difficulties, and one can almost
see the self-satisfied smile of " sweet revenge"
playing upon his features as he wrote: -
  "We had a servant, of course. She kept
house for us. I have a still latent belief that
                    [ xvii ]

 





she must have been Mrs. Crupp's daughter
in disguise, we had such an awful time with
Mary Anne. . . . She was the cause of our
first little quarrel. . . . Mary Anne's cousin
[a soldier] deserted into our coal-hole, and
was brought out, to our great amazement, by
a piquet of his companions in arms, who took
him away handcuffed in a procession that
covered our front garden with ignominy. This
nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went
so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was sur-
prised, until I found out about the tea-spoons,
and also about the little sums she had borrowed
in my name of the tradespeople without
authority."
  In 1832 Dickens was a mere youth, and
gave no immediate promise of fortune or fame.
His literary talents were undeveloped, and Miss
Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, was per-
haps not attracted by his inauspicious pros-
pects, although in the early stages of their
courtship days she seems to have been quite
fascinated by him, and to have given no
thought to such gross and material considera-
tions. She afterwards married Mr. Winter,
a merchant in good standing, who in later
years became a bankrupt, and after renewing
                  [ xviii ]

 





her correspondence with Dickens twenty-three
years later, she suffered the humiliating act of
appealing to him to use his influence in ob-
taining some employment for her husband.
The unpromising youth whose idolatrous love
she had spurned, and whose consequent
" wretchedness and misery" had been the
object of her " pity," afterwards became the
popular idol of all England and America, while
the propitious fortunes of the man of her
choice had meanwhile vanished and become
hopelessly dissipated.
  In the most fanciful of all Dickens' imagi-
nations he could scarcely have conceived a
more dramatic spectacle than this, in which
he involuntarily played the leading part. Hap-
pily, however, for the world at large - and
perhaps for Dickens himself -this early love
affair ended as it did; for if he had married
the object of his first love, the complacency of
his mind -for the time being, at least-
would have neutralized the ambition which,
fired by the sting of defeat and adversity,
produced one of the world's greatest literary
geniuses.
  In the fortunes of war the issue of a great
battle has often turned upon an incident of
                   [ xix I

 






apparently trivial consequence; and it has
frequently happened that single episodes of
seeming unimportance have brought fortune
and great renown to those of whom these
achievements were least expected. The most
painful experiences often prove to be blessings
in disguise, and it would be difficult to find
a more splendid demonstration of this truth
than we have in the life of Charles Dickens.
  In a letter to Mrs. Winter (nee Miss Bead-
nell) in 1855, he wrote: " Whatever of fancy,
romance, energy, passion, aspiration and deter-
mination belong to me, I never have separated
and never shall separate from the hard-hearted
little woman - you     whom    it is nothing to
say I would have died for with the greatest
alacrity. . . . It is a matter of perfect certainty
to me that I began to fight my way out of
poverty and obscurity with one perpetual idea
of you." l
  There can be no doubt that Dickens was
conscious of the fact that the stinging rebuff
administered to him was due to his lowly posi-
tion in life, and that this animated him with a
  1 He embarked at once in the field of literature, and in less than
eight months after the separation the first of his Sketcbes made their
appearance in magazine form. See passage from his letter to Forster,
quoted on pages 5 and 6, infra.
                     [ xx

 





zeal which he had never before experienced,
and which otherwise he would never have
possessed. This came at a singularly oppor-
tune time, when his mind was in its formative
stages, and the resolutions and impressions of
that period remained with him through life.
   In writing to Mrs. Winter in later years he
said: " I forget nothing of those times. They
are just as still and plain and clear as if I had
never been in a crowd since, and had never
seen or heard my own name out of my own
house. . . . You so belong to the days when
the qualities that have done me most good
since were growing in my boyish heart that I
cannot end my answer to you lightly." His
first love letters furnish unmistakable evi-
dence of his sincerity and steadfastness of pur-
pose,- qualities which ruled supreme to the
end. There have perhaps been few men who
throughout their lives have clung more tena-
ciously to the memories and ideals of youth.
  Those who have commonly ascribed a cold-
blooded and unresponsive nature to Dickens
will be surprised to learn from these letters
that there was concealed within him an abun-
dance of the tenderest sentiment, and that his
mind was highly impressible. There appears,
                   [ xxi I

 





however, to have been but one thing capable
of completely awakening these delicate sensi-
bilities, and that was the remembrance of his
first love. In his letter of February 1S, 1855,
in which he tenderly recalls the sad memories
of his youthful devotion, he said: " When I
firnd myself writing to you again, all to yourself,
hcw can I forbear to let as much light in upon
thzm as will show you that they are there
still I "
  In writing of Dora, in part XV of David
Copperfield (issued in July, 1850), under
the chapter heading, "Our Housekeeping,"
D: ckens said: "I look back on the time I
write of; I invoke the innocent figure that
I dearly loved, to come out from the mists and
sladows of the past and turn its gentle head
towards me once again; and I can still declare
that this one little speech was constantly in
my memory." Is it to be wondered that the
still living Dora should be seized with an
impulse to respond to this imploring speech
bat a man who had already become world-
renowned, any more than that t1ie lost dove in
the wilderness will respond to the distant call
oU its mate Is it surprising, moreover, when
she did respond by writing to him, that there
                   [ xxii I

 





should be "a stirring of the old fancies," as
he says That Dickens was not overstating
his former devotion for the original of Dora
may be seen from the following passage from
David Copperfield: "If I may so express it,
I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over
head and ears in love with her, but I was
saturated through and through. Enough love
might have been wrung out of me, metaphor-
ically speaking, to drown anybody in; and
there would have remained enough within me,
and all over me, to pervade my entire exist-
ence. .  . The sun shone Dora, and the birds
sang Dora. The wind blew Dora, and the
wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to
a bud."
  The later letters show that in order to es-
tablish a sure footing for the much desired
cordial relationship, Mrs. Winter felt herself
called upon to offer some plausible explanation
for her actions in early years, and whatever
her excuses were, assuredly they were accepted
at their full face value. Precisely what she
wrote to Dickens we shall never know, except
by inference from his reply,' in which he said:
  I It would appear that Mrs, Winter told Dickens how she had
pined for him after their relationship in early years was broken off;
                    [ xxiii ]

 






" If you had ever told me then what you tell
me now, I know      myself well enough to be
thoroughly assured that the simple truth and
energy which were in my love would have
overcome everything. . . . All this again you
have changed and set right -at once so cour-
ageously, so delicately and so gently, that you
open the way to a confidence between us
which still once more in perfect innocence and
good faith, may be between ourselves alone."
  Although Dickens was married to Miss
Hogarth three years after boldly vowing to
Maria Beadnell, -" I have never loved and I
ne ver can love any human creature breathing
but yourself," it is left to the reader to judge
whether or not these seemingly rash vows of
uidying devotion had any bearing upon the
" incompatibility of temperaments " which, un-
happily, resulted in estrangement and sepa-
r.tion from his wife more than twenty years
for in Little Dorrit he thus tauntingly records her explanation: "One
more remark," proceeded Flora with unslackened volubility, " I
w.sh to make, one more explanation I wish to offer, for five days I
hk.d a cold in the head from crying which I passed entirely in the
b:.ck drawing-room - there is the back drawing-room still on the
first floor and still at the back of the house to confirm my words."
It is noteworthy, however, that this was written after his disenchant-
n- ent, which occurred subsequent to writing the letter from which
the extract is taken.
                      [ xxiv]

 





later. The father of nine children, he wrote
Mrs. Winter in 1855, -" Nobody can ever
know with what a sad heart I resigned you,
or after what struggles and what a conflict.
My entire devotion to you and the wasted
tenderness of those hard years which I have
ever since half-loved, half-dreaded to recall,
made so deep an impression on me that I refer
to it a habit of suppression which now belongs
to me, which I know is no part of my original
nature, but which makes me chary of showing
my affections, even to my children, except
when they are very young." Here is the first
self-confessed reason for a dominant charac-
teristic in Dickens. His "habit of suppres-
sion" is a matter of common knowledge, but
perhaps no one ever supposed it to be "no
part of his original nature," or that it was
acquired through disappointment in love.
  Let it not be supposed, however, that the
Mrs. Winter who later came into his life was
a contributory factor in his unfortunate domes-
tic infelicity. It was in Dickens' nature to
live more in his books and idealities than in
the bosom of his family, and it is doubtful
if there was to be found one woman in a
thousand who could have made both him and
                   [ xxv I

 





herself happy under these conditions. Later
developments prove that he was more in earnest
than might have been imagined when in 1833
he wrote Maria Beadnell, -" My feeling on
one subject was early roused; it has been
strong, and it will be lasting."
   Although of a private nature, the correspond-
en(:e contains nothing which need shock
the most sensitive morals. The author does
not expose himself to unfavorable comment;
for the sentiments expressed are mostly ani-
mated reflections of passions and impulses of
bygone days, which he has permanently re-
co]rded, and given dramatic color by the eloquent
descriptive powers of a brilliant and matured
mind. There is nothing in the letters that
could militate against his reputation, or mini-
mize the reverence in which his memory is
held. The letters having been written to one
outside of the author's own family, we may be
absolved from any charge of exposing inviolable
confidences.
  If while reflecting upon fondly cherished
mrmories of the past, Dickens unbosomed
himself in an unguarded moment, with no
thought that the world would ever be the wiser,
this affords no reason why his admirers of
                   1 xxvi ]

 





to-day should be denied admission to his con-
fidence, and to a resultant better understand-
ing of his true character. He was to a large
extent a pablic servant, because he was de-
pendent upon the patronage of the public for
his popularity and support; therefore the world
at large has perhaps a higher claim upon him
than Mrs. Winter ever had, and there can be
no logical excuse at this time for withholding
facts which will be as new and interesting to
his readers as they were precious to Mrs.
Winter. No matter how studiously we may
have pondered over the writings and biogra-
phies of Charles Dickens, after reading the
contents of this volume we shall surely know
him as we never knew him before, and feel a
greatly renewed interest in many of his writ-
ings, -particularly in David Copperfield and
Little Dorrit.
  By no means the least interesting among
these letters are the ones written last in the
second series, after the author's disenchant-
ment. It is to be remembered that the letters
which are so overflowing with tender remem-
brances and gushing sentiment were all written
before the "meeting" took place.   One of
the strangest features of the whole romance is
                   [ Xxvii ]

 





that Dickens appears to have lived for years
in CL perpetual dream, in which he could never
pic-ure the girl he had loved in any real or
imaginative situation apart from that in which
he had known her in his boyhood. In one of
his exuberant moods he wrote to Mrs. Winter,
   ` You are always the same in my remem-
brance. When you say you are 'toothless, fat,
old, and ugly' (which I don't believe), I fly
away to the house in Lombard Street, which
is pulled down, as if it were necessary that the
very bricks and mortar should go the way of
my airy castles, and see you in a sort of rasp-
berry colored dress with a little black trimming
at the top -black velvet it seems to be made
of -cut into vandykes - an immense number
of vandykes - with my boyish heart pinned
lik! a captured butterfly on every one of
them." But when the awakening finally came,
alas, he found that the " vision of his youth "
had, as a living reality, fallen far short of his
fanciful idealization.  The dream of twenty
years was over, and the displeasures of the
sudden awakening were forthwith recorded
in Littk Dorrit,' where the Dora of his youth
  I If the reader has a copy of Little Dorrit at hand, turn to one of
its arly chapters, entitled " Patriarchal," and read it through.  For
                   [ xxviii ]

 





was transformed into the Flora of his mature
years.

   Note.-The foregoing Preface was written
before the manuscripts were placed in the hands
of Professor Baker, and the impressions and
deductions recorded are such as presented
themselves to the writer after a careful study
of the correspondence. It was the intention
to omit from these prefatory remarks any pas-
sages that might prove to be a repetition of
comments made by the editor, but upon com-
paring this with his work it was found that
scarcely any of the comments are paralleled,
and that conclusions disagree in but a single
instance -that in relation to the Mary Anne
Leigh   episode.    It will be   seen   that Pro-
fessor Baker contends that she herself was
in love with Dickens and that the seed of
dissension sowed by her resulted from this
Clennam, substitute Dickens; for Flora Finching, substitute Mrs.
Winter; and supplant Mr. Casby by Mr. George Beadnell, Maria Bead-
nell's father. How undisguisedly Dickens expresses his characteristic
melancholy in making Clennam say, as he sat musing before the
dying embers in the fireplace,-" And turned his gaze back upon
the gloomy vista by which he had come to that stage in his exist-
ence: ' So long, so bare, so blank I No childhood, no youth. ex-
cept for one remembrance; ' the one remembrance proved, only that
day, to be a piece of folly I . . . The one tender recollection of his
experience would not bear the test, and melted away."
                      [ xxix ]

 





attachment and her consequent pique over
her inability to obtain any responsiveness from
hin. Although with no thought of putting
forth any theory in opposition to that of the
distinguished editor, yet the point is admittedly
an interesting one, and since intricate puzzles
are more or less absorbing, particularly when
they concern the bewildering mysteries of a
woman's heart, it may be that the reader will
enjoy the contrasting views presented.
                       HENRY H. HARPER



[ xxx ]

 























                    " DORA"
    After original painting by James Fagan, specially
for The Bibliophile Society; in the colors of the
original.
    " I never saw such curls--how could 1, for there
never were such curls! --as those she shook out to
hide her blushes. As to the straw hat, and blue
ribbons, which was on the top of the curls, if I could
only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham
Street, what a priceless possession it would hav
heen! ' --DAVID COPPERFIELD.


  This page in the original text is blank.


 








CHARLES DICKENS



   AND MARIA BEADNELL (" DORA")

   LETTERS written by Charles Dickens in his
youth are extremely rare. Four only have been
printed. His Letters, edited by his sister-in-
law, Miss Georgina Hogarth, and his daughter
Mary, contain only three dated before 1837,
when Dickens was already twenty-five years
old. One of these, written in 1833, is to his
future brother-in-law, Henry Austin, and two,
of 1835, are to his fiancee, Miss Catherine
Hogarth. The editors state that though their
"request for the loan of letters was so promptly
and fully responded to, that we have been pro-
vided with more than sufficient material for
our work," yet they " have been able to procure
so few early letters of any general interest that
we have put these first years together."' Under
the dates 1833-36 they print only the three
letters already mentioned, -one of these, as
given, only a fragment.
    I The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1 vol., 1893, pp. vii, 3.
                  1 1 1

 






   In Hotten's Cbarles Dickens, the Story of his
Life, a letter of the reportorial days of Dickens
on the Morning Cbronick (183 5-36) is printed
with the comment, -" This is, in all likelihood,
the Dnly letter of Dickens' reporting days now
in eKistence."'
   That letters written to Dickens in this early
part of his career should be lacking is easily
explained. In September, 1860, he carefully
destroyed all correspondence up to that time
received by him. Writing to Mr. Wills, his
fellow-editor of Housebold Words and All the
Year Round, he said: -
   "Yesterday [Sept. 3] I burnt in the field at
Gad's Hill the accumulated letters and papers
of twenty years.    They sent up a smoke like
the genie when he got out of the casket on the
seashore; and as it was an exquisite day when
I began, and rained very heavil