Item Info

Accession Number: 87-405
Physical Description: [2] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square London
     Tuesday Evening Fifteenth May 1855
Dear Sir
            After I had the pleasure of meeting you at Milne’s[1], I was unexpectedly occupied out of town [2] for a while, and so missed the opportunity of seeing you again—for the time. But pray let me say in the plainest and heartiest manner, that I saw you with the greatest interest, and sincerely hope to know you better.[3]
            I have a letter (from someone in the City)[5], asking me to subscribe to a volume of the Postman’s poems.[4] I have of course expressed my readiness to do so [6], and this little correspondence has put it in my mind to write to you and ask you to remember what we agreed upon—I mean, that if you should see anything from his hand that you think I could have the pleasure of printing in Household Words, at least to let me read it with that object in view.[7]

           With much respect and regards
                Believe me
                          Very faithfully yours
                          Charles Dickens

The Reverend Charles Kingsley.

MssDate: Tuesday Evening Fifteenth May 1855
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

[1]  At dinner on 24 Mar (Guest List, MS Trinity College, and Cambridge); in Apr, Kingsley wrote to his wife: “CD was a dinner and he and fraternized. He is a really genial lovable man with an eye like a hawk. Not high bred but excellent company, and very sensible. But Mrs Dickens! Oh the fat vulgar vacancy!”  (given in Susan Chitty, “The Beast and the Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley, 1974, p. 174).
[2] Possibly the occasion mentioned in “To Millais, 10 Apr.
[3] For Dickens’s relationship with Kingsley and the Christian Socialists, see N.C. Peyrouton, “CD and te Christian Socialists; The Kingsley –Charles Dickens Myth”, D LVIII (1962), 96-109.
[4] William F. Rock, stationer, of Walbrook;  wrote the preface to Edward Capern’s Poems.
[5] Edward Capern of Devon, a rural letter-carrier from Bideford to Buckland Brewer and its neighborhood; married, with two children and the threat of his going blind led him to the attempt to provide money by publication.
[6] Capern’s Poems were published in 1856; subscribers, besides Dickens included Kingsley, Tennyson, Landor, Eliza Cook, W.M. Praed, J.A. Froude and Rowland Hill.
[7] In Feb 55, Kingsley had sent Thomas Hughes Capern’s thoughts on Sunday post office labour and some poetry “in hopes that you may get CD and the Household Word to take some notice either of him or of the subject. While Capern opposed Sunday mail delivery Dickens supported it (“The Sunday Screw”, HW, 22 June 50, I, 289-92). Nothing by or about Capern ever appeared in Household Words. 

Recipient: Kingsley, Charles, 1819-1875
Provenance: Hamilton, 3/1956, Matlack Fund.

Bibliography:

Volume 7, pp. 621-622, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey; associate editors, W.J. Carlton…[et al.] 

Country: Creation Place Note:Tavistock House
Country:England
City/Town/Township:London

Call Number: DL K614 1855-05-15
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author