Item Info

Accession Number: 2001-68
Physical Description: [3] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

  Tavistock House
  Saturday Night
  Twelfth December 1857
Dear Sir
 although there is a very droll (and an original) idea in the farce, I doubt if it would do on the stage. I don't think it ends as well as it opens, and I don't see enough for an actor to "make" in it. By far the best part is Mr. Maresnest's, but you could not hold the stage with the piece, unless Cranky were done by a good actor; and, as the piece stands, a good Farce-actor would not play the said Cranky, because the character is really not strong enough to win the presence and eye of an audience all that time. I am not giving you this opinion as a writer, but as a an actor.
  What the Farce wants, for the stage, is the throwing of a great deal more into Cranky's hands through some some addition in the plot which would place him in a more ludicrous position, by involving him in some new complication of his own respecting it..as for instance, if he had some
tremendous grudge against some common-place man of whom he only knew that his name began with a P- or if he had a rival of the name of Podgers, before he married Mrs. Cranky—or if a defaulting Podgers had disappeared with Mrs Cranky's marriage portion—or if the Bank of Dodgers and Dodgers had failed and damaged him—and the thing, whatever it might be, were set right at last by the appearance (to make restitution) of that Dodgers, who really was born there,  but should explain that it had not been his intention to be born there but that his mother had been frightened by a Poet in the neighbourhood of Bedlam, and fled to that apartment (or relations) for refuge in a hackney carriage—then I think you might get Mr Buckstone to the rescue. The solicitous gentlemen and ladies should then rush off to the neighbourhood of Bedlam in search of the immortal Podgers, and the mortal Dodgers should throw the end of the piece into Mr Cranky's mouth. 
  With some ingenuity and invention in such a direction. I believe the Farce might succeed greatly. Otherwise, no.
  Faithfully yours
 Charles Dickens
John Hollingshead Esquire

MssDate: 12 December 1857
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

Letter refers to Hollingshead's "The Birthplace of Podgers, an Original" Domestic Sketch in one Act" based on W. Moy Thomas's investigations into the poet Chatterton's place of death which were published in the "Athenaeum, 5 Dec 57. Dickens's suggestions were not taken.
 

Recipient: Hollingshead, John
Provenance: Holmes 5/01, Gratz fund.

Bibliography:

Volume 8, pp. 492-493, 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 H725 1857-12-12
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author