Even the prolific Dickens struggled with writer’s block.

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Ever struggled to write? It’s a problem that most authors face, even those as great as Charles Dickens. Given the length of so many of Dickens’s novels, it is difficult to believe that he ever had a moment’s hesitation when he sat down to write. But Dickens was not immune to writer’s block, or the anxiety induced by the sight of a blank page and an impending deadline. And, by Dickens’s own admission, he wasn’t much fun to be around when the words just wouldn’t flow.

This letter, in which he describes his anguish at being unable to write, was written to Angela Burdett-Coutts on 19 February 1856, as he struggled with Little Dorrit. Unable to write part six (chapters 19 to 22), he found himself “Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out of [the] window, tearing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up, going out, coming in, a Monster to my family, a dread Phenomonon to myself.” Nevertheless, Dickens surmounted his difficulties and met his deadline a few weeks later, on March 8. This letter shows that even when Dickens couldn’t produce fiction, he could always write an amusing, self-dramatizing letter to a friend.

To Miss Burdett-Coutts, 19 February 1856
49 Champs Elysées, Tuesday Nineteenth February 1856

My Dear Miss Coutts.

Walter was born on 8th. of February 1841. His name (a mild one) is Walter Landor. Birthday, eighth of February eighteen hundred and forty one. Name, Walter Landor. No vegetable designation, no flower, no beast, no terrors of any description.

I don't know Dr. Sandwith.

Your note finds me settling myself to Little Dorrit again, and in the usual wretchedness of such settlement — which is unsettlement. Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out of window, tearing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up, going out, coming in, a Monster to my family, a dread Phenomonon to myself, &c &c &c

With love to Mrs. Brown

Ever Dear Miss Coutts | Most Faithfully & affec Yours

CD.

Can you help decipher a page of Dickens’s shorthand?

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In my previous post I focused on a letter in which Dickens recalled how, at the age of fifteen, he had applied himself “with a celestial or diabolical energy to the study of such things as would qualify me to be a first-rate Parliamentary Reporter.” In that letter Dickens referred to his mastery of Gurney’s system of shorthand, which he learned under the tutelage of J. H. Barrow, his maternal uncle. In the same letter he proclaimed himself to be “the best Short Hand Writer in the World.” The Morgan’s undated shorthand draft was acquired by Pierpont Morgan some time before 1913, but it seems to have been overlooked by the editors of the Pilgrim Edition. In David Copperfield, Dickens described the system of shorthand created by Thomas Gurney as “that savage stenographic mystery.”

I thought that it would be interesting to show a sample of Dickens’s shorthand. This is a single-page shorthand draft. Given that it is written on a sheet bearing the letterhead “Tavistock House,” where Dickens lived from 1851 until 1860, we can assume that it was written sometime during that decade, and that it is possibly the draft of a letter. We know that Dickens used shorthand for drafting letters throughout his life. Such shorthand drafts are extremely rare, probably because the draft was discarded or destroyed once Dickens had copied it out in long hand and put the letter in the mail. The Morgan has only one example of a shorthand draft in Dickens’s hand, and according to the Pilgrim Edition, there are only two other shorthand drafts extant, one at the Charles Dickens Museum in London, and another at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Can you help solve the stenographic mystery of this manuscript by transcribing Dickens’s shorthand draft? We are eager to know if this shorthand text is a letter, and to whom it is addressed, and exactly when it was written. My working hypothesis is that this text may have been an exercise written for Arthur Stone, the son of Dickens’s friend and illustrator Frank Stone. In 1859, after Frank Stone’s death, Dickens became a second father to Stone’s sons, Arthur and Marcus, and helped them to advance their respective careers. In 1859-1860 he taught Arthur Stone the Gurney system of shorthand and, in 1864, commissioned his brother Marcus to illustrate Our Mutual Friend. The Benoliel Collection, at the Free Library of Philadelphia, has five shorthand notebooks Dickens used to teach Arthur Stone, with extensive notes in Dickens’s hand, and with his corrections of Stone’s shorthand.

Please  (or comment) if you are able to decipher the Morgan’s shorthand draft, it would be a service to scholarship, and would assist us in improving our catalog records.

Why does Dickens continue to prove such an elusive subject for biographers? Curator Declan Kiely takes a look at one particularly revealing letter.

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Dickens wrote this letter—which made him feel like “a wild beast in a caravan, describing himself in the keeper’s absence”—in response to a request from his friend, Wilkie Collins, for some biographical details. It was highly unusual for Dickens to reveal personal information in his correspondence; he had done so only once before, twenty years earlier, at the request of another journalist who sought information for a biographical sketch. Except with his wife, and his closest friend (and later biographer) John Forster, Dickens was reticent about his early life.

But in January 1856 Dickens signed a contract with the French publisher Hachette to produce a complete translation of his novels and, in response to increasing interest in Dickens’s work in France, Collins was asked to assist Emile Durand Forgues to write what we would now refer to as an author profile. Forgues’s essay, published in the Paris weekly journal L’Ami de la Maison, incorporated all of the information Dickens was prepared to reveal in this letter. Read today, however, the letter is fascinating for its candor, self-deprecation (and self-promotion), and for what is left out or left unsaid. Dickens notably excludes any mention of the fact that, at the age of twelve, he was withdrawn from school and sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he spent ten hours each day pasting labels onto pots of blacking, which was used for boot polish. For Dickens, this interlude remained always “the secret agony of my soul,” and it was only revealed to the public after Dickens’s death, when Forster published his biography.

Dickens is amusingly unafraid to make large claims for himself in his letter—that he is “the best and most rapid Reporter ever known,” and “the best Short Hand Writer in the World.” And yet, this self-confident boast stands in stark contrast with his lackluster educational attainment—he says that he was able to distinguish himself at school “like a Brick.”

He also leaves out the notable failure of his editorship of The Daily News, the massive success of his Christmas books, his successful editorship of the magazine Household Words, or his considerable philanthropic endeavors, although his postscript includes an example of his prowess as a fund-raiser for good causes. Future posts will delve into these other aspects of Dickens’s biography.

At the end of the letter Dickens sends his “kindest regard to Mrs. Glutch”—Collins’s name for his London landlady, and a name that sounds like it could have come straight out of one of Dickens’s own novels. But my favorite part of this letter, its most interesting statement, is Dickens’s acutely insightful declaration that “I had been a writer when I was a mere Baby, and always an Actor from the same age.” It is what readers of Dickens’s work have always recognized, of course: that the root of the author’s creative energies, and the source material for his greatest fiction lay in childhood, and its formative early experiences.

To Wilkie Collins, 6 June 1856

Tavistock House, Sixth June 1856

My Dear Collins

I have never seen anything about myself in Print, which has much correctness in it — any biographical account of myself, I mean. I do not supply such particulars when I am asked for them by editors and compilers, simply because I am asked for them every day. If you want to prime Forgues you may tell him without fear of being wrong, That I was born at Portsmouth on the 7th. of February 1812. That my father was in the Navy Pay office. That I was taken by him to Chatham when I was very young, and lived and was educated there till I was — 12 or 13, I suppose. That I was then put to a school near London, where (as at the other place) I distinguished myself like a Brick. That I was put in the office of a Solicitor, a friend of my father's, and didn't much like it, and after a couple of years (as well as I can remember) applied myself with a celestial or diabolical energy to the study of such things as would qualify me to be a first-rate Parliamentary Reporter — at that time a calling pursued by many clever men who were young at the Bar. That I made my debut in the Gallery (at about 18, I suppose), engaged on a Voluminous publication no longer in existence, called The Mirror of Parliament. That when the Morning Chronicle was purchased by Sir John Easthope and acquired a large circulation I was engaged there, and that I remained there until I had begun to publish Pickwick; when I found myself in a condition to relinquish that part of my labors. That I left the reputation behind me of being the best and most rapid Reporter ever known, and that I could do anything in that way under any sort of circumstances — and often did. (I dare say I am at this present writing, the best Short Hand Writer in the World.)

That I began, without any interest or introduction of any kind, to write fugitive pieces for the old Monthly Magazine, when I was in the Gallery for the Mirror of Parliament. That my faculty for descriptive writing was seized upon, the moment I joined the Morning Chronicle, and that I was liberally paid there, and handsomely acknowledged, and wrote the greater part of the short descriptive "Sketches by Boz" in that paper. That I had been a writer when I was a mere Baby, and always an Actor from the same age.

That I married the daughter of a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh who was the great friend and assistant of Scott, and who first made Lockhart known to him.

And That here I am.

Finally, if you want any dates of publication of books, tell Wills and he'll get them for you.

This is the first time I ever set down even these particulars, and, glancing them over, I feel like a Wild Beast in a Caravan, describing himself in the keeper's absence.

With my kindest regard to Mrs. Glutch.

Ever Faithfully

CD.

I made a Speech last night at the London Tavern, at the end of which all the Company sat holding their napkins to their eyes with one hand, and putting the other into their pockets. A hundred people or so, contributed Nine Hundred Pounds, then and there.

This blog features letters from Charles Dickens drawn from the Morgan's collection, which includes over 1,500 of his letters. The Morgan has the largest collection of Dickens's letters in the United States, surpassed in number only by the Dickens House Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. Posts will include images of Dickens letters with a complete transcription, and a brief commentary on content and context. A Letter from Charles Dickens will allow readers of the blog to discover for the first time—or renew their acquaintance with—Dickens's notable letters.

Needless to say, I needed to be extremely selective when deciding which of the Morgan's letters to include in the exhibition Charles Dickens at 200. The twenty letters that will be on display from September 23, 2011, until February 12, 2012, represent less than a third of the exhibition checklist, and a tiny percentage of the Morgan's collection. This was to allow the inclusion of a representative selection of important literary manuscripts, printed editions, photographs, original illustrations, caricatures, playbills, and realia (some everyday objects owned and used by Dickens).   

This blog aims to redress the exclusion of some remarkable letters that, for various reasons, did not fit into the exhibition's seven sections, which includes topics as diverse as philanthropy and mesmerism. Posts will include images of a Dickens letter with a complete transcription, and a brief commentary on its content and context. Although almost all of Dickens's letters have been published in the magnificent twelve-volume Pilgrim Edition (1965–2002), many readers and admirers of Dickens's fiction may not be familiar with his correspondence. As the scholar John Butt pointed out half a century ago, Dickens's letters “make good reading in themselves,” and “throw light on the conditions in which a great novelist wrote his books.”

In his invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing letters, Dickens “expressed both his mood and his mind on a great variety of topics with ease and freedom.” (John Butt, The Yale University Library Gazette, April 1962). His letters have been absolutely indispensable as source material for Dickens's numerous biographers, and are widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of the Dickens canon. 

Dickens would be furious, of course. He reviled the idea of his letters being published and, to protect the privacy of those who wrote to him—and safeguard his own privacy—burned a huge amount of his incoming correspondence. Henry Dickens, one of Dickens's seven sons, recalled roasting onions in the ashes of the bonfire that consumed twenty years' worth of his father's correspondence in September 1860. As Claire Tomalin points out in her excellent new biography, “if he [Charles Dickens] had had his way, no one would have seen any of his letters.”

Dickens was not the only destroyer of letters: surprisingly, his closest friend, John Forster, whom Dickens nominated to write his biography, is believed to have burned all but fifty-five of the more than 1,000 letters quoted in the three-volume biography. As Tom Stoppard wrote in his play The Invention of Love, “posterity has a brisk way with manuscripts: scholarship is a small redress against the vast unreason of what is taken from us.” Fortunately, many of the recipients of Dickens's letters treasured and preserved them, and an astonishingly high number survive – approximately 15,000 are included in the Pilgrim Edition, which is reckoned to be a high proportion of the correspondence Dickens wrote.