NARRATIVE.

We have been able to procure so few early letters of any general interest that we put these first years together.  Charles Dickens was then living, as a bachelor, in Furnival’s Inn, and was engaged as a parliamentary reporter on The Morning Chronicle.  The “Sketches by Boz” were written during these years, published first in “The Monthly Magazine” and continued in The Evening Chronicle.  He was engaged to be married to Catherine Hogarth in 1835 ­the marriage took place on the 2nd April, 1836; and he continued to live in Furnival’s Inn with his wife for more than a year after their marriage.  They passed the summer months of that year in a lodging at Chalk, near Gravesend, in the neighbourhood associated with all his life, from his childhood to his death.  The two letters which we publish, addressed to his wife as Miss Hogarth, have no date, but were written in 1835.  The first of the two refers to the offer made to him by Chapman and Hall to edit a monthly periodical, the emolument (which he calls “too tempting to resist!”) to be fourteen pounds a month.  The bargain was concluded, and this was the starting of “The Pickwick Papers.”  The first number was published in March, 1836.  The second letter to Miss Hogarth was written after he had completed three numbers of “Pickwick,” and the character who is to “make a decided hit” is “Jingle.”

The first letter of this book is addressed to Henry Austin, a friend from his boyhood, who afterwards married his second sister Letitia.  It bears no date, but must have been written in 1833 or 1834, during the early days of his reporting for The Morning Chronicle; the journey on which he was “ordered” being for that paper.

Furnival’sinn, Wednesday Night, past 12.

LETTER TO MR. HENRY AUSTIN

DEAR HENRY
I have just been ordered on a journey‚ the length of which is at present uncertain.  I may be back on Sunday very probably‚ and start again on the following day.  Should this be the case‚ you shall hear from me before.

Don’t laugh.  I am going (alone) in a gig; and, to quote the eloquent inducement which the proprietors of Hampstead chays hold out to Sunday riders ­“the gen’l’m’n drives himself.”  I am going into Essex and Suffolk.  It strikes me I shall be spilt before I pay a turnpike.  I have a presentiment I shall run over an only child before I reach Chelmsford, my first stage.

Let the evident haste of this specimen of “The Polite Letter Writer” be its excuse, and

Believe me, dear Henry, most sincerely yours,

[HW:  Charles Dickens]

NOTE. ­To avoid the monotony of a constant repetition, we propose to dispense with the signature at the close of each letter, excepting to the first and last letters of our collection.  Charles Dickens’s handwriting altered so much during these years of his life, that we have thought it advisable to give a facsimile of his autograph to this our first letter; and we reproduce in the same way his latest autograph.

LETTER TO MISS HOGARTH

FURNIVAL’S INN, Wednesday Evening, 1835.

MY DEAREST KATE,

The House is up; but I am very sorry to say that I must stay at home.  I have had a visit from the publishers this morning, and the story cannot be any longer delayed; it must be done to-morrow, as there are more important considerations than the mere payment for the story involved too.  I must exercise a little self-denial, and set to work.

They (Chapman and Hall) have made me an offer of fourteen pounds a month, to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four woodcuts.  I am to make my estimate and calculation, and to give them a decisive answer on Friday morning.  The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too tempting to resist.

Sunday Evening.

I have at this moment got Pickwick and his friends on the Rochester coach, and they are going on swimmingly, in company with a very different character from any I have yet described, who I flatter myself will make a decided hit.  I want to get them from the ball to the inn before I go to bed; and I think that will take me until one or two o’clock at the earliest.  The publishers will be here in the morning, so you will readily suppose I have no alternative but to stick at my desk.