Description:

Dickens Charles



Charles Dickens, Ghost Hunter! Letter Re: Hertfordshire Haunted House Same Year he Published The Haunted House

 

1p ALS signed by British novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) as "CharlesDickens" at lower center. Written on November 15, 1859 at Dickens's home in London. On "Tavistock House, / Tavistock Square, London. W.C." letterhead, the watermarked cream bifold paper inscribed overall in blue ink. The remaining pages are blank. A little surface grime, stray ink spots on last page, and expected paper folds, else near fine. 4.5" x 7".

 

When he penned this letter to fellow British writer William Howitt (1792-1879), Dickens was a wildly popular, commercially successful, and established man of letters.

 

In full, with unchanged spelling and grammar:

 

"Tuesday Fifteenth November, 1859

 

Dear Sir

 

My friend - whom you altogether mistake for somebody else whom I dont know of - has an idea of taking the Haunted House at Cheshunt actry Mer [?]. Can you tell me to whom application should be made about it?

 

Faithfully Yours,

CharlesDickens

___________

_______

____

 

William Howitt Esquire."

 

The letter is significant when you consider its remarkable back story. According to Dickens biographer Michael Slater, Howitt and Dickens had recently engaged in a "an increasingly tetchy semi-public correspondence" about spiritualism which had appeared in The Critic. Howitt strongly maintained that spiritualism was real, while Dickens had some reservations. Remaining unconvinced of the existence of the supernatural, he had elsewhere referred to Howitt as "a kind of arch-rapper among the rappers," referring to the popular spiritualist practice of table-rapping. (Michael Slater, Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 478-479.)

 

Dickens inquired of Howitt as to the location of a haunted house in Cheshunt, England (a London suburb located 12 miles to the north) that Howitt had visited, and that had been featured in Catherine Crowe's 2-volume The Night Side of Nature, or, Ghosts and Ghost-seers (London: T.C. Newby, 1848). Though the house had been described in "Chapter XIII: Haunted Houses" of Crowe's book, and visited by Howitt, Dickens was apparently unable to find it, as it was partially torn down.

 

Dickens loved a good ghost story, like all Victorians. He had capitalized on the popular tradition of recounting ghost stories at Christmastime with his A Christmas Carol (1843). Now sixteen years and many works later, Dickens was preparing another Christmastime ghost story. The Haunted House was published in Dickens's periodical All The Year Round on December 13, 1859, and was almost certainly inspired by Dickens's debate about spiritualism with Howitt, and possibly even by the haunted house in Cheshunt mentioned in the letter.

 

The Haunted House is an example of a "portmanteau story," so-called because the primary author's contributions appear at the beginning and end, with stories written by other authors appearing in between. The story takes place in a neglected Georgian manor located somewhere in the English countryside. The narrator and his friends lease the house to conduct spiritual research, eventually reporting their findings in the form of The Haunted House.

 

Simultaneous to preparing The Haunted House, Dickens was wrapping up the serial publication of A Tale of Two Cities, this last which had appeared in weekly issues since late April 1859. Dickens would use the same publication as a vehicle for his next major work Great Expectations, which would appear in serial form between December 1860 and August 1861. All The Year Round, the successor periodical of Household Words, was published between 1859-1895. Frequent magazine contributors Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell had co-written The Haunted House.

 

Charles Dickens and his family lived at Tavistock House, a London rowhouse, between 1851-1860 (although Dickens's wife Catherine and he had separated in 1858). It was here that Dickens wrote Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and as we know, The Haunted House.

 


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