"TO HAVE A POSSIBILITY OF A CHANCE": DICKENS AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED

DICKENS, Charles. Autograph letter signed. Tavistock House, 12 April 1852. Octavo, 1-1/2 pages mounted together, measuring 4-1/4 by 9-1/2 inches; handsomely framed with portrait, entire piece measures 19 by 20 inches. $13,500.

Autograph letter signed to G.L. Chesterton, a close friend of Dickens and governor of the Middlesex House of Correction in Coldbath Fields, which had a reputation as one of the most severe of the London penitentiaries.

The letter, written from Tavistock house and dated April 12, 1852, discusses Mary Anne Church, one of the charity girls in whose welfare Dickens and Miss (later Baroness) Burdett-Coutts took an interest in this period, but whose unrestrained "pilfering propensities" made her a particular problem. Apparently Mary Anne Church was not interested in being saved, though Dickens and Miss Coutts were determined. Dickens requests information about the place "where they take all sorts and conditions of impracticable girls in, if they will work," confiding that they think they will have to send Church away, "… and Miss Coutts wants her to have some sort of a possibility of a chance, in leaving the place where she has been such a consistent botheration." The association between Dickens and Miss Burdett-Coutts was an interesting one; she was an immensely wealthy philanthropist who allied herself with Dickens in numerous projects over many years. "They both observed in each other something which they recognized in themselves, a genuine concern and compassion for the poor which went beyond the political or social mores of the time. That is why Dickens began to act as her unpaid agent, revealing to her some of the more remediable evils in nineteenth-century London and collaborating with her in the effort to alleviate them" (Ackroyd). It was with her cooperation and that of Chesterton that Dickens launched numerous philanthropic efforts including, the reform of the ragged schools, and a "Home for Fallen Women," which was supposed to give them domestic training and preparation for a respectable life, and to which Chesterton sent a few of his inmates. It is of particular interest that during the period of this letter Dickens was writing Bleak House, one of his most eloquent portrayals of the situation of the poor in the face of what he called "this monstrous system." The letter closes with the line, "Mr. Illingworth will show you a good letter to Miss Coutts from Mary Anne Browne." The Rev. Edward Illingworth was Chaplain at Coldbath Fields and was apparently among those taken in by Miss Church. Mary Anne Browne, however, was an example of the success of Dickens' and Miss Burdett-Coutts' efforts. The present letter is printed in the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters, vol. VI (1988), p. 640.

Fine condition.