1843.
NARRATIVE.
We have, unfortunately, very few letters of interest in this year. But we are able to give the commencement of Charles Dickens's correspondence with his beloved friends, Mr. Douglas Jerrold and Mr. Clarkson Stanfield; with Lord Morpeth (afterwards Lord Carlisle), for whom he always entertained the highest regard; and with Mr. Charles Babbage.
He was at work upon "Martin Chuzzlewit" until the end of the year, when he also wrote and published the first of his Christmas stories—"The Christmas Carol."
He was much distressed by the sad fate of Mr. Elton (a respected actor), who was lost in the wreck of the Pegasus, and was very eager and earnest in his endeavours to raise a fund on behalf of Mr. Elton's children.
We are sorry to be unable to give any explanation as to the nature of the Cockspur Street Society, mentioned in this first letter to Mr. Charles Babbage. But we publish it notwithstanding, considering it to be one of general interest.
The "Little History of England" was never finished—not, that is to say, the one alluded to in the letter to Mr. Jerrold.
Mr. David Dickson kindly furnishes us with an explanation of the letter dated 10th May. "It was," he says, "in answer to a letter from me, pointing out that the 'Shepherd' in 'Pickwick' was apparently reflecting on the scriptural doctrine of the new birth."
The beginning of the letter to Mr. Jerrold (15th June) is, as will be readily understood, an imaginary cast of a purely imaginary play. A portion of this letter has already been published, in Mr. Blanchard Jerrold's life of his father. It originated in a proposal of Mr. Webster's—the manager of the Haymarket Theatre—to give five hundred pounds for a prize comedy by an English author.