It is generally safe to be cautious about very short letters. The forger well knows how difficult is the task of maintaining an assumed character. Just as the mimic may succeed in reproducing the tone and manner of a person with sufficient closeness to deceive even the most intimate acquaintances of the subject, yet fail to carry the deception beyond a few words or phrases, so the literary forger invariably breaks down when he attempts to simulate handwriting over many sentences. So conscious is he of this great difficulty that he often avoids it by boldly copying some genuine letter. We have had offered to us "guaranteed" Thackeray letters which we immediately recognised as such. In one particularly glaring case the forger had copied the original letter very fairly so far as the penmanship was concerned, but while the original was written on a half sheet of note paper, the forgery was on a different size paper, and the writing across the length of the paper instead of the breadth. This naturally disarranged the spacing between the words, which in all Thackeray's writings is a pronouncedly regular feature, and this variation was in itself sufficient to excite suspicion.
The popularity of Dickens among collectors grows steadily. Despite the fact that he was an industrious correspondent, and that a very large number of his letters appear from time to time in the market, the demand is ever in excess of the supply. As a consequence he has suffered perhaps more than any of the literary immortals at the hands of the forger. Yet it is safe to say that there should be no writer so safe from fraudulent imitation, for there is a peculiar distinctiveness about his caligraphic productions that once seen and noted should never be forgotten. Specimens are easily available. The catalogues of dealers are constantly presenting them, and most public libraries possess examples, either in the original holograph or in some form of reproduction.
Probably no writer preserved his style with such little change as Dickens. His signature in later years varied somewhat from that of his literary youth, but the body of his handscript retained throughout the same characteristics. It was always a free, fluent, graceful hand, legible as that of Thackeray when its leading peculiarities have been mastered, but less formal and studied than his. It was always remarkably free from corrections or interlineations. He wrote with the easy freedom of the stenographer; indeed it is easy to recognise in the delicate gracefully formed letters the effect of years of training in the most difficult and exacting form of handscript.
Perhaps the leading peculiarities in the Dickens holograph are these:—
The date of the month is never expressed in figures, but always written in full; in fact, abbreviation in any form he never countenanced.
The letter y, both as a capital and a small letter is a figure 7 except in the affix "ly," when the two letters become an f or long stroke s.
The letter t is crossed by the firm downward bar, which the character readers claim as a sign of great resolution.
Letter g is invariable in form.
Capital E consists of a downstroke with a bar in the centre.
The hook of many final letters has a tendency to turn backwards.