Sir—I disdain to reply to Mr. Cruikshank’s preposterous assertions, except to give them, as before, a flat contradiction.—Your faithful servant, W. Harrison Ainsworth.
11th April 1872.
To this the Editor added:—‘We can publish no more letters on this subject.’
It will be seen in my second letter that I intended to give an explanation of this affair in a work I am preparing for the press, but, as ‘delays are dangerous,’ it occurred to me that I had better bring forward my statement without delay.
As Mr. Ainsworth’s positive and flat contradictions and his contemptible insinuation as to my labouring under a singular delusion have led some persons to form erroneous ideas and to draw false conclusions upon this question, I feel placed in a very serious position as regards my character for truthfulness and the condition of my intellect; and I am therefore compelled in self-defence to place certain facts before the public to prove beyond the fear of contradiction that what I have asserted is the truth, and that it is Mr. Ainsworth who is labouring under a delusion, or has unfortunately lost his memory.
And in order that this question may be clearly understood, I now proceed to give a full and particular account of all the professional transactions between myself and Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth when we were both on the most friendly terms and both working together to amuse the public; and also to show how it was that this friendship and joint labour ceased, now some twenty-eight years ago; and although I feel it a positive duty to myself to make these statements, it is, nevertheless, to me rather a painful task, well knowing that it will place Mr. Ainsworth in a very awkward position as regards his conduct towards me, the explanation of which he will feel bitterly, but which he has brought upon himself, for had he, in common justice, acknowledged that I was the originator of certain ideas and characters up to which he had written, the facts which I am now about to state would never have been placed before the public.
A question has been asked publicly, and which I grant is rather an important one in this case, and that is, Why have I not until lately claimed to be the originator of ‘Oliver Twist’? To this I reply that ever since these works were published, and even when they were in progress, I have in private society, when conversing upon such matters, always explained that the original ideas and characters of these works emanated from me, and the reason why I publicly claimed to be the originator of Oliver Twist was to defend Dr. K. Shelton Mackenzie, who was charged by Mr. John Forster, in his Life of Mr. Charles Dickens, with publishing a falsehood (or a word of three letters as he describes it; Mr. Forster in a marginal note puts it thus: ‘Falsehood ascribed to a distinguished artist’), whereas the Doctor was only repeating what I had told him at the time Oliver Twist was in progress. Mr. Forster designates Dr. Mackenzie’s statement as ‘a wonderful story,’ or ‘a marvellous fable,’ and in a letter from the Doctor to the Philadelphia Press, December 19, 1871, he says: ‘My wonderful story was printed in an American periodical years before Mr. Dickens died.’ And then asks, ‘Why did not Mr. Forster inquire into this matter, for surely he must have known it?’ And I presume Mr. Dickens must also have heard of this ‘wonderful story,’ the truth of which he did not deny, for this reason—because he could not! And with respect to Mr. Ainsworth’s insinuation as to my ‘labouring under a delusion’ upon this point, all my literary friends at that time knew that I was the originator of Oliver Twist, and as Mr. A. and I were at that time upon such intimate terms, and both working together on Bentley’s Miscellany, is it at all likely that I should have concealed such a fact from him? No! no! he knew this as well as I did, and, therefore, in this matter at any rate, it is he who is ‘labouring under a delusion.’
And I will here refer to a part of my letter, which was published in The Times, December 30, 1871, upon the origin of Oliver Twist, wherein I state that Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Dickens came together one day to my house, upon which occasion it so happened that I then and there described and performed the character of ‘Fagin’ for Mr. Dickens to introduce into the work as a ‘receiver of stolen goods,’ and that some time after this, upon seeing Mr. Ainsworth again, he said to me, ‘I was so much struck with your description of that Jew to Mr. Dickens that I think you and I could do something together.’ Now I do not know whether Mr. Ainsworth has ever made any allusion to this; perhaps he disdains to do so; but perhaps he may give this also a ‘positive contradiction’; and, if he does, then all I have to say is that his memory is gone!
I will now explain the reason why I have publicly asserted my right as the originator of The Miser’s Daughter.
On the 1st of December 1871 there appeared in No. 28 of The Illustrated Review a short Biographical Sketch of Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth, with a portrait of that gentleman; and in the list of the many and various works written by him the following are placed in chronological order: No. 1, Rookwood; 2, Jack Shepherd; 3, Guy Fawkes; 4, The Tower of London; 5, Old St. Pau’s; 6, The Miser s Daughter; 7, Windsor Castle; 8, St. James’s; or, The Court of Queen Anne.