- 105
Dickens, Charles
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
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Description
- Dickens, Charles
- Autograph letter signed, to Pauline Viardot
- paper
describing in some detail the personal impact of the Staplehurst railway disaster, and promising her a copy of Our Mutual Friend when it is completed ("...May it interest you, half as much as it interests me..."), written in blue ink, 2 pages, 8vo, headed stationery of Gads Hill Place, 16 August 1865
"...The scene was so affecting when I helped in getting out the wounded and dead, that for a little while afterwards I felt shaken by the remembrance of it. But I had no personal injury whatsoever. My watch (which is curious) was more sensitive, physically, than I; for it was some few minutes 'slow' for some few weeks afterwards. Except that I cannot yet travel on a railway, at great speed, without having a disagreeable impression - against all reason - that the carriage is turning on one side, I have not the least inconvenience left..."
"...The scene was so affecting when I helped in getting out the wounded and dead, that for a little while afterwards I felt shaken by the remembrance of it. But I had no personal injury whatsoever. My watch (which is curious) was more sensitive, physically, than I; for it was some few minutes 'slow' for some few weeks afterwards. Except that I cannot yet travel on a railway, at great speed, without having a disagreeable impression - against all reason - that the carriage is turning on one side, I have not the least inconvenience left..."
Provenance
"Le Cesne Viardot Collection" (blind stamp)
Literature
The Letters of Charles Dickens: Volume 11, 1865-1867, ed. Storey (Oxford, 1999), pp.82-83
Catalogue Note
DICKENS DESCRIBES THE AFTER-EFFFECTS OF THE TRAUMATIC RAILWAY DISASTER THAT SCARRED HIS FINAL YEARS TO PAULINE VIARDOT, CELEBRATED MEZZO-SOPRANO AND LOVER OF TURGENEV.