The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

publishing

America

American Notes

Martin Chuzzlewit

To MRS [VON OPPEN],1 31 MARCH 1862

Text from facsimile in Cowan’s Auctions Inc on-line catalogue, 16 April 2005.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

Monday Thirty First March 1862

My Dear Madam

I have given your instructions, envelope, and stamps, to the publisher here2 (having nothing to do with that kind of business myself), and no doubt the commission will be faithfully executed by to day’s post. Your letter is exceedingly pleasant to me, and I thank you for it most cordially. It is my misfortune to believe America short of absolute perfection, and sometimes to think that she vitally injures the great principles she holds in trust;3 but I have numbers of American friends, and I believe I have never lost one by reason of this moral audacity. So I send my regard with some confidence to your husband, and assure you that I remain what I have so long been without knowing it—

Mrs D’Oppen

Faithfully Your friend

CHARLES DICKENS

1. CD clearly wrote “D’Oppen” in the letter; the source suggests the letter was accompanied by an envelope addressed to Mrs Von Oppen. Perhaps Isabella Von Oppen, born c. 1835 in the United States; married (1857) Friedrick (Frederick) Von Oppen from Prussia, manager (1871) of Colt’s Firearm Co. They lived (1871) at 29 Norfolk Crescent, St Marylebone.
2. Chapman & Hall; possibly an offprint from All the Year Round was requested.
3. As embodied in the Declaration of Independence. CD had experienced the tyranny of the Press, hostility for his claims to copyright protection, and the institution of slavery: see American Notes, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Pilgrim Letters 3, throughout and pp. 125 viii-xvi. Mrs Von Oppen’s birthplace and the company her husband worked for suggest grounds for objection to CD’s representation of the United States.