The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To THOMAS MITTON,1 9 NOVEMBER 1843
MS Charles Dickens Museum
Address: Thomas Mitton Esquire | 23 Southampton Buildings | Chancery Lane
Devonshire Terrace
Ninth November 1843
My Dear Mitton
This is certainly odd – and not too agreeable. But I can scarcely think it expresses much more than his cautious habits, and desire to consider the matter.2 I have had a touch of the fidgets too, now and then; but the process of writing long books line by line, and seeing them gradually grow under one’s hand, is favorable to the cultivation of patience. I cannot think his final reply will be otherwise than we would have it; but we must toe the line and stand well up to the scratch,3whatever it is.
I have half done the Christmas Book,4 and am resting for two days before going to Chuzzlewit – that is, if I can call anything rest, with that before me. Yesterday I walked a great deal. To day I am going out on horseback, for a thirty mile ride.
I shall not be quite at ease, I need not say, until I hear from you.
Faihfully Ever
CD
- 1. Thomas Mitton (1812-78), solicitor, one of CD’s closest friends. Son of Thomas Mitton, publican, of Battle Bridge (the district now known as King's Cross), where the Mitton and Dickens families may at some time have been neighbours — perhaps in The Polygon, where the Dickenses were living 1827-8. In recollections given to the Evening Times when she was 95, Mitton's sister Mary Ann claimed to have known CD well as a small girl. Mitton and CD were clerks together for a short time during 1828-9 in Charles Molloy's office, 8 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, where Mitton served his articles. He acted as CD’s solicitor for twenty years. See William J. Carlton, “The Strange Story of Thomas Mitton”, Dickensian 56 (1960): 41-52.
- 2. John Forster had advised CD that he should proceed with caution in proposing to his publishers that he take a break from writing, and going abroad after the completion of Martin Chuzzlewit: “such insufficient breath as was left to me I spent against the project, and in favour of far more consideration than he had given to it, before anything should be settled” (The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 305). CD protested: “I expected you to be startled. If I was startled myself, when I first got this project of foreign travel into my head, MONTHS AGO how much more must you be, on whom it comes fresh: numbering only hours! Still, I am very resolute upon it—very. I am convinced that my expenses abroad would not be more than half of my expenses here; the influence of change and nature upon me, enormous” (To Forster, [2 Nov 1843], Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 591). CD expressed impatience to Mitton at Forster’s objections.
- 3. An expression originating in the line drawn across the boxing ring, to which opponents are brought for an encounter (OED).
- 4. A Christmas Carol, published 19 Dec 1843.