The Charles Dickens Letters Project

WILLIAM CLOWES,1 21 MAY 1864

MS Beccles and District Museum. On mourning paper.

GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Saturday Evening Twenty First May 1864

My Dear Sir

Will you have the kindness to assure Mr. Bentley2 from me, in reference to the subject of his letter, that we have no present opening in All The Year Round for a long serial story.3

William Clowes Esquire

Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS4

• 1. William Clowes (1807-83; Dictionary of National Biography), son of William Clowes (1779-1847; Dictionary of National Biography), of William Clowes & Sons, printers. Clowes Snr had made an approach to CD in 1841 (Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 517 & n.3, and Corrigenda, above). In 1864 CD chose Clowes Jnr as printer of Our Mutual Friend (first No. published 30 Apr 64), for some volumes of the CD Edition, and later for Edwin Drood. Clowes was established at 32 Duke St, Stafford St, Blackfriars and 14 Charing Cross. He was also linked with the Caxton Press at Beccles, Suffolk, run by his son and nephew after the original owner absconded; subsequently Clowes & Clowes.
• 2. Richard Bentley (1794-1871; Dictionary of National Biography), publisher: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 164n. For CD’s early relations with him, see Robert L. Patten, CD and His Publishers, 1978, ch. 4. Later in severe financial difficulties; Clowes was appointed one of the “inspectors” under whose supervision the firm was carried on: see Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 403 & n, and Royal A. Gettman, A Victorian Publisher: A Study of the Bentley Papers, 1960, pp. 25-6.
• 3. Clowes, as an “inspector” of Bentley’s affairs, was presumably acting to secure possible profits through serialisation. Quite apart from any unwillingness to become directly involved in Bentley’s business dealings, CD was running in All the Year Round G. A. Sala’s Quite Alone (concluded 12 Nov 64), overlapping it with Percy Fitzgerald’s Never Forgotten (from 3 Sep 64), itself succeeded by Amelia B. Edwards’s Half a Million of Money (from 22 Apr 65).
• 4. Attached to this letter is a fragment of an envelope, with the opening of the final line of the address (“Blac” = “Blackfriars”) and CD’s signature; the signature suggests a significantly earlier date than that of this letter.