The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MARCUS STONE,1 19 NOVEMBER 1858 

Text from facsimile in [A.L. Baldry], "Marcus Stone: Early Life", Art Annual Christmas supplement to Art Journal, 1896, p. 11.

 Tavistock House

November 1858. 

My Dear Marcus

            You made an excellent sketch from a book of mine, which I received (and have preserved) with great pleasure.2 Will you accept from me, in remembrance of it, this little book.3 I believe it to be true, though it may be sometimes not as genteel as History has a habit of being.4

                                    Faithfully Yours

                                                CHARLES DICKENS 

• 1. Marcus Clayton Stone (1840-1921; Dictionary of National Biography), genre painter and illustrator, son of CD’s friend Frank Stone. Illustrator of Our Mutual Friend and one-volume editions of American Notes, Pictures from Italy, and Great Expectations.
• 2. Stone, then aged 12, had produced a sketch from Bleak House, of Jo at the gates of the graveyard ("Marcus Stone: Early Life", p. 12).
• 3. CD presented Stone with a copy of his Child's History of England; the inscription reads: "Marcus Stone. From his friend | CHARLES DICKENS | Christmas 1858."
• 4. The Child's History was published in Household Words from 25 January 1851 to 10 December 1853, and in three volumes, 1852-1854. It was partial to the Protestant cause and sympathetic to Oliver Cromwell (who, CD believed, possessed "courage and high abilities"), while denigrating Popish plots and kings like James I, whom CD called "his Sowship" and described as "ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in mind and person". Henry VIII is described as "a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of England."