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Charles Dickens ALS re: his new poem "The Vines"
Charles Dickens ALS re: his new poem "The Vines"
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Dickens Charles

Two page bi-fold ALS, on letterhead of Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester Kent, 4.5" x 7". Penned by Charles Dickens in his own hand on the first page, remaining pages blank. Dated "Tuesday Nineteenth June 1866". Signed by Charles Dickens with his initials of "CD", inclusive of a large heart flourish. Lightly toned with a few handling marks. Expected folds else near fine.

Charles Dickens pens a lovely ALS to friend and peer Marguerite Agnes Power, a novelist, writer for periodicals and editor. Charles Dickens from time to time would contribute to one of her annuals, "Keepsake". His delightful letter makes mention of being pleased with one of his latest poems which was about to be published titles The Vine (published the following month as "The Vines"). Dickens poem was published in his Journal "All The Year Round" in Volume XV on page 609 of which a copy of the poem as shown in the journal will be included with the letter. A fantastic scarce ALS with mention of his fantastic prose in advance of publication.

His letter to Marguerite is shown in part below:

"Dear Marguerite,

I am extremely pleased with the Vine, as a charming and (illegible) little poem - …

Rest satisfied that I will you of explain exactly what you write on the other point in the two quarters to which I have natural and easy access. I showed here on this note sooner, but for having been away on a rest trip of the hard work.

Affectionately Yours

CD".

All the Year Round was in many ways identical to its predecessor Household Words (1850-1859), not least because it remained a 2d. weekly (9d. monthly) conspicuously ‘Conducted by Charles Dickens.’ In two respects, however, its constitution differed. Its leading article now comprised an installment of serial fiction, whose authorship was identified; gone were the investigative reports and satirical broadsides that had characterized leaders in the earlier incarnation. Dickens and sub-editor W. H. Wills were now the sole partners in and proprietors of their publication. When Dickens serialized A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1860-61) in its pages, he was his own publisher; when he contracted authors such as Wilkie Collins, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Reade, Frances Trollope, and Edmund Yates to contribute novels, he became their publisher as well as editor. The published poem is shown in full below:

THE VINES From "All The Year Round", Volume XV, page 609

Published 7/7/1886

THE VINES.

"WINTER was dead, and all the torpid earth

Was throbbing with the pulses of the Spring,

And cold was gone, and suffering and dearth,

And the glad fruit-trees at the blossoming:

And meads were green, and all the stalwart woods

Felt the sap rising from their mossy roots

To their proud crowns, whose coronet of buds

Burst with the morning into tender shoots

Of living verdure. Hid among the leaves

Of early foliaged shrubs and ivied bushes,

And in warm crannies of the sheltering eaves

Sat on their nests the patient mother thrushes.

A cottage stood upon a south hill-side,

The sun looked down on it through the glad days,

Without, within, the mellow golden tide

Flowed in bright floods or penetrating rays,

And made a glory in each little chamber.

All reds warmed into rubies for the minute,

And every bit of yellow became amber,

The while the rays in passing lingered in it.

Beside the porch there grew a sturdy vine,

Rugged and knotted was the tough brown stem,

About the rustic pillars did he twine,

With garlands in the summer dressing them.

Proud was he of his beauty and his vigour,

And of his fragrant blossoms and sweet fruit,

He feared no bight, nor winter's sharpest rigour

To work him harm in stem, or branch, or root.

About his foot the little children played,

The sunbeams glinted through him on their hair,

Above, the sparrows twittered as they made

Their ragged nests, or fed their nestlings bare:

And all the household loved him. He had seen

Three generations born; the babes that lay

Cooing on mothers' laps i' the shadow green

Of his cool boughs he'd watched from day to day

Growing to well-knit youths and maidens comely,

Whispering and listening to lovers' vows,

Thence to staid men and quiet matrons homely,

And hoary elders white with age's snows.

A very patriarch of vines he flourished,

Tended by all with reverence and love,

As much by human care and tendance nourished

As by the showers from the skies above.

But now a change had come. Last autumn-tide,

When all his clusters were in ripest splendour,

A young man with a young wife by his side

Sat watching from the porch the moonlight

tender;

His arm was round her; on his shoulder lay

Her fair young head in perfect, blissful rest,

Softly around them stole the shadows grey,

While the last lustre faded from the west.

He raised his arm to the o'erhanging bough,

And plucked a cluster: "Dear old vine,'' he

said,

"Strong as he is, and hale and hearty now,

Can he outlive us? Will he not be dead

Before the baby-angel every day

Brings to us near and nearer, shall be grown,

A sturdy youth, or maiden fair and gay—

Before our budding flower shall be blown?

Here, then, beside him let us plant and rear

A shoot that may in course of time succeed him,

That, as he wanes, shall flourish, year by year,

Reaching to ripeness as our children need him."

And so 'twas done: the venerable vine

No longer stood alone; his vigorous age

Was thus despised! his haleness called decline!—

Through all his fibres thrilled a jealous rage.

And now the Spring was come with all its dews

And all its tender showers and smiling lights,

And vivid earthly greens and skyey blues,

Its long sweet days, its brief and perfumed nights;

And the young vine, more forward than the old,

Was waking with the spring, each downy bud

Was softly swelling, ready to unfold

A rosy shoot, mantling with youthful blood.

The old vine looked upon it: all the hate

Winter had paralysed now quick awoke;

Must he then yield to this ignoble fate?

Was there not time yet for a final stroke?

Yes; like a serpent should his limbs enlace

His feeble rival, crushing out his breath."

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