The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1858-08-26
3iljsrrJIanrous
The Dickens Domestic Affair.

The following letters are in cirCula-
ton among the friends of Mr.. and
Mrs Dickens
TAvIsTooK HOUSE, LONDON, W. E., ;
Tuesday, May 25th, 1858. !
My DEAR ARTHUR You have not
only my full permission to show this,
but 1 beg you to show, to any one who
wishes to do me right, OF to any one who
may have been misled into doing me
wrong. Faithfully, &C., CD.
To ARTHUR SMITH, Esq.
TAvIsTocK HOUSE, LONDON, W. E., }
Tuesday, May 25, 1858. I
Mrs. Dickens and I have lived unhaD.
PLY together for many years Hardly
any one who has known us intimately
can fail to have known that we are, in
in all respects of character and temper.
ament, wonderfully unsuited to each
other. l suppose that no two people,
not vicious in themselves, ever we're
Joined together, who had a greater diff.
fculty in understanding one another,
or who had less in common. An at
tached woman servant, (more friend to
both Of us than servant,) who lived with
US sixteen years, and is now married,
and who was, and still is in Mrs. Dick
ems confidence and in mine, who had
the closest familiar experience of this
unhappiness, in London, in the country,
in France, in Italy, wherever we have
been, year after year, month after
month, week after week, day after day,
will bear testimony to this.
Nothing has, on many occasions,
stood between us and separation but
Mrs. Dickens sister, Georgine Hogarth.
From the age of fifteen she has de-
voted herself to our home and our
children. She has been their playmate,
nurse, instructross, friend, protectress,
adviser and companion. In the manly
consideration toward Mrs. Dickens
which I owe to my wife, I will merely
remark Of her that the peculiarity of
her character has thrown all tho children
on some one else. l do not now-I
cannot by any stretch Of fancy-imag-
inc what would have become of them
but for this aunt, who has grown up
with them, to whom they are devoted,
and who has sacrificed the best part
of her youth and life to them.
She has demonstrated, reasoned, suf-
fered and toiled, and came again to
prevent a separation between Mrs. Dick
ems and me. Mrs. Dickens has often
expressed TO her her sense of her afrec-
tionate care and devotion in the house
never more strongly than within the
last twelve months.
For some years past Mrs. Dickens has
been in the habit of representing TO me
that it would be better for her to 90
away and live apart; that her always
increasing estrangement made a mental
under which she sometimes la
bors-more, that she felt herself unfit
for the life she had to lead as my wife,
and that she would be better far away.
[ have uniformly replied that we must
bear our misfortune, and fight the fight
out to the end that the children we're
the FIRST consideration, and that I feared
they must bind us together Gin ap-
Atlength, within these three weeks,
Il was suggested to me by Forster that,
even for their sakes, it would surely be
better to reconstruct and rearrange their
unhappy home. L empowered him to
.reat with Mrs, Dickens, as the friend
If both of us for one and twenty years.
Mrs. Dickens wished to add, on her
part, Mark Lemon, and did so. On
last Lemon wrote to Forster
hat Mrs. Dickens gratefully and
accepted" the terms I pro-
posed TO her.
On the peouniary part Of them, / be-
ieve they are as generous as If Mrs
Dickens wers q lady Of distinction and
a man Of fortune. The remaining
larts Of them are easily desoribed-my
eldest boy TO live with Mrs Dickens
md take care Of herr my eldest girl to
leep my house, both my girls and all
ny children, but the eldest son, TO live
With me, in the continued companion
hip Of their aunt, Georgine for whom
hey have all the tenderest affection that
have ever seen among young people,
md who has a higher claim (as ] have