T hus, an open letter to a short-lived weekly provincial British newspaper early in 1871: DEAR SIR,-Will you allow me, as a woman, to say a few words on behalf of another woman, whose name years ago, and recently, has been held up to reprobation as far as the English tongue reaches. Privately, I know absolutely nothing of the lady in question, Mrs. Charles Dickens, and I base my judgment of the merits of the case on her husband's published ex parte statements concerning their separation. I have never heard a hint of criminal misconduct of any kind against this lady, yet, the manifesto of her husband, published in his journal, and the terms of his will, place her, by inference, almost beyond the pale of moral toleration. Surely this is not right. The public cannot help remembering that the woman, whose name has never been heard during the recent lamentation, was his companion for twenty-five years and the mother of his twelve children. We do not honour him the less in remembering her, who, surely, must have suffered enough in having once possessed the love of such a man, and then lost it. Nothing is so difficult to adjudge upon as a quarrel between man and wife. After half a century the Byron affair has set the literary world in envenomed contention: 1 and the Dickens' separation may be as hotly discussed by our grandchildren. Even now, with the weight of the recent loss heavy on our hearts, we cannot help asking ourselves if this lady has not suffered some injustice. No one has raised a voice for her. She is exiled from her children, the sympathy of society, her husband's grave: and he, the rich, popular, famous and honoured, is her accuser; and the bitter feeling comes out most conclusively in his last will. He desires in this that the world should know he allowed
