Brief description: Letter from Charles Dickens to Thomas Mitton, 5 August 1846
Label: Charles Dickens writes to his friend and solicitor Thomas Mitton from Switzerland. The letter describes in detail his stay in Switzerland and mentions Dombey & Son: 'I have written to very few people indeed, for as soon as we were comfortably established here I went to work at the new book of which I am happy to say I have completed the first number and begun the second.' Dickens gives a full and detailed description of the town, house and grounds that the family is staying in. He describes his recent trip up to the mountains: 'a week’s trip among the mountains covered with eternal snow and ice, which block up the view from these window. And wonderful and indescribable the scenery among them is'; and juxtaposes it with lengthy description of the heat and wind experienced at his house in the valley, as well as his adventures at altitude, 'fancy walking from this [heat] … on to a sea of ice, unfathomable in depth, firve and twenty miles long, and tossed up into immense waves, like the spires of Gothic Churches!' Dickens goes on to describe how much the house, carriage and wine costs, what the food is like; and how other members of the family are passing their time (Charley, Katey, Mamey, Georgy).
Collection: Archives & Manuscripts
Object number: A927
Object type: letter
Production person: Dickens, Charles
Production date: 05/08/1846
Inscription content: Rosemont, Lausanne, Switzerland, Fifth August 1846

My Dear Mitton,

I have no doubt you have been looking once or twice for a letter from me since I have left home. I have written to very few people indeed, for as soon as we were comfortably established here, I went to work on the new book, of which I am happy to say I have competed the first number and begun the second. I have also made a week’s trip among the mountains covered with eternal snow and ice, which block up the view from these windows. And wonderful and indescribable the scenery among them is.

The town of Lausanne is prodigious if ugly, and (I should hope) the dullest in all the world. But the country is most charming; and there are more beautiful walks about here, than I have ever seen in the neighborhood of any other place. Our house (to which a farmhouse is attached) stands in the midst of meadows, orchards and vineyards of its own, on a beautiful slope off and on the side of a hill, stretching from the town down to the Lake of Geneva, of which our best windows command a lovely view. The town is at about ten minutes distance, and when it is lighted at night, the lamps and candles dotting the crown and side of the hill make it very pretty and cheerful. There are innumerable bowers and smoking-retreats in the garden, and the grounds are so large, that the children seldom go beyond them. We have on the ground floor a stone hall, two drawing rooms opening on the garden, a dining room, kitchen and servant’s room, and excellent cellarage. Above, a brick hall, two best bedrooms, my study, also dressing room, and three nurseries. Above that, in the roof, a most extraordinary place like a Barn, common in most Swiss houses, and generally used for storing grain and vegetables for winter use. Out of this, three servant’s rooms open. And that is the whole house. Up stairs is a wood balcony sixteen paces long; and below it, a stone colonnade of the same size full of flowering plants. My landlord, who is what we should call in England the Sherriff of the town, lives with a rich widow whom he married, in another house like a lodge, down at the Garden Gate. He is a Swiss, but served in the English Navy 18 years, and speaks the language perfectly. He, and the farmer who holds under him and lives in the farmhouse, keep the grounds, garden, flowers and so forth in good order; and I pay £10 English per month for the whole set out.

Except in some few things it is not at all a cheap place – dearer than Genoa, and as dear, I should say, as Paris. The most astonishing circumstance to me, is that Bread, of all things in the world, is dearer at this moment, than in London! Meat is pretty cheap, and very good. So is poultry. We contract for everything at the same price which is charged to the proprietor of the Hotel, and have a very good cook. The native wine is something between vinegar and pickled cucumbers, and makes you wink and cry when you taste it. But I get very good French wine (red) at ten pence the bottle. This we drink as you would drink Beer in England. I also get very good Madeira about 3/- or 3/6, and a very good effervescent wine indeed called Swiss champagne at ¾. Geneva Hollands is very fine, and the Brandy is very good too. Milk and butter, and so forth, we get from the farm in any quantity. Ice is cheap and clean. The rooms are small, as they are in all Swiss houses, with a view to the water; but everything is very clean and very neat.

There are only four English families here, but with them, of course, we are on very good terms. One is a Mr Haldimand, a bachelor, and the principal owner of Belgrave Square, London. He is quite the King of this place, and has one of the finest country houses in the world, a little below here. He keeps all sorts of vehicles and horses, and we go cruising about the country with him on very pleasant excursions. I keep (and shall keep during fine weather) the most extraordinary one horse carriage you ever saw. It is a sort of car, with a head and curtains to it, in which you sit sideways, three of you, all in a row, like waxwork. It is the common carriage of the country, and is made so that the riders may avoid the wind, which always blows straight up or down the valley. For this machine, and the horse, and his food, and the driver, I pay £2..10..0 English per week.

The wind aforesaid, when it does blow, is of the most extraordinary disruption. I don’t know what to compare it to. It makes nothing of tearing and twisting up half a dozen trees at a time, and at one instant filling the whole house with leaves and dust. Its fury is quite inconceivable, and it seems to blow in ten thousand little circles, like whirlpools. One is very glad to have it, or the tremendous thunder storms, to get the air cleared and purged of the heat, which is, just now, unusually intense. The houses, being built for snowy weather chiefly, are very hot; the ceilings low; and the beams and rafters large. No amount of heat would tell, in a house like the Peschiere at Genoa, as the present heat tells here. It is next to impossible to sleep at night. The floors, and walls, and ceilings get hot – like the sides of an oven, and though there are outside blinds to all the windows, and doors from one room into another, so that you can make a draught through a whole story at once, it is perfect suffocation upstairs between 1 and 5 in the day. I have a cold bath in the house, or I don’t know what I should do. It plays the Devil with my side, as real heat always does; being almost the only thing that damages me.

Fancy walking from this – as I was doing every day last week – on to a sea of ice, unfathomable in depth, five and twenty miles long, and tossed up into immense waves like the spires of Gothic churches! Picture me clambering over this, with a great leaping pole, and half a dozen iron points buckled on to the soles of my shoes, and washing my face with snow, and going down to drink melted ice like chrystal [sic], and staggering and hauling myself up into places like Dreams, under the direction of a Mountaineer-Guide apparently divested of all human capacity of tumbling down or tiring himself – and there you have me to a T.

Charley goes to a school, kept by a German, about a quarter of a mile off. He is a weekly boarder, and come home every Saturday. There are one or two other English boys, so I hope he will be set up in French for life, before he comes home. He speaks the language always, now, and can make himself understood anywhere; but does not speak correctly, yet. I have been going at it rather hard too, and found myself at first very much confused by the Italian; for as soon as I begin to think in a language that is not my own I naturally being to think in that. Georgina know it extremely well, however, so we do wonders by talking together.

I propose moving the caravan to Paris at the end of November, as I hope to do a good deal with that city, and have a great school in my eye for Charley. You must come over there with me, for a week, when we get settled, and I come to London. Nothing can be more surprising or completely new. You would be in a perpetual state of amazement.

When I add that Katey and Mamey have a Swiss Governess every day, and that all the children are well and hearty, and that they and their Mama and Aunt, send you all sorts of kind remembrances, I think I have exhausted my household news – except that we lost a portmanteau at Ostend, containing all the children’s clothes, which came to hand last Thursday! We had maintained an animated correspondence in the meantime with every station on the Belgian and German Railroads. Whenever they get a parcel without a passenger, they put it away somewhere, smoke a pipe, and f[orget about] it.

I hear rumours of the cholera being in London. It was never [in Switzerland?] and I trust in God it never will be. The Peasants who work in the Vineyards have suffered very much, this year, from the heat: and many of them, I understand, have died, in consequence. They are a very hardy people, generally, though a little given to drunkenness – how they can ever drink enough of that wine to get drunk is their affair: not mine. Their great amusement is rifle-shooting, which takes place on all the public holidays of which there are a good many. They are extraordinary good shots, and think nothing here – where they fire at a small mark on a mountain side, set up across a deep ravine, some two hundred yards wide – of clicking into the very centre of the Bull’s Eye. The town gives prizes, which are generally silver spoons; and the successful competitors walk about with these spoons stuck in their hats and buttons holes like flowers. The inhabitants in general have an immense idea of the Inimitable, and treat him with the greatest respect.

I am looking for Bradbury and Evans’s half yearly account, which I expect to receive next Monday. I shall hope to hear from you soon. You have received a begging letter or two from my Garden Box, I dare say?

Ever faithfully yours
CD.

WVAVI# 5541
Inscription description: pencil marks on the letter
Credit line: Purchased with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Friends of the National Libraries and the Dickens Fellowship.
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Letter from Charles Dickens to Thomas Mitton, 5 August 1846