3 September 1860: Charles Dickens has a bonfire

On 3 September 1860, Charles Dickens made a decision that would forever obscure much of his personal life and creative process. During this year, Dickens moved from Tavistock House in London and took up permanent residence at Gad’s Hill Place, Rochester, Kent. Here he gathered “the accumulated letters and papers of twenty years” and set them ablaze in his backyard.

What motivated this drastic action is still unclear, though it is widely believed that Dickens sought to protect his personal affairs. He was known to be intensely private, and by this time, he had endured a series of challenges. He was worried that his separation from his wife, Catherine, and secret relationship with Ellen Ternan, a much younger actress, could lead to public disgrace. He was distraught by his daughter Kate’s recent marriage to Charles Allston Collins, whom he disapproved of, and ten days after the wedding, his brother, Alfred, died from pleurisy, leaving behind a widow and five children. As if this weren’t enough, Dickens’s mother, Elizabeth, became senile and needed constant care.

The following day, 4 September 1860, Dickens wrote to William Henry Wills, the sub-editor of Household Words, saying, “Yesterday I burnt, in the field at Gad’s Hill, the accumulated letters and papers of twenty years. They set up a smoke like the genie when he got out of the casket on the seashore; and as it was an exquisite day when I began, and rained very heavily when I finished, I suspect my correspondence of having overcast the face of the heavens.”

By burning the papers, Dickens perhaps sought to control the narrative of his life, choosing what would be remembered and what would be forgotten.