There are few times in an Oxfam volunteer’s ‘career’ that you get a book which might be worth a few thousand pounds. But then again not many are signed by Dickens’ eldest daughter.

No, I didn’t find it at the bottom of a box – another volunteer did.

I take my hat off to him.

Not least because I have to admit that if it had come through my hands for sorting, I might have thrown it in a sack without looking inside.

But he put it one side and made me look at it.

It is ‘The Household Edition’ and over the years I have learned there were a lot of them printed and quite a few of them come into our shop – whereas, dear reader, not a lot of them sell.

But this one has this dedication:

 

 

Mary (Mamie) it turns out, helped run the new household when Dickens left his wife taking the children with him and set up home with his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth and may, just may, have had an affair with her – or more likely gone on to have an affair with Ellen Ternan.

It wasn’t until after her father’s death that Mamie re-contacted her mother.

 

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(Charles Dickens with Mamie and Kate, two of his daughters)

Georgina found living with Mamie difficult, complaining that she was drinking too much. In the late 1880s she persuaded Mamie to move to Manchester where she lived with a clergyman and his wife.

Georgina wrote, “Mr Hargreaves is a most unworthy person in every way – and it was always amazing to me that she could keep up this strong feeling and regard and affection for him to the very end of her life. Mrs Hargreaves has kept true and devoted in her attentions to Mamie during her long illness.”

(I am not sure what the definition of drinking too much was in Victorian times but I suspect Georgina would not approve of my plans for a large glass(es) of white tonight….)

Back to the book: I think the dedication is to Mary Wakeman but I have failed to find her and thus a connection to Mamie.

The dedication is after Charles Dickens’s death and by that time Mamie had gone to live with a Rev Hargreaves and his wife in Manchester which was in itself, or had occasioned, a ‘scandal’ according to Wikipedia.

Then she left Manchester, and retired to ‘the country’ which was in this case, Farnham Royal in Berkshire and is now, to you and me, an extension of Slough – and there she died.

So, I looked at this book and its dedication and I Googled and got nowhere with any search of a similar book and dedication.

When I called our antiquarian book expert, who was on his way to somewhere to do something, he said not to get my hopes up as he didn’t think it was going to set the Oxfam Petersfield Bookshop world alight.

But, and dear reader and this is not something I often say, I thought he was wrong.

He turned up in the shop today to say he was. ( That conversation made me miss Pilates which is not something a Sussex housewife should do.)

Anyway, in the meantime, I had contacted The Dickens Museum in London who said it would be a great book to add to their collection but they didn’t do valuations.

I would like to go to them and if it turns out to be worth £100 they can have it with our blessings and free postage and packing.

But if there are (probably Americans) willing to pay hundreds, even possibly thousands of pounds that is what we will do.

After all this is not, I understand, even in my excited state, a national treasure.

So, I have contacted someone in Bonhams who has helped us before – usually that involves politely telling me what I have is not worth their thinking about.

I have contacted Peter Harringtons, a posh bookseller in London and another posh bookseller called Sotherans, and the retiring board member of the Dickens’ Society at the University of Iowa.

I have emailed the Slough Observer on the basis that Mamie must be a local celeb and perhaps they know of a local historian who knows of her friend and has some more information.

(Do they believe I am an Oxfam volunteer or do they suspect that I am posing as one so they will be nice to me?)

So, now dear reader, I will leave you to try and find Mary Wakeman and who was she to Mamie Dickens, where was Mamie Dickens when she gave this book as a Christmas present, are there any other books out there signed by Mamie, and I will keep checking my emails to see if any of these experts are excited.