Vacant House, Empty Book

Another Hesperus 100 pager down: this time A House to Let "by Charles Dickens." Well, not actually. The book is a collection of six short stories, one of which is a horrible poem, with the only thing in common being a thread of speculation as to why a dilapidated house across the street from the narrator is vacant with no chance of being rented. Inside the cover, the table of contents credits only one of the stories as being exclusively written by Dickens, two co-authored with good old Wilkie Collins, one singularly by Collins, and the other two by little known women, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. The book emerges more as a marketing device for Dickens' magazine, especially to promote the circulation of work by these lesser female writers. The two strongest selections are the story's "book ends" first and last installments which happen to be the two co-authored pieces.

The writing is crisp and witty as it introduces Sophonisba, an old lady with a clever perspective on her long life, an appreciation for her servants and a curiosity about her surroundings. Moving to London for a change of scenery as recommended by her physician, she lets lodgings across the street from the titled "abandoned" building. She charges both her butler, Trottle (a wonderful Dickensian name) and a long suffering, doddering suitor, Jarber, to find out what they can about former owners and the house's history. This challenge becomes the device to introduce "stories" about previous occupants whose eccentricities have absolutely no bearing on the denouement. In fact, it appears that the women's contributions had been previously published independent of this literary collection.

Despite its strong first chapter, the book falters and even the second best last chapter seems contrived and a vehicle for Dickens' more familiar social causes of broken families and lost and abused children. At least I only devouted a couple of hours to reading the book.