A halting acrostic poem, ending with the sugary couplet “Life has no charms, no happiness, no pleasures, now for me/ Like those I feel, when ’tis my lot Maria, to gaze on thee”, offers little clue to the glittering literary career that was to follow. But, 185 years after the 18-year-old Charles Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, an exhibition promises to shed light on his earliest literary efforts, with a selection of his love poetry on public view for the first time.

Dickens was working as a reporter when he fell for the 20-year-old Beadnell in 1830, and pursued her for three years, going on to immortalise her as the characters of Dora Spenlow in David Copperfield and Flora Finching in Little Dorrit. The Charles Dickens Museum in London opens a new exhibition this week featuring the author’s love poems to Beadnell, including the acrostic poem in homage to the banker’s daughter that is the first known example of his literary work.

“My life may chequered be with scenes of misery and pain, And’t may be my fate to struggle with adversity in vain,” wrote the young Dickens in Beadnell’s album, on display at the museum. “Regardless of misfortunes tho’ howe’er bitter they may be, I shall always have one retrospect, a hallowed one to me, And it will be of that happy time when first I gazed on thee.”

Beadnell “seemed enchantingly pretty to him, even with eyebrows that almost met in the middle,” writes Claire Tomalin in her acclaimed biography of the author. “She was capricious and, to judge by what she later became, silly.”

Dickens’ poem Lodgings to Let, in which the young man states that, “Then I will say sans hesitation/ This place shall be my habitation/ This charming spot my home shall be/ While dear ‘Maria’ keeps the key,” is being displayed for the first time as part of the exhibition. Also on show is the writer’s lengthy poem The Bill of Fare, transcribed from the original by Beadnell’s sister Margaret Lloyd. Dickens, among 360 lines of poetry, compares himself in the text to “a young Summer Cabbage, without any heart; –/ Not that he’s heartless, but because, as folks say,/ He lost his a twelve month ago, from last May.”

A letter from the time, meanwhile, sees the author wax lyrical on the topic of gloves, loquaciously insisting that “my dear Maria – (I fear I ought to say ‘Miss Beadnell’ but I hope you will pardon my adhering to the manner in which I have been accustomed to address you)” must not refuse the gift of a pair. “Surely, surely you will not refuse so trivial a present: a mere common place trifle; a common present even among the merest ‘friends’. Do not misunderstand me: I am not desirous by making presents or by doing any other act to influence your thoughts, wishes, or feelings in the slightest degree. – I do not think I do: – I cannot hope I ever shall: but let me entreat of you do not refuse so slight a token of regard from me.”

The adult Dickens would write to Beadnell years later, in 1855, revealing again the depths of his devotion. “Whatever of fancy, romance, energy, passion, aspiration, and determination belong to me, I never have separated and never shall separate from the hard-hearted little woman – you – whom it is nothing to say I would have died for, with the greatest alacrity!” wrote the then successful author. “I never can think, and I never seem to observe, that other young people are in such desperate earnest, or set so much, so long, upon one absorbing hope. It is a matter of perfect certainty to me that I began to fight my way out of poverty and obscurity, with one perpetual idea of you.”

Several letters were exchanged before the two met up; despite Beadnell’s warnings that she was no longer the young woman Dickens remembered, the novelist was shocked by her appearance. He wrote to one of his admirers, the Duke of Devonshire: “We have all had our Floras, mine is living and extremely fat.”

The letters before their meeting were “very long”, said the museum’s curator Louisa Price; there followed a “significant gap” once the pair had met, and when the letters began again “they were very short and formal. Poor Maria.”

Price said that the film of The Invisible Woman meant that a great deal of attention has been paid recently to Dickens’s later love interest, Ellen Ternan. “We wanted to highlight the story of Dickens’s first love, Maria, to balance this,” she said. “Dickens pursued Maria for three years at a significant period of his life. He said himself that she was instrumental in helping him raise his expectations of life and better himself as a man. She inspired the beloved character of Dora Spenlow in David Copperfield and also Flora Finching in Little Dorrit – some would say, his best comic character. I think there is a strong case to say – we never forget our first love.”

Price added that there was also “the comic element” to the duo’s story, including “the inability of Mrs Beadnell to get Dickens’s name right” – she would call him Mr Dickin – “and the fact Dickens was pursuing Maria at the same time as other men.” The novelist would later reproach Beadnell “for playing him off against other ‘danglers’,” said the curator.

The love poems of Young Dickens

Acrostic
My life may chequered be with scenes of misery and pain,
And’t may be my fate to struggle with adversity in vain:
Regardless of misfortunes tho’ howe’er bitter they may be,
I shall always have one retrospect, a hallowed one to me,
And it will be of that happy time when first I gazed on thee.
Blighted hopes, and prospects drear, for me will lose their sting,
Endless troubles shall harm not me, when fancy on the wing
A lapse of years shall travel o’er, and again before me cast
Dreams of happy fleeting moments then for ever past:

Not any worldly pleasure has such magic charms for me
E’en now, as those short moments spent in company with thee;
Life has no charms, no happiness, no pleasures, now for me
Like those I feel, when ’tis my lot Maria, to gaze on thee.

Lodgings to Let
Lodgings here! A charming place,
The Owner’s such a lovely face
The Neighbours too seem very pretty
Lively, sprightly, gay, and witty
Of all the spots that I could find
This is the place to suit my mind.

Then I will say sans hesitation
This place shall be my habitation
This charming spot my home shall be
While dear “Maria” keeps the key,
I’ll settle here, no more I’ll roam
But make this place my happy home.

A great advantage too will be,
I shall keep such good company,
So good that I fear my composing
Will be considered very prosing
Still I’m most proud amongst these pickings
To rank the humblest name. – Charles Dickens

(Reproduced by courtesy of Charles Dickens Museum, London)

• The exhibition will run at the Charles Dickens Museum, London, until 19 April.