The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CATHERINE F.A. MACREADY,1 [?4 OCTOBER 1838]

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 440.

Text from facsimile on Nate D. Sanders Auctions website, April 2020.

Doughty Street

Thursday Morning

My Dear Mrs. Macready

           I very much regret that most pressing, more solitary, and less agreeable engagements prevent my having the pleasure of dining with you tomorrow. I should apologize for not answering your kind note before, but Kate2 was taken so very unwell yesterday morning that she was compelled to go to bed – and hence the delay. She is better to-day and sends her best regards to yourself and Miss3 and Mr. Macready, in which I heartily join.

Believe me always

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

I have had the resolution to shut myself up so strictly with Oliver Twist, as not to enter the doors of Covent Garden Theatre since the opening night,4 despite Hamlet and Othello.5 What do you think of that?

• 1. Catherine Frances Atkins Macready (1823–52), first wife of CD's friend, the actor and theatre manager William Charles Macready (1793-1873).
• 2. Catherine Dickens, née Hogarth (1815-79), CD's wife.
• 3. Letitia Margaret (1794-1858), W.C. Macready's sister, who lived with them.
• 4. W.C. Macready, as manager of Covent Garden Theatre, opened the new season on 24 Sept 1838 with Shakespeare's Coriolanus, ceding the title role to John Vandenhoff.
• 5. Hamlet and Othello were being performed alternately from 1 Oct. CD incorporated motifs from Othello into part 21 of Oliver Twist, which he was then writing: in chapter 47 Bill Sikes rushes to murder Nancy after Iago-like goading by Fagin. See Laurence Senelick, "Traces of Othello in Oliver Twist," Dickensian 70.2 (1974): 98-100.