The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CHARLES NIXON,1 22 APRIL 1846

Replaces catalogue extract (aa) given in Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 602. Text from digitised facsimile on eBay, undated.

 1 Devonshire Terrace

Twenty Second April 1846.

Sir

I beg to say in reply to your obliging letter, that I cannot accede to the request with which the Members of the Parochial Committee2 have honoured me, as aI think it very probable I may be induced to take my family to Switzerland this Summer,3 and may remain there (for the more quiet execution of a literary project)4 some twelve months.a5

I am Sir | Faithfully Yours 

 CHARLES DICKENS

Mr. Charles Nixon

• 1. Possibly of 10 Upper Belgrave Place.
• 2. The request not identified.
• 3. CD left with his family for Switzerland, 31 May, staying there until he moved to Paris, 16 November.
• 4. CD began writing Dombey and Son, “a long book...which I could write better in retirement” (To Coutts, 22 Apr 46), in Lausanne in June. He also began there in September his Christmas Book, The Battle of Life: “I never had to begin two stories together, before: and it is desperate work” (To Mitton, 25 Sep 46).
• 5. CD, with short visits to London, stayed abroad until his return from Paris at the end of February 1847.