The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THE EARL OF ABERDEEN,1 26 JUNE 1844

Text from facsimile in Sotheby’s online catalogue, September 2019. 

1 Devonshire Terrace

York Gate Regents Park.

Twenty Sixth June 1844.

My Lord.

            As I am on the eve of leaving England on a visit to France and Italy,2 I beg to make application to Your Lordship for a Foreign office Passport; including myself, my family,3 and servants.4

            I have the honor to be, my Lord

Your faithful and obedt Servant

            CHARLES DICKENS

The Right Honorable

            The Earl of Aberdeen

• 1. George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), statesman, diplomat and Scottish landowner. Tory politician, who served as Foreign Secretary 1828-30 (under the Duke of Wellington), and 1841-6 (under Sir Robert Peel); Prime Minister 1852-5. CD attacked Lord Aberdeen's government in "Mr. Bull's Somnambulist" (Household Words 10 [25 Nov 1854]: 337-9.
• 2. CD and his family travelled and lived on the Continent from July 1844 to July 1846.
• 3. CD was accompanied by his wife Catherine, and their children Charley, Mamie, Katey, Walter, and Frank.
• 4. CD mentions two nurses in ch. 1 of Pictures from Italy: Anne Brown, and Charlotte Stubbing. Stubbing remained in Genoa and married William Johnson, a servant of Sir George Craufurd, 3rd Baronet of Kilbernie (see To Bradbury & Evans, 7 July 1845, Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 326-27). In addition, the Dickens family brought a cook, Jane, who married a Frenchman, the cook of the British Consul at Genoa, Timothy Yeats Brown; Jane remained in Italy (see To Daniel Maclise, 9 May 1845, Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 306-307). CD employed Louis Roche, a native of Avignon, to act as a guide and make travel arrangements (described in Pictures from Italy as "a French Courier – best of servants and most beaming of men!").