The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDMUND HENDERSON,1 9 FEBRUARY 1869 

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 300. 

MS William Ryan 

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND

Tuesday Ninth February 1869 

Dear Colonel Henderson. 

I feel that I am going to write you a preposterous note, and I have not the slightest doubt that you will be of my mind when you read it. 

But I can not get it out of the head of an old schoolfellow of mine2 who has prospered in the world moderately though not brilliantly, that in the reorganization of Scotland Yard3 there may be clerkly or secretarial employment for one who knows London and its ways well – who has a solid acquaintance with common law – and who is a solicitor of thirty years standing, with high credentials as an acute practical man to be thoroughly trusted. I find it equally hopeless to get it into the head of this same old schoolfellow that even if you wanted such a person for the Service, the odds are fifty thousand to one that your experience would have found him long ago.4 

The entreaty to recommend and to certify is so pressing upon me “for the sake of old times”, that I cannot resist doing both. Of course I am able to do both, or the entreaty would count as nothing with me. It goes heavily to my conscience that I trouble you with the gentleman’s suit and name – Mr Mitton5 – but in all other respects (in this association) my conscience is bright and clear. 

Believe me 

Very faithfully Yours 

CHARLES DICKENS 

Col: Henderson

                        “                       “                       “6

• 1. Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson (1821-96; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police 1869-86; Lieut-Col., Royal Engineers, 1862; Surveyor-General of Prisons, 1863; knighted 1878. His second wife was the daughter of the Rev. Joseph Hindle, Vicar of Higham (see Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 53n).
• 2. Thomas Mitton; see below. CD’s use of the term 'schoolfellow' gives credence to Forster’s remark that CD and Mitton first met at 'a school kept by Mr. Dawson in Hunter-street, Brunswick-square' (Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W. T. Ley, p. 46).
• 3. Soon after his appointment, Henderson increased the number of Metropolitan Police detectives from 15 to 260 and instituted a Criminal Investigation Dept.
• 4. Henderson did not appoint Mitton so did not appoint Mitton's solicitor at the Brentford police court, who at the time was working as a solicitor at the Brentford Police Court; see W. J. Carlton, 'The Strange Story of Thomas Mitton', Dickensian 56 (1960): 151.
• 5. Thomas Mitton (1812-78), solicitor, one of CD's earliest close friends. Son of Thomas Mitton, publican, of Battle Bridge (the district now known as King's Cross), where the Mitton and Dickens families may at some time have been neighbours -- perhaps in The Polygon where the Dickenses were living 1827-8. Mitton and CD were clerks together for a short time during 1828-9 in Charles Molloy's office, 8 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, where Mitton served his articles. He was CD’s solicitor until 1856.
• 6. The MS shows ditto marks below Henderson’s name; this is a shorthand to indicate his address as it would appear on the envelope.