The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDWARD GOULBURN,1 8 JULY 1840

Text from facsimile in R & R Auctions catalogue, July 2007. 

Devonshire Terrace | 8th. July 1840.

My Dear Sir 

I am unfortunate again! I am engaged next Wednesday – not only to dinner at home, but to a party at Miss Coutts’s in the Evening.2 I should have written to you sooner, but there was a chance of release from the first of these engagements, which, I am sorry to say exists no longer. I cannot tell you how vexed I am.  

Believe me | Dear Sir | Faithfully Yours 

 CHARLES DICKENS

Mr. Serjeant Goulburn.  

• 1. Edward Goulburn (1787-1868; Dictionary of National Biography). Forced to withdraw from the Army after publishing a libellous satirical poem. Serjeant-at-law, 1829; Tory MP, Leicester, 1835-7: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 607n.
• 2. CD had accepted Miss Coutts's invitation on 4 July: see To Miss Coutts, 4 July, and To Marjoribanks, 6 July (Pilgrim Letters 2, pp. 95-6).