The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CAPTAIN ELISHA ELY MORGAN,1 27 July 1849

MS Robin Lloyd

Captain E.E. Morgan

New York City

U.S. of America

BONCHURCH, ISLE OF WIGHT2

Twenty Seventh July 1849.

My Dear Sir

The date of this letter will I hope explain to you why we have not been able to avail ourselves of your kind and welcome invitation, which only arrived here last night.3

My ladies4 desire their cordial remembrances to you, and I am always

CHARLES DICKENS 

Captain Morgan.

• 1. Capt. Elisha Ely Morgan (?1805-64), of the American merchant service (Silas Jones Jorgan in ‘A Message from the Sea’, All the Year Round Christmas Number, 1860). See Leon Litvack, "Messages from the Sea: New Dickens Letters to E.E. and W.D. Morgan", Dickensian 110.2 (2014), 242-54.
• 2. CD was in the Isle of Wight with his family from 26 July to 1 October.
• 3. Morgan captained the Southampton on its inaugural voyage across the Atlantic in June 1849. It docked at Gravesend on 6 July (‘Money-Market and City Intelligence’, Times, 6 July 1849), and then travelled on to London. It left London for the return journey to New York on 28 July (‘Regular Line of Packets between London and New York’, Times, 4 June 1849).
• 4. Catherine Dickens and Georgina Hogarth.