The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Period: 
1861-1870
Theme(s): 
social engagements
autographs

To ELIZABETH BENZON,1 7 MARCH 1864

MS Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, Specialized Libraries and Archival Collections, University of Southern California. On Gad’s Hill headed mourning paper. 

57 Glo’ster Place, Hyde Park Gardens

Monday Morning, Seventh March 1864

My Dear Mrs Benzon

Let me cordially wish you many happy returns of to day. I do so, before going away to fulfil my engagement. You will have known, by not hearing from me to beg a corner, that it held me fast.2 Enclosed is the autograph for Mrs. Adams3 with my kind regard to her. 

Very Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

  • 1. Née Elizabeth Schlesinger Lehmann (1829-78), born in Hamburg; Frederick Lehmann’s sister and wife of Ernst Leopold Benzon: see Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 411n.
  • 2. The engagement (not identified) that kept him from a corner of the table at her birthday party. CD anticipates Mrs Benzon’s next day’s reading of his letter.
  • 3. Not otherwise identified.