The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To FREDERIC OUVRY,1 18 OCTOBER 1867

MS Laurence Senelick.

Friday | Eighteenth October, 1867.2

Memorandum as to my Policy of Assurance

In the Eagle Life Office

On the afternoon of Thursday the 17th. October 1867, I called at The Eagle Office in Pall Mall to enquire if any extra premium were necessary to be paid, or any permission necessary to be obtained, for my intended voyage to America and back.3 I there saw two gentlemen belonging to the Office, who informed me that the foregoing Rule 74 exonerated me from the payment of any extra premium, or the obtaining of any permission.

• 1. Frederic Ouvry (1814-81), of Farrer, Ouvry & Farrer, CD’s solicitors from 1856: see Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 273n. Sotheby’s catalogue gives Ouvry’s name, possibly from an envelope no longer with the MS.
• 2. Date at bottom of MS.
• 3. CD visited America for the second time, Nov 1867-Apr 1868.
• 4. CD wrote this note at the bottom of a printed page of the Company’s terms and conditions, having crossed out everything except Rule 7, under which applicants were permitted, “in times of peace, without extra charge”, to reside in any country “north of 33 degrees north latitude”, and to “pass by sea (not being seafaring persons by profession)” between any places “lying north of 33 degrees north latitude”.