The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To GEORGE [?DARLING],1 22 APRIL 1857

Text from facsimile in Alexautographs catalogue, 2010.

Tavistock House, London | Twenty Second April, 1857

Dear Sir

My absence from London2 has prevented my returning an earlier reply to your letter, and sending back your Manuscript with thanks. I can hardly be expected to recognize the necessity of the question propounded at your Debating Society, as I may be reasonably supposed to have settled it very conclusively in my own mind. But it is extremely agreeable and gratifying to me to have so earnest a champion as yourself and to find the generous order of youth expressing itself so well, and with so strong a love of what is good and true.

Mr. George [?Darling] Junr.

Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Unidentified. Name uncertain; “Darling” possible.
• 2. CD was in Gravesend, 7-15 Apr, to keep “an eye on the little repairs” at Gad’s Hill (To Miss Coutts, 9 Apr; Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 310). He was clearing off accumulated correspondence on his return to London.