The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THE REV. GILBERT ELLIOT,1 1 MAY 1850

MS Fred. D. Bentley, Snr, Marietta, Georgia, USA. Address: The Reverend Gilbert Elliot.

Devonshire Terrace | First May 1850.

My Dear Sir

I send you round the enclosed2 (which perhaps you will return), thinking you may like to be made acquainted with such an intimation of its being “all right” in that quarter. I have said a word to my friend Mr. Punch.3

The Reverend Gilbert Elliot

In haste | Ever Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. The Rev. Gilbert Elliot (1800-91); Rector of Holy Trinity, Marylebone (1846- 50), during which time he and CD became friends: see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 538n. His appointment as Dean of Bristol announced in The Times, 1 May. Opposed to the Romanizing movement in the Church of England (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 205n).
• 2. Not identified.
• 3. i.e. Mark Lemon, as editor of Punch. In issues for May 1850 the only likely items that Elliot’s interests might have prompted are verses mocking admission charges to St Paul’s Cathedral (p.169) and a satirical defence of the Metropolitan Interments Bill (p.187).