The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To HENRY BICKNELL,1 9 SEPTEMBER 1867
MS The Garrick Club.
GAD’S HILL PLACE | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT
Monday Ninth September 1867
My Dear Bicknell
Pray give my love to Mrs Bicknell,2 and my cordial thanks for the kind remembrance and her dear father’s3 sketch. Assure her from me that she cannot have a brighter or more faithful recollection of those “pleasant days in the far off distance” than I have; and that her figure is always in the foreground of those delightful pictures when I see them. I cannot remember the rights of the signatories to the sketch.4 I know we had some joke about it at the time, but I cannot call it to mind. May the Clyde5 be a kind river to you and yours and do good service!
We all unite in Kindest wishes and regards, and I always am
Very faithfully yours
CHARLES DICKENS
Henry Bicknell Esquire
- 1. Henry Sanford Bicknell (?1818-80), younger son of Elhanan Bicknell (1788-1861; Dictionary of National Biography), patron of arts and businessman; Henry had been employed by the Crystal Palace Co.; probably a member of his father’s firm by 1860; married Christine, only child of David Roberts in 1841.
- 2. Christine, née Roberts, 1821-72, only child of David Roberts.
- 3. David Roberts (1796-1864; Dictionary of National Biography), painter; RA 1841: see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 522; probably met CD through Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867; Dictionary of National Biography: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 553), marine and landscape painter; painted scenery for CD’s Amateur Theatricals 1851-2: see Pilgrim Letters 6
- 4. On 14 June 62 Roberts, Stanfield and Benjamin Webster travelled to Gad’s Hill, where they spent a few days; David Roberts made a pencil sketch, dated Gadshill, 17 June 62, now in the Yale Collection. CD seems to suggest some residual right to the sketch among the original members of the party, of whom he and Webster were now the survivors: the picture is not among those sold in July 1870 (Catalogue of the Library of CD..., ed. J. H. Stonehouse, 1935).
- 5. The river that runs through Glasgow, and into the Firth of Clyde.