The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JAMES HEYWOOD,1 17 OCTOBER 1845

MS Private.

London, 1 Devonshire Terrace

York Gate Regent’s Park

Seventeenth October 1845

My Dear Sir

I am exceedingly obliged to you for your kind invitation. It would be a great pleasure to me to accept it; but my movements are so exceedingly uncertain, my arrival in Manchester2 so dependant on circumstances, and the period of my stay so very short, that I deem it best to hold myself aloof from all engagements there. I have many occupations at this moment of a very pressing nature; and Mrs Dickens being unwell besides, and very near her confinement,3 I am really afraid to make engagements.

I am always, My Dear Sir,

Very Faithfully yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

James Heywood Esquire.

• 1. James Heywood (1810-97; see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 404n), one of the founders of the Manchester Athenaeum and its first President.
• 2. CD had agreed to attend the Manchester Athenaeum’s soirée on 23 Oct, to support Talfourd, the evening’s President. Heywood evidently asked CD to do something else than just attend: see also To Leech, 17 Oct, and, for the soirée, Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 413nn.
• 3. Catherine gave birth to Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens on 28 Oct. CD had already made clear her pregnancy meant his visit to Manchester must be brief: five days later, he withdrew altogether (To Berlyn, 22 Oct).