The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JAMES THOMSON,1 12 JUNE 1852

Extract in Jarndyce Catalogue, Winter 2012-13.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE,

Saturday evening, Twelfth June 1852

I am very glad that all is going so well – I am very glad also, that there is no difference between us in reference to the subject of our last short correspondences.2 Of course you understand that I will connect Sir James Brooke's name with the trust, with the greatest pleasure, and with all possible grace and courtesy towards him. The point I would rather avoid is quite another matter. . . . I observe that the word I have written before "places" has a cabalistic appearance. I mean it to represent a 3.3

• 1. James Thomson, of Gordon, Thomson, & Keene, seed merchants and nurserymen, 25 Fenchurch Street.
• 2. CD had written to Thomson the previous day (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 694) about a speech he was to give at the Gardeners’ Benevolent Institution on 14 June, declining to allude to the "Bornean proceedings" -- that is, controversial case of Sir James Brooke, "Rajah" of Sarawak, who had put down piracy in Borneo in 1849 and been appointed KCB. Joseph Hume MP had three times vainly demanded a Commission of Inquiry on suspicion of the illegality and inhumanity of his actions. He finally succeeded later in the year, but Brooke was exonerated; see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 694, n 4.
• 3. CD had reserved three tickets for Catherine Dickens.