The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To PETER LE NEVE FOSTER,1 29 JANUARY 1858

Text from facsimile in Bloomsbury Auctions online catalogue March 2016.

Tavistock House. W.C.

Twenty Ninth January 1858

Dear Sir

I cannot have the honor of being one of the Deputation to present the address to which your Private Circular refers;2 inasmuch as I attached my name to it as President of the Chatham and Rochester Institution, in submission to such of its members as have appended their names to the document, and without in the least perceiving (as I informed the Secretary), what on earth we had to do with the marriage of the Princess Royal.

Your faithful Servant

CHARLES DICKENS

P. Le Neve Foster Esquire

• 1. Peter le Neve Foster (1809-79; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), barrister and secretary of the Society of Arts. CD had been a member of the Society since 1849 and served as Vice-President 1850-51. Foster was involved with the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was a keen pioneer of photography.
• 2. A Deputation of members of the Society of Arts presented a congratulatory address to the Prince Consort (President of the Society), on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858; see Journal of the Society of Arts no 273, Vol. 6 (12 Feb 1858): 183.