The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DR SHERIDAN MUSPRATT,1 24 AUGUST 1851

MS Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Autog. Dickens, Charles). Address: Dr. Sheridan Muspratt | College of Chemistry | Liverpool. On mourning paper.

Broadstairs, Kent. | Sunday Twenty Fourth August | 1851.

My Dear Dr Muspratt.

Five hundred pounds would be a noble sum to clear in Liverpool, and would more than satisfy me.2 I wish I could be there, to meet Baron Liebig,3 – one of the greatest men in Europe, and in whom I am (as who is not?) most strongly interested. But I can only feel proud at a distance, to know that I have the honor to number him among my readers.

Faithfully Yours alwys 

 CHARLES DICKENS

Dr. Sheridan Muspratt. 

• 1. Dr James Sheridan Muspratt (1821-71; Dictionary of National Biography), industrial chemist; founded the Liverpool College of Chemistry, 1851: see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 439n.
• 2. The Guild of Literature and Art performed Bulwer Lytton’s Not So Bad as We Seem and Lemon’s Mr Nightingale’s Diary in Liverpool, 11 Feb 52; about £600 was cleared (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 596 & n). Muspratt contributed significantly to the success of the performance: To Wills, [6 Feb 52], PIlgrim Letters 6, pp. 593-4 & 594n.
• 3. Justus von Liebig (1803-73), eminent German chemist: see PIlgrim Letters 6, p. 471n. Muspratt had worked in his laboratory, 1843. Liebig was making a tour through the United Kingdom