The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Period: 
1851-1860
Theme(s): 
social engagements
travel
Italy

To SIR FITZROY KELLY,1 20 DECEMBER 1853 

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 230.

Text from facsimile in Bloomsbury Auctions online catalogue, March 2015.

Tavistock House

Twentieth December 1853. 

My Dear Sir Fitzroy

            I feel extremely obliged to you for your friendly invitation, and should have accepted it in its2 own spirit with the greatest readiness and pleasure but for a previous unlucky engagement, made on the very day of my return to England.3

            I experienced much attention and kindness from Sir William Temple4 when I was at Naples nine years ago,5 and was disappointed not to have the opportunity of seeing him when I was there again the other day.6 It is another reason for my sincerely regretting that I cannot accept the pleasure you so kindly propose to me.                                                                                                                                                 

                                    Very faithfully yours               

CHARLES DICKENS

 Sir Fitzroy Kelly.

  • 1. Sir Fitzroy Kelly (1796-1880; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), barrister and judge; Attorney General 1858-9; Conservative MP 1852-66. For his identification as the original of “Bar” see Little Dorrit, ed. H. P. Sucksmith, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), p. xxvii.
  • 2. "the" deleted before “its”.
  • 3. CD returned to England on 10 Dec 1853.
  • 4. Sir William Temple (1788-1856), envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at Naples 1832-56; brother of Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Prime Minister 1855-8, 1859-65).
  • 5. For CD's being " gloriously fêted" by Temple while in Naples in 1845, see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 267 n1, and John Forster's description of Temple as "a man supremely agreeable, with everything about him in perfect taste, and with the truest gentleman-manner which has its root in kindness and generosity of nature" (Life of Charles Dickens [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 372).
  • 6. CD was in Italy and Switzerland from Oct-Dec 1853, in the company of his friends, the author Wilkie Collins and the artist Augustus Egg.