The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS HILL,1 [19 NOVEMBER 1837] 

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, May 2020.

Doughty Street

Sunday 

My Dear Sir

            Very many thanks for the papers,2 which I will safely return, – and also for the opportunity of perusing Mr Hook's3 note. I assure you that I am most anxious to improve an acquaintance with him, and shall be delighted if we ever grow intimate, as I hope we may when the wind takes lodgings in some other quarter.4

            I am sorry you were not with us last night.5 It went off exceedingly well.

                        Ever Faithfully and Sincerely Yours

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

Thomas Hill Esqre.

• 1. Thomas Hill (1760-1840; Dictionary of National Biography), retired drysalter (dealer in chemical products) and book-collector; in his prosperous days a lavish host at his Sydenham villa. A comic, eccentric, but popular figure, he was the original of the amiable know-all Hull in Theodore Hook's Gilbert Gurney (1835). For CD's esteem for him see Pilgrim Letters 2, pp. 111-12. For his many purchases at the sale of Hill's library, see Pilgrim Letters 2, pp. 229-30, 249-50 & nn.
• 2. Unidentified.
• 3. Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841; Dictionary of National Biography), writer, wit and vigorous lampooner; contributed to Bentley's Miscellany. Though CD did not get to know him well, as he had hoped, he commented sensitively on his death in a letter to Washington Irving (Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 396).
• 4. CD's joke relates to the proverb "When the wind is in the east, 'tis neither good for man nor beast".
• 5. The dinner to mark the completion of The Pickwick Papers was held at the Prince of Wales Hotel, Leicester Place, Leicester Square, on Saturday 18 Nov. CD had invited Hill to the event (Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 329).