The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM KELLY,1 3 OCTOBER 1858

Text from facsimile in Jarndyce Dickens catalogue CXLV.

Royal Hotel, Aberdeen2

Sunday Night | Third October 1858.

Dear Sir

I have received your very welcome note,3 and I beg very cordially to thank you. But unfortunately I have not received the newspaper to which your note refers. Could you have the kindness to send me a copy of the Sonnet4 I am naturally anxious to read – either to Glasgow (care of Mr Muir Wood,5 Buchanan Street), between this and Saturday; or to my house (Tavistock House) in London, afterwards?

William Kelly Esquire

Yours faithfully and obliged

              CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Possibly Thomas W. Kelly, London schoolmaster; contributed “Animal Mechanics” to Household Words (10 July 52); author of Rosemary Leaves, 1854, and other collections of verse: see Pilgrim Letters 10, p. 363.
• 2. On Monday morning, in John Marr’s Music Saloon, CD read the Carol and in the afternoon he read Little Dombey: for his Autumn 1858 Reading tour see Pilgrim Letters 8, passim and Appx H.
• 3. No doubt forwarded from the office by Wills.
• 4. Not traced.
• 5. John Muir Wood, of J. M. Wood & Co., pianoforte and music sellers, 42 Buchanan Street, Glasgow; CD’s agents for his readings in Glasgow.