The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CHARLES BODENHAM,1 12 MARCH 1845

Text from facsimile in Heritage Auctions online catalogue, Jun 2022.

Hotel Meloni2 Wednesday Morning Twelfth March 1845.

My Dear Sir

    I thank you very much for the order to see the alabaster columns,3 and I shall be truly happy in your company to the church where they are kept. The weather does not promise favorably today, if we may judge from present appearances. Should it be finer tomorrow, I will propose an hour to you, early in the morning.4

    Believe me My Dear Sir

        Faithfully Yours

            CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Bodenham Esquire.

• 1. Charles Thomas Bodenham (1783-1865), of Rotherwas House, Dindor, Herefordshire; land inspector, High Sheriff, and member of the Roman Catholic Board. In 1810 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Weld, of Lulworth Castle, Dorset; both were from landed Catholic families, and frequent European travellers.
• 2. In the Piazza del Popolo, Rome.
• 3. Possibly in the Villa Albani, beyond the Porta Salara, where the long gallery was "decorated with two columns of jaspar [sic.] and alabaster" (Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Central Italy, Including the Papal States, Rome, and Etruria [London: John Murray and Son, 1843], p. 468).
• 4. CD wrote to Bodenham again on 24 Mar, to say, “We have not seen the alabaster columns” (Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 286).