The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DRINKWATER MEADOWS,1 [1838]

Text from facsimile in Dominic Winter online catalogue, Nov 2023.
Address: Boy2 | Drinkwater Meadows Esquire | Fund Office | Covent Garden Theatre.
Date: Handwriting confirms 1838.

• 1. Drinkwater Meadows (?1793-1869; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), comedian; a member of the company of CD’s friend William Charles Macready, at Covent Garden. He played the role of Tom Pinch in a dramatisation of Martin Chuzzlewit in 1844 (see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 150n). He was said to have been born in Yorkshire in 1799, though his gravestone suggests that he was born in 1793 or 1794.
• 2. The letter was hand-delivered by a messenger boy.