The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDWARD BARROW,1 23 FEBRUARY 1864

 Text from Charles Wells, “Written in a Library: A Dickens Letter”, Bristol Times and Mirror, 7 Aug 1920, p. 10; addressed Edward Barrow; dated Gloucester Place, Hyde Park Gardens, 23 February 1864.

Many thanks for your letter. Another of my boys2 would arrive3 out at Calcutta when his brother4 had been dead a month, confidently expecting to see him after six years. When a family are widely dispersed this is in the course of Nature. The ranks must be closed up and the march must go on.5 

• 1. Edward Barrow (1798-1869), CD’s maternal uncle; Parliamentary reporter on the Mirror of Parliament and later on the Morning Herald. Member of the Newspaper Press Fund from January 1859: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 49n.
• 2. Francis Jeffrey (1844-86), CD’s third son; he had left England for India on 20 Dec 63, on his way to join the Bengal Mounted Police.
• 3. CD used this subjunctive mood elsewhere: see To Adams, 25 Feb 64, and To Knight, 1 Mar 64 (Pilgrim Letters 10, pp. 362, 366).
• 4. Walter Landor (1841-63), CD’s second son; he had been a Lieutenant in the 2nd Highlanders stationed in India; died of aneurism of the aorta, 31 Dec 63 (see further To Miss Burdett Coutts, 12 Feb 64, Pilgrim Letters 10, pp. 355-6).
• 5. Not apparently a quotation, though from 1861 CD uses a similar sentiment when exhorting correspondents in situations of loss (e.g. To Mrs Brown, 3 Nov 61, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 494; To Forster, 22 Dec 68, Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 252).