The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

social engagements

travel

To MAJOR LAKE1, 24 APRIL 1853

Text from facsimile on eBay August 2016.

Address: Major Lake, | 9 Charles Street, | St James’s

Tavistock House

Twenty Fourth April, 1853.

My Dear Sir

My difficulty about Friday, is, that I am not sure when my Scotch friend2 departs for Edinburgh, but I rather think he will not go until Saturday at the earliest. Therefore I am with-held from making any engagement, as we go wildly to theatres and other public places, and I am bound to keep within call – like a Surgeon. I think our only course is, to trust to our better fortune – Autumn – and India! Or possibly you may find yourself at Boulogne in the course of the Summer, when I should be very happy to see you there. If I can get a good house, I purpose passing the whole summer in that place.

Very faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Major Lake.

1. Major Edward John Lake (1823-77; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), army officer, commissioned in Bengal Engineers 1840; saw active service in the Punjab. Between 1852 and 1854 he was in England on furlough.
2. CD’s old friend John Thomson Gordon (1813-65), Sheriff of Midlothian, was staying with him at this time; see Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 64 and n; also pp. 65, 71. For further information on Gordon see Paul Schlicke and William F Long, 'Dickens’s Second-Best Scottish Friend: John Thomson Gordon 1813-1865,' Dickensian 111.3 (2015): 257- 64.