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:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

friends

health

America

public readings

To MRS FANNY KEMBLE,1 20 APRIL 1868

MS Armstrong Browning Library, Texas.

Westminster Hotel, New York2

Monday Twentieth April | 1868.

My Dear Mrs. Kemble.

I cannot receive your touching and most sympathetic note without thanking you for it, and assuring you of the response that lies in my heart. The effects of my recent hard work in a hard winter have culminated in a neuralgic affection of the right foot, which so disables me to day that I am even now doubtful of the possibility of standing at my table tonight.3 But if I can walk tomorrow I will try to see you and say Goodbye. Accept my best wishes for your prosperity and happiness and for the welfare of those who are dearest to you. I cannot offer them without emotion, recalling through how many years and how many changes I have been among the warmest of the admirers of your genius.

Believe me | Always affectionately your friend

CHARLES DICKENS

I shall preserve the “leaf” from Washington4 with tender care and pride.

1. Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble (1809-93; Dictionary of National Biography), actress and writer, daughter of Charles Kemble and niece of Mrs Siddons: see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 242n. Married (1834) Pierce Butler, an American plantation owner; separated 1845. Living again in America, where she gave readings. She had attended CD’s reading in Philadelphia, 30 Jan (Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 30).
2. CD was giving his final readings in New York, 13-20 Apr.
3. CD’s farewell reading, in New York and America; he read the Christmas Carol and The Trial.
4. Presumably some memento, possibly connected with Mrs Kemble’s own reading tour, which overlapped with the final stages of CD’s (Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 30).