The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To FREDERIC OUVRY,1, 17 MAY 1858

MS Hospitalfield Arts Centre.

Tavistock House

Seventeenth May 1858

My Dear Sir,

You will perceive from the enclosed letter of the Honorary Solicitor to the Guild2 that under the English law we must apply to Parliament for leave to amend our Act, and that we cannot even register a Petition having that object, until next November.3

The delay is excessively unpalatable and irksome to me; but I fear it is [           ]4 it and there is no possible hope of [      ]5 at any earlier moment.

Believe me ever

Very faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Frederic Ouvry Esquire

• 1. Frederic Ouvry (1814-81) CD’s solicitor from 1856.
• 2. Mr Wordsworth, Honorary Solicitor for the Guild of Literature and Art, a self-help scheme for writers and artists, founded by CD and his friends in 1851. See To Patrick Allan-Fraser 19 April 1858.
• 3. CD proposed that Ouvry seek an amendment to the 1854 Literary and Scientific Institutions Act (which incorporated the Guild of Literature and Art), so as to enable the organisation to accept a gift of Hawkesbury Hall in Warwickshire, from Patrick Allan-Fraser (1813-90). See To Ouvry, [?10 May 1858], Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 562. See also Michael Slater, "Munificence Declined: New Letters about the Guild of Literature and Art", Dickensian 111.1 (2015): 34-41.
• 4. Letter torn; words missing.
• 5. Letter torn; words missing.