The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To GEORGE CATTERMOLE,1 [?JULY-DECEMBER 1837]

Text from facsimile on the website of John Wilson Manuscripts Ltd. On mourning paper. Date: after 27 June, when Cattermole was among those who dined with CD following the visit to Newgate (To Forster, [26 June 37], in Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 277); handwriting supports 1837; “always” in subscription supports later rather than earlier in the period.

48 Doughty Street / Tuesday Morning

My Dear Cattermole.

How sorry I am, that I did not get your note earlier! I very much regret being prevented from joining you to-day but I hope I shall see you on many future occasions both here2 and there.

George Cattermole Esqre

Believe me Always / Most Sincerely Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. George Cattermole (1800-68; Dictionary of National Biography), painter and illustrator. Co-illustrator of Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge. Had contributed drawings, 1821-3, to the antiquary John Britton’s Architectural Antiquities of England. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1819-27; member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1833. In 1839 he married a distant relative of CD’s: see further Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 277n.
• 2. After the visit to Newgate, Forster, Cattermole, H. K. Browne and Macready had dined with CD at Doughty Street, where they were joined by J. P. Harley, George Hogarth, and Banks, Maclise’s brother-in-law (Macready, Diaries, I, 401- 02).