The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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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):

Urania Cottage

charity

testimonials

To THE GOVERNORS OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL,1 9 JULY 1852

Text from facsimile in Bloomsbury Auctions online catalogue, March 2015.

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square

Friday Ninth July 1852.

I beg to state to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital that I have read the printed paper describing the qualifications they require in their Matron; and that I very earnestly and strongly recommend Mrs Morson2 to their favorable consideration.

For upwards of three years, I have had constant opportunities of observing Mrs Morson’s capacity for the administration of such an office.3 She has been, during that time the principal directress of an establishment for the reclamation and training of young women, which is maintained by the munificence of Miss Burdett Coutts4, and with the management of which I am intimately associated. She is a lady of great discretion, of remarkable sweetness of temper, and has a power of uniting firmness with conciliation in a very remarkable and uncommon manner. I have never known her to make a mistake even under circumstances of great difficulty, and I have invariably found that those under her care have become attached to her. She is accustomed to method, order, punctuality, and to a habit of sound and judicious observation. I would entrust her, myself, with the duties to which she now aspires, in preference to any lady I have ever seen in a similar capacity.

CHARLES DICKENS

1. The Foundling Hospital, Guilford St, now the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children: see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 34n. CD and Wills described the Hospital and its work in 'Received, a Blank Child', Household Words 7 (19 March 1853): 49-53.
2. Georgiana Morson (née Collin, ?1817-1880), matron of Urania Cottage 1849-54. See Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 703 and 710; CD was ‘very sorry to hear’ that Mrs Morson was making this application, which was not successful.
3. For CD’s account of Urania Cottage, see his article 'Home for Homeless Women', Household Words 7 (23 April 1853): 169-75. See also Jenny Hartley, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women (2009).
4. Angela Georgina Burdett Coutts (1814-1906; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), philanthropist and long-standing friend of CD, with whom she collaborated on Urania Cottage and other social work projects.