The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To H. K. BROWNE,1 6 JUNE 1856

MS (fragment) Valerie Browne Lester.

Tavistock House | Friday Sixth June 1856

My Dear Browne2

• 1. Hablot Knight Browne, “Phiz” (1815-82; Dictionary of National Biography), painter and illustrator: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 163n. CD’s chief illustrator from Pickwick to A Tale of Two Cities.
• 2. The letter is torn off just below the greeting, leaving the tops only of the first line of the letter. Browne has made a series of sketches above and around what remains of the letter: reproduced in Valerie Browne Lester, Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens, 2004, p. 128. Presumably Browne tore off CD’s instructions for illustrations; CD was working on the July No. of Little Dorrit (Bk I, Chs 26-9), in which the illustrations were “Five and Twenty” and “Floating Away”. Browne’s sketches on the letter fragment bear no relationship to any Dorrit illustrations. The central sketch (not unlike a windmill) may be a preliminary thought for the monthly cover of Charles Lever’s Davenport Dunn (serialized from July 1857), where a large man steps forward over the horizon, from a panorama of London, lit behind by a giant oil-lamp sending out rays of light. The couple at the left margin might possibly relate to an illustration in the December 1857 issue, “Conway on escort duty”, where a man helps a young woman of superior class along a shore at night, with the wind blowing