The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To HANNAH BROWN,1 18 SEPTEMBER 1856

Replaces mention in Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 189.
Text from facsimile in Dominic Winter auction catalogue, Nov 2022.
Address: Mrs. Brown | Miss Burdett Coutts | Prospect Hill | Reading2

Tavistock House
Thursday Eighteenth September | 1856.

My Dear Mrs. Brown.

    Any time tomorrow between 10 and 4, or any time on Monday between 10 and 4; on Tuesday, or Thursday.3

        Faithfully Yours

      CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Hannah Brown, née Meredith (c. 1800–78), former governess (since 1821) and lifelong companion of CD’s friend Angela Burdett Coutts. Her husband, Dr William Brown (1798–1855) was Miss Coutts’s personal physician, and a member of the management committee of Urania Cottage.
• 2. Miss Coutts had rented Prospect Park for six months, possibly to ease Mrs Brown’s grief over the death, on 23 Nov 1855, of her husband.
• 3. Mrs Brown was consulting with CD about her decision to establish an Exhibition for students of St George's Hospital, by examination, in memory of her husband, who had been a pupil at its Medical School. See Pilgrim Letters 8, pp. 169–70 171–2, 191–2, 197, 201, 221.