The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To HENRY BICKNELL,1 10 JUNE 1858 

Text from facsimile in Hindman online catalogue, April 2021.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, | TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON. W.C.

Thursday Tenth June 1858 

My Dear Bicknell

            I must thank you heartily for your kind letter. No mark of friendship could be more welcome to me, or more cordially cherished by me.

                                    Very faithfully Yours

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

Henry Bicknell Esquire.

• 1. Henry Sanford Bicknell (1818-80), on staff of the Crystal Palace Company. He endorsed the proposal of the company's directors to ask CD to join the Council of the Crystal Palace Art-Union, formed to promote art and "art-industry", chiefly through commissioning works for distribution to its subscribers. For CD's declining the invitation see his letter to Bicknell of 24 June: "I abstain, on principle, from associating myself in name alone with any project; I know I have not leisure to bestow on any new occupation at present" (Pilgrim Letters 8, pp. 590-1). CD was friendly with the painter David Roberts, father of Bicknell's wife Christine; see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 522 & n. The first mention of Bicknell is in a letter to John Forster, October 1849; see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 596.