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:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

America

public readings

social engagements

health

To JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,1 31 DECEMBER 1867

Text from facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries online catalogue, Feb 2018.

Westminster Hotel, New York2

New Years3 Eve, 1867

My Dear Mr Lowell

I have been unwell,4 or I should have sooner written to tell you that the disengaged day in my calendar is Wednesday February 26th.5

Many happy New Years to you and yours!

Faithfully Yours ever

CHARLES DICKENS

Professor James Russell Lowell

1. James Russell Lowell (1819-91; Dictionary of American Biography), man of letters, poet and teacher; succeeded Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as Smith Professor of French and Spanish at Harvard University, 1857-61. He attended CD's opening reading in Boston on 2 Dec 1867; in advance of the event, on 18 Nov, he wrote to CD's publisher James T. Fields: "Don't fail to get me tickets, and for the first night. I should like to see his reception. It will leave a picture on the brain. And why should I not be there to welcome him, as well as Tom, Dick, or Harry?" (M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess. A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields [Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922], p. 141n).
2. In Irving Place, New York City; CD took up residence there on 9 Dec 1867.
3. Thus in MS.
4. CD disclosed to several correspondents that he had been unwell; see To Mary Dickens, 30 Dec 1867; To W.H. Wills, 30 Dec 1867, and To Charles Eliot Norton, 31 Dec 1867 (Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 526-9). His suffering from "low action of the heart" (To John Forster, [?25 Dec 1867], in Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 523) caused concern for his physician, who recommended cancelling the readings for a few days (To J.T. Fields, 29 Dec 1867, in Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 525).
5. CD confirmed the meeting in a letter to Lowell on February 13, 1868, in which he agreed to dine with him and his daughter Mabel (Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 51). The meeting is also confirmed in a letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 520).