The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Correspondent

How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Lydia Craig, Jeremy Parrott, and Scott Caddy (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Lydia Craig, Jeremy Parrott, and Scott Caddy (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

visual arts

To JOHANNES CHRISTIAAN D’ARNAUD GERKENS1 [8–21 OCTOBER 1853]

Envelope only.
Text from facsimile in Activity Auctions online catalogue, Oct 2022.
Address: Affranchie2 | À Monsieur: | Monsr. J.C. D’Arnaud Gerkens | The Hague
Date: handwriting confirms 1853. CD’s use of French in the address suggests that he sent the letter from either France or Switzerland, some time between 8 and 21 October, whilst on a tour in the company of Wilkie Collins and Augustus Egg.

1. Johannes Christiaan d'Arnaud Gerkens (1823–92), Dutch painter, illustrator, and lithographer; specialized in drawing portraits. He had sent CD some representations of the principal characters in David Copperfield (see To Gerkens, 19 Apr 1953, in Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 66). The image was never published by Gerkens; however it did appear, with an accompanying description, in Dickensian 4.5 (May 1908): 125 and unpaginated front matter.
2. “Stamped” in French.