The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN DILLON,1 8 FEBRUARY 1844

Replaces extract (misdated 3 Feb 1844) in Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 39.
Text from facsimile in Christie’s online catalogue, Sept 2022.

Devonshire Terrace.
York Gate Regents Park
Eighth February 1844.

My Dear Sir.

    No, indeed. Trust me you were not wrong in believing — in feeling well-assured I hope — that the testimony you bear to the success of my little book, would sink deep into my heart, and fill it with a sad delight. Nothing could touch me half so nearly. No roar of approbation that human voices could set up, would affect me like the faintest whisper from a home such as yours.2

    I will not venture to condole you, upon the loss you have sustained. I heard of it with great sorrow at the time; and have often enquired concerning you, of mutual friends.

    I shall ever prize your letter. I thank God for the high privilege of speaking to the secret hearts of those who are in grief like yours;3 and I thank you earnestly, for the courage you have given me.

        I am My Dear Sir

            Faithfully Your friend

                CHARLES DICKENS

John Dillon Esquire

• 1. John Dillon (c. 1791–1868), of Morrison, Dillon & Co., merchants, Fore St, Cripplegate; like his partner James Morrison (1789–1857; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) he was extremely rich, and was a well-known philanthropist. Dillon spoke at the Sanatorium dinner 29 June 1843 (see Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 500n), and was at the farewell dinner to William Charles Macready on 26 Aug 1843 (see Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 544n). Dillon was also a member of the Elton Fund committee, established to provide for the seven orphaned children of Edward William Elt (1794–1843, known as Elton), an actor who died in a shipwreck.
• 2. CD wrote this letter in response to one from Dillon, who provided a transcription of his communication with the author, in a note tipped into a copy of the first impression of the first edition of A Christmas Carol: “On my return from France in the month of January 1844 I read this copy of ‘A Christmas Carol’ — In the August preceding, I had met its author at dinner —, & but a few days afterwards, had lost, by death, one who (in a letter to Mr. Charles Dickens) I described as ‘to me more than a son — all my plans of life & hopes of enjoyment having been more or less bound up in him — perhaps too much so.’ From that moment (I added) to the present, I have met with few things, certainly I have read no book of our own age which has given me so much relief — rather I should say afforded me so much consolation as I have derived from the kindly humanizing & therefore cheerful spirit of the ‘Christmas Carol.’ Amid the public fame which attends you, — am I wrong in believing that you will not consider as intrusive this private testimony (however humble) to your success in the best offices of an author — the consoling the griefs & arousing the kindliest sympathies in the hearts of those who read him—?” (Christie’s online catalogue)
• 3. Dillon's second son, Edward, aged 22, died on 10 Sep 1843 (The Times, 11 Sep 1843).