The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOSEPH KING,1 10 MARCH 1852

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 623.
Text from facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries online catalogue, Jun 2022.

Tavistock House.
Wednesday Tenth March 1852

My Dear Sir

    I have been constantly “going” to call on you one morning and bring you the enclosed with many thanks.2 My occupations have so constantly enforced me into the substitution of the will for the deed, that I think it best to send it thus after all.

        My Dear Sir

        Always Faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

Joseph King Esquire.

• 1. Joseph Charles King (?1794-1854), schoolmaster; took a small number of pupils, both boarders and day-boys, at his house at 9 Northwick Terrace, Maida Hill. He was an intimate friend of CD's friend William Charles Macready, at whose home CD had met him by 17 Nov 1840. King's teaching staff consisted of his three daughters, and a mathematical assistant. He was a fine scholar and collector of pictures and books (his library sold by Sotheby's, 13 Nov 1854); he "had methods of teaching far in advance of his time", introducing his boys directly to Homer and Virgil without rote learning of grammar, and no "academic mustiness" (Edith Sichel, The Life and Letters of Alfred Ainger [London: Constable & Co., 1906], pp. 11-12); confirmed by Frederic Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs (2 vols., London: Macmillan & Co., 1911), vol. 1, 28ff, who thought him "the ideal schoolmaster"). Ainger says that King's eldest daughter Louisa (later Mrs Menzies) assisted him in teaching Greek – probably the sole resemblance to the establishment of Dr Blimber's in Dombey and Son; Louisa's serving as inspiration for the character of Cornelia Blimber is noted both by John Forster, Life of Charles Dickens (London: Cecil Palmer, 1928), p. 485, and by Charley Dickens in his Introduction to Dombey and Son (London: Macmillan & Co., 1892), p. xix.
• 2. For the education of his son Walter, CD paid King’s account of £34.10.0, debited on 13 March (MS Messrs Coutts). We are grateful to Warren Weiss for this information.