The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To JOSEPH KING,1 31 MARCH 1847
Text from extract (aa) in Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 48 and facsimile of final two pages (bb) of three-page letter, in Blackburn Public Library. Date and address from catalogue description accompanying facsimile.
1 Chester Place
Regent's Park
aI removed Charley, as you are aware, to King's College, in compliance with Miss Coutts's wish. She is very much attached to him.a . . . bWhen I told Miss Coutts of my intention2 the other day, she proposed his going to a certain establishment in Surrey; but I mentioned to her how much grateful confidence I had in you – how interested you were in Charley – how Charley always bore you in his most affectionate remembrance – and how I thought he could not be so happy or so well placed anywhere as under your care. She readily yielded to my opinion; and the result of our deliberation was, that I would ask you to take back Charley when his health should be quite restored,3 and to give us the benefit of your counsel as time goes on, as to the expediency of sending him to a Public School in the end;4 also as to the pursuit for which he seems the best adapted, and to which he seems the most to incline. If we can, in the course of his mental and physical developement,5 find this out, Miss Coutts is very anxious to look about her, and prepare his way.
I write to you in entire confidence and without the least reserve. Such a friend as this lady, is most important to the child of course; and I should hardly feel justified in placing him under your charge, without telling you his exact position.
I think it will be better after a time – if you think so too – that he should be a weekly boarder at your house. But we will talk this over, before he comes. All I am anxious to do now, is to express my hope that you will like to have him, and to say that I am very sure he cannot have a better friend and tutor.
My dear Sir
Faithfully yours always
CHARLES DICKENS
Joseph.6 C. King Esquireb
- 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. King 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. To return Charley to him, postponing entry to King's College School, because of his health; see To Angela Burdett Coutts, 2 Apr 1847, in Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 50. CD thought so well of King's teaching that Charley remained under the schoolmaster's tutelage in the period 1847-9; Walter Dickens followed, in 1849-51; the two sons were well prepared for Eton and Addiscombe, respectively.
- 3. Charley was suffering from scarlet fever.
- 4. Miss Coutts bore the cost of Charley's attending Eton. See Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 501-2.
- 5. Thus in MS.
- 6. Thus in MS.