The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JULIA FORTESCUE,1 12 APRIL 1848

Text from facsimile in Gorringes (Lewes) online catalogue, March 2005.

Devonshire Terrace. | Twelfth April 1848. | Wednesday.

Dear Miss Fortescue.

We have entered into an arrangement with the Shakespeare House committee,2 to play twice in London,3 for the purpose of founding a fund to endow a Curator of the house, who shall always be someone associated with English literature.4 The design being, to connect with the place and the name, an honourable retreat for one distinguished man through all time. The exact time of acting is not yet fixed, but I have proposed some time between the middle and end of May. The Merry Wives on the first night; Every man in his Humour on the second. An interval, probably of a week, between the two performances. I hope we may count on your kind assistance.5 Next Saturday we rehearse a farce,6 but on that day week we shall probably resume the Merry Wives; and if you will allow me, I will beg my brother7 to send you a list of our calls8 and other arrangements, as soon as it can be made out. We are going to do Mrs Inchbald’s Animal Magnetism9 with the Merry Wives, and I hope we shall do it very well. 

Miss Fortescue

 Alwys believe me | Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Julia Sarah Hayfield Fortescue (1817-99), actress: see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 331n. Played in a number of adaptations of CD’s works and several times with the Amateur Company organised by CD since 1845 (for the Company, see Pilgrim Letters 4 and Forster, Pilgrim Letters 5, i, 381-2).
• 2. On 7 Dec 47, the London Shakespeare Committee, following the purchase of Shakespeare’s birthplace in Sep, had announced its wish to place it “under the superintendence of some Person honourably connected with Dramatic Literature” (Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 222 n.2). By Apr 48, CD had proposed the endowment of a curatorship through performances by the Amateur Company (ibid.).
• 3. At the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 15 and 17 May.
• 4. CD intended the first beneficiary to be James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862; Dictionary of National Biography), the dramatist and actor, whose plays included Virginius (1820) and The Hunchback (1832). CD had been concerned to learn of Knowles's bankruptcy in Nov 47; in the event, less than £600 of the proposed £1,000 was raised and Knowles received it as a lump sum (Pilgrim Letters 5, pp. 222 n.1, 423 n.3).
• 5. Fortescue played Mistress Ford in Shakespeare and repeated her role of Mistress Kitely in Jonson (she had performed it in 1845). Fortescue did not appear in the subsequent provincial performances.
• 6. Animal Magnetism (see below); the rehearsal took place at Fanny Kelly's private theatre, 73 Dean Street, Soho (Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 281). The Company played James Kenney's farce, Love, Law, and Physic (1812) after Every Man in His Humour.
• 7. Frederick Dickens (1820-68).
• 8. i.e. dates for rehearsals.
• 9. The farce (1788) by Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821; Dictionary of National Biography), actress and author