The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To LEBBEUS CHARLES HUMFREY,1 7 SEPTEMBER [1843]

Text from facsimile in Stargardt Autographenhandlung online catalogue, Mar 2024.

Date: CD was in Broadstairs with his wife Catherine and their children throughout Aug and Sep 1843

Broadstairs.
Thursday Seventh September

Dear Sir.

   I am greatly obliged to you for your kind note of this morning, and I assure you, most cordially, that it would have given Mrs Dickens and myself great pleasure to have accepted your2 Invitation, if it had been in our power to do so. But we have some friends staying with us at this moment, and shall have an addition to their number on Saturday. The new comer will remain with us until Wednesday, and then I go to London for two or three days, on business.3 I mention these engagements, being really desirous that you should understand how it is, and why it is, we are prevented from coming to you — and that our will has nothing to do with it.

   I have waited to answer your note, until I could see Mrs Dickens (who is not very well) and ascertain whether all these matters stood as they did yesterday. She sends her compliments to Mrs Humfrey;4to which I beg to add my own; and very much regrets our being compelled once more to decline the pleasure you offer us.

   Trusting that we shall be more fortunate on some other occasion, I am Dear Sir

      Faithfully Yours

         CHARLES DICKENS

____ Humfrey Esquire5

• 1. Lebbeus Charles Humfrey Q.C. (1758-1852), a leading London criminal barrister, who owned a holiday house at 5 Brick Court, Broadstairs.
• 2. “it” overwritten with the “y” of “your”.
• 3. On 14 Sep CD visited Field Lane Ragged School; see To Angela Burdett Coutts, in Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 562.
• 4. Emma Humfrey (1815–73) née Gibbs.
• 5. CD did not know Humfrey’s first name.