The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To LORD JOHN RUSSELL,1 16 JUNE 1858

Text from facsimile in Lacy Scott & Knight online catalogue, Sep 2017.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE,
TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON W. C.
Wednesday Sixteenth June 1858

My Dear Lord John Russell.

    I am deeply sensible of your kind feeling towards me, and most heartily assure you that it has affected me very much.2

    Unfortunately I am not free for the 26th for I am going down to Gad’s Hill on Friday morning, and we have some friends coming to stay there with us, in constant succession,3 until I go away on a long tour of reading, at the beginning of August.4 I stand in some need of country, peace and quiet, and my daughters5 have made these arrangements for me accordingly. But if Lady John6 will be at Pembroke Lodge7 on the morning of Thursday the 24th and will allow me to have the great pleasure of calling on her there and then, I will most gladly do so. I have to read in town that evening,8 and could not better employ the forenoon.

        Believe me Ever

        Very faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

The | Lord John Russell

• 1. Lord John Russell (1792-1878; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), leading Whig politician, principal architect of the Great Reform Act in 1832, and one of the main promoters of parliamentary reform; Prime Minister 1846-52, 1865-6. CD had known him at least since 1846, and dedicated A Tale of Two Cities to him.
• 2. CD’s “Personal” statement, concerning his separation from his wife Catherine, had appeared in The Times on 7 June; it was reprinted in Household Words on 12 June.
• 3. Among CD’s invitees to Gad’s Hill were Thomas Beard, John and Eliza Forster, and William Woodley Frederick de Cerjat (Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 595, 597–8).
• 4. CD’s reading tour of England, Ireland and Scotland extended from 2 Aug to 13 Nov; he returned to Gad’s Hill whenever possible.
• 5. Mamie (1838–96) and Katey (1839–1929).
• 6. Frances Anna Maria Russell (1815–98, née Elliot; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Russell’s second wife, married on 20 July 1841.
• 7. The residence of the Russells, in Richmond Park.
• 8. CD read A Christmas Carol at St Martin’s Hall on 24 June.