The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MARGARET ELLIOT,1 27 FEBRUARY 1866

MS Charles Dickens Museum.

6 Southwick Place, Hyde Park W2
Tuesday Twenty Seventh February 1866

My Dear Miss Elliott3

    I am heartily obliged to you (and to the Dean too) for your kind remembrance. But unfortunately, besides that I am not at all well at this present writing,4 I have a birthday engagement for Saturday5 if I should be up to going out. More’s the pity!

        Faithfully Yours ever

        CHARLES DICKENS

Miss Elliot

• 1. Margaret Elliot (1827-1901) eldest daughter of Gilbert Elliot (1800-91), Dean of Bristol, and his first wife Williamina (1796-1853). CD was a close friend of the Dean’s second wife, Frances (née Dickinson; 1820-1898).
• 2. CD had taken 6 Southwick Place, from 26 Feb to 10 June 1866, for the convenience of his London and Provincial series of readings, and for the benefit of his daughter Mamie during the London Season.
• 3. Thus in MS, though CD put a broad stroke through the two ts.
• 4. On 23 Feb CD confided to his friend William Charles Macready, “The cause of this phenomonon [sic.]is pronounced to be ‘great irritability of the heart’”.
• 5. The birthday of CD’s lover, Ellen Ternan (1839-1914), fell on 3 March.