The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To MARION ELY,1 27 FEBRUARY 1855
MS Free Library of Philadelphia.
Tavistock House / Twenty Seventh February 1855.
My Dear Miss Ely.
I was at the Olympic2 last night (Tit for Tat,3 excellent, and your protegé4 Robson marvellously good),5 and did not find your note until I came home at midnight. If I had had it sooner, I have a strong suspicion that I should have been better pleased with my box-company, and worse with my stage entertainers – for then I should have been at the Princess’s6 with you. Catherine7 told me you wished to have one of the reprinted little papers.8 I am truly sorry to tell you that I have not one left. I dispersed them at the time among those whom I had known in that association, and they were soon gone.
Ever believe me / Very faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
Miss Ely.
- 1. Marion Elizabeth Ely (1820-1913), daughter of Charles Ely and Sara, née Rutt; niece of Rachel Talfourd (1792-1875), wife of CD's friend Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854).
- 2. The programme was Tit for Tat (see below); A Lucky Friday; and The Yellow Dwarf and the King of the Golden Mines.
- 3. By Francis (Frank) Talfourd (Talfourd’s eldest son) and Alfred Wigan, based on a French vaudeville; its first night was 22 Jan. For Frank Talfourd’s earlier theatrical interests, see Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 602n.
- 4. CD jokes about Marion’s enthusiasm for the actor rather than meaning formal support or sponsorship.
- 5. Thomas Frederick Robson, originally Brownbill (?1822-64; Dictionary of National Biography), actor and manager; made his reputation in comedy, farce and especially burlesque. Joint manager of the Olympic theatre, 1857, where he produced professionally Wilkie Collins’s The Lighthouse, taking CD’s role of Aaron Gurnock: see further Pilgrim Letters 8, pp. 394, 418 & nn. Because of his small figure, he became known as “the great little Robson”. He played Sowerby, whose jealousy is provoked by Thornby’s courting of his wife; in Act II, Sowerby in turn (tit for tat) successfully arouses the jealousy of the now-married Thornby. The Times (23 Jan) reported the “laughter of the audience was innocent throughout the piece”.
- 6. Oxford Street, Marylebone, under Charles Kean’s management; the programme was Dion Boucicault’s Louis XI (adapted from the French of Casimir Delavigne) and Harlequin Bluebeard; or The Great Bashaw. Louis XI, essentially “a one-part piece”, gave Kean histrionic opportunities he took fully, the audience being “overpowered by the marvellous delineation of character” (The Times, 15 Jan); CD, though, did not admire Kean as an actor: see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 545 & n.
- 7. Catherine Dickens (1815-79), CD's wife
- 8. Presumably one of the special reprintings on black-bordered paper that CD had made in Mar 54 of his Household Words obituary notice of Talfourd’s death: “The Late Mr. Justice Talfourd”, Household Words, 25 Mar 54 (IX, 117).