The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA,1 15 SEPTEMBER 1868
MS Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
GAD'S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Tuesday Fifteenth September 1868
My Dear Lord Dufferin
I should have answered your kind note much sooner, but that it seemed absurd to do so, without knowing when I am coming to Belfast. It is now arranged (these things being settled for me), that January is to be the time for my short visit.2
I am most cordially obliged to Lady Dufferin3 and yourself for your proffered hospitality, and I thank you sincerely. But the work on such occasions is so very hard, that I long ago found any private enjoyment to be quite incompatible with it. I travel with a staff of whom the greatest exactness in business is required, and I never leave them.4 I invariably live at an hotel with my Secretary, and stick to my post as though it was a matter of life or death. There is not the least merit in this devotion, for I could not get on with out it.
If you should fortunately be at home when I come to Belfast, I shall hope to express my thanks in person, and to have the honor of being presented to Lady Dufferin. In the meantime and always, Believe me
Very faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
The Lord Dufferin
- 1. Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple Blackwood (1826-1902), son of 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye; 1st Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, of Clandeboye, Co. Down, diplomat and administrator; Under-Secretary War Office 1866-8; Governor General of Canada 1872-8; Viceroy of India 1884-8; Ambassador in Paris 1891-6. See Leon Litvack, 'Dickens, Irish Friends and Family Ties: New Letters to James Emerson Tennent and Lord Dufferin', in Dickensian 110.1 (2014), 47-53
- 2. CD’s ‘Farewell’ tour of Ireland included two readings in Belfast, on 8 and 15 January 1869.
- 3. Hariot Georgina Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1843-1936).
- 4. CD travelled to Ireland in the company of his manager George Dolby and his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth.