The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MARY BOYLE,1 17 AUGUST 1863

Text from facsimile on eBay, Aug 2023.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND
Monday Seventeenth August 1863.

My Dear Mary. After a long day’s work here, I send you this shortest of notes to tell you how heartily glad I am that you have carried away from Gad’s Hill so pleasant a remembrance of it, and how heartily pleased I shall be to see you there again when you can come.

— Boy and Dockyard, on Wednesday in next week;2 both, rather like — I flatter myself!!

The undersigned Boy going a wandering uncommercially.3

        Ever your affectionate

                    CD.

• 1. Mary Louisa Boyle (1810-90), miscellaneous writer; daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir Courtenay Boyle (1770-1844), second son of the 7th Earl of Cork and Orrery; a distant cousin of CD’s friend Lavinia Watson. She first met CD at the Watsons’ residence, Rockingham Castle, in Dec 1849. For her close friendship with CD see Mary Boyle her Book (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 229–43.
• 2. CD’s son Sydney (1847–72) was at home while his ship, the frigate HMS Orlando, was being repaired in Chatham Dockyard. See To W.W.F. de Cerjat, in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 253.
• 3. CD published his next “Uncommercial Traveller” piece (later retitled “Chatham Dockyard”) in All the Year Round on 29 Aug 1863. It was based on the author’s personal observations, gathered from a visit to the Dockyard with Sydney. The description of the “wise boy”, with his store of nautical knowledge, is probably an affectionate portrait of his son (All the Year Round 10 [29 August 1863]: 14).