The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To PETER LE NEVE FOSTER,1 31 JANUARY 1861

MS The Royal Society of Arts.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

Thursday Thirty First January 1861.

Sir

In answer to your circular letter, I beg to inform you that I have no work of the late Mr. Leslie’s2 in my possession.3

P. Le Neve Foster Esquire

Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Peter Le Neve Foster (1809-79; Dictionary of National Biography), Secretary, Society (later Royal Society) of Arts 1853-79: see further Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 295n.
• 2. Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859; Dictionary of National Biography, Dictionary of American Biography), painter. Son of a Philadelphian clockmaker, but born in London and spent most of his life in England: see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 395n. CD first met him mid-late 1841.
• 3. CD in fact possessed two original works by Leslie. In 1846, Leslie painted CD in the character of Bobadil in his production of Every Man in His Humour (Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 469 & n; Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 479: see also F. G. Kitton, CD by Pen and Pencil, 1890, following p. 100); in 1847, Leslie executed a grisaille of “Pickwick and Mrs Bardell”, reproduced as the frontispiece in the Cheap Edn (Pilgrim Letters 5, pp. 63, 194, 206; it was in the 1870 sale of CD’s works of art). The present whereabouts of either work unknown.