The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To RAIKES CURRIE,1 8 AUGUST 1855

MS John Cave.

Folkestone, Wednesday Eighth August / 1855

My Dear Sir

We have been over to Boulogne,2 or I should have sooner acknowledged the receipt of your kind note. Our having some friends on a visit here,3 prevents us from enjoying the pleasure it proposes to us.4 Mrs. Dickens5 begs me to thank Mrs. Raikes Currie on her behalf, through you. And with my own acknowledgements, I am My Dear Sir 

Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

Raikes Currie Esquire

• 1. Raikes Currie (1801-81), banker and politician; Liberal MP for Northampton 1837-57. His country home was Sandling Park, Hythe, some four miles from Folkestone.
• 2. CD stayed with his family in Folkestone from July to October and worked on Little Dorrit. The trip to Boulogne, by ferry from Folkestone, must have been brief, most probably on 5 or 7 Aug: possibly connected with Gibson’s school there, where Alfred, Frank and Sydney Smith Dickens were due to start the school year on 1 Sep.
• 3. As CD indicates in To Currie, 10 and 28 Aug, again refusing Currie’s invitations (see next and Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 696), many friends stayed briefly; the certain visitor at this date is Wilkie Collins, who stayed throughout August.
• 4. Possibly a dinner invitation.
• 5. Catherine Dickens (1815-79), CD's wife.