The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ROBERT BELL,1 30 MARCH 1857

Extract in J.A. Stargardt, Berlin catalogue 2003; addressed Robert Bell; dated Tavistock House, 30 March 1857.

…I have such an agreeable remembrance of my last very pleasant visit to you,2 and of my great enjoyment of your hospitality, that I am vexed to be under an engagement to dine at Gravesend next Tuesday.3 It is, however an engagement— and a grim business one to boot4—and you know the reliability of your old manager.5 (I will be as disagreeable at Gravesend as I possibly can). 

• 1. Robert Bell (1800-67; Dictionary of National Biography), journalist and miscellaneous writer; best known for his Annotated Edition of the English Poets, 29 vols (not 24 vols as given previously), 1854-7: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 543 & n. He had served under CD on the Charter Committee which reported to the Royal Literary Fund on proposed reforms, 1855.
• 2. Unidentified; unlikely to have been the meeting so long ago as Apr 55 suggested at Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 305 n.5.
• 3. CD was at Gravesend from 7-15 Apr, while he oversaw building works at Gad’s Hill.
• 4. Unidentified business connected with Gad’s Hill.
• 5. Bell had acted in the amateurs’ production of Not So Bad as We Seem, 1851: see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 385n.