The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ROBERT DUDLEY,1 5 SEPTEMBER 1857 

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 434.

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, May 2020.

Gad's Hill Place

Higham, by Rochester\Saturday Fifth September 1857 

Dear Sir

            I am greatly obliged to you for the spirited and accurate sketch,2 of which you have had the kindness to send me a Photograph. Pray do me the favor to accept my cordial thanks.

                                    Faithfully Yours

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

Robert Dudley Esquire.

• 1. Robert Charles Dudley (1826-1909), watercolourist and lithographer. He illustrated, with frontispiece and vignette, Such Is Life: Sketches and Poems. (London: S. Eyre, 1857) dedicated to CD by the volume's author, "Doubleyou", i.e. William Wilson (1826-86). Later Dudley had success as a painter, mainly of genre pictures and landscapes; he exhibited at the Royal Academy 1866-89.
• 2. No doubt one of the scenes in The Frozen Deep or Uncle John (performed at Manchester on 21, 22, or 24 August 1857), possibly executed for a Manchester newspaper.