The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM JERDAN,1 28 JUNE 1841

MS David H. Kilmer.

Royal Hotel Edinburgh

Thursday Twenty Eighth June | 41

My Dear Jerdan.

Your letter is coming to me, I have no doubt. I am very sorry that I shall not be able to get to Kelso, but I have written my hearty thanks to your brother.2

The dinner was a very brilliant affair indeed – they say here, the best on record.3 It included all parties and persuasions. They were obliged for lack of room to turn away nearly a hundred applicants for tickets, and besides the diners we had more than a hundred and fifty ladies. Blackwoods are going to publish a good account of the speechifying.4 When they do, I’ll send you one. Meanwhile I forward you two papers, wherein the reporting is dismal.5

It’s November here. – I hope it may be June in London.

Always

Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. William Jerdan (1782-1869; DIctionary of National Biography); 3rd son and 7th child of John Jerdan and Agnes Stuart; his father was a rather easygoing, though respectable, small landowner of Kelso, Roxburghshire. William was editor of the Literary Gazette 1817-50; from 1820 a leading figure in literary society: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 207, also Jerdan’s Autobiography (4 vols, 1852-3).
• 2. See last.
• 3. The dinner in CD’s honour held at the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, on 25 June: see PIlgrim Letters 2, pp. 310-11 for full annotation.
• 4. In fact they did not do so.
• 5. The Caledonian Mercury gave a brief report and the Edinburgh Evening Courant a slightly fuller one: see ibid., pp. 311-313.