The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To SIR MARTIN SHEE,1 9 JUNE 1841

MS Swann Auction Galleries on-line catalogue, 2009.

Devonshire Terrace. | June The Ninth 1841.

Dear Sir Martin.

I thank you very much, for your kind and ready acquiescence in the matter of the Sanatorium.2 I should have mentioned when I sent you Doctor Smith’s3 pamphlet4 and conveyed to you the committees5 request, that the design—honestly—was not upon your pocket, but upon the sanction of your name and station. Let me thank you again with great cordiality, and beg you to believe me

Very faithfully Yours 

 CHARLES DICKENS

Sir Martin Archer Shee

“ “ “6

• 1. Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769-1850; Dictionary of National Biography), portrait painter; RA 1800, President RA 1830-50. He and CD had met at the Artists’ Benevolent Fund dinner, 12 May 38 (Speeches, ed. K. J. Fielding, p. 2). See further Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 262n.
• 2. A sanatorium, promoted by Dr Southwood Smith (below), for “the Lodging, Nursing and Care of Sick Persons of the Middle Classes” (1842 Prospectus); opened at Devonshire House, York Gate (close to CD’s house at Devonshire Terrace), Apr 42. See further Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 165n.
• 3. Thomas Southwood Smith, MD (1788-1861; Dictionary of National Biography), sanitary reformer. From 1820 practised medicine in London; the main founder of the Health of Towns Association, 1839. See further Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 164n.
• 4. The Sanatorium; A Self-Supporting Establishment for the Lodging, Nursing, and Cure of Sick Persons of Both Sexes, 1840.
• 5. Apostrophe omitted by CD. CD was on the Committee of the Sanatorium and was concerned to recruit additional “names” (see To Shee, 3 June 41, Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 293).
• 6. The MS apparently shows ditto marks below Shee’s name; if so, indicating his address as it would appear on the envelope (32 Cavendish Square).