The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To JAMES THOMSON,1 12 JUNE 1852
Text from facsimile in Raptis Rare Books online catalogue, Apr 2023.
Tavistock House
Saturday Evening, Twelfth June | 1852
My Dear Sir
I am very glad that all is going on so well––very glad also, that there is no difference between us in reference to the subject of our last short correspondence.2 Of course you understand that I will connect Sir James Brooke's3 name with the toast, with the greatest pleasure, and with all possible grace and courtesy towards him.4 The point I would rather avoid is quite another matter.
Mr Cutler5 has sent me the prospect.6 she will hold herself much indebted to your courtesy. (I observe that the word I have written before "places" has a cabalistic appearance. I mean it to represent a 3).
My Dear Sir
Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
James Thomson Esquire
P.S. I will attend to your request [ ].7
- 1. James Thomson, of Gordon, Thomson, & Keene, seed merchants and nurserymen, 25 Fenchurch Street.
- 2. CD had written to Thomson on 11 June, declining to allude to the “Bornean proceedings” (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 694; see next note).
- 3. Sir James Brooke (1803–68; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, army officer and first Rajah of Sarawak, who had put down piracy in Borneo in 1849 and been appointed KCB. Joseph Hume MP had three times vainly demanded a Commission of Inquiry on suspicion of the illegality and inhumanity of his actions (he finally succeeded later in the year, but Brooke was exonerated.) On 30 Apr, as a mark of public confidence, Brooke was honoured by a grand Public Dinner at the London Tavern (for which Thomson had been a steward); a 42-page Report of the speeches was published in May.
- 4. CD gave a speech at the ninth anniversary festival of the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution, on 14 June at the London Tavern. While he did not refer to Brooke by name, he did note “the names of many noblemen and gentlemen of great influence and station”; he did, however, propose a toast to Thomson (Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K.J. Fielding [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960], pp. 146, 147 [misspelled “Thompson”]).
- 5. Edward R. Cutler, Secretary of the Institution.
- 6. See To Cutler, 7 Apr 1852: “I am rejoiced to learn that you have so good a prospect” (Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 637).
If you will have the kindness to reserve three tickets for Mrs. Dickens,CD’s wife Catherine (1815–79), née Hogarth. - 7. Two or three words indecipherable on low-resolution image.