The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To FRANCES ELIZABETH BURNETT,1 [?26 JUNE 1841] 

MS (fragment) Daniel Moss; cut from a longer letter, leaving 7 lines on recto, with closure and signature on verso.

Date: handwriting confirms 1841; "proceedings" suggests the Edinburgh dinner for CD, 25 June 1841. 

as ready and quick as it was possible to be!) were in a perfect state of wild enthusiasm. The proceedings2 lasted two hours. The highly-gifted young man3 wound up with another short speech, not less effective than the first: and then withdrew to his Inn, and to Bed. He returned to. . .

            My best remembrances to Mr Burnett, and love to Charley4 and poor little Harry.5

            Always affectionately

                        CHARLES DICKENS

Mrs Burnett.

• 1. Frances Elizabeth (Fanny) Burnett, née Dickens (1810-1848); pianist and singer. Eldest of John Dickens’s children (see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 4n). In 1823 began study at the Royal Academy of Music, singing under Domenico Crivelli and studying the piano under Ignaz Moscheles. Forced to suspend her studies due to John Dickens’s financial difficulties, returning first as a part-time piano teacher and then as a student again in 1832. Met Henry Burnett at this time; married in 1837. CD and Fanny were close, though he envied her success and education. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1846; died in 1848 after a prolonged illness.
• 2. Probably the dinner in CD's honour, at the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, 25 June 1841. See To John Forster, [26 June 1841], in Pilgrim Letters 2, pp. 310-11, and To Messrs Chapman & Hall, 26 June 1841, in Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 312. For a report on the proceedings see Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1841, pp. 2-3.
• 3. CD is here referring to himself.
• 4. Charles Dickens Kneller Burnett (1841-81).
• 5. Henry Augustus Burnett (1839-49), the likely model for little Paul Dombey in Dombey and Son.