The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

family

To FRANCESCO BERGER,1 10 JANUARY 1855

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 502.

Text from facsimile in Sumner and Stillman online catalogue, May 2020.

Tavistock House

Wednesday Tenth January 1855

Dear Sir

I hope the opportunity you desire2 will present itself naturally, before very long. I cannot make an express appointment for the purpose just now, as I am quite uncertain whether I may not be called out of town Tomorrow or next day, with Charles,3 or on the business of placing him in some house of commerce.4 Besides which, I have – the Christmas holidays being over – a fortnight's arrear of appointments to clear off.5

Your letter required no apology and is very agreeable to me.

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Mr Francesco Berger

1. Francesco Berger (1834-1933, Dictionary of National Biography), musician; befriended Charley Dickens while the two were in Germany, when Berger was a student at Leipzig's Konservatorium der Musik, founded by Felix Mendelssohn in 1843. Berger was later "admitted on terms of intimacy to the whole of the Dickens family" (Berger, Reminiscences, Impressions and Anecdotes [London: Sampson Low & Co. (1913)], p. 17). He also composed the music for Dickens's productions of Wilkie Collins's plays The Lighthouse (1855) and The Frozen Deep (1856); see To Berger, 13 Jan 1857, in Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 259.
2. Presumably connected with Berger's professional prospects.
3. Charles Culliford Boz Dickens ("Charley", 1837-96), CD's eldest son.
4. Charley was eventually placed with the financial house of Baring Brothers, 8 Bishopsgate Street Within. See To Angela Burdett Coutts, 12 & 21 Jan 1855, in Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 503, 508.
5. That evening, CD met with W.H. Wills and a Mr Ryland to discuss what was to be done with Charley (see Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 503-4). Over the next fortnight, CD’s appointments were primarily focused on the question of Charley’s future. He went to Wimbledon to see the Rev. John Matthew Brackenbury of Wimbledon School about his son Walter’s education (Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 508), and met with a merchant, John Dillon on 24 Jan, presumably about Charley’s future (Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 506). CD hints at other such meetings with merchants during this time; he was also engaged in editorial work for Household Words.