The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MR FLIGHT,1 29 JANUARY 1850

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 19.

Text from facsimile in Chaucer Covers & Auctions online catalogue, Dec 2018.

Devonshire Terrace

Twenty Ninth January 1850 

Mr Charles Dickens sends his compliments to Mr Flight, and has to inform Mr Flight in reply to his letter, that he has not the least knowledge of Mr J.H. Barron's address,2 or of any of his proceedings.

• 1. Probably Edward Gill Flight, solicitor, 1 Adam St, Adelphi, who had defrauded the poet and humorist Thomas Hood in 1844. The promised financial support of Flight for Hood's Magazine had proved to be fraudulent; bills were unpaid, Hood was owed £100, and both the Feb and Mar numbers of the publication had appeared late. Frederick Oldfield Ward sought contributions on Thomas Hood's behalf from many authors: Alfred Tennyson and John Ruskin were asked and declined; however Walter Savage Landor, Bryan Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall"), Richard Monckton Milnes, and Charles Mackay all responded favourably. Robert Browning sent poems, published in June-Aug 1844 and Mar-Apr 1845, including "Garden Fancies" and "The Tomb at St. Praxed's".
• 2. Thus in MS. The Pilgrim editors believed that there was an error in the original John Wilson catalogue listing from 1981, and that "Barron" was "almost certainly a misreading of "Barrow" – that is, John Henry Barrow (1796-1869), CD's maternal uncle.