The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CHARLES MANBY,1 20 JULY 1869

Text from facsimile in Raab Collection online catalogue, Aug 2019.

GAD’S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Tuesday Twentieth July, 1869

My Dear Manby

    Thanks, both for the two interesting addresses,2 and your interesting account of their preparation, all of which I have read with much pleasure. I shall be delighted to meet Mr Bidder3 next season in your new house. We purpose setting up a temporary caravan in London after Christmas.4

            With Kindest regard to Mrs Manby5

                Ever Yours
            CHARLES DICKENS

Wasn’t it in 14696 that we belonged to the Shakspeare club?7

• 1. Charles Manby (1804-84; Dictionary of National Biography), Secretary to the Institution of Civil Engineers 1839-1856. For many years he was involved with the management of the Adelphi and Haymarket Theatres; CD occasionally wrote to him in connection with theatrical business, including the staging of performances and requests for tickets. See, for example, Pilgrim Letters 5, pp. 469, 470, and Letters 6, pp. 133, 268, 271, 603.
• 2. Untraced.
• 3. George Parker Bidder (1806-78; Dictionary of National Biography), civil engineer, architect, and calculating prodigy. Worked with Robert Stephenson on the London and Birmingham Railway, and worked on the construction of railways in England, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and India. He was one of the founders of the Electric Telegraph Company in 1845-6, and was involved with the development of submarine telegraph facilities. His fascination with the dynamics of moving water led him to analyse issues of tidal scour on coasts and estuaries. He demonstrated a clear grasp of technical and financial aspects of a problem, and his works were characterized by simplicity and economy. See Charles Manby’s Memoir of Bidder, in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 57 (1879): 294–309. CD wished to meet Bidder after hearing from Manby about his analysis of fresh-water floods of rivers, “tersely expressed and with a noble absence of all flourish or pretence” (To Manby, 12 July 1869).
• 4. CD rented 5 Hyde Park Place from Thomas Milner Gibson, for the period Jan-June 1870.
• 5. Harriet Manby (1818-99; née Willard), second wife of Charles Manby; they married in 1858.
• 6. That is, 400 years before the date of this letter: CD was making a joke about how much time had passed since the founding of the Club.
• 7. Thus in MS; for another occurrence of this spelling see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 392. The short-lived Shakespeare Club was formed in 1838, and dissolved in 1839; it met weekly, on Saturday evenings, at the Piazza Coffee House, Covent Garden, where the members enjoyed supper together. Many of them were leading writers, painters, musicians and actors of the day, including CD, his friends John Forster and Thomas Talfourd, the actor William Charles Macready, the artists Clarkson Stanfield and Frank Stone, and the author Charles Knight; Charles Manby was also a member. The Club's object was "to combine intellectual with social enjoyment": Shakespeare readings and papers were given, and other literary subjects discussed, among them "Is the present system of periodical publication calculated to raise the character of Literature?" and "Is the utilitarian progress of the present age favourable or unfavourable to Literature and the Fine Arts?"  (Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 392, n3). For CD’s involvement in its activities see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 380, 497, 527, 529, 610, 611. After the dissolution of the Club many of its members founded the Shakespeare Society in 1840.