Item Info

Accession Number: 87-261
Physical Description: [4] pages
Material: Paper
Transcription:

  Broadstairs, Kent
  Sunday Third September 1848

My Dear Fred.
        I will not express an opinion in reference to the enclosed letter, as I could say nothing of it that would be gratifying to you.
       Neither will I put it to your reasoning consideration how far a young lady who cannot make a stand against the postponement of her marriage on the most unanswerable ground, is likely to make a stand against the struggles and sacrifices it is certain to demand of her.
       Neither will I ask you whether you see nothing in all this, so opposed to the commonest social delicacies and restraints, as to be very new and startling.
       But, once again, and for the last time, I must do my duty by protesting against this connexion as fatal and hopeless. I regard the hour in which I encountered this family, as the most unfortunate of my life. And I do in my soul believe that the step you are about to take, is as disastrous and ill-advised a one as ever was taken in this like direction by mortal man.
      Less than this, I can not say. More I will not—for it would be fruitless—and with this, I leave the subject for ever.
      Your letter, received last night gives me, for the first time, a piece of information which sets your position in an entirely new light before me. I learn from it that you are in debt. I never supposed it possible that you would contemplate marriage, on your income, with such fetters on your limbs. Whenever I have thought that you owed money, I have supposed that you were gradually paying it, and that you could, very reasonably and easily, do so—taking time. When I wrote from Paris, this was my belief. And I thought that if I could assist you to furnish your house or lodgings, —your income being clear before—I should be justified in such an outlay. But, whether I can reconcile it with any remembrance of my children and the claims upon me, to fling any sum of money into the unfathomable sea of such a marriage with debt upon its breast, is grave question on the deliberation of which I enter for the first time. And I can not possibly enter on it now, unless I have the means before me, in writing, of ascertaining what your liabilities are, and what your exact position is. And I must ask to know that, apart from the intangible and baseless visions with which delude yourself of extraordinary     

MssDate: Sunday Third September 1848.
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

The enclosed letter to which Dickens refers is presumably 

Recipient: Dickens, Frederick William, 1820-1868
Provenance: Gift of Benoliel, Mrs. D. Jacques 12/6/1955.

Bibliography:

Volume 5, p. 400-401, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey; associate editors, W.J. Carlton…[et al.]

Country: Country:[England]
City/Town/Township:Broadsairs/Kent

Call Number: DL D556f 1848-09-03
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author