Item Info

Accession Number: 87-0966
Physical Description: [2] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

                                               Tavistock House, Friday Night, First April 1853.
My dear mark. Consider this rough draft. I would not make it longer, were I you—or at all events much longer—unless on indispensable and absolute necessity. Ever affect CD.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear B and E.
              I address this business letter to you as the Firm, in the perfect certainty that you will not misconstrue a word in it. I beg you to understand that I am truly sensible of having always received the most generous, manly, and honorable treatment from you. I never can hold it in a more lively remembrance than I do now.
             You know whether I have endeavoured to deserve your confidence by a thorough devotion of myself to Punch, and a complete relinquishment of any private convenience, occupation, or desire, that could possibly interfere with it. I will not say another word on that point. 
             My time of life, my family, and my close and long connexion with you, all taken into account, decide me, after much anxious consideration, to ask you whether you think you can give me some share in Punch. I do not seek a large—and my expectations are modest, I hope. but if I could have some little proprietorship in Punch that could be made an Editorial one, so that the share and the Editorship should be inseparable and my present position thus rendered superior to any chances and changes that may lie beyond ourselves, it would be a relief a comfort and an encouragement to me that I cannot possibly express.
             But you are not to consider that, I know. You can only ask yourselves—a little influenced perhaps by your unvarying friendship and consideration for me, which I gratefully acknowledge—whether I have rendered any faithful services in my sphere of action, that give this application some color of reason.   If you can think so, I gladly and hopefully leave the rest in your hands.
            I have made the purport [of] this letter known to no one but C.D. Without any request on my part, he has answered “that as your friend and mine, if there is any impartial part he can take in the matter, or any confidence he can receive, or any trust he can execute, or any friendly office he can discharge, his services are more than ready.”” 

MssDate: Friday Night First april 1853.
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

"B and E" refers to Bradbury and Evans, Dickens's Publishers. There is no evidence that Lemon sent this or a similar letter to Bradbury & Evans. It is not referred to in the Punch archives; and, after selling his third-share to Bradbury & Evans in 1842, Lemon did not subsequently own any share in Punch.

 

Recipient: Lemon, Mark, 1809-1870
Provenance: Gift of Mrs. Jacques Benoliel, 12/6/54.

Bibliography:

Volume 7, p.57, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey; associate editors, W.J. Carlton…[et al.]. 

Country: Creation Place Note:Tavistock House
Country:England
City/Town/Township:London

Call Number: DL L544m 1853-04-01
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author