ALs to Mrs. Austin
Charles Dickens
Item Info
Physical Description: [2] pages
Transcription:
Tavistock House
Fifth November 1856.
My Dear Mrs Austin
I have not seen anything of your Protegée, and I humbly hope she will not come to me. If she should, I shall entreat her to excuse me from hearing her; firstly, because, from simply hearing her in a room, I could form no opinion worth giving or having, of her powers as an actress; secondly, because I shrink with horror from the idea of sending any one to a Manager, and throwing any fresh ingredient into the sooty soup of theatrical difficulties and jealousies.
I thoroughly agree in all you say of the Drama. It has been my constant effort for years past to shew in many ways that an amusement so wholesome and humanizing is more needed by an over-worked, over-driven, over-repressed, over-lectured, over-bothered People, than all the Blue Book writing and Didactic speechifying whereof my soul is sick, and wherewith my liver (in the Persian idiom) is turned upside down.
I wish you would come, in the holidays of this next Christmas, and see a New Play here. I think it would be very pretty, and I know it will have some specialties which can be seen nowhere else. We will write to Lady Gordon, and give her more than a month's notice of the great event.
My Dear Mrs Austin
Faithfully Yours
Charles Dickens
MssDate: Fifth November 1856.
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Austin, Sarah, 1793-1867
Provenance: Bloomsbury Book Auctions 11/30/83 lot 183 thru Mag, Gratz
Bibliography:
The Letters of Charles Dickens, Pilgrim Edition, Volume Eight, 1856-1858, p. 219.
Country: Creation Place Note:Tavistock House
Country:England
City/Town/Township:London
Call Number: DL Au76 1856-11-05
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author
ALs to Mrs. Austin
ALs to Mrs. Austin