Item Info

Accession Number: 95-2202
Physical Description: [2] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

Gad’s Hill Place, Higham, by Rochester, Kent.
  Sunday Eighteenth October
  1857
My Dear Morley.
  I particularly want a little piece of information, with a view to the construction of something for Household Words. I have not the means of reference here, and I dare say you can supply them out of your own reading. It will oblige me very much, if you will consider and reply to the following question.
  Whether, at any time within a hundred years or so, we were in such amicable relations with South America as would have rendered it reasonably possible for us to have made, either a public treaty, or a private bargain, with a South American Government, empowering a little English Colony, established on the spot for the purpose, to work a Silver-Mine (on purchase of the right). And whether, in that supposititious case, it is reasonably possible that our English Government at home would have sent out a small force, of a few Marines or so, for that little Colony’s protection; or (which is the same thing), would have drafted them off from the nearest English Military Station.
  Or, can you suggest, from your remembrance, any more probable set of circumstances, in which a few English people – gentlemen, ladies, and children – and a few English soldiers, would find themselves alone in a strange wild place and liable to hostile attack?
  I wish to avoid India itself; but I want to shadow out in what I do, the bravery of our ladies in India.
  Very faithfully Yours
  Charles Dickens
Henry Morley Esquire

MssDate: Sunday Eighteenth October 1857
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Morley, Henry, 1822-1894.
Provenance: Purchased from Heritage, 8/2/95. Benoliel Fund.

Bibliography:

Volume 8, pp. 468-469, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey ; associate editors, W.J. Carlton … [et al.].

City/Town/Township: Creation Place Note:Gad's Hill Place
City/Town/Township:Higham, by Rochester, Kent

Call Number: DL M827 1857-10-18
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author