Item Info

Accession Number: 87-570
Physical Description: [2] pages
Transcription:

3 Hanover Terrace, Regents Park

Sunday Seventh April, 1861.

My Dear Lady Olliffe

It would have given me the greatest pleasure to have dined with you on the anniversary of your wedding day, but it most unfortunately happens that I’m engaged that day to die with George Moore, of Kensington Palace Gardens, who is (as John Gilpin was)

a citizen

Of credit and renown.

I would have got rid of the engagement somehow, if it had been an ordinary one, but he proposed the day at a month’s notice, as being the day after my last Reading this season.

Tell Olliffe with my love, how heartily vexed I am.

Why did you get married on the nineteenth? Why didn’t you take the twentieth—when I am not engaged and could have come to you? Olliffe couldn’t wait, I suppose; but it’s hard that I should suffer for it!

Ever affectionately Yours

Charles Dickens

MssDate: Sunday Seventh April, 1861
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Olliffe, Laura Cubitt
Provenance: Benoliel, Mrs. D. Jacques 11/57

Bibliography:

 The British Academy Pilgrim Edition: The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Nine, 1859-1861. Graham Storey, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 402.

Country: Creation Place Note:3 Hanover Terrace, Regents Park
Country:England
City/Town/Township:London

Creation Year: 1861
Call Number: DL OL4L 1861-04-07
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author