Item Info

Accession Number: 87-345
Physical Description: [2] pages
Transcription:

Gad's Hill Place

Higham by Rochester, Kent.

Friday Twenty Fifth October, 1861.

My Dear Sir

I am exceeingly obliged to you for your kind invitation, and beg you not to estimate my appreication of it by my non-acceptance of it.

The truth is, whenever I am away from home, so employed as I shall be at Colchester, I never stay with any friend whomsoever. Any such pleasure would be so incompatible with what I have to do, that I am obliged systematically to renounce it.

As I shall remain in Colchester but a few hours altogether, i shall not have an opportunity of thanking you in person. But I shall hope to have another and better occasion of doing so.

May I ask you when you write to your brother, to send him my kind regard, and to add that I was exceedingly sorry to miss him in London (by only a few hours) before he went away?

My Dear Sir

Faithfully Yours

Charles Dickens

W. Hawkins Esquire

MssDate: 1861
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Hawkins, William
Provenance: Hamilton 12/55

Bibliography:

The British Academy Pilgrim Edition: The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Nine, 1859-1861. Graham Storey, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 482.

Call Number: DL H814 1861-10-25
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author