Item Info

Accession Number: 96-547
Physical Description: [1] page
Transcription:

Faubourg St. Honoré

Thursday Twentieth November 1862

My Dear Madame Viardot.

I cannot help it. I must thank you for that wonderful performance of last night. When Monsieur Viardot came upon me by accident, I was holding forth about the first act, to my daughter and sister in law, with tears rolling down my face. I came to you in hardly a better condition. I went away when all was done, in a worse. Nothing can be more magnificent, more true, more tender, more beautiful, more profound!

Faithfully Yours always

Charles Dickens

MssDate: Thursday Twentieth November 1862
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

 As Orpheé in Gluck’s Orpheé et Eurydice (first performance in Paris, 1774), at the Théâtre-Lyrique. Arthur Sullivan, one of CD’s party, recorded: “She was intensely emotional, and her performance was certainly one of the greatest things I have ever seen on the stage” (Arthur Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan, 1899, p. 51). Sullivan recalled CD, on this trip, “arguing with cabmen in bad French and talking, talking all the time, as voluble and interesting as his books” (Herbert Sullivan and Newman Flower, Sir Arthur Sullivan, his Life, Letters and Diaries, 1927, p. 42. On a subsequent visit to Paris, he said of CK: “his electric vitality was extreme, but it was inspiriting and not overpowering” (Arthur Lawrence, ibid., p. 52). (All from Pilgrim Vol. 10, p. 163n.)

Recipient: Viardot-Garcia, Pauline, 1821-1910
Provenance: Christie's #8536 11/8/96 Lot 17 via Holmes

Bibliography:

 The British Academy Pilgrim Edition: The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Ten, 1862-1864. Graham Storey, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 163

 

Country: Creation Place Note:Faubourg St. Honoré
Country:France
City/Town/Township:Paris

Creation Year: 1862
Call Number: DL V656 1862-11-20
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author