The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ANNE PROCTER,1 9 JULY 1858

MS Alastair J. E. Matthew.

GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT. 

Friday Night, Ninth July, 1858.

My Dear Mrs Procter.

A thousand thanks for your kind and considerate note.2 I received at the same time, one from my boy in India,3 wherein he said he had seen your Patriarch,4 and was going to “Tiffin”5 with him next day. I wonder whether the “Moonshee”6 was of the party. I wonder whether I should like to know a Moonshee. As at present advised, I think not. I am heartily glad to hear that our dear Miss Bewick7 has achieved so great a success.8 Pray congratulate her, most cordially, from me. And with Love to Procter, and with Love to yourself, Believe me ever

Mrs. Procter.

Affectionately Yours 

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Anne Procter (1799-1888), daughter of Captain Thomas Skepper and Anne Dorothea (afterwards the third wife of Basil Montagu; married, 1824, Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874; Dictionary of National Biography), writer (as Barry Cornwall) and lawyer: see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 27n. Well known as the witty hostess of a wide literary circle. CD had known the couple since the late 1830s.
• 2. Presumably with news from India, where the 'Mutiny' had effectively ended in Mar 58, though fighting continued in Oudh into June.
• 3. Walter Dickens (1841-63), attached from the outbreak of the Indian 'Mutiny' to the 42nd Highlanders; saw action at Cawnpore (Dec 57) and Lucknow (Mar 58): see To Boyle, 5 Feb, Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 516 & n.
• 4. Presumably a joking name for the Procters’ son, Montagu (1830-85); served in the 'Mutiny'.
• 5. A light meal; luncheon (Oxford English Dictionary).
• 6. A native secretary or language-teacher in India: also “munshi” (Oxford English Dictionary).
• 7. Thus in MS; Mary Berwick was the pseudonym of Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-64), daughter of Ann and Bryan Procter; contributed poems to Household Words from Feb 53. CD published her work for almost two years before discovering her identity (see To Adelaide Procter, 17 Dec 54, Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 486 & nn).
• 8. Her collected poems, Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses, 1858; republished posthumously, 1866, with an introduction by CD.