The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1836-1840

Theme(s):

theatre

To ANNE BUCKLEY,1 8 SEPTEMBER 1845

Text from facsimile of printed form letter (^aa), with additions in CD’s hand, in Forum Auctions online catalogue, June 2021.

Devonshire Terrace SEPTEMBER 8th, 18452

My Dear Miss Buckley3

^aIf any unforeseen occurrence should arise, at any time between the date of this note and the occasion to which it refers,4 to prevent you from availing yourself of the enclosed Card of Invitation; I beg the favor of its return to me, immediately after your becoming aware of your inability to attend.
I trouble you with this request, in deference to a general desire on the part of the Inviters5 that there should be no vacant seats in the Theatre, when many of their personal friends are necessarily excluded from it, at the best, in consequence of its small size.

Faithfully yours,^a
CHARLES DICKENS6

Miss Buckley.

1. Anne Buckley (1794-1868), younger sister of Eliza Touchet (née Buckley; 1792-1869), widow of James Touchet (1784-1821), second cousin of CD’s friend William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-82). Mrs Touchet acted as Ainsworth’s salon hostess at Kensal Lodge, on the Harrow Road near Willesden; visitors included Francis Mahony (“Father Prout”), Daniel Maclise, George Cruikshank, John Macrone, and Benjamin Disraeli. Catherine Dickens maintained a friendship with both Anne Buckley and Eliza Touchet after her separation from CD; see Lillian Nayder, The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), p. 291.
2. “Devonshire Terrace” and “8th” in CD’s hand.
3. “My Dear Miss Buckley” in CD’s hand.
4. Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour was first performed by CD’s amateur company on 20 September 1845, at Fanny Kelly's private theatre in Dean Street, Soho. See Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 348-9; see also Robert C. Hanna, “Frances Maria Kelly, Charles Dickens, and Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School”, Dickensian 114 (2018): 278-93.
5. Principally CD and Clarkson Stanfield. The acting company included CD, John Forster, Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, John Leech, Frank Stone, and CD’s brothers Augustus and Frederick. For the full cast see Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 377-8.
6. Signature and name of addressee in CD’s hand.