The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DAVID ROBERTS,1 17 FEBRUARY 1852

Text from facsimile on eBay.

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square

Tuesday Seventeenth February 1852

My Dear Roberts

The Amateur Company of the Guild of Literature and Art2 (after doing wonders at Manchester and Liverpool)3 are going to dine with their Manager here on Monday the 1st of March4 at a quarter past six. It will give me great pleasure if you will join the party.5

Believe me | Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

David Roberts Esquire

• 1. David Roberts (1796-1864; Dictionary of National Biography), marine and landscape painter: see Pilgrim Letters 5 p. 522n. Probably met CD through Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867; Dictionary: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 553n). Roberts painted the act drop for the Guild of Literature and Arts actors’ production of Bulwer Lytton’s Not so Bad as we Seem: see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 322n.
• 2. For the Prospectus of the Guild of Literature and Art, April 1851, see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 852 (Appendix D); its aim was to help artists and writers with annuities as well as grants for members in need and their widows, an insurance scheme and houses for needy or retired writers and artists, built on Bulwer Lytton’s estate at Knebworth, Hertfordshire.
• 3. The Amateurs performed Lytton’s Not so Bad as we Seem, and Mark Lemon’s Mr Nightingale’s Diary, heavily revised by CD, on 11, 13 and 14 Feb 52 at Manchester and Liverpool with great success.
• 4. CD had invited the “whole company, and the Artists who painted the Scenes”, as well as the Duke of Devonshire, in whose house Lytton’s play had been first performed (Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 322, 602).
• 5. Roberts went: see also Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 614-5.