The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY,1 1 JULY 1852

Tavistock House

First July 1852 

My Dear Dr Hawtrey.

            I am most singularly unfortunate with you. On Saturday, I have a semi-public engagement which is associated with a very important design;2  and for Tuesday, I have been engaged this fortnight!3 Nevertheless, I shall still hope that when the Fates have had enough of keeping us asunder, we shall meet.

                                    Very faithfully Yours

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

The Reverend Dr Hawtrey.

• 1. Edward Craven Hawtrey (1789-1862; Dictionary of National Biography), Headmaster of Eton 1834-53. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge (Fellow 1810-35). DD 1834. Assistant master at Eton 1814-34; Provost 1853-62. As Headmaster nearly doubled the school's numbers. Edited Goethe's lyrical poems 1833-4; published a translation of Homer into English hexameters 1843, and other translations of Greek, Italian and German verse. An easy-going bachelor, he had "an odd weakness for fine clothes, perfumes, and gold chains; one of the school beliefs was that 'Hawtrey stood up in £700' " (Arthur Duke Coleridge, Eton in the Forties [London: R. Bentley & Sons, 1896], p. 294). On one occasion he ordered a boy caught reading Bleak House in class to translate Jo's evidence (Ch. 11) into Greek comic iambics (Francis St. John Thackeray, Memoir of E. C. Hawtrey [London: George Bell & Sons,1896] p. 155n). CD's son Charley (1837-96) attended Eton from January 1850 to December 1852.
• 2. On Saturday 3 July CD had dinner with the architect Coutts Stone (1819-1902); see To Angela Burdett Coutts, 30 June 1852, in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 702. Stone was working with CD's brother-in-law Henry Austin on the plans for Miss Coutts's project for improved sanitation in 150 tenement houses in Westminster; see To Angela Burdett Coutts, 3 Dec 1852, in Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 812-14.
• 3. CD was in Folkestone on Tuesday 6 July.