The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To GEORGE DOLBY,1 3 AUGUST 1868

Text from facsimile in Sotheby's catalogue, Sept 2019.

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

Monday Third August 1868

My Dear Dolby

I cast this penny roll upon the waters,2 with the view of ascertaining where you are, and what you are about.

I want to speak to you about Income Tax return.3 Shall you be in town on Thursday? I shall be at the office that day. Shall you be in town on Friday? I propose to dine that day, either at Verrey's4 (I can't write – that means Verrey's), or Greenwich,5 or anywhere else. Will you come?

Love to Mrs. Dolby,6 the young lady,7 and the jovial boy.8 Childs9 (just heard from him) sends his "best regard to dear Dolby."

Scott10 is here, looking as if he had come Express out of a cheerful Barber's window.

Ever Cordially

CD.

• 1. George Dolby (1831-1900), manager of CD’s reading tours, 1866-70, on behalf of Chappell & Co. Became a personal friend of CD; author of Charles Dickens as I Knew Him (1885).
• 2. A metaphor for acting generously, without the expectation of a reward. The expression derives from Ecclesiastes 11:1: "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days".
• 3. Income Tax had been introduced in 1842, imposed at the rate of 7d. in the pound on annual incomes above £150 (Stephen Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, vol. 2 [London: Longmans Green & Co., 1888], pp. 225, 263 & 325).  The 1842 legislation was officially the "Act for granting to Her Majesty Duties on Profits arising from Property, Professions, Trades and Offices"; the tax was usually referred to as "income and property tax: it was not called "income tax" until 1892, when the 1842 legislation was retrospectively renamed as the "Income Tax Act". From 1857-8 onward, the rate fluctuated between 5d. and 10d. in the pound; CD, as a high earner for his time, paid tax at a rate of 7d. per pound from 1863-4 up to the time of his death in 1870. For 1867 he paid £28.10s.8d. in tax; for 1869 he paid £43.6s. (Coutts's Bank). There is no record of a tax payment in 1868. His wish to speak to Dolby about his tax return probably concerned his UK liabilities from the American public reading tour; given his own tax bracket, and amounts he banked, CD does not appear to have paid tax on the whole of his income – particularly on these foreign earnings. On the arrangement that he and Dolby had come to with the Internal Revenue Department concerning exemption from tax in the United States, and the altercation with a New York tax official, see Charles Dickens as I Knew Him (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885), pp. 304-10.
• 4. Mrs Harriet Verrey's café restaurant, 229 Regent St, where CD often dined. CD's first attempt to write "Verrey's" displays an unsteadiness of hand, possibly brought on by the health issues that plagued him while he was in the United States in the winter and spring of 1867-8. For further information see Nicholas Cambridge, “Bleak Health: Charles Dickens’s Medical History Revisited”, Dickensian 114.2 (2018): 117-33.
• 5. Probably the Trafalgar Tavern at Greenwich, a favourite of CD's.
• 6. Ursula Marian Dolby, née Moss (1838-75), eldest child of William Moss, of Ross-on-Wye, organist of Ross Church and music teacher; married George Dolby on 21 Sept 1865.
• 7. Charlotte Dolby (1866-1960).
• 8. George Charles Dolby, born 3 Feb 1868.
• 9. George William Childs (1829-94; Dictionary of American Biography), editor and joint-proprietor of the Public Ledger, Philadelphia since 1864, and philanthropist; previously partner in Childs & Peterson, Philadelphia booksellers and publishers 1853-60; founded the American Publishers' Circular and Literary Gazette, ed. Shelton Mackenzie, 1863. Presented the Shakespeare Memorial Fountain, Stratford-on-Avon and memorial windows to George Herbert and Cowper in Westminster Abbey and to Milton in St Margaret's Church, Westminster. Author of Recollections of General Grant, 1885 and his own Recollections, 1890. CD wrote to Childs on the same day as he penned this letter to Dolby; see Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 163-4.
• 10. Henry Scott, CD's valet and dresser, who accompanied him on reading tours in the UK, Ireland, and the United States.