The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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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].

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

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Period:

1841-1850

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friends

travel

family

To HARRIET BELCOMBE,1 12 AUGUST 1841

MS Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt-am- Main.

1 Devonshire Terrace. | York Gate Regents Park.

August The Twelfth 1841.

My Dear Mrs. Belcombe.

Last month—will you believe it?—I was in York2 one night, and didn’t come to see you. Worse than that, I had Mrs. Dickens with me, and didn’t give her the opportunity of knowing you,3 which she was most anxious to have. I am so bent upon your knowing how this happened—how we were coming home from Scotland; got into York at 6 O’Clock in the evening, and left at a quarter before 7 next morning—that I have given this note to my brother,4 who has been staying at Malton;5 and desired him to call upon you with such a full and true account of my comings and goings, as shall reinstate me in your favor, and make you look upon me as a martyr. With best regards to Dr. Belcombe and the young ladies, I am always

Dear Mrs. Belcombe | Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

1. Harriet (d. 1849), wife of Henry Stephens Belcombe, MD (1790-1856), Senior Physician to the York County Hospital. See Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 368n.
2. CD and Catherine, returning from Scotland, travelled by York, staying there the night of Saturday 17 July.
3. CD, travelling to Greta Bridge to see the Yorkshire schools in February 1838, had stayed in York, where he delivered a letter from the actress Sarah Bartley to Mrs Belcombe. He subsequently sent her a presentation copy of Pickwick Papers “as a slight acknowledgement of the great kindness” he had received (Pilgrim Letters 1, pp. 368-9 & nn).
4. Alfred Lamert Dickens (1822-60); trained as surveyor and civil engineer; employed at least since 1840 by the Birmingham and Derby Railway Company and based at Tamworth (Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 113 & n).
5. Approximately twenty miles from York, where CD had proposed to stay on his way to Scotland in June, presumably to visit Alfred, who was clearly engaged in preliminary surveying work for the York and Scarborough Railway, a project supported by George Stephenson of the Birmingham and Derby Company. The project was shelved and the line only opened in July 45, Alfred again being employed and based in York from at least Mar 44 (Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 89, 96, 97 n.5).