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:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

France

travel

health

To JAMES G. BREACH,1 [9] JUNE 1853

Text of first page from facsimile, and summary in Kotte Autographs online catalogue, May 2020.

Date: written 9 June, but misdated 10 June.

Tavistock House

Thursday Tenth June 1853.

My Dear Mr Breach.

I have been ill for a week,2 and am left a little pulled down. So I purpose coming to your excellent care, tomorrow (Friday)3 and staying until Sunday,4 when, if it be fine weather I purpose crossing5 to Boulogne, where we are going to pass the summer, and whither some of our family have already gone.

I shall have only Mrs Dickens with me, but we expect a friend to stay Saturday with us. Will you be so kind as to have cheerful and quiet rooms prepared for us. We shall be down, in all probability, by the Express which leaves London at halfpast eleven tomorrow forenoon.

Very faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

1. James Gaby Breach (1803-82), proprietor of the Pavilion Hotel in Folkestone.
2. On CD's debilitating illness see To Lady Eastlake, 11 June 1853, in Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 95.
3. 10 June 1853.
4. 12 June 1853, when CD and his family travelled to Boulogne.
5. CD remarks, in a letter to W.H. Wills on 13 June, that he enjoyed "a delightful passage" to Boulogne (Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 98).