The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To SIR JOSEPH OLLIFFE,1 [?21 OCTOBER 1855-27 APRIL 1856]2

MS Private.

Champs Elysées | Sunday evening

My Dear Olliffe

I grieve to give you trouble; but my Nurse3 has suddenly fallen ill in a strange way—has been vomiting a quantity of blood, without any reason that I can make out (unless it should arise from a natural derangement of the system: which seems to be upon her)—and I am induced to ask you if you can kindly come round in the Coach I send with this, and look at her.

Ever Faithfully Yours | CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Joseph Francis Olliffe (1808-69; Dictionary of National Biography), physician to the British Embassy in Paris; see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 606n.
• 2. CD was in Paris, with intervals in England, 19 Oct 55 to 29 Apr 56; the earliest and latest dates therefore on the first and last Sundays in this period.
• 3. Presumably the nurse of Edward (“Plorn”); otherwise unidentified. No other reference is made to her in the known correspondence of this Paris period.