The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To LADY MOLESWORTH,1 16 JANUARY 1865
MS Paul Montefiore.
GAD’S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Tuesday Seventeenth January 1865
My Dear Lady Molesworth
It is not my Daughter Mary’s2 fault that your kind note has been left unanswered, but mine. She is only waiting for Lehmann’s3 dinner on Saturday, to go away hunting.4 I had a foolish notion that I might be able to offer her and myself to you for one day this week. But I might have known that I cannot dine out and write books; and that one day in a week is the greatest amount of “doubling” I can ever do in that way.
Remember that our time here on Tuesday is half past five sharp. Fechter5 is not going to do the Sculptor piece,6 at first, with the Robert Macaire,7 so the latter will be our attraction. Don’t you think we had best postpone the Wednesday’s theatrical view until there is something special to see? If yes, please tell Chorley8 so, and I will keep a sharp look out (as I have already been keeping) on the bills of wild out of the way places. At present they have really nothing in them.
Ever affectionately
CD.
- 1. Lady Molesworth, née Andalusia Carstairs (c.1809-88; Dictionary of National Biography), actress, singer, and society hostess; widow of Sir William Molesworth, Bt (1810-55), whom she married in 1844. Born in Ireland; made her début as a singer, under stage name of Andalusia Grant, at Drury Lane, Oct 27; her last stage appearance was as Hymen in W.C. Macready's revival of As You Like It, 1841. Became a leading literary hostess at their London home, 87 Eaton Place, and in Pencarrow, Cornwall. First met CD at Devonshire Terrace 3 Jan 1849, at a dinner to celebrate The Haunted Man; visited him at Gad's Hill, and saw him again in Paris in Jan 1863. Lady Dorothy Nevill records that CD, at one of Lady Molesworth's dinner-parties, "bubbled over with fun and conversation, talking in a way which resembled nothing so much as some of the best passages in his own books. He laughed and chaffed, telling me, I remember, that he had a great scheme for writing a cookery-book" (The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, ed. Ralph Nevill [London: E. Arnold,1906], p. 147). "He really liked the old lady", wrote Lord Redesdale (Memories [New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1915], vol. 2, p. 518).
- 2. Mary Dickens (Mamie; 1838-96).
- 3. Augustus Frederick Lehmann (1826-91), of German birth; industrialist; settled in London since 1859.
- 4. Mamie made an annual hunting trip to Hampshire. See, for example, Pilgrim Letters 10, p. 328; Letters 12, pp. 212, 214, 216.
- 5. Charles Albert Fechter (1822-79; Dictionary of National Biography) French actor, whom CD befriended in the 1860s; in Jan 1865 he presented the author with a Swiss chalet, in which he wrote in the summertime.
- 6. Fechter acted in The Sculptor, alongside the Italian-born actress Mademoiselle Beatrice (Marie Beatrice Binda, 1839-78); see ''Theatricals in London”, Carlisle Journal, 7 March 1865, p. 4. In his youth Fechter had aspirations of following his parents in a career as a sculptor.
- 7. This character originally appeared in an 1823 play by Benjamin Antier, Saint-Amand, and Frédérick Lemaître entitled L'Auberge des Adrets. In June 1834 these playwrights produced Robert Macaire, a burlesque in four acts. It was then adapted by Charles Selby, also in 1834, as a melodrama in two acts. Charles Fechter wrote a new adaptation, entitled The Roadside Inn, in two acts; it is this play, first performed at the Lyceum on 21 Jan 1865, to which CD invites Lady Molesworth. The Times, 23 Jan 1865, in a long notice, praised Fechter's acting to a packed audience. The character of Macaire was portrayed as the archetypical con man, representing scandals in government, politics and high society in France. Due to the scandalous nature of the character, it was banned from being used in plays in 19th-century France, with people charged with crimes for its portrayal.
- 8. Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-72; Dictionary of National Biography), music critic and miscellaneous writer; on staff of the Athenaeum since 1835. Close friend of CD, and contributor to All the Year Round.