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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charity

friends

To MISS ROSS,1 1 APRIL 1850

Text from facsimile in Leslie Hindman Auctioneers online catalogue, August 2015.

Devonshire Terrace

First April 1850.

My Dear Miss Ross.

I am very sorry that I cannot be of any assistance to you in the matter you confide to me. Nor need I hesitate, in the same confidence, to tell you why. It is not a month, since I communicated with Lord John Russell2 on the subject of a small pension for Mr Poole3, who has no means of existence and is quite unable to write. The question is still pending, but Lord John immediately assisted him from another public source, and that in so handsome a manner that I should feel it (as I am sure you will understand4 on this explanation) indelicate and obtrusive, to bring another such application under his notice.

With all good wishes, Believe me

Faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Miss Ross.

1. Either Georgina or her younger sister Thomasina. Their brother Charles Ross was a parliamentary reporter on The Times and a friend of CD’s since 1832; CD became friendly with the whole family. Thomasina was an accomplished linguist, and contributed eight papers to Household Words between 1850 and 1851. In 1852 the Earl of Carlisle applied to Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, for a Civil List pension in recognition of Thomasina Ross’s literary labours; the appeal succeeded three years later. See William J. Carlton, 'Dickens and the Ross Family', Dickensian 51 (1955): 58-66.
2. Lord John Russell (1792-1878; Dictionary of National Biography), Prime minister 1846-52, author and friend of CD.
3. John Poole (1785/6-1872; Dictionary of National Biography), playwright, author of the highly successful Paul Pry (1825) and very popular in the days of CD’s youth. In the mid-1840s he fell on hard times and relied on the kindness of CD, John Forster and Thomas Noon Talfourd. They negotiated grants to him from the Royal Literary Fund, and in 1847 CD donated to him some of the proceeds of his amateur theatrical performances at Liverpool and Manchester. See letters from CD to Russell on Poole’s behalf, Pilgrim Letters 6 pp. 232-3 and pp. 239-40. Poole was awarded a Civil List pension of £100 p.a.
4. A small tear has removed the final "d".