The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BLANCHE HUNTON,1 4 NOVEMBER 1868

MS Michael Silverman.

GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Wednesday Fourth November 1868

Dear Madam

I had not the honour of being acquainted with the late Mr. MacFarlane,2 but I would willingly have signed the Memorial certifying to his literary merits, if I had not already signed three other Memorials3 strongly pressing the Minister4 for pensions. So long as those cases remain undisposed of, I should consider it unreasonable on my part to urge others.

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Mrs. Hunton

• 1. Blanche Hunton (1836-80; née MacFarlane), second daughter of Scottish writer Charles MacFarlane (see below). She married librarian and bookseller James Hunton of 19 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London, in 1860.
• 2. Charles MacFarlane (1799-1858), a prolific Scottish travel writer, biographer, and novelist, who had been left to bring up six children (including Blanche), after the death of his wife Charlotte in 1854. In the last year of his life he was an inmate of the London Charterhouse.
• 3. CD signed a Memorial for a pension for the widow of Robert Bell (see To Anthony Trollope, 9 May 1867, in Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 365). He also supported the case of Clarissa Cattermole (wife of George Cattermole, the illustrator of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, who had died on 24 July 1868); she eventually received a Civil List pension in 1875. He might have signed memorials for others, including Anna Maria Hall and William Harrison Ainsworth (who received pensions in December 1868), and the children of John Leech (who received pensions in June 1868).
• 4. Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister since Feb 1868.