The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS BEGGS,1 25 APRIL 1850

MS Private

Devonshire Terrace

Twenty Fifth April 1850 

Mr Charles Dickens presents his compliments to Mr. Beggs, and begs (on behalf of himself and Mrs. Dickens)2 to express regret that his engagements3 would not have admitted of his accepting the Invitation of the National Reform association,4 to the Soirée of this evening,5 even had he received it before last night.

• 1. Thomas Beggs (1808-96), educationalist, temperance activist, and writer on juvenile delinquency. Secretary of the Complete Suffrage Association 1842, and of the Health of Towns Association 1848. Employed as an engineer and brass founder in London 1848-71.
• 2. Catherine Dickens, née Hogarth (1815-79), CD's wife.
• 3. CD was busy editing Household Words, writing the 13th monthly part of David Copperfield, and correcting proofs of the novel, in which there were more errors than usual; see To Frank Stone, 23 Apr 1850, in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 89 ("I am half dead with work, and my head is swimming on a wild sea–out in the Pacific at least").
• 4. The National Reform Association was founded in 1848 by the Liberal MP Sir Joshua Walmsley, alongside whom CD served on the short-lived Central Working Classes Committee of the Great Exhibition (see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 57). The National Reform Association campaigned for the extension of the franchise to male rate-payers, and held over two hundred public meetings up and down the country in 1850.
• 5. The soirée, which concluded the Association's three-day conference, took place at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street, and was attended by over 600 people. For a report see "National Reform Association", in the Times, 26 Apr 1850, p. 5.