The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To WILLIAM DARE MORGAN,1 19 MARCH 1868
MS Mrs. Gerald Morgan
Address: W.D. Morgan Esquire | 70 South Street |New York City
Albany,2 Thursday Nineteenth March | 1868.
My Dear Morgan
I most heartily congratulate you on your happiness. None of your old and true friends can be more deeply interested in it than your undersigned correspondent and all the household at Gad’s Hill. I look forward to being presented to Miss Hoyt,3 and to welcoming her, beforehand, to my Household Gods and Goddesses: – you know how warmly.
Dolby,4 I, and our three men,5 will mount guard over you all the way to Liverpool: and I mean to report to Miss Hoyt from the other side what excellent care we took of you. The Gasman (as the most reliable)6 already has orders – tell Miss Hoyt from me – never to take his eye off you, day or night.
All good be with you, and with the object of your love. With best wishes for both, Believe me alwys
Affectionately Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
- 1. William Dare Morgan (1838-87), son of CD’s friend Captain Elisha Ely Morgan (?1805-64). Joined his father’s shipping firm, the Black X Line, and spent most of the period 1861-4 in London, safeguarding the family’s interests during the American Civil War. See Leon Litvack, "Messages from the Sea: New Dickens Letters to E.E. and W.D. Morgan", Dickensian 110.2 (2014): 242-54.
- 2. CD read in Tweddle Hall, Albany, on 18 and 19 March.
- 3. Angelica Livingston Hoyt (1847-1933), Morgan’s fiancée.
- 4. George Dolby (d. 1900), CD’s reading tour manager from 1866.
- 5. Aside from Dolby, the staff CD brought with him from England included Henry Scott (his valet), Richard Kelly (who arranged the preliminaries in each venue), and George Allison (the gasman). Kelly was discharged for speculating on tickets; see Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 62, 96; dated 1-3 and 17 April 1869.
- 6. CD called George Allison ‘the steadiest and most reliable man I ever employed’ (Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 92; dated 7 April 1868).