The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM WOODALL,1 28 APRIL 1863 

Text from facsimile in International Autograph Auctions online catalogue, Apr 2019. 

GAD'S HILL PLACE

HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Tuesday Twenty Eighth April 1863. 

Sir 

            I do not remember to have received any such communication from you as you describe in your letter dated four days since. As I have left Tavistock House these two years,2 it may have gone to my office in London3 and have been set aside by some mistake in the great accumulation of correspondence there.

            It is with regret that I convey you the assurance of my inability to comply with the request of the Wedgwood Memorial Committee.4 But I have lately done all that I can reasonably afford to do in such wise.5

                                    I am Sir

                                                Faithfully Yours

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

William Woodall Esquire

• 1. William Woodall (1832-1901; Dictionary of National Biography), partner in the china manufacturing business of James Macintyre, in Burslem, near Stoke-on-Trent; Secretary of the Wedgwood Memorial Institute Committee.
• 2. On Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, where CD lived from 1851 to 1860.
• 3. The office of CD's journal, All the Year Round, at 26 Wellington Street, Strand.
• 4. A proposal for an institute honouring the memory of master potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95) was made by the Earl of Carlisle at a town meeting in Burslem on the 27 January 1859; this called for funds for erecting a "memorial building", comprising a library, school of art, and museum. The foundation stone was laid on 26 October 1863; see Wedgwood: An Address. By the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone (London: John Murray, 1863).
• 5. The request from Woodall was for a speech, rather than a financial donation. CD delivered an address on behalf of the Royal General Theatrical Fund on 4 Apr, and had agreed to give another speech, at the annual dinner of the Royal Free Hospital, on 6 May.