The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN HUGHES,1 8 MAY 1838

Text from facsimile in on-line catalogue. Victor Gulotta Collection, May 2011.

48 Doughty Street. | Tuesday May 8th. 1838

Sir.

I very much regret that the number of similar engagements I have already formed, will prevent my acting as a Vice President at your next Anniversary Dinner,2 but I hope to be more fortunate on another occasion.

John Hughes Esquire

I am Sir | Very truly Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. John Hughes (1790-1857; Dictionary of National Biography), author and artist: publications included Views in the South of France…after Original Sketches by J. H., 1825, and Lays of Past Days, 1850. Father of Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays) and William Hughes (see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 466 & nn). Friend of Richard Harris Barham, author of the Ingoldsby Legends, which began first to appear in Bentley’s Miscellany, for which Hughes and his mother supplied material. Hughes himself published in Bentley’s, including “Walter Childe” (Canto I), Bentley’s, vol. III (1 May 1838), pp. 433ff. CD’s formality in opening and closing, on the face of it surprising between editor and contributor, arises because Hughes’s contributions, like Barham’s own, were transmitted directly to Bentley (The Life and Letters of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham…By His Son, 2 vols, 1870, II, 20).
• 2. Not traced; possibly the Literary Fund Anniversary Dinner.