The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM POWELL FRITH,1 16 MAY 1864 

Text from facsimile in International Autograph Auctions online catalogue, October 2016. On mourning paper.2 

GAD'S HILL PLACE,

HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT. 

Monday Sixteenth May 1864 

My Dear Frith

The enclosed requisition3 (which speaks for itself as a plain matter) will require 20 signatures. Do you feel a sufficient interest in such a principle, to authorize me to add yours to it? You can tell me on Wednesday, and then give it me back. 

Ever Faithfully

CHARLES DICKENS  

W.P. Frith Esquire 

• 1. William Powell Frith (1819-1909; Dictionary of National Biography), painter. Studied art at the Royal Academy schools. Exhibited at the British Institution 1839; at the Royal Academy 1840; ARA 1845; RA 1853. Painted several pictures of Dolly Varden in 1841 (after the publication of Barnaby Rudge), after which he became a friend of CD. John Forster commissioned the portrait Charles Dickens in His Study from him in 1859.
• 2. Since the death of his mother on 12 Sept. 1863 CD generally wrote his letters on mourning paper.
• 3. Prepared by CD for a meeting of the Garrick Club on 25 Apr 1864, to amend the rules for committee member retirement and re-election. In the end the resolution was not used; see To Lover, 21 May 1864, Pilgrim Letters 10, pp. 397-8.