The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To JOHN PALGRAVE SIMPSON,1 8 OCTOBER 1855
MS Huntington Library
TAVISTOCK HOUSE,
Monday Eighth October 1855
My Dear Sir
Coming to town this morning for the day,2 I find your two letters together.
For myself, I am bound at once to say that I am far from sanguine of the success of your enterprize,3 and that I am not disposed to join it.
As to Miss Burdett Coutts, I am unable to give you any authorized reply, as that lady is in the South of France.4 But I have a strong impression that an application to her to become a shareholder would be certainly unsuccessful, and that her interest in such a design would altogether depend upon the manner of its realization and execution.
I hope your experience may rapidly disprove my misgivings, and I beg to assure you that your second note needed no apology.
My dear Sir
Very faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
J. Palgrave Simpson Esquire.
- 1. John Palgrave Simpson (1807-87), playwright and novelist. In Paris during the 1848 Revolution, he settled in London in 1850. Published four novels and had c. 60 plays performed, including adaptations of Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities. Like CD, a member of both the Garrick Club and the Athenaeum.
- 2. CD was in Folkestone, ‘hammering away’ at Little Dorrit (see To Macready, 4 Oct).
- 3. Not traced.
- 4. Angela Burdett CouttsAngela Georgina Burdett (1814-1906; Dictionary of National Biography), later Baroness Burdett Coutts, youngest child of Sir Francis Burdett and Sophia, daughter of Thomas Coutts, the banker, whom CD assisted in her philanthropic projects. She was travelling with Dr William and Mrs Brown (the latter her former companion, Hannah Meredith), returning from the Pyrenees by way of Montpellier.