The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To BENJAMIN HOTINE,1 22 APRIL 1863
MS Charles Dickens Museum.
OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,
Wednesday Twenty Second April 1863
Sir
I reply to your letter myself, as the Secretary of my Readings2 is busy elsewhere, and could scarcely answer it until tomorrow.
I cannot in the least understand what is meant by your “paying a shilling to see the Hall” where I read. No such charge has ever been heard of by any of the people in my employment.
As to your being obliged to buy a pig in a poke, if you take three unreserved places without seeing them, I apprehend you would do the same if you went to any public place whatever, where there is any charge for admission. It is usual in such cases to trust in some small degree to the honesty and responsibility of the chief person concerned, and to assume that the accommodation is fair and just. You may very safely do so in the present case, for, laying aside very tempting considerations of personal profit, I left St James’s Hall because it was not clear to me that every one admitted there could see and hear perfectly.3
Faithfully yours
CHARLES DICKENS
Mr Hotine
- 1. Benjamin Hotine (1818-77), fishmonger, with premises at 19 Lime Street, London. For a full account of the correspondence between CD and Hotine see Leon Litvack, "Dickens, Celebrity, and the 'Para-Social Relationship'", Dickensian 116.2 (2020): 146-61.
- 2. Thomas Hughes Headland (?1806-88); assistant to Arthur Smith in Dickens's public readings from 1858-61. He became manager of the readings after Smith's death in October 1861, but muddled the schedule and misjudged ticket distribution to local agents.
- 3. CD changed his London reading venue from St James's Hall (where he had read in 1862) to the Hanover Square Concert Rooms (where he began reading in March 1863), "For the sake of the finer effects" in the latter venue; see To W.C. Macready,31 March 1863, in Pilgrim Letters 10, p. 227. See also CD's reassuring letter to Hotine, dated 24 Apr 1863.