The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

social engagements

To JANE HARRIET HAWKINS,1 20 JULY 1860

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, June 2021.

Address: Mrs Hawkins | Alresford Hall | Alresford | Colchester2

GAD'S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Friday Twentieth July, 1860.

Mr Charles Dickens regrets that an engagement in another part of the country prevents his having the honor of accepting the invitation for the 9th of August,3 with which he is favored by Mr and Mrs Hawkins.4

1. Jane Harriet Hawkins, née Smythies (1820-1908), wife of William Warwick Hawkins (1816-1868) of Alresford Hall, Essex, Conservative MP for Colchester 1852-7.
2. "Colchester" written in a different hand.
3. CD had attended the wedding of his daughter Katey on 17 July, and was concerned about the health of his brother Alfred, who eventually died on 27 July (see Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 272). CD was at Gad's Hill on 8-9 Aug, after being in London for three days (see Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 284-5). His disclaimer to Hawkins seems to have been a polite fiction, in lieu of the actual, personal, reason for his preoccupation.
4. CD declined another invitation in Oct 1861, when he was on reading tour (he read in Colchester on 1 Nov); see To William Hawkins, Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 482-3.