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:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

charity

To E. [?V]. WILLIAMS,1 28 APRIL 1865

Text transcribed from digitised facsimile on eBay (University Archives), Jan 2002.

Gad’s Hill, Twenty Eighth April 1865

Sir,

In reply to your letter, I beg to say that I do not think that the point to which you call my attention is one coming within the province of a chairman at a Public Dinner.2 The principle is a very sound one, but always has to be considered with a reference to the number of members a Society is likely to be composed of, and also the [*] amount of [**]3 it is likely to require. For these reasons I regard it as belonging to the administration of the Body and deem that your suggestion would be more appropriately addressed to the President of the Institution than to the President of the Dinner.

I am Sir | Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

1. Not identified; possibly Sir Edward Vaughan Williams (1797-1875; Dictionary of National Biography), barrister, judge of court of common pleas, 1846; privy councillor, 1865.
2. CD was Chairman of the Newsvendors’ Benevolent Dinner on 9 May and of the Newspaper Press Fund Dinner on 29 May: see K. J. Fielding, The Speeches of CD, pp. 337- 348.
3. Three words not clear from computer image.