Beschreibung:

DICKENS, Charles (1812-1870) Autograph letter signed (‘Charles Dickens’) to Sir Joseph Paxton Tavistock House, London, 6 December 1858. Four pages, 177 x 110mm, bifolium, printed letter-paper headed ‘Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London WC’ (later annotations in pen and pencil at upper margins of pp. 1 and 4). Provenance: John Fleming (1910-1987; New York bookseller and collector) – Dr Muus G. J. Beets (Hilversum, Netherlands); presentation letter, 17 September 1979, from Henry G. Walter Jr. A Pickwickian Christmastime dinner in Coventry: a long and colourful letter to Sir Joseph Paxton the architect who designed the Crystal Palace, describing a case of unseemly politicking around a dinner held in his honour to mark Dickens's reading of A Christmas Carol to benefit the Coventry Institute. Dickens is surprised and vexed to have Paxton’s letter [explaining his absence from the dinner]: ‘Of course you know the local lights and shadows of Coventry, better than I do; but I am strongly of the opinion that Mr. Whitten’s discretion is not remarkable, and that in this manner he made a mistake […] if you had been there you would have been heartily received’. None of his fellow diners suspected the real reason for Paxton’s absence; Dickens considered making reference to it in his speech, but ‘After a careful study of our Blunder-headed Whitten, I came to the conclusion that I had better not […] if he could only find a hole big enough to put his foot in, he would unquestionably do it’. Charles Dickens in the manner of his much-loved creation Samuel Pickwick, finds himself far from London and forced to navigate the complexities of local society at a dinner held in his honour: he recounts the events of his night in Coventry with a mixture of frustration and wry amusement to Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865), the Member of Parliament for that city. Paxton had been dissuaded from attending that evening on political grounds by one Mr Whittem [misspelt here by Dickens], who subsequently lied baldly to the other guests before Dickens’ eyes about the reason for Paxton’s absence. Dickens continued his series of enormously successful public readings of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth to raise money for good causes in 1858: in just three months, he gave 85 readings in over 40 towns across Britain. Published: Tillotson & Storey (ed.), The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 8: 1856-1858 (1995), pp.714-6.