ALS, four pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.25 x 7, Tavistock House letterhead, December 6, 1858. Handwritten letter by Charles Dickens to Sir Joseph Paxton, the architect who designed the Crystal Palace, describing a case of unseemly politicking around a dinner held in Dickens' honor to mark his reading of A Christmas Carol to benefit the apprentices of the Coventry Institute. Using colorful prose, reminiscent of the pages of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens is surprised and vexed to have Paxton’s letter explaining his absence from the dinner. In part: "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." In fine condition, with a faint stain to the top edge of the last page.
Charles Dickens, in a long letter, 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 honor: he recounts the events of his night in Coventry with a mixture of frustration and wry amusement to Sir Joseph Paxton, 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 in The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 8: 1856-1858 (1995), pp.714-6.
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