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Charles Dickens

Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Mary Tillotson (eds), The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 3: 1842–1843

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To SAMUEL ROGERS, 22 MARCH 1842

MS Professor E. S. Pearson. Address: Samuel Rogers Esquire | 22 Saint James's Place | London | England.

Baltimore. United States. | Twenty Second March 1842.

My Dear Mr. Rogers.

I know you will be glad to hear, under my own hand, that we are both well,—though very anxious to get back to dear old home, our friends, and darling children. I am obliged to make, as perhaps you have heard, a kind of Public Progress through this Country; and have been so oppressed with Festivals given in my honor, that I have found it necessary to notify my disinclination, to accept any more; or I should rather say my determination not to lead such a trying life. I have made one departure from this rule, and that is in the case of a body of readers in the Far West—at a town called St. Louis, on the confines of the pg 163Indian Territory. I am going there to dinner (it is only two thousand miles off)—and start the day after tomorrow.

If you ever have leisure to write a line, saying that you have received this, and are well, I shall be truly delighted to hear from you. Any letter addressed to me, to the care of David Colden Esquire, 28 Laight Street Hudson Square New York, will be forwarded to me without delay.

They give me everything here, but Time. If they had added that to the long catalogue of their hospitalities, I should certainly have inflicted a long letter upon you, which would have wandered into it's impossible to say how long a description of our1 travels and adventures. So you may consider yourself very fortunate.

I hope you are as well as ever, and as great a walker as ever, and as good a talker as ever—in short as perfect and complete a Samuel Rogers as ever—which I don't doubt in the least. I have made great exertions here in behalf of an International Copyright law,2 and almost begin to hope, from the assurance the leaders of the different parties at Washington have given me, that it may be brought about.

We have arranged to sail from New York for England, on the 7th. of June, in the George Washington Packet Ship. We had so bad a voyage out, that I have eschewed ocean steamers for ever.

The peace and quiet of Broadstairs never seemed so great as now. I could hug Miss Collins the Bather,3 as though she were a very Venus.

  •                     Believe me—here and everywhere—
  •                                         Faithfully | Your friend
  • Samuel Rogers Esquire                              Charles Dickens4

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Notes

Editor’s Note
1 "wanderings" cancelled here.
Editor’s Note
2 Rogers had signed the petition presented to the Senate on 2 Feb 37: see To Forster, 24 Feb, fn. He was also one of the 12 signatories to the memorial sent to CD in Apr.
Editor’s Note
3 A Broadstairs joke: see Vol. ii, p. 123. Described in a paragraph on Broadstairs in the Age, 11 Sep 42, as "the pretty and obliging chatterbox … presiding at the bathing machines".
Editor’s Note
4 Catherine added the following on p. 3 of CD's letter: "My dear Mr. Rogers. | I must add one line to remind you of your kind promise to me, the last time we saw you before we left home, that when you wrote to Charles, you would also send me a few words of remembrance. I need not say what pride and pleasure it would give me. | We are both anxiously looking forward to the 7th. of June when we sail on our return to dear England. You may easily imagine how often our thoughts turn in that direction, and how often we long to see those dear little ones, who I almost fear will have forgotten their truant parents before we get back to them. My impatient husband is hurrying me as he wishes to put up the parcel. Therefore I can only add that I am dear Mr. Rogers | Your affectionate friend | C. Dickens."
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