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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 EDMUND B. GREEN,7 27 JANUARY 1842

Text from New England Weekly Review, 5 Feb 42.

Tremont House, Boston, | Twenty Seventh January, 18428

My Dear Sir,

Pray assure my friends in Hartford, that I joyfully and gladly accept their most welcome invitation—that I shall arrange to meet you at Springfield, on Monday week;9 and that I shall have the pleasure of dining with them on pg 24Wednesday following.1 Add that I shall ever remember my Thirtieth Birthday, (the intervening Tuesday) as the season of their kindness and congratulation, above all my other birthdays, past, present, or to come.

  •                                                        Faithfully yours
  • Edmund B. Green, Esquire.                              Charles Dickens

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Notes

Editor’s Note
7 Edmund Brewster Green (1814–52), editor and part-proprietor of the New England Weekly Review, a Whig paper published at Hartford. For a time, private secretary to Henry Clay. Joined the California gold rush 1850, taking the sea route, but stopped at Panama, where he published the weekly Panama Herald. Father of the historian John Fiske (originally Edmund Fiske Green).
Editor’s Note
8 Date written out thus, in full, indicates that letter was in CD's own hand (similarly, To Unknown Correspondent, 27 Jan): cf. Putnam's style, as secretary, in To Felton and To Roberts, 27 Jan. The writer of letters quoted from catalogue and other printed sources giving dates in abbreviated or standardized form, cannot be determined.
Editor’s Note
9 Green was presumably one of the "deputation of two" which met CD and Catherine at Springfield on 7 Feb and took them on by steamboat to Hartford (To Forster, 17 Feb). He was a member of the committee of arrangements for the Hartford Dinner to CD, and one of the speakers.
Editor’s Note
1 In three other letters (To Forster, 29 Jan, To Fred Dickens, 30 Jan, To Macready, 31 Jan) CD gives the day of the Hartford Dinner as a Wednesday. In fact it took place, at the City Hotel, on Tues 8 Feb (Hartford Daily Courant, 10 Feb). Presumably Green's invitation had mentioned 8 Feb, not the day of the week, and CD had miscalculated: cf. his not only saying in this letter that his birthday (Mon 7 Feb in 1842) was on a Tuesday, but also announcing in his Hartford speech on 8 Feb that he now had a new reason for remembering that day "which is already one of mark in my calendar, it being my birthday". The Hartford Daily Courant of 10 Feb described the dinner as "a grand affair—high[ly] creditable to the Young Men of Hartford". William J. Hammersley (publisher, bookseller, and local politician; later Mayor of Hartford) presided; there were many official speeches and other toasts; and some verses, written in CD's honour by Mrs Lydia Sigourney, were recited. For CD's speech, with its allusions to international copyright, see To Forster, 14 Feb and fn, and Speeches, ed. K. J. Fielding, pp. 23–6 (misdated 7 Feb).
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