SD2632. Charles Dickens to William Charles Macready

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 357 (in part).

Gad’s Hill Place,

Higham by Rochester, Kent.

Tuesday Thirty First March 1863.

My Dearest Macready

Wills spoke to me about the ms or Mrs. Meredith’s novel …

We really have been be-princed to the last point of human endurance; haven’t we? Having two little boys sent home from school “to see the illuminations” on the marriage-night, I chartered an enormous Van, at a cost of five pounds, and we started in majesty, from the office in London, fourteen strong. We crossed Waterloo Bridge, with the happy design of beginning the Sight at London Bridge, and working our way through the City, to Regent Street. In a bye-street in the Borough, over against a dead wall and under a Railway-bridge, we were blocked for four hours! We were obliged to walk home at last, having seen nothing whatever. The wretched Van turned up in the course of the morning. …

Text: Dickens, 10, 227–228.

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