Item Info

Accession Number: 2002-151
Physical Description: [1] page with envelope
Transcription:

 My Dear Harness

I have missed you sorely, at the Readings.  We have had the most enormous houses, but your seat has always been ready for you, and the faithful Dolby has always reported: “No Mr Harness.”

I cannot quite make up my mind whether to read the Murder from Oliver Twist, or no.  I cannot decide whether the art of the thing should exalt the horror, or deepen it.  Therefore I am going to try it in St. James’s Hall, before a mere handfull of friends, next Saturday.  Half past eight is the time, and it will not take an hour.  If you can come — do.  You will receive a card of admission, a few hours after you receive this note.

      With Kindest regard to your sister

Believe me ever

                Your truly affectionate Friend

Charles Dickens

 

MssDate: Tenth November 1868
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

 On letterhead of the Office of All the Year Round.

Notes:

In the later years of his life, Dickens put enormous time and energy into his readings — really one-man dramatic performances of passages from his books. He made extensive, and very profitable, reading tours of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the United States. His contemporaries believed that the strain of these performances greatly shortened his life. In this letter he invites his friend William Harness to a private performance of “The Murder from Oliver Twist,” a new scene:

Harness did attend the private audition, and told Dickens that it was “a most amazing and terrific thing . . . but I am bound to tell you that I had an almost irresistible impulse upon me to scream. . . . ”  Dickens later told his daughter Mary that, at one reading, the “Murder” had caused “an epidemic of fainting . . . I should think we had from a dozen to twenty ladies borne out, stiff and rigid, at various times.  It became quite ridiculous.”

 

Provenance: Benoliel Fund

Country: Creation Place Note:No. 26 Wellington Street, Strand
Country:England
City/Town/Township:London

Call Number: DL H229 1868-11-10
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author