Beschreibung:

DICKENS, Charles John Huffam (1812-1870). Autograph letter signed to 'Dear Mrs Ternan', Angel Hotel, [Doncaster], 16 September 1857, one page, 8vo, on a bifolium (slight soiling, remnants of tape on inner margin, touching one letter). A brief and hurried note about an expedition to the St Leger, informing Mrs Ternan when Dickens and his party are to be returning - 'We will come away from the course at whatever time suits you best' - and begging her to 'have no ceremony with me', signed with immense panache. UNRECORDED; APPARENTLY THE ONLY SURVIVING DOCUMENT IN DICKENS'S HAND DIRECTLY CONNECTING HIM TO THE TERNAN FAMILY.. Dickens was in Doncaster with Wilkie Collins, ostensibly as part of a walking tour which they were to write up for Household Words as 'The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices'. The tour turned out to be even lazier than anticipated, after Collins sprained an ankle. This need not have been a disappointment for Dickens, since, as Claire Tomalin pinpointed in The Invisible Woman: the Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens , the real raison d'tre for the 'tour' was probably the presence in Doncaster of Nelly Ternan, the young, golden-haired actress with whom Dickens was already struck and who was almost certainly to become his mistress, under conditions of the utmost secrecy. The Ternans, mother and three daughters, were in Doncaster to perform at the Theatre Royal on 15th March - the 'Lazy Tour' contains an indignant report of the vile behaviour of members of the audience towards the actresses that evening. More intriguingly, in his report of St Leger day in the 'Lazy Tour', Dickens has one of the apprentices distractedly burbling about a beauty encountered at the race: 'Mr Idle asserts, that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel, with an appearance of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody to the following effect: "O little lilac gloves! And O winning little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head, why anything in the world but you and me!..."'. From this Mrs Tomalin has surmised 'that Nelly was at the St Leger Day race and possibly in the Dickens carriage'. The present letter provides strong evidence in support of that assumption. The next Sunday Dickens was writing to his assistant, Harry Wills 'I am going to take the little - riddle [Nelly] - into the country this morning. I think I shall leave here on Tuesday, but I cannot positively say'. It is likely that it was St Leger Day that crystallised his obsession with Nelly.